In the interest of less typing, first, read my post from last ludum dare on this topic, as it covers 90% of what I want to say right now.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/04\/27\/how-to-ensure-more-people-can-sucessfully-run-rate-your-game\/<\/a><\/p>\n Basicly though, the short of it is, if your game REQUIRES a setup procedure, or requires me to go out and install some other libraries or runtimes on my system itself before I can play, I will (most other people will too) click the \u201cback\u201d button and move on to the next game in the list of 1400.\u00a0 This goes for you too love2d people! (ESPECIALLY love2d people!) Even if i did manage to figure out how to get the mess of severely outdated libraries love uses on my system without destroying my entire OS I would still have to deal with the fact that love versions don\u2019t work with games made in other versions, so no matter which one I install it would only work for half the games!\u00a0 Pack the interpreter for love, it\u2019s a TINY set of executables and libraries, i showed a few people how to do this last LD and it seemed to be a huge success, a lot of people were able to play the game that otherwise wouldn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n To add on to this as well:<\/strong><\/p>\n * No I will NOT install a different web browser, if your game has issues in firefox I talk about the issues in firefox and rate it based on that, sure chrome may be a better experience in your game but I don\u2019t use chrome.\u00a0 If it has MAJOR issues under firefox i just leave a note saying it doesn\u2019t run on firefox and move on. I\u2019ve seen a lot of instances of people pointing out bugs\/lag issues that break the game and the response basicly being \u201coh\u2026just test it on chrome\u201d<\/p>\n * No, I will not upgrade my system core (libc, libstdc++,etc\u2026) just because you compiled with the latest git version of gcc and don\u2019t want to take 10 seconds to copy those shared object files into the tarball.\u00a0 \u201cjust upgrade gcc\/libc!\u201d as a fix to get your game working, leaving me with a month worth of tracking down every package that breaks and bug testing all my code against a new gcc version is not going to cut it.<\/p>\n * No, I will not install sun java 7.\u00a0 Seriously, unless you have some sort of HUGE PRESSING REASON to be compiling for sun java 7, set your compile target for java 6, now magially those 90% of users complaining in your games page about \u201ccrashes on start\u201d or \u201cwouldn\u2019t run\u201d can run the game just fine!\u00a0 Also stop using the non-standard java extensions for different sound types included in sun and microsoft\u2019s jre\u2019s only, it breaks your game under the default vm\u2019s on android, linux, and basicly any system using anything but those two vm\u2019s<\/p>\n A few extra tips to add on to the ones in the linked post:<\/strong><\/p>\n * Linux Games:<\/strong>\u00a0 on top of what i already posted last LD (READ THAT POST!!!)\u00a0 another common mistake i\u2019m noticing is distributing the linux games in zip files.\u00a0 Remember, zip does not preserve permissions! This means that your executable files will not be executable after download, and you simply have to hope that the user knows how to re-flag the file executable. (you\u2019d be surprised! linux is far more mainstream now, the majority of users do NOT know why that file \u201cjust wont run\u201d\u2026even in something here like LD) . The preferred distribution format is .tar.gz , i don\u2019t know offhand the gui programs for linux that can create them but even from a shell it\u2019s as simple as<\/p>\n tar -pczf filename.tar.gz \/folder\/path<\/p>\n * Naming your links:<\/strong>\u00a0 Please stop simply calling everything \u201cweb\u201d it makes filtering for platforms next to impossible, and LD\u2019s search function next to useless.\u00a0 At least make them say, \u201cweb(html5)\u201d or \u201cweb(unity)\u201d so that when i\u2019m\u00a0 browsing html5 games on my android or such every other \u201cweb\u201d link isn\u2019t silverlight or unity telling me \u201clol\u2026i trolld you, i don\u2019t have a web plugin that works on your device!\u201d.\u00a0 There\u2019s also quite a few games that named their links \u201cwindows\u201d \u201cmac\u201d \u201clinux\u201d and all three of them point to a windows executable, sometimes with a blurb that it \u201chopefully\u201d works under WINE.<\/p>\n * Don\u2019t put things like \u201csorry linux users\u201d\u00a0 \u201csorry mac users\u201d \u201cmaybe next time i\u2019ll do html5\u201d or things like that in your description text,<\/strong> it makes your game come up when filtering for those platforms and makes the ludum dare search feature entirely useless.<\/p>\n * Make sure your zip\/tarball has a well named folder your entire game is contained under in it<\/strong>, do not have all your files simply sitting on the top level.\u00a0 there\u2019s 1400 games to test, most games do this properly but a few still do not, if you dont contain your stuff in a folder it will happily unzip all your files all over other peopel\u2019s test directories, generally containing other games we\u2019re testing or want to keep around to try farther\/review, and now instead of just having a folder to remove i get to hunt and peck files, sometimes hundreds of them, from the main directory trying not to delete the ones i meant to keep\u2026<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Tags: ld24<\/a>, ld48<\/a>, protip<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 30th, 2012 4:51 pm","title":"No i will NOT install your frameworks"}