Hi all, Over the last couple of months or so I've been busy as a bee porting Mysteries of the Ancients etc over to my cross-platform Evolution engine, and now I am busy writing the documentation for the new cross-platform beta of Mysteries of the Ancients which I hope to have out sometime this summer. However, as I've been porting the code, testing it on multiple operating systems, etc I need to decide upon the method of installation for the game. So here is the deal.
One issue I am experiencing with the cross-platform version of a game like Mysteries of the Ancients is that every operating system has its own directory structure, its own special place for storing files, which means I have to constantly change the directory paths for my files every time I compile it on a different OS. For example, on Windows saved games should go in c:\Users\user name\Application Data\MOTA, but on Linux it would go in /home/user name/.mota. Its not difficult to support both, but an easier way is just to keep everything in a single directory and run it from your home directory on Linux or from your User directory on Windows. There is a similar issue with things like sound and music. Typically on Windows a game's sounds and music would be in the same directory as the executable like c:\Program Files\Mysteries of the Ancients\Sounds or c:\Program Files\Mysteries of the Ancients\Music, but Linux has a totally different directory structure where files should go. For example, the manual would go in /usr/shared/docs/MOTA, the sounds in /usr/MOTA/Sounds, the music would go in /usr/MOTA/Music, and the executable goes in /usr/bin. In short, there is no middle ground in terms of where files would go just because they are totally different. The easiest solution I can see for this problem is to simply zip the game up, and rather than installing it you would extract the contents to c:\Users\user name\MOTA on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 and would unzip them in /home/user name/MOTA on Linux. That way I can keep all the files together, not worry about different environment variables or different directory paths, and of course not have to worry about things like User Account Control griping about saving files to the program directory. While this method seems to work well for Jeremy Kaldobsky, AKA Aprone, I am worried that some users would want an actual installer like Inno Setup rather than unzipping and manually installing the program themselves. I can do that, of course, but I'd prefer not have to unless it is necessary. Any thoughts, opinions, or suggestions about this issue? Thanks. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
