Distributing the game

[GodotGuy2]

Hey ChronoCrash,
So I know that all OpenBOR games are .pak files and can only be played in the pack folder of OpenBOR, but is there any way to make the games .exe files so that it can be distributed online? I need to know because I may have a job which requires using this engine. If there is a way to distribute these games, how would I go about doing it?

 

[msmalik681]

Well if there is only 1 pak file then it will auto load that game so u could name the openbor folder something like data then have a shortcut to the exe so it looks less messy

 

[CRxTRDude]

...

Welcome to ChronoCrash dude. To answer your question, the only way to do what you said is just to add the pak and a newer version of the engine and then make an installer for it. There's no way to embed the pak file to the exe (unless you wrote something to do just that); but if your aim is portability, it depends on your mod. If your mod is heavy on graphics and sound, it will inflate pak size.

BTW, here's some things to consider when you start at OpenBOR:

• People now advocate the use of 16bit [or 32bit] color modes which can give you less restrictions in color. See the wiki about that.
• Once you got that done, you can now use PNGs instead of GIFs. Make sure though that you declare globalmap to your entity header. You'll understand that soon enough.
• OGG is recommended for new modders, since it gives higher quality with a modest file size. For more info on that, see Illusionista's tutorial. Be warned that there are some BOR files that are still required by the engine or else it will not run (primarily complete.bor, menu.bor, gameover.bor and remix.bor). You can convert them using wav2bor.

I can part you with that. For more, there's the help and resources board, the wiki and the more updated manual

 

[bWWd]

Ive seen some people making exe openbor games , not sure how but its doable.
I dont recommend using OGG because it lags some devices and dont recommend using png's cause difference is minimal between gif , and its easy to make mistake and render 24 bit png which happened to me a lot of times by mistake and i had to rerender again and overall people will complain why 24bit png doesnt work etc. just stick to 256 colour gif files and should be fine.
CRxTRDude dont recommend things if you didnt had to battle with them yourself, youre making his life harder in the end.This recommendation is quoted, i have no clue who came up with that stuff, its weird.

 

[White Dragon]

mmm...
this would be a solution:
http://reboot.pro/topic/5509-portableapps-portable-program-maker-tool/

 

[esn23]

use molebox it can turn openbor into an exe so that everything is secure in the exe. 

 

[O Ilusionista]

Ive seen some people making exe openbor games , not sure how but its doable.
I dont recommend using OGG because it lags some devices and dont recommend using png's cause difference is minimal between gif , and its easy to make mistake and render 24 bit png which happened to me a lot of times by mistake and i had to rerender again and overall people will complain why 24bit png doesnt work etc. just stick to 256 colour gif files and should be fine.
CRxTRDude dont recommend things if you didnt had to battle with them yourself, youre making his life harder in the end.This recommendation is quoted, i have no clue who came up with that stuff, its weird.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you:

- OGG is recomended over .BOR, which is way bigger. The only port that trully doesn't likes OGG is PSP. In Android devices, it runs smoothly unless you have a bad device. If its needed, its better to make specific ports for specific devices

 

[CRxTRDude]

CRxTRDude dont recommend things if you didnt had to battle with them yourself, youre making his life harder in the end.

Just because it's a recommendation, that does not mean you have to follow it. It's just advice, it may sound like enforcement, but this is just because of the fact that I've learned it and the fact that DC encourages use of 16 bit+, with entity-localized palletes, better sound and other things. I'm just preparing to the fact that we have no limitations to making mods now. The problem now is documentation, the fact that there's no tutorials regarding this, that's what bothers me most. People are resorting to hit and miss philosophies and other things that makes people complain that a feature is broken.

- OGG is recomended over .BOR, which is way bigger. The only port that trully doesn't likes OGG is PSP.

This , on the other hand, I forgot to emphasize.

 

[DCurrent]

Couple of things. First, if you distribute OpenBOR, remember than "open" does not mean "free". This is a legitimate application and there IS a license to follow, so keep that in mind. It doesn't stop you from distribution, but to do so you must take a couple of simple steps and also give credit where its due.

Also about .png; yes, I DO recommend highly you use it, for several reasons, all of which I've explained in great detail elsewhere. One person's common mistake (saving as 24bit) is not a reason at all for others to avoid the format. I make a lot of common blunders doing certain things too - it doesn't make the technique bad. Simply put, .png is the future and that's not going to change. There is no reason at all to use .gif for sprites in new projects.

Now .ogg is another story. I use it personally because I like the smaller size, find working with it more convenient, and I don't give two spits about authoring for non PC consoles. Your situation may be different and you should evaluate based on what your end goal is.

DC

 

[bWWd]

Regular bor doesnt support png files  so why confuse people telling its better to use png if there is no actual advantage to use png right now and gifs work perfectly fine, even if its filesize difference then that difference is so small its not even worthy mentioning, if there would be real png advantage then i would totally forget about gif files.
I keep my files as png in their full color palette and convert to gifs so i know theyre 256 colour ones, i dont like idea of having 2 identical png files and checking which one is 256 colour one.
PNG will be the future if 24 bit ones will be supported for ingame graphics.
About ogg then theres memory leak on android because of it which is probably responsible for lag on psp as well.
Some mods that have 200 MB music folder and 50 MB of actual game data should use obb tho or modders should reconsider using shorter music clips.
IMO OGG implementation is still incomplete.

 

[GodotGuy2]

Okay, First, Kudos to all you guys who answered my question for distribution. I may need to update my OpenBOR, because the version I got I got during 2012. Can someone give me a "Legal" link to the most recent version and tell me where I can find this "license that the admin mentioned?

 

[CRxTRDude]

It's in the file manager section of the forum, under the engine. The license is inside the engine zip.

In summary, just give credit where it's due, mainly the OpenBOR Team for the engine and if you get some scripts from the forums, just give credits to them as well.

For commercial terms, I think you can give DC a call for that, he's the lead dev, so he's got the say on these kinds things.

If you read through the lines, again, the decision is still on you and your team on what should you use and utilize, these things need to be weighed and planned as a team together and not solo unless it's a solo project, hobby or experiment. We're here to help and critique and hope you would have a good experience working with the engine.