Requirements on exported .exe

Sent a test game to 2 friends who don't have Construct installed, for testing.

They say an error window shows up saying DirectX8 is missing. One of them plays WOW on that same machine.

What are the exact requirements for games exported as .exe?

PS: first post, Construct is great, python support made me decide to learn it.

The November 2008 build of the DirectX 9 runtime(or something like that) is required to run Construct games.

[quote:dm3r9qqj]They say an error window shows up saying DirectX8 is missing.

That's not right - the runtime uses DirectX 9. Microsoft release updates every few months to DirectX 9 without changing the version number from 9.0c. Construct uses the August 2008 update of DirectX, so you'll need that.

If you visit this page you'll see the exact error message they'll have received. Don't ignore it! It tells you exactly what is wrong, and how to fix it. If they follow the instructions, the game should then run.

Oh one more thing - people seem to regularly run in to this no matter what the error message says. I think people have a phobia of the red X and close it before following the instructions which make it work. Have you got any suggestions on how to make this clearer so it doesn't happen again?

"Your machine will self destruct in 30 seconds if you don't follow these instructions" may get their attention

Put the words "Don't Panic" right at the top...

Honestly I think this is going to be a problem for quite some time. Here's a few reasons why:

1. Most everybody assumes that directx is automatically updated because its Windows.

2. Most people assume that just because they installed directx with some other game that their version is up to date, or a least good enough. "Hey I run WOW on this machine, so it must be the right version".

3. Yeah the big red x, and the annoying Windows error sound will put off most people.

So a couple options are to either a: make a way to have games be backwards compatible to other versions, or b: like deadeye said have a quaint little notice that wont scare them away.

Something with rainbows, and unicorns, and a nice big font with lots of hearts and smiley faces.

How important is the August 2008 update? I mean, is it absolutely essential that Construct have it set as the minimum?

This is Adobe's version penetration for Flash Player:

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_ce ... ation.html

Version 10 is the latest and greatest, but if I was developing in Flash (which I have done in the past), I'd be aiming for version 9, at most. I wouldn't want to turn away users by making them download an update to their system before they could play my game.

Perhaps the same could be said for developing in DirectX. I'm won't claim to know anything about it, but couldn't the bar be set a little lower and still work to an acceptable level? What would be lost by requiring an earlier version of the DX runtime as a minimum spec?

There's two reasons we need the August 2008 version:

• The runtime depends on D3DX, a library external to DirectX and updated separately. Newer versions have fewer bugs.
• XAudio2 requires DLLs from an "optional" DirectX update to work, and XAudio2 was only released in 2008.

However, we might be able to come up with a system which bundles the DLLs inside the final EXE. If we do this, I think we should enable it on by default, so people don't run in to this problem.

It's not ideal, but it's what we're forced to do with Microsoft being silly about DX distribution.

On an aside, WoW uses OpenGL I think?

WOW has DX and GL modes, a quick search revealed. Defaults to DX.

Thing is, I instructed the wow-less friend to download and install the same DX redistributable (Nov08) I downloaded to be able to run Construct.

Perhaps she didn't get it right. I shall investigate in person and report back.

Oh and people are fond of clicking big OK or NEXT buttons without reading. Have the OK button take you to the DX downloads page and you'll have most of them staring at a list of downloads like this O_O

not perfect, but closer

The OK button already takes them to the download page for DirectX. Another way to avoid this is to use an installer for your game, and have the installer update DirectX.