DX Studio

General Discussion - How to pickup external resources when building installer?

BUnzaga Commercial Pro Edition Joined 07 June 2006 09 February 2010 06:11:08

For example, I have save file or other external resources I am using inside DX Studio, how can I package these with installer? Is there a local path or something? Or optionally, if I link them in using external resource, is there a way to package them in when installer build? OR, if there is no way to do each thing everyone wants specifically, is there a way to allow US to use an MSI or other installer program to package the file content, as a .exe, and also use the player we package with the installer files?

Chris S DX Studio Team 09 February 2010 08:28:45

Yes, you can edit the InnoSetup script created in the intermediate directory as you need. The helpful companion to InnoSetup called ISTool makes this process a lot easier.

BUnzaga Commercial Pro Edition Joined 07 June 2006 09 February 2010 13:19:18

Ok cool, it just took a bit of fiddling to find out 'how' to do it. Here is what I did, in case anyone else is interested: 1. I added this to my 'Files' section: {#DocSrcFile}\..\[folderStructure\file.extension]; DestDir:{app}[folderStructure]; DestName: [fileName.extension] That is all! As an example, say my source file was 'system.folders.document+"Maps\Map1\Map_1.xml"' and I when I want the installed to build my game, I want it to keep that same folder structure, but change the file to '.mpf', then this is how my line would look: {#DocSrcFile}\..\Maps\Map1\Map_1.xml; DestDir:{app}\Maps\Map1\; DestName: Map_1.mpf Or say for example, I want it to copy everything from a source directory to the same directory in the installed build: Source: {#DocSrcFile}\..\[folderName]\*.*; DestDir:{app}\[folderName]\; Replace [folderName] with your actual folder path. Hope this helps anyone!

BUnzaga Commercial Pro Edition Joined 07 June 2006 09 February 2010 13:24:53

Chris, while on this subject, could you explain what actually happens when we use an external source in our development? For example, say we have 10 files that are referenced externally, when we run the document, these are just loaded externally at run time right? It acts as though we actually added them to the document. So if my 10 files add to 200 megs, then it acts as though my document was the 200 megs + whatever the original size was. Is that how it works, like an 'in place' resource type thing?

Chris S DX Studio Team 09 February 2010 15:15:42

Yes that's it, but you will also get a slight performance boost as the external resource doesn't need to be unpacked from the master document.

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