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Re: [pygame] PyGame Runtime

Brian Fisher wrote:

Will, first off I think it's wonderful that you're thinking so much of
distribution. When it comes to the majorty of the downloadable game
audience (the less technical part) I think having reasonable end-user
distribution is a pre-requisite to the success of any game generation
tool chain. To put another way, if a good distribution option was not
there for tool x, distribution would have a signficantly increased
failure rate, and  the majority of game developers in the world would
take tool x off of their list.

However with your idea of a Pygame Runtime, I honestly think it would
be a large step backwards, at least for the Mac and Win markets. The
big reason why I say that is because the number one issue for
distribution to be successful to the mass downloadable market is that
when they find and run your link, it all just works. Basically most
people will not put any work at all into figuring out why they can't
run what they downloaded. They'll just go find and play one of the
thousands of games that do just work. Also no distribution channel for
downloadable games will take a game for inclusion if it doesn't just
work for the vast majority of users. If there is a dependency that is
required and not included - any at all - then it won't work for people
without the dependency. And a runtime (that is not included) is a
dependency.

Surely it is better than the current situation where there all these great games on pygame.org that are only ever played by other PyGame coders. Personally I wouldn't mind a runtime, but I'll grant you that a lot of potential end users would baulk at having to download an extra dependancy - and we can't foist it on them like Microsoft.

I know installers aren't that difficult to create. I've used Inno-setup myself, it's an excellent system - but its still a hurdle that most PyGame coders don't want to tackle unless they have something particularly impressive that they want to distribute. It is also more of a hassle if you want the game to run on multiple platforms.

A runtime wouldn't preclude creating your own install package, coders would be free to chose one or both methods of distribution. How about a compromise where the game is attached to a small stub exe that checks for the presence of the runtime, and offers to download it if it isn't present? Although that does kind of defeat the cross-platform benefit.

Will