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Game Development Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: January 5th

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 576 (previous three years) + 6 (current year) = 582 / 1000
Game Ideas: 775 (previous three years) + 0 (current year) = 775 / 1000

The first week of 2009 was a short one, and I’m off to a slow start. I spent the majority of my time working on using NSIS to create a Windows installer for Walls, which is otherwise a finished game. NSIS turns out to be a lot less straightforward than I expected. While I understand scripting an installer, it would be nice to have it automatically create the uninstaller that will completely remove all trace of the game regardless of where the player installs it. The installer would know more about what its doing than I would, but I’m expected to write a full-proof script? People keep suggesting Inno Setup, but since my build environment is my Debian machine, I’d like to keep my build process as simple as running a single command and waiting for the GNU/Linux and Win32 builds to get created automatically. I want no manual steps, and I don’t want to require a Windows machine to be involved in the process.

I know I’m just learning what NSIS is capable of, but I’m still surprised there isn’t an Easy Script option that says, “Anything you install, this uninstaller will remove, no matter where the player installs it.” I’ve made significant progress, and just a bit more time will see a finished installer ready. Still, with all this hassle, I can see why web apps are so appealing. Installing is just uploading to my own server. B-)

[tags]game, game design, productivity, personal development, video game development, indie[/tags]