Packaging Java game for Windows distribution

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Does anyone have recommendations for utilities to make Windows executables for running Java code, and for installers?

I’m writing a small freeware Adventure game-let in Java for Windows and Mac OSX. Most Windows users expect more hand-holding than Mac users.

#2

I’ve used exe4j to make a windows exe file out of a jar file. It worked nicely. It does cost some money though. I think that JSmooth is a free alternative, but it wasn’t as polished when I looked at it.

For a good free cross-platform java installer you should take a look at IzPack.

#3

Webstart it, and then your windows users dont have to do anything, it just works.

Unless you run into a webstart bug, of course :(.

Or…upload the jars to JGF (link in my sig) and it will autoamtically webstart your game for you.

#4

Thanks for the replies! I’ve experimented a little with writing a launcher myself but this is something I hope to use what other people have done.

Don’t think what I’m trying to do is suitable for Java Web Start. It’s going to run fullscreen for one thing, and there’s a number of large images involved. I’ll take a glance at JGF.

#5

webstart is just a way of automatically downloading and installing all the libraries for an appliucation in such a way that:

  • doesn’t ask the user lots of questions
  • doesn’t force the user to go and download extra stuff from other sites
  • doesn’t add any junk to the user’s computer - the additional installed libraries + game are invisible as far as most users are concerned

So…there’s nothing that “normal” java does taht will stop working with webstart.

It also has the ability to run custom installers, but probably not in the way you’d like

#6

One option is of course to bundle the jre. There is a pretty new topic about this:
Here

The good thing is, that it is almost like any windows program then: just start the .bat and everything works and if the game itself is big already, couple of more MBs arent too noticable in that.

But of course the minus in bundling is, that it adds couple of more MBs to the package and when extracted, that couple of MBs (about 5) is something like 20 MBs.

Personally I like the WebStart, but since I know that not all people have WebStart installed (they have just Microsoft’s Java), the bundling option works sometimes better.

#7

It’s getting disingenuous to say that - it would be true if only one person on the planet did not have webstart, but vaguely implies that many don’t. In reality, almost everyone has it. I saw the results of a study last week (don’t know how old the study is) that implied around 85% of internet users have webstart (i.e. modern java). Until/unless I can find the original study and see what the circumstances are, I’m taking it with a pinch of salt, but we know that fore the last few years 50% of all new PCs came with webstart installed already, so…

#8

Really? Then the people I know are way different than “the normal people”. But thats good to know.

[quote]I’m taking it with a pinch of salt, but we know that fore the last few years 50% of all new PCs came with webstart installed already, so…
[/quote]
And about that, personally I dont know many people who would have bought a PC from some big company (HP, Fujitsu etc.), so with home-build-computers that isnt true.

But seems like my target group (about my friends and their friends) are different than what the statistics show.

edit: come to think about it, my guess is, that in the target group, I referred, maybe like 60-70% have the WebStart, it is actually pretty big percent, but in such small group of people, it feels a lot more than it is.