[SGDC] Jocobus Game Launcher

[vsimonet at stevens.edu]

Hello Everyone,

 

Sorry for the delay on this, but after the last meeting I forgot about
sending out the info I talked about.

 

First off, folder structure: there isn't much too this. Make a folder with
your game and data within it. Make sure there is only one executable (*.exe)
in it. You can also have an icon and "info", I'll explain in a moment. The
result is a folder that looks like

*         My Game

o   My Game.exe

o   Startup.cfg (generated, and overwritten every time the game starts)

o   Info.ini (optional)

o   Icon.ico/png (optional)

o   . (anything else you want, unless it is called Info.ini or Icon.ico/png
which could be picked for the game's icon and information)

 

The game MUST have an exit button and should always be full screen.

 

Unity developers: I honestly have not looked around, but make sure your game
doesn't have the configurator pooping up when the game runs. For everyone's
current games, they can probably run at max quality settings, and should be
1920x1080 and fullscreen.

 

To start the game, a player must press either 1 player or 2 player
(prominent buttons on the arcade machine), a file will be generated next to
the EXE called "Startup.cfg". This will have two fields in the following
format:

PlayerCount: <1/2>

StartTime: <datetime>

 

I'm sure passing them in as arguments would be good, but keeping them
separate allows for easier maintenance, and makes it easy for us to add more
info without cluttering arguments, which you may want for something else.
I'm also sure that you might've wanted to handle the player buttons yourself
(at least, that was my original thought when the Jocobus project was
announced), but we need some very specific way to start a game, and those
buttons seemed the most obvious.

 

Icon is easy enough to understand: some image, probably 256x256, though
larger will be scaled down. If you don't provide an ICO or PNG, the icon
associated with the EXE will be used. and it will probably look terrible.



 

The last most important part is Info.ini

 

Just like with the icon, if one is not found, the info is pulled from the
EXE. If you right click your EXE (on Windows) and choose "Details", you will
see the Title and Description your game has. If they are empty, you will see
the game's File name, with the description "An awesome game called <file
name>" (as you can see with "bash" in the above screenshot).

 

Format for "Info.ini":

[Key]

Value

 

[Key]

Value

 

[Key]

Value

.Etc.

% comment

 

You don't need to specify comments, but they are there if interested.

 

Available keys are:

*         "Title", which takes a single line title.

*         "Description", which takes a multi-line/linewrapped description.

*         "Arguments", which are arguments passed into the game if desired.

 

That's everything, if you want to actually see the launcher's source code,
look at https://github.com/sgdc/jam/tree/master/Launcher

 

Any questions, email me at vsimonet at stevens.edu
<mailto:vsimonet at stevens.edu> 

 

Vinnie

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