Found a cool installer program...

[RickJ]

I guess there are a lot of installers out there but I have decided to use this one.  


NSIS Installer

It's script based so it's very flexible and it seems to do a good job at compression.   You can get a nifty IDE fo it here:

HM NSIS Edit  

The IDE features a syntax highlighting editor, a pointy and clicky wizzard, and online help.  You can create a complete  installation package using  the wizzard only.  Everything is GPL'd open source  so it's cost and nag free.   The newset version is in at an ALPHA-4 stage (seems very stable to me) and it seems like there will be a production release soon.

I suppose everyone has their own favorite, I thought I would share this with everyone.  

[juncmodule]

On a related note...Do you know of any free help file creators? .CHM Format preferred. I have one that creates a more simple help file...but it looks like poo

later,
-junc

[Goldmund]

On a side note, I tend to think that installers for AGS games are like names of our "companies": they're redundant, but it's just so damn cool to use them.

[RickJ]

Hi Junc,

A few months ago I wrote an AGS GUI for a dos based docbook.    In case you are not familiar with docbook, you create an XML tagged source document and then run an XSLT translator program to create the output documnt which can be in any number of formats.

The dos thingy supports 2 forms of HTML, PDF, and CHM fairily well.    Here is an example of a document I made with this system.

Example of HTML
Examples of other formats

The dos system can be downloaded from the eDE User's Forum at
http://www.e-novative-forum.com/index.php

Check out the examples and let me knopw if you are interested.  I'll figure out wherethe GUI is at and walk you through the process.

[juncmodule]

I seem to recall when you were working on this. The finished products look great, I will check out the rest in a bit. I'm not in need of it right at the moment, but I will need to compile a manual for my current project once it is finished. Could be weeks away, could be months. I'm still waiting for some people to get back to me on some character sprites so I can complete all of the art.

On yet ANOTHER unrelated note, any new developments with AE? I posted a question about it in the tech forum but it slid away somewhat unnoticed I imagine.

Goldmund: I agree, for a game that you play for five minutes, it's pretty silly. But, for a project like Fatman or FoY I can see how the developers would want to package it nicely. However when someone makes a one room one puzzle game and says that SuperDuperMegaGames, Inc. DEVELOPED this 1337 game...well...I agree.

EDIT: 22.9MB!!! Ouch...this will have to wait...

later,
-junc

[RickJ]

Junc:  The download includes a Java JRE which is mostly what makes it so darn big.   Open Office is supposedly going to do a WSIWYG DocBock thing in their word processor.  

Yes I need to get back to that AE thing.  A couple of people asked CJ to add a DoAgsCommand(...) function that would ease my pain quite a bit.  The problem with this task is that I will need an uninterrupted or week to do it.  There are a lot of things to keep in my head whilst implementing.  

Goldmund:  I also prefer games in zip format.  I decided to use an installer for the Bluster project so that it would get placed in the Start menu and a desktop icon would get created.    

I came across NSIS a long time ago when I downloaded a program that was infected with a virus.  It wouldn't install because NSIS uses CRC checking.  That's when I started liking it.  I never got around to using it before because it takes a little time to do the scripting from scratch.   I  was pleasantly surprised when I saw what they we doing with the latest version.  

[Interference]

I use HTML Help Workshop and Inno Setup Installer. I wasn't really happy with NSIS. The guys who made Winamp 3 made NSIS and Winamp 3 was/is rubbish. It crashed more times than contestants on "Britain's Worst Driver."

Html workshop can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/appndx/appa06.htm

Inno Setup can be found via the link below. Install ISTool too, it's a GUI for Inno, which is script-based itself.

http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

[ThunderStorm]

At the moment, I'm not sure whether I'd use NSIS or Inno Setup, as both seem to have about the same facilities, while Inno Setup captures the "classic" installer look better.

As for a help file creator: I found Shalom Help Maker quite good. It creates .hlp files only though, no .chm files. However, the results turn out quite nicely.

[jannar85]

I use HTML Help Workshop and Inno Setup Installer.

Ditto.