Development Blog

Will I need a mac to develop iOS games?

I can probably work around that for Lua but to actually publish anything, I think a Mac is needed to sign the code. Unless you publish through someone else's account.

By default, Visual Studio builds programs in debug mode that won't run on consumer's machines.

By default VS builds programs in debug mode, yes. They will run on other peoples machines if you deploy the debug libs too but MS never intended people to do so; which is why the debug libs are not included in the redistributable.

 

Why would you want to deploy a debug version to the consumer which is far bigger and potentially slower, you'd surely build a release version!

I agree with Pixel

Many users don't even want to install the VS redistributable. I have some friends who refuse to install it. In that case you can still create a folder and include the VS redistributable as pre-packaged with your game, so there is no need to install it. Which is much cleaner IMHO, since it doesn't clutter your registry settings and program list. Even better is of course to use MinGW and create a single exe game, which is not possible with VS (it was only possible in VS6).

By default VS builds programs in debug mode, yes. They will run on other peoples machines if you deploy the debug libs too but MS never intended people to do so; which is why the debug libs are not included in the redistributable.

 

Why would you want to deploy a debug version to the consumer which is far bigger and potentially slower, you'd surely build a release version!

I deploy debug versions in Leadwerks 3 for the Lua debugger to work.

@Metatron I just include the redistrib DLL's in the same directory as the exe. It's like 3 dll's. Maybe someone could explain the downside to doing it this way but it seems far easier, faster, and less intrusive to the user.

I deploy debug versions in Leadwerks 3 for the Lua debugger to work.

Ah ok, that bit of information makes all the difference. Static linking would appear to make sense under this situation as the users are almost certain to not have the required libs and installing the debug libs as DLLs would serve no other useful purpose.

 

With regard to your comment Rick, that's perfectly acceptable. Basically it should always be the applications responsibility to install the runtime libs, either by simply including them, as in your suggestion, or by running an installer (often done silently). The only downside that I can see with your approach is you might simply end up duplicating the run time libs on the users system; but that's not really a big issue.

often done silently

 

I hate that almost every game I install from steam installs the runtimes via installer. It takes an extra 5+ mins to dl/install those damn things and why does every game need to do so. Drives me nuts .