Software updater for Ren'Py games?
Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 9:09 am
I'm not sure if other people have this problem:
Sometimes a VN is a work in progress, but you're still releasing it to testers. Or perhaps it's chapter-based, and you release new content periodically. Or perhaps the game is being co-developed, and you want to share updates.
Either way, you need to get updates to your testers/players/etc in some way.
Often it's good enough to just upload a new zip file, and then get people to re-download it.
But what if your zip file is pretty large, and you've only changed a few small files?
Typically in a case like this, you might use a revision control tool (git/subversion/etc). But those are a bit technical for non-programmers, or for end-users.
What I often do is include a file sync tool in my projects (rsync), and a batch file to run that, to grab just updated files from my internet server. But that's only practical if you have an internet server - most people would need to upload to megaupload or rapidshare or something.
What I'm getting at: What would be nice, is if Ren'Py had a built-in way of letting users update their games to newer versions.
I remember PyTom mentioning something before about letting people host their VN code on his server, to avoid people losing projects (don't remember when or where that was).
What might be interesting, is if there was an easy-to-use Ren'Py game updater, possibly tying into that service (or other internet hosting options. eg: bittorrent?), so that players could, when launching the game, see that a new version is available, and then download it from within the game itself.
Though, I'm not sure how much demand there is for that kind of feature. Certainly, I find it quite useful for my own projects.
Sometimes a VN is a work in progress, but you're still releasing it to testers. Or perhaps it's chapter-based, and you release new content periodically. Or perhaps the game is being co-developed, and you want to share updates.
Either way, you need to get updates to your testers/players/etc in some way.
Often it's good enough to just upload a new zip file, and then get people to re-download it.
But what if your zip file is pretty large, and you've only changed a few small files?
Typically in a case like this, you might use a revision control tool (git/subversion/etc). But those are a bit technical for non-programmers, or for end-users.
What I often do is include a file sync tool in my projects (rsync), and a batch file to run that, to grab just updated files from my internet server. But that's only practical if you have an internet server - most people would need to upload to megaupload or rapidshare or something.
What I'm getting at: What would be nice, is if Ren'Py had a built-in way of letting users update their games to newer versions.
I remember PyTom mentioning something before about letting people host their VN code on his server, to avoid people losing projects (don't remember when or where that was).
What might be interesting, is if there was an easy-to-use Ren'Py game updater, possibly tying into that service (or other internet hosting options. eg: bittorrent?), so that players could, when launching the game, see that a new version is available, and then download it from within the game itself.
Though, I'm not sure how much demand there is for that kind of feature. Certainly, I find it quite useful for my own projects.
