Sorry your browser is not supported!

You are using an outdated browser that does not support modern web technologies, in order to use this site please update to a new browser.

Browsers supported include Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 10+ or Microsoft Edge.

Work in Progress / CheckDX: check if Directx 9.0c (August) is installed before running your game

Author
Message
jfroco
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Dec 2009
Location: Chile
Posted: 24th May 2010 07:05
Hello,

Please let me start saying that I really love DBP, but one thing that bothers me is that it needs DirectX 9.0c to work.

It doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you start distributing your game you realize that a lot of people doesn't have it installed or what it is worse they don't know how to install it. If you need a prove just look for directx in the forum.

The simplest way of solving this is to create an installer for your game that install and runs the Directx runtime installer along with your game.

The problem with that is that today most indie games are distributed in a zip file or even as a single exe file, so it may be a problem that your game has to be installed.

So... I developed this small utility: "checkdx.exe" that will check if the correct version of DirectX is installed (it will look for D3DX9_42.dll and check that the version is 9.27.952.3000).

If the dll is installed it will run game.exe, if not it will run dxwebsetup.exe (you must bundle dxwebsetup with your game ).

Of course, checkdx doesn't hava any external dependencies and I have found that if D3DX9_42.dll is in the PC there's a huge probability (0.9999999...) that it was installed correctly), so it shoul work in most environments.

And for those strange cases when checkdx will fail, you can always provide an installer as your secondary download file.

The attached file includes the very first version of checkdx.exe, Microsoft dxwebsetup.exe (2/5/2010 version) and a sample game.exe to test the app.

How to use with your game:
1) Rename your game executable to game.exe
2) Rename checkdx.exe to run.exe or start.exe
3) Ask your users to run this file instead of game.exe.

So the big question:

Do you think checkdx could be useful for you?

Please let me know.

Best regards

JF

PS: If there is interest I could develop a new version that reads a ini file with the file and version you want to check, and the name of the executable.

Attachments

Login to view attachments
jfroco
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Dec 2009
Location: Chile
Posted: 24th May 2010 07:09
(Sorry for the double post. How can I edit my posts?)

Stupid typo: it will checks for version 9.27.952.3001.
Sven B
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Jan 2005
Location: Belgium
Posted: 24th May 2010 14:24 Edited at: 24th May 2010 14:47
Your checkdx.exe kept directing me to the installer instead of the game, while I have DirectX 9.0c (August) installed. Running game.exe also worked fine.

[edit] It might be because I haven't updated DirectX 9.0 as well as DBP in a while.

Cheers!
Sven B

Sepnon
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Feb 2010
Location: Brazil
Posted: 25th May 2010 00:16 Edited at: 25th May 2010 03:23
isn't there already a function for that?

found it:



but it's buggy

Attachments

Login to view attachments
jfroco
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Dec 2009
Location: Chile
Posted: 25th May 2010 06:52
Hello Sven. B,

Thank you for testing.

So, after running the installer you still get the installer?

Hello Sepnon.

Thank you.

I don't think you can run a DBP app if you don't have the right directx version installed, that's the purpose of my app. Or can you?

Best regards

JF

Login to post a reply

Server time is: 2024-03-28 23:22:07
Your offset time is: 2024-03-28 23:22:07