SUMMARY OF WHAT I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT DIRECTX, AND RUNNING YOUR GAME/APPLICATION ON THE END-USER'S COMPUTER:
1. Some computers will not run programs made with DBPro if the end-users have not installed certain optional components of DirectX 9.0c.
2. The best way to deal with that problem is by including the Microsoft DirectX Redistributable package with your application.
3. You can download the Microsoft DirectX Redistributable package here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=8109 You will end up with a folder of .cab files about 100 MB in size.
4. Not all of the .cab files are needed by your application in the Microsoft DirectX Redistributable package. Most of the files in the package are dated. DBPro only needs files up to Aug 2007, so you can trim the size down in that package if you want to make your game smaller.
Quote: "Dark Basic Pro is an open source BASIC programming language for creating Windows applications and games. The solution requires Microsoft DirectX SDK (August 2007)."
But you will need at least these files in that package:
Quote: " dxsetup.exe
dsetup32.dll
dsetup.dll
dxupdate.cab"
More information on that can be found at
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee416805%28VS.85%29.aspx#installation_of_directx_by_the_game_s_installer
5.
This seems to be the professional approach: You can have an installer install your game and DirectX. War Setup 3 and Wix (both are need) are recommended free tools. Personally, I downloaded War Setup 3, and in it's help documentation it showed me where to download Wix. However, I did not use War Setup 3 and Wix personally yet because I was just releasing a really small free game, so I didn't really care to learn to use War Setup 3 and Wix.
6.
This is a workable approach: What I did was putting the trimmed-down DirectX Redistributable folder which I named "DirectX Redist" in the game folder, and also a small installer that I programmed in DBPro in the game folder. Here is a picture of my game folder:
This small installer (named "RunicGame1nstall.exe" has only the following code:
EXECUTE FILE "DXSETUP.exe", "", "DirectX Redist", 1 REM Install Microsoft DirectX SDK
END
This code does not use any DBPro's graphical commands, so it ran without needing the DirectX update.
(The small installer is named "RunicGame1nstall.exe" because for some reason, when I named it "RunicGameInstall.exe", running it caused Windows to prompt a warning message. It's as if Windows are wary of .exe files which has the word "install" or "setup" in it, so I used "1nstall" instead of "Install" to avoid the warning message.)
The README.txt file told the end-user to run "RunicGame1nstall.exe" to install the DirectX components which may be needed to run the game.
7. Then I used Winzip to put my game folder into a zip file. (Zip files can be unzipped very easily, such as by Windows Explorer, so I'm not worried that the end-users being unable to unzip the game.) This is a simple way to provide a downloadable file.
8. Then I put the file into Dropbox, I obtained the link to it from Dropbox.com, and I put the link to it in my website. So far, about 15 to 30 people have downloaded my game, and I have heard of some good feedback, and I haven't had even one person having trouble running the game yet.
