Here's how you use PyInstaller and PyGame to create a single-file executable from a project that has a data directory that contains resources like images, fonts, and music.
- Wake Up: Ludum Dare 37 Entry Mac Os Update
- Wake Up: Ludum Dare 37 Entry Mac Os Update
- Wake Up: Ludum Dare 37 Entry Mac Os Catalina
Wake Up: Ludum Dare 37 Entry Mac Os Update
- Find games for macOS like Long Gone Days, Linda & Joan Prologue: 'Four Months Earlier', Caves of Qud, Gravity Ace (Early Access), When The Night Comes on itch.io, the indie game hosting marketplace.
- Ludum Dare#14: Doom Runner And again Ludum Dare. The theme: Advancing Wall of Doom If you know the movie Running Man, you know the story. You're taking part in a deadly game show. Run for your life, grab prizes and money. Unstoppable behind you is a spike wall. Stop too often and you are done for. Full source code is included.
Wake Up: Ludum Dare 37 Entry Mac Os Update
- Get PyInstaller.
- On Windows, you might also need pywin32 (and possibly MinGW if you don't have Visual Studio).
- On Mac OS X, you will need XCode's command line tools. To install the Command Line tools, first install XCode from the App Store, then go to Preferences – Downloads and there is an option to download them there.
- Modify your code so that whenever you refer to your
datadirectory, you wrap it using the following function:An example of usage would be
This is mostly for convenience – it allows you to access your resources while developing, but then it'll add the right prefix when it's in the deployment environment.
- Specify exactly where your fonts are (and include them in the data directory). In other words, don't use
font = Font(None, 26). Instead, use something likefont = Font(resource_path(os.path.join('data', 'freesansbold.ttf')), 14). - Generate the
.specfile.- Windows: (You want a single EXE file with your data in it, hence
--onefile). - Mac OS X: (You want an App bundle with windowed output, hence
--windowed).
- Windows: (You want a single EXE file with your data in it, hence
- Modify the
.specfile so that you add yourdatadirectory (note that these paths are relative paths to your main directory.- Windows: Modify the section where it says
exe EXE = (pyz,and add on the next line: - Mac OS X: Modify the section where it says
app = BUNDLE(coll,and add on the next line:
- Windows: Modify the section where it says
- Rebuild your package.
- Look for your
.exeor your.appbundle in thedistdirectory.
Based on our top 20 Ludum Dare 32 entry of the same name 24 challenging levels, with additional extra-difficult 'challenge' levels to unlock by reaching par milestones Plenty of varied puzzles and scenarios to figure out, dangers to avoid, secrets to find, and deadly pits to fall into.
Phew! That took me a long time – the better part of a few hours to figure out. This post on the PyInstaller list really helped.
So why was I trying to package a Python executable file anyway? Read on…
This weekend, I decided to participate in a 48-hour game design 'competition'. Ludum Dare is a compo that asks you to create a video game from scratch in a 48-hour time period – you have to write your code and create all of your assets in that time period.
This means no reusing graphics, pictures, music, or sound from other projects, for example. You're also not supposed to reuse code either. I decided to participate on the Thursday the day before. Flip grip (itch) mac os. Most people use the previous weekend as a 'warmup weekend' to test their tools, get some practice, and so forth. (My entry is located here, by the way).
I'll do a more detailed compo writeup later, but I just want to concentrate on one thing that kept me up for hours after the competition: getting a Windows executable created from a Python project that uses PyGame and a data directory.
I rather enjoy Python as a programming language. The syntax is reasonably concise, the language does a lot of things for you, and it's well-laid out. There's also a lot of good support in the form of third-party libraries. I've been using Python for various things for the past few years (usually small scripts for data extraction and analysis in research).
One thing I had never thought about before was distributing a Python project as an executable package, and while it was on my mind throughout the entire compo, I didn't actually learn the process of creating the package until the last hour of the comp before submission. After you submit your primary platform, Ludum Dare allows you around 48 hours to compile for Windows, since the majority of reviewers use Windows.
Wake Up: Ludum Dare 37 Entry Mac Os Catalina
The ideal submission is a single binary file (an .exe file for Windows) that doesn't have to extract a lot of data, so that it's easy for people to download and run your game.
PyInstaller vs. Py2exe vs. Py2app
I went on a wild goose chase trying to find out how to make a single executable file out of a Python project that would include all of my data assets. I first tried py2exe and py2app. py2app mostly worked all right, but py2exe was a pretty big mess.
The end story is that PyInstaller is newer and shinier than py2exe, and that you need to secret sauce code that someone out there on the Internet found before I did. PyInstaller basically runs EXE files by extracting the assets into a temporary data file that has a path _MEIPASS in it ((technical details here). Be sure that you check that every file is loaded in through that wrapper. The Tree() TOC syntax was also confusing, but basically, it's the relative path of your data files and it will automatically load all of the files in that directory. Make sure it exists in the EXE portion (Windows) or the APP portion (Mac).
There's a Make/Build cycle in PyInstaller to generate the spec file and build it in a single step as well – I find it easier to do that to generate the spec file and do an initial binary run, then to modify the spec and run PyInstaller again with the spec file as the argument. PyInstaller is pretty smart about rebuilding, and you save a lot of time.
I think in the long run, if you compare py2exe, py2app, and PyInstaller, PyInstaller is the program worth learning. It did have a pretty sharp curve for me – it didn't help that I was trying to do this late at night after a challenging weekend!
If you do wish to use py2app to build your Mac OS X application bundle, then do keep in mind that you need to have a import pygame._view because of some kind of obscure issue.
Anyway, that's all there is to this post for now. Labyrinth tower (danjaman91) mac os.
I think in the long run, if you compare py2exe, py2app, and PyInstaller, PyInstaller is the program worth learning. It did have a pretty sharp curve for me – it didn't help that I was trying to do this late at night after a challenging weekend!
If you do wish to use py2app to build your Mac OS X application bundle, then do keep in mind that you need to have a import pygame._view because of some kind of obscure issue.
Anyway, that's all there is to this post for now. Labyrinth tower (danjaman91) mac os.
Not so personal space mac os. Here's the setup.py I used for py2app.
