Downloading Goal

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.

• Ludum Dare 48
• Ludum Dare Jam
• Ludum Dare Games
• Ludum Dare 46

Ludum Dare 46 Picks a collection by leafo, lyn-marie charlene excelsia, Spencer Hayes, LadyAijou, Amos last updated 2020-05-01 18:41:32 Follow leafo Following leafo Unfollow leafo. The Open Source Software Collection includes computer programs and/or data which are licensed under an Open Source Initiative or Free Software license, or is public domain. In general, items in this collection should be software for which the source code is freely available and able to be used and distributed without undue restrictions, and/or.

Galcon is a series of real-time strategy video games for Android, iPhone, webOS, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Flash, which were developed by Phil Hassey. It is set in space and involves maneuvering fleets of ships to capture enemy planets. Based off of 'Tsuru no Ongaeshi,' the Japanese folk story more commonly known as 'The Crane Wife,' this visual novel was made in less than 48 hours for Ludum Dare 24, August 2012, with Ren'py. In 'Inu no Ongaeshi,' you play a lonely freelance writer, if, with your lack of motivation, you can even call yourself that. “(R,G,B)” is a minimalist adventure game I made for Ludum Dare 26.The theme was “Minimalism”. My goal was to experiment with pure color values and explore the flat 2D space while keeping the game itself very simple.

1. 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.
2. Modify your code so that whenever you refer to your data directory, 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.

3. 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 like font = Font(resource_path(os.path.join('data', 'freesansbold.ttf')), 14).
4. Generate the .spec file.
   • 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).
5. Modify the .spec file so that you add your data directory (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:
6. Rebuild your package.
7. Look for your .exe or your .app bundle in the dist directory.

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. 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).

Ludum Dare 48

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.

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.

Ludum Dare Jam

Anyway, that’s all there is to this post for now.

Ludum Dare Games

Here’s the setup.py I used for py2app.

Ludum Dare 46

Here are some of my mini-games. Most of them were made for the Ludum Dare, a 48h or 72h game development competition.