I've seen many games get downloaded to my hard-drive, and over 90% of them don't use an installer. Now, if your releasing a demo or beta, this is certainly a good thing. There's nothing worse than rooting though your Start/Programs/Games folder, only to find 10 games entitled 'Supa Doopa Blasta DEMO V.1'. However, full games should not just come as a zip with an exe, txt and dll file crammed into it. No, no, no... you should use an installer. And it is for this reason I have written this handy little article to help you learn the basics of a good installer.

First and foremost, before I start, do not use the default K&P, TGF, C&C or MMF installer. It looks cheap, tacky and it's very professional. Use <a href="http://www.clickteam.com">Clickteam's</a> <a href="http://www.clickteam.com/English/installmaker.php">Install Maker</a>. It's free, easy as pie to use, and makes the installers into one, single exe, and not the regular exe + a dat file.

Secondly, you have to decide what style of installer you want. Fullscreen or Windowed. It doesn't matter which you choose, but I always opt for Windowed as it is a lot more compact and doesn't take over the whole screen causing Outlook, five versions of IE5 and an important html file to get GPFed. It also can look alot more professional, but it's entirely up to you. For this article, we'll use windowed.

Thirdly. You need an image. You need to draw a new image at 128x280 in size and save it as a .BMP file. Now, this image shouldn't be a screenshot of the game but instead a new, fresh and very smooth looking drawing of your character(s), game location or whatever you can think of. But don't use screenshots unless their REALLY good.

Forthly. Write up a documentation file, and paste it in. This will have to cover game keys, important info about the game and pretty much anything the player can be mulling over whilst they wait for it to install. You could also just cut & paste your readme file here for the lazy klikers amongst us.

Fifthly (TSTAAFB*). Fill in all the crap and go customise crazy!! Change the text font to a different (but most certainly professional) looking font. Fiddle about and don't try and make it too filled with gunk... remember, people want to play the game, not spend all week shifting through notes.

It's really quite simple to makee a good installer, and hopefully this article will provoke you to try it yourself.

Well, that's all for now... toodlepip!

-- SteveWardale.



* Try saying that after a few beers