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Tips for Deployment: DON'T CORRUPT YOUR GAME! (And other things)

A topic by WyldFire Games created Jul 28, 2022 Views: 243 Replies: 6
Viewing posts 1 to 5
Submitted (2 edits) (+2)

First, if you see this, friendly reminder to backup your project today :)

As the deadline draws near, I have something for EVERYONE to hear!! (No rhyme intended, I promise.)

1: As a general rule of thumb, try to prevent naming files in your project folder with special characters. Don’t even use underscores or dashes. Some computers can’t read these and sometimes it will cause deployment issues. Also sometimes even if it does deploy, it can cause issues for computers running different versions of Windows.  I recommend this NamingConvention.

2: Do not, please DO NOT under any circumstances, deploy INTO your project folder! Doing so will corrupt your project's data and makes it  incredibly difficult to fix.

3: Please be sure to backup often. Don't lose your hard earned work. If you haven't already done so and you are reading this, make a backup.



Submitted(+1)

I'll add one to your points WyldFire:

  •  For RPGMaker projects don't use that Enigma Virtual Box, from my experience it skyrockets the FPS
Submitted

Just backup up mine, thanks!

Can someone point me to a quality tutorial on how to do deployment? I've never gotten far enough along in a project to even bother attempting it before, but I'm in a rush right now trying to finish up my game jam entry and don't want to miss the deadline simply because I can't figure out how this works... I'm running on a Mac, btw, but I have a spare laptop with Windows running in Bootcamp if it's necessary to move it in order to deploy a Windows version of the game (and hopefully not as painfully time-consuming as it sounds).

Submitted (3 edits) (+1)

You know that you probably aren't the only person in a rush, right? You can easily find one with a search engine.  BenderWaffles' Deployment Video was my first result when I typed in "RPGM Deployment" in google. That video isn't bad.

You can probably find one for what version of the game you are using with the search "RPGM Deployment [Your version of RPGM here]"
You could also try RPG Maker instead of RPGM. You might have a harder time looking for a Mac specific tutorial though since I was told that only MZ works on modern Mac devices.


If you hate video tutorials, I've made a brief tutorial (Since I'm not making a serious entry, it really doesn't matter to me if I make it on time or not. I already streamed my video of the development process to show that you can make a game in less than 32 hours of work).:



Do not pick the folder that you are developing in. That is a quick way to break things because you are telling RPGM to overwrite your game files with the deployment version while it is reading from the same file. So it is like a tug of war. You probably have no idea what will happen. It could be fine, it could break something.



Use parenthesis (" ") if you have a space in your file structures. ie. "C:/Program Files" instead of C:/Program Files (Otherwise butler could read it as C:/Program and then get confused as to what is the Files command.)

(1 edit)

Thanks a lot!  Some of that will probably remain a bit fuzzy to me until I've actually done it myself, but the little hints you threw in there are exactly what I was looking for (especially since I saw another user's submission page warning people not to download his files because something about his deployment attempt didn't quite jive with something that itch.io was expecting, so he was going to have to make a new upload).  And now I'd better get back to work! ;-)

Submitted(+1)

Good tip as well: Sometimes files used by plugins aren't considered "used" by the engine, in which case, you can't select "exclude files" during deployment. In that event, you may need to clean out some rtp assets to make the file not unbearable large. Good rule of thumb:

1. Don't delete the vehicles

2. Double check the sideview images aren't used.

3. I, personally, don't touch SEs, BGMS, and animation assets, it's usually just used in mysterious places and a word of caution.

4. Usually tilesets, characters, pictures, and battlebacks are safe to delete. Also usually bgs unless you're using them/have a weather affect plugin.

Good luck and remember to do all final testing on a deployed project! Weird things pop up there that don't on the in engine testor.