Creating an EXE Wrapper PoC

First of all I'd like to point out that I don't know what I am doing.

This is really just a PoC (proof of concept).

I didn't try compiling the python to exe.

I was playing around with Python and Webkit and was ablt to render a Construct2 game as a program independent of the browser, so it looks more like a regular program.

Here's a pic:

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11384284/desktop.JPG" border="0" />

I left the "Made with Construct" bit to show what was happening.

I used a python wrapper for webkit but your could use C++ or C#.

On a side note another way (haven't tried it yet) is just to code up a form (program screen) with an embeded browser using C# or VB.Net, which opens index.html in the same folder. You could even put an decryption routine in the program so your html files can stay encrypted on disk.

If anyone is interested here's the python code from the PoC (you also need python, pyGTK and pyWebkitGTK installed). Should work on windows or linux.

import gtk

import webkit

win = gtk.Window()

bro = webkit.WebView()

bro.open("C:\Documents and Settings\Frankie\Desktop\8bit Mage\index.html")

win.add(bro)

win.show_all()

gtk.main()

Can you give more details ?

I�d like to try with a game...

Cordially,

Amarcelo

Very interesting! I think we'd prefer to release an EXE exporter than build this kind of functionality in, but it's a good option for those looking for extra distribution options. Do you have a list of steps for anyone else to repeat if they wanted to give it a go?

Hey this is cool!

I wanna try this out.

Thanks for sharing.

Ashley,

Is it possible in future C2 versions one EXE exporter ? It�s very interesting option too !

Ashley,

Is it possible in future C2 versions one EXE exporter ? It?s very interesting option too !

Writing a game once in C2, then EXE game and HTML5 game can be exported. There is no doubt that EXE exporter of C2 will attract more people to buy and use C2. After EXE exporter, IPhone exporter should be a suitable next target...

Ashley,

Think in an EXE exporter for the future versions will be great !!!!

Cheers

Antonio

I've put together a C# wrapper, details can be found at this post

exe exporter sounds nice...but i still prefer the "old" construct classic to build executables appz ^^

how did you manage to build pywebkitgtk?

never mind, got it with cygwin

Interesting, how are the framerates?

That is pretty cool. Great job.

Very interesting topic that was buried... I wonder if anyone picked it up.

I've been doing some more research on the topic I thought I'd share:

Want a quick way to make you game to look like an app try renaming the html page created (by default index.html) to .hta (E.g. index.hta).

XULRunner (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XULRunner) might be a good alternative from Mozilla. It let's you define web apps E.g. html/javascript that will run on your desktop as an application.

Titanium App Accelerator (http://www.appcelerator.com/) looks commercial but I believe it is based on Apache licence model. The community edition is free and might be just what we need but I haven't had a chance to test it.

Pokki (http://www.pokki.com/) Is a nice of example of web apps being rendered on the desktop. Might be nice to convert Scirra Arcade into something similar.