Smartpacker

[Kitty Hello]

http://www.smartpacker.nl/vpacker.html
I think that product is quite a nice idea. You can pack your game to a virtual file system and distribute it all in one file. No setup required. Would you want me to implement in-editor support for it?

[ampos]

Is this something like the .ipa files or the .app folder on Mac?

[Kitty Hello]

Yes. It packs all your stuff in one .exe file and provides a virtual file system when running.

[Minion]

So there would be no need for shoebox then as all the files would be hidden within the exe ? And could you read external files (Im guessing so, but thought Id check before it was implemented)

[Wampus]

That does look rather good. What little I could find about it from users on dev forums was positive too.

I would definitely buy this if GLBasic's editor supported it.

[ketil]

Well. What about the memory usage ?

That was always the question with the older exe-packers.

Most resources should only be loaded when it's needed.
No point having level2-99 in the memory when playing level 1.

Smart packer might have ways to work around this as de-allocating some of the PE-sections after loading the exe and mounting it's virtual filesystem from the stored exe file.
Just make sure that it's not an enormous memory muncher

[MrTAToad]

I presume this wouldn't be available for WIZ and Linux, for example ?

[MrTAToad]

Thats a shame - a Linux version would be very handy...

[ketil]

Thats a shame - a Linux version would be very handy...

I know it lacks some of the functionality of smartpacker, but for compression on linux and osx (and a lot of other OSes including windows) you have UPX.

There are also a lot of frontends for it, and it's free.

[XanthorXIII]

Would this be usable for the mobile devices or would we need to use Shoebox?

[Crivens]

It's built into GLB (look for SET SHOEBOX in help) and basically is like having a zip file with all your media in it. Once you set it then it looks in here if it can't find media when you load it. It's not actually compressed but is nice to have in a single file. Use the shoebox option in the tools menu to make a shoebox.

There is a problem with it on iOS however in that it leaks memory. Gernot found the fix and it should be in the next release apparently. Also for me I couldn't get wav files to work from it, but that maybe something I did wrong.

Cheers

[MrTAToad]

Would be handy to have for the mobile market - just think of the extra sales!

[XanthorXIII]

Yes we need something that can encrypt and decrypt the meida to prevent people from going in and ripping out our art assets.

[Crivens]

Shoebox should be fine for most needs. It isn't encrypted or compressed, but the vast majority of people won't be able to extract media from it without a fair bit of skill.

Cheers