WiX XNA Installer

New Post: Compile Error

_untitled_ — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 01:28:08 GMT

Hi there!

It appears that I am unable to compile the code. I'm using SharpDevelop 4.3 (does it have to be 3.2.1?), and when I try to compile, I get this error message:

Is there a specific version of Wix that must be used? I just downloaded the latest Wix version's binaries and extracted them to the proper directory.

Thanks for any help!

New Post: Game requires "Run as Administrator"?

Cygon — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 08:02:29 GMT

As far as I know, there's no way to suppress the UAC popup for an application that requires admin rights. In any case, you should fix your game, not hide the problem through the installer ;-)

If your game is asking for admin rights without your doing, it might be that its executable contains the words "setup" or "patch" in the filename.

If you mean your game starts, but runs into some error unless launched with administrative privileges, it's hard to track down without actually knowing the error. It may be that you're trying to write into a directory your game has no business accessing (such as "Program Files" or "Windows") or that you're trying to open a registry key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in read/write mode.

New Post: Game requires "Run as Administrator"?

NAM1025 — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:29:13 GMT

For some reason my game won't run on computers unless the Run as Administrator box is checked, or you right click and Run as Admin...

I've googled for a way for WiX to automatically do this when it's installed but it seems like I need to do something with CustomActions and ShellExecute, however I can't find the answer I'm looking for.

Can anyone shed some light on this issue?

Source code checked in, #81799

Project Collection Service Accounts — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:57:23 GMT

Upgrade: New Version of LabDefaultTemplate.xaml. To upgrade your build definitions, please visit the following link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=254563

Source code checked in, #81798

Project Collection Service Accounts — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:51:05 GMT

Checked in by server upgrade

New Post: Dialogs, Diacritic [HELP]

Cygon — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:38:22 GMT

I have never translated an installer to a different language, but I have no doubt that WiX is able to handle other languages.

A quick google search suggests that maybe you have to specify your country's codepage in the <Package /> node. There are some ready-made translations for the standard installer UI and a tutorial here: http://wix.tramontana.co.hu/tutorial/localization

Otherwise, you can probably find someone who knows what to do on the WiX users mailing list: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users

New Post: Dialogs, Diacritic [HELP]

Tomas2D — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:27:36 GMT

Hello, i cant change, for example : "Next" to "Pokračovat".

ERROR : A string was provided witch character that are not available in the specified database code page '1252'.

Do you know how to fix it ? Thanks !

Reviewed: 4.0.0-r305 (十二月 06, 2011)

runningfrog — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:36:41 GMT

Rated 4 Stars (out of 5) - great！it supports XNA 4.0 ！

New Post: Silent Install for Intel App-Up store

Phantasm_Games — Thu, 12 May 2011 06:44:11 GMT

Hi All,

I have used the installer here for my XNA Game Armoured And Dangerous You can download and install the free demo if you like. I am trying to get the game on Intel App-Up store and the only thing that is stopping me currently is the silent install requirement that they have. I have been trying to configure the project for this but haven't had any luck. Can anyone please point me in the right direction as to how to go about removing user input and silently installing the required software?

Thanks to all in Advance

Phantasm Games

New Post: Upgrade Installation

Sersch — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:09:35 GMT

For anyone interested to configure the installer to automatically reinstall later version of your Application(instead of bringing up the typical "this application is already installed" error)

http://blogs.technet.com/b/alexshev/archive/2008/02/15/from-msi-to-wix-part-8-major-upgrade.aspx

New Post: Adding files & folders is painful

salocinx — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:48:42 GMT

damn, I am using square brackets and the symbol @ in my filenames (such as " filename_[2@4] " for defining tiles). Heat.exe does substitute these special charaters with _

any ideas how to solve this problem?

New Post: Adding files & folders is painful

salocinx — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:24:18 GMT

oh yeah... for comparision purposes, the final result looked like that:

cheers, salocinx

New Post: Adding files & folders is painful

salocinx — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:23:14 GMT

hey guys, many thanks for the very valuable informations posted here. After some experimenting I successfully implemented your suggestions.

One thing I have to add. When I did it like roonda suggested, the output looked something similiar to the following (for each Component resp. file that I have in my Content folder):

What was wrong? The File-Id was a strange string everytime starting with "fil..." something. The File-Id is also the name after the copy of your particular files in the final installation directory. That means, that my game didn't found those files and thus didn't start.

So I had a check on the docks for heat.exe and found the following argument that helped to preserve my original file-name:

-suid => Suppress unique identifiers for files, components, & directories.

finally resulting in:

"C:\Program Files\SharpDevelop\3.0\bin\Tools\Wix\heat.exe" dir "C:\Path\To\My\GameDir" -cg MyGameFilesGroup -dr INSTALLDIR -gg -suid -out ".\Source\MyGameFiles.wxs" -var var.GameDeployFolder

now everything works just like a little god for me ;-)

hope to helped newcomers like me - enjoy game programming and many thanks for this great post !!

New Post: Adding files & folders is painful

Pnikosis — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 10:16:41 GMT

Hi, just came here to thanks roonda for his hints to automate the files inclusion. Works great so far :)

Just a question about the shortcut creation, I guess that in the "GameExecutable" section (in the files.wxs), I have to change Game.exe to my executable (let's say MyGame.exe), and in the Source, put "$(var.GameDeployFolder)\MyGame.exe", am I right?

Edit: Yes, this has to be done in order to create correctly the shortcut, plus, I have to remove the game executable from teh MyGamesFiles.wxs. Works great!

Updated Wiki: QuickStart

Cygon — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:29:10 GMT

How to Start
After extracting the release you downloaded, you'll end up with an example installer that installs a dummy game and a start menu shortcut. Open the provided solution in SharpDevelop 3.0 to get started customizing your installer.

To make it compile, you'll first need to replace some GUIDs. Each installer needs to have its own unique product id, update id as well as an id for each of the installable components. To make sure those lazy XNA developers don't forget to change those GUIDs, I replaced them with unworkable strings ;-)

Search & Replace "!replace-this-with-real-product_guid" with a random GUID
Search & Replace "!replace-this-with-real-upgrade_guid" with a random GUID
Search & Replace "!replace-this-with-game-component_id" with a random GUID
Search & Replace "!replace-this-with-menu-component_id" with a random GUID

(Google for "GUID Generator" if you don't have one handy.)

Set up Requirements
The next step is to tell the installer about your requirements. The file Config.wxi contains all the settings you can make. You will find detailed descriptions next to each configuration option, but I'll provide a short overview here as well

InstallPrerequisitesIfRequired - Controls whether the XNA Framework and DirectX Runtime will be installed if it's missing on the target system. Disabling it reduces the installer size, but the installer will not let the user continue if they don't have gotten XNA from somewhere else already
RequiredShaderModel - The shader model your game requires. The installer checks this (using an ancient version of the DirectX 9 interface any OS since Windows XP SP2 has built-in) and warns the user if his hardware doesn't fulfill the requirements.
RequiredDotNetProfile - Whether you require .NET 4.0 or .NET 4.0 Client Profile (set to "Full" or "Client"). All XNA 4.0 projects by default target the .NET 4.0 Client Profile. The advantage of the .NET 4.0 Client Profile is that it's marginally smaller than the a full install of .NET 4.0. If the user already has a full install of .NET 4.0, he is able to run applications targeting the .NET 4.0 Client Profile, too, of course.

Change Company and Product Name
By default, the game installs "MyCompany MyGame", an exciting dexterity game where you have to click the "OK" button of a message box with your mouse. Of course ,not everyone wants his game to be called "MyGame", so here's how to change this:

In Setup.wxs, you can change the name, manufacturer, package description and comments to match your own product name.

You can also rename the SharpDevelop solution and project so you can see right away which game's installer you're working on when SharpDevelop is open.

Adding Files
Finally, you need to tell the installer which files it should place on the target system. This is where some intimate contact with the details of WiX and Windows Installer technology becomes unavoidable.

Open Files.wxs and you will find a bunch of <Directory /> and <Component /> nodes. Those are currently set up to install a file named "Game.exe" and create a shortcut for it in the start menu.

In the simplest case, you can just go ahead and put as many <File /> nodes besides the one for Game.exe as you need and all is well. Maybe rename Game.exe and give the start menu shortcut a better name while you're at it.

Adding Subdirectories
It becomes more difficult if you want to create subdirectories in your game directory. To do this, please follow this guide: Adding Subdirectories

In short, you need to put another <Directory /> element beneath the <Directory /> element for 'INSTALLDIR'. Then you have to add another <Component /> element with a new unique GUID to put your <File /> elements under. This <Component /> then has to be added to a <Feature /> in Setup.wxs.

A <Feature /> is something you can either install of leave out, eg. your installer might have the features "Game", "Editor" and "Docs". Any number of <Component /> elements can be linked to a feature, causing the files and registry entries in that <Component /> to be installed when the feature is selected. Multiple features can link the same <Component /> (eg. you might have a component "shared files") and it will only be installed once.

Yes, it's complicated, but on the upside, you have complete control over any changes the installer does, you'll get support for uninstalls automatically and it's all free :)

Updated Wiki: Home

Cygon — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:26:38 GMT

QuickStart Guide for those new to the Installer

Project Description
This is a professional installer for your XNA-based games, written in WiX, Microsoft's Open Source toolkit for creating msi packages. It checks for .NET and automatically deploys the XNA Framework if needed, getting rid of the dependency problem once and for all. Source included!

The installer template has been created using SharpDevelop 3.2 which already includes the WiX toolkit and is able to compile the template without any additional configuration work. You can also compile the sources by hand, but SharpDevelop is recommended for its simplicity.

It will check the target system for a shader capable graphics card and display a warning if none is found. If the user is missing the Microsoft .NET Framework (4.0 or 4.0 Client Profile, you decide), a friendly notice will be displayed, asking the user to download the .NET Framework before installing your application.

The presence of the DirectX 9.0c runtime files needed by XNA 4.0 is checked as well as the XNA Framework 4.0 itself. If any of those two don't exist in the target system, the installer will, depending on its configuration, either require the user to install them or automatically install them.

Includes binaries of the WiX custom action DLLs used by the template for checking availability of the .NET Framework 4.0 or 4.0 Client Profile, installing the DirectX 9.0c version required for XNA 4.0 and of course the XNA Framework 4.0 redistributable.

The installer's overhead can be as little as 460 KB (without XNA Framework integrated) or 6.0 MB (including the XNA Framework 4.0) - less than the XNA Framework 4.0 redistributable alone - due to some clever compression tricks.

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Cygon — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:08:20 GMT

The is no introduction page for the Documentation section yet. Working on it ;-)

If you're new to WiX and XNA Installer, this QuickStart guide can help you with your first steps
QuickStart Guide for those new to the Installer

In case your game has multiple subdirectories, this is what you have to do to add a subdirectory to your installer:
How to Add Subdirectories to your Installer

To fully customize the installer, in-depth knowledge of WiX is required. You can find an excellent WiX tutorial here:
WiX Tutorial

To obtain the sources of the custom action DLLs (Visual C++ Express 2010 required), point your subversion client to the following URL:
https://devel.nuclex.org/sideprojects/svn/installer/Installer.Build/trunk

Updated Release: 4.0.0-r305 (Oct 12, 2010)

Cygon — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:03:36 GMT

WiX XNA Installer Template 4.0

Contains a template SharpDevelop 3.2 WiX project for XNA 4.0 games that can be quickly customized to build a professional and bullet-proof installer for your own game.

Creates a single, easy to distribute .msi file
Checks the system for the Shader version of your choice before installing
Ensures that the user has the .NET Framework 4.0 or 4.0 Client Profile on his system.
Uses LZMA compression for a very low overhead of only 6.0 MB (with XNA + DirectX).
Automatically deploys the XNA 4.0 Framework and DirectX libraries

Released: 4.0.0-r305 (Oct 12, 2010)

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:03:36 GMT

Creates a single, easy to distribute .msi file
Checks the system for the Shader version of your choice before installing
Ensures that the user has the .NET Framework 4.0 or 4.0 Client Profile on his system.
Uses LZMA compression for a very low overhead of only 6.0 MB (with XNA + DirectX).
Automatically deploys the XNA 4.0 Framework and DirectX libraries

Source code checked in, #57878

Cygon — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:02:10 GMT

Notice: I'm maintaining the source code for the WiX XNA Installer on my personal Subversion server at https://devel.nuclex.org/sideprojects/svn/installer/Installer.Build/trunk/ You can also download semi-regular builds from my continuous integration server at https://devel.nuclex.org/teamcity/viewLog.html?guest=1&buildId=lastSuccessful&tab=artifacts&buildTypeId=bt20