How to make a one file game with a custom icon
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/How to make a one file game with a custom icon
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| Hi! I've been helped so much by this great forum, I'd like to contribute a little myself now, so here is a very easy to use step by step guide for any beginners who want to know how to make a one file game (no media folder) with a custom icon (no rocket icon). I've done a lot of testing for this, including trying about 20 programs, narrowing them down to 3, and figuring out the best way to use them, and the best order to use them in. Here are the steps! 1. Make a square image of the icon in Photoshop, or any program like it. If there are any areas of one color, you must add a little noise or those areas will become invisible later! Unless you want that, in which case make sure the image is surrounded on all sides by a solid color, and met with a fairly sharp edge. Shrink the image to 48x48 and save it as a png. 2. Start a new icon project with RealWorld Icon Editor (shareware) by selecting Create new, then Icon from image, then navigating to the png you just made, and finally making sure Windows XP application icon is the only option selected. You can experiment with the others if you want, but for a simple, highly compatible icon, just use XP. Click finish. 3. Look through the different "versions" of your image on the pane to the left to make sure they all look okay before saving the final ico. Click any one to see it up close. Don't worry about the low color ones, they're supposed to look screwy. Almost no one will ever see those anyway, except maybe some guy living in a cave using a 20 year old computer. Sorry some guy living in a cave... 4. Make the exe with Blitz3D if you haven't already. This is really just to help you in the next step when you're asked to write the whole filepath of the exe, so you can just click on it instead. 5. With all the media in the same folder as the exe, use BlitzMediaLinker (shareware) to merge them all, replacing the original exe. This program is so unbelievably easy to use, I can't think of any instructions that aren't completely obvious already! It basically just asks you, where's the bb, where's the exe to overwrite, where's each media file, what kind of compression do you want? (none!), where is Blitz3D.exe, and that's about it! 6. Use Resource Hacker (shareware) to replace the rocket icon. To do that, start Resource Hacker and open the exe you just remade. Go to Action>Replace Icon, navigate to the ico you made earlier, and click Replace. Whether you use Save or Save As makes no difference. Either way you end up with a file that's been reprocessed twice now, but it's nothing to worry about. 7. Restart your computer if the exe icon doesn't change right away. Now, see that shiny new file surrounded by a bunch of junk files no one wants to look at or deal with? You can take that out of there now and put it on the desktop, a flash stick, CDs to give to friends...or whatever! Because that, is now your game :) |
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| "Sorry some guy living in a cave..." ....good stuff. Made me spit my lunch! Ok, this sounds cool. Will give it a whirl I think. Isnt it just typical? The steps needed to change a simple ICON. One question...does the media need to be in the same dir as the exe? What about include files....I guess these are compiled into the exe anyway...? |
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| 1. Make a square image of the icon in Photoshop, or any program like it. If there are any areas of one color, you must add a little noise or those areas will become invisible later! Unless you want that, in which case make sure the image is surrounded on all sides by a solid color, and met with a fairly sharp edge. Shrink the image to 48x48 and save it as a png. or just make a 48*48 image to begin with ;) |
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| lol What I did was 1. take a screeny from my gorilla game 2. resize it to.. idk.. 512x512 3. opened up Imagicon and loaded my picture 4. saved the picture and Imagicon shrunk my pretty picture down to 32x32 5. used resource hacker, changed its icon, saved 6. wondered why it didn't work, renamed "Gorilla.exe" to... something else... 7. then it worked 8. updated my game, made another executable 9. found out i had to do the process with resource hacker over again 10. now i'm waiting till the game is finished (which will be never) before I change the icon 11. will not add periods or capitalization to these sentences |
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