I got as far as downloading and running and a screen came up asking me to register. Realistically I think you may need to consider how many people are going to register via email just to see if a prototype of something runs, with no idea what it is. It was also accessing the internet to 'update' on the splash screen, which is again not something which implies trust for an unknown program.

3 hours ago, lawnjelly said:

I got as far as downloading and running and a screen came up asking me to register. Realistically I think you may need to consider how many people are going to register via email just to see if a prototype of something runs, with no idea what it is. It was also accessing the internet to 'update' on the splash screen, which is again not something which implies trust for an unknown program.

Thanks for the reply. I totally agree! I don't know what this register screen was? My app doesn't do anything like that? Was it something to do with itch.io? I just tried to download it and it just downloads my setup.exe?

My app also doesn't have updating or a splash screen.

Was it the itch app?

Looks like on the download itch offers two links confusingly, one for just downloading the setup for the prototype, and one for their app.

Do you think I should be offering a download link not through itch.io?

Thanks for the feedback it is really useful!

Looks like running the game through the itch app doesn't work anyway so far so thanks for bringing this to my attention, I will take it offline until I've fixed it.

Yeah my mistake with so little sleep and little info, I clicked on the thing saying 'download app', I thought your game was called 'itch'!

If is any help I tried the installer on linux on wine, it seemed to install but not the visual studio redistributable runtime for some reason (maybe it doesn't like wine). So when I ran it it failed missing mostly those runtimes. OpenAL did seem to install though.

Then I tried it on my win7 laptop and it failed installing the visual studio runtimes, with an 'unspecified error'. I always find those extra downloads are a pain, especially for test versions, so I usually statically link / include dlls rather than rely on some third party installer especially for a test app. MS installers are practically guaranteed to screw up. Usually you can get your test 'install' down to one .exe file, if you are cunning (you can even pack data into the exe as a resource for example).

It would also be helpful for people to know what are the min specs for your test program, versions of OS, opengl / direct x etc, shader version.

1 minute ago, lawnjelly said:

Yeah my mistake with so little sleep and little info, I clicked on the thing saying 'download app', I thought your game was called 'itch'!

If is any help I tried the installer on linux on wine, it seemed to install but not the visual studio redistributable runtime for some reason (maybe it doesn't like wine). So when I ran it it failed missing mostly those runtimes. OpenAL did seem to install though.

Then I tried it on my win7 laptop and it failed installing the visual studio runtimes, with an 'unspecified error'. I always find those extra downloads are a pain, especially for test versions, so I usually statically link / include dlls rather than rely on some third party installer especially for a test app. MS installers are practically guaranteed to screw up. Usually you can get your test 'install' down to one .exe file, if you are cunning (you can even pack data into the exe as a resource for example).

It would also be helpful for people to know what are the min specs for your test program, versions of OS, opengl / direct x etc, shader version.

No problem, thanks again for the info. I haven't tested with wine, but the app actually was largely developed on Linux, I will be aiming to release a proper linux version after I get my head around this one.

Yeah I really hate installers at this point! Having these visual studio runtimes is annoying to deal with. First I had them statically linked as you said, but was told that was a bad idea as they wont update. I will probably end up getting rid of all visual studio stuff to just get rid of it all together, there is nothing the code needs windows stuff for anyway.

I'm glad you mentioned the itch app though as I just tried it through their client and it didn't run anyway.

Urgh, releasing stuff is such a pain

If it's a free game, consider uploading to the Projects section as well. Might be more straightforward for people already on GameDev.net, plus you can provide updates integrated with your blog, gallery, profile, etc.

(i.e. no bothersome itch.io stuff)

Thanks! I will totally do that.

Created a Gamedev project for this now so no need for Itch.io Hopefully that will make things simpler