Fateless for Windows is out! I have spent the last week wrestling with Windows Installer ensuring the right DLL's were included, but the build now installs and runs perfectly on a fresh installation of Windows 10. The current build includes episode 1, supports game pads, and has a brand new ending screen. As primarily a mobile developer, I was surprised to find that the game release and packaging process for Windows was a lot of more involved than your typical Android or iOS app.

To make the build, I had to install two brand new fresh Windows 10 installations (one with VirtualBox, one on a separate partition), then repeatedly keep creating and testing an MSI build with Visual Studio's "setup" project plugin, over and over again (probably about 50 times ?). I started out with a Hello World project that did basically nothing other than printed out a string. Once that installed and ran correctly (even this was non-trivial; had to include some DLL's), I gradually added pieces of the game (code and dependencies) until it no longer ran. Once it no longer ran, it was then easier to zero in on what caused the problem, knowing the last things I added. Turns out the reason for the infamous 0xc000007b error in my case was an OpenAL32.dll that I was including that was actually 64 bit (despite having "32" in the name). A tool called InspectExe was really helpful in telling 64 and 32 bit DLL's apart. I recommend going from Hello World to your full game gradually to anyone who is struggling to deploy a game on Windows. This is probably well known approach to Windows developers, but was new to me as a "spoiled" mobile developer ?.

I would appreciate any feedback on the game, now that it runs on the most popular platform around here. Episode 2 will be included soon; it's actually already in the build, but the menu system does not support desktop/mouse yet so there is no way to launch it. Gamepad/mouse sensitivity controls are now also high on the priority list. Overall, I'm really happy with the progress and to me the game seems quite a bit more fun on the big screen than on mobile, especially with a controller.