gs-tauri boilerplate project

adent42

So electron is a bit heavy since it includes an mini install of chrome to get things working.

Tauri is an HTML5 wrapper that uses the OS's native web component, making the binary a lot smaller.

Sooo... here you go:

https://github.com/gamesalad/gs-tauri/

Armelline

This is very exciting. Building HTML5 into exes in particular is such a faff and leads to huge files and this seems massively more straightforward. I just did a quick test with mixed results. I haven't got the time tonight to really dig into it, so enitrely possible I'm doing things wrong.

Running the dev test, it launches the game and it seems to play fine. There's a white border that would be better black, but it seems to work great. When I actually build it, though, I get a white screen with no sign of the game at all, including no music.

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, though. I'll poke at it more later if I can!

Tested on Mac for now as I'm more comfortable with it and didn't have much time, but I'll do a Windows test later too!

adent42

I should re-checkout the project and try to drop something in from scratch, to see if I missed anything on checkin then!

Armelline

Thanks! I've resisted porting Sand (and soonish Silk) to Steam because they're image heavy and surprisingly big for what they are, and once wrapped to an EXE were excessive in size. This might just be the push I needed!

adent42

K, fixed the issue for the build (had to add some more permissions). Hope to see Sand on Steam!

Armelline

Looks fixed on Mac. Will be trying Windows tonight. Thanks!

Armelline

Windows, I had to install Rust before it would try to preview or build anything. Not sure if that was wrong. I'm getting the white screen problem for both the dev and build options on Windows, though.

Last Windows build I did of Sand for awards thing, it ended up taking the 198mb project and making it a 563mb folder full of confusing looking files. This, it's making a 198mb project with a nice clean installer. This is an amazing addition, had no idea Tauri was even a thing!

adent42

Yes you do need to install rust (tauri's native side is built in rust). Not sure about the white screen issue, so I'll look this weekend as this is more of a "freetime" project.

Armelline

Thanks!

Turned out I already had rust installed on my Mac so never ran into the need for it there!

adent42

I didn't look into it this weekend, but I suspect it's based on the code we use to create paths to assets (we assume a / and windows likes a \ )

adent42

After mentioning it, it was a quick enough fix that I pushed an update. Let me know if it works!

Armelline

I'll check it out tonight, thanks!

Armelline

Still not been able to get this to work on Windows but I'll give it another try tonight.

adent42

K, I'll see if I have my Parallels up and take a look tonight then.

adent42

Okay, I think I got it this time. Had to do things in the opposite direction (convert backslashes to fwd slashes).

Armelline

Thanks! I'll give it another try asap!

Armelline

Seems to be working great now, thanks!

adent42

Awesome, looking forward to seeing Sand on Steam!

Armelline

Thanks! We're thinking we'll bundle Sand and Silk together for Steam as Sand on its own is a bit short but with this it's gone from "eh maybe one day" to "this is a very high priority once Silk is out on iOS!"

CasualEvolution

Well, this interests me! 😁

How do I generate the html5 to package as an exe? Can I export it from the classic Mac version of GS?

Or should it be a project generated and exported from the web version of GS?

Thanks!

adent42

@CasualEvolution

The high level instructions are in the README of the project, but I'll try to create a video sometime soon if that's requested.

You can use the Desktop version of GS, but it's running on HTML5, you need to publish as HTML5 and test your game.