though becareful when doing showing videos or stills while doing an install. on some systems with extremly fast cd drives installs take very little time. in fact so little that the stills (which are ussually synced to how far the install is done which is the best way since it will not stall the install on faster pcs) went by so fast you could not read them. so make sure that whatever you show during the install is not super important. maybe even have a feature that lets you view the install stills after the game is installed. cause face it, slowing the install for faster pcs so that they can read the stills might be annoying to them. basically the trick is to use multithreading (ie do the install in one thread and the stills/videos/sound/animations in another thread). just make sure that you dont use too much disk/cpu time doing the animations. that should be reserved for the copy of files off the disc.

Am I the only one that hates installers?

That''s one of my favorite parts about the DOS days. Just copy some files and you''re done. Programs store their own settings in configuration files. They are self-contained, and you don''t need to worry about them dumping junk that sits in your registry for the life of your PC or until your next format.

It may seem like an irrelevant rant, but I think it''s a real issue. If a program (game, whatever) has DLLS that only it will use, why the hell does it put them in Windows/System and register them? Why can''t it just keep them in the same folder?

This is my complaint with software nowadays. It hijacks your system.

My favorite installer, therefoere, is one that copies files and does nothing else. If it displays a movie while this occurs, fine. But when it starts latching onto my system through all kinds of arcane registry keys and system configuration files, it''s gone too far.

i agree, personally i think there is no real need for n game installer beyond having a zip file that extracts everything under a single directory. uninstall is a simple process of deleting said directory. of course ppl like to have start menu entries and desktop icons, ussually i perfer running from command line anyway. if i need a shortcut for convinence i can create them myself. also an installer MUST include an option to NOT rceate start menu and desktop entries. it is quite annoying to have the installer forceful put the entries there and then having to manually delete them. worse yet, some stupid uninstallers fail to finish if a single file is missing thus screw up when i delete the entries making me have to keep backups so that i can uninstall the app properly (since 9 out of 10 times it uses the registry because the coder was on crack). thankfully i am all past that since i no longer install any game that uses a crappy installer (pimp by nullsoft is free and works great. so is winzip self extracting zips, or winrar self extracting rars).

On registry keys:
How do you determine if an application is installed? "Look in a standard location". How do you determine the standard location?

On DLLs in common locations:
Many modern games allow for modifications (mods) and other applications to make use of their DLLs. If they weren''t in a logically common location, then we''d have to find where they were installed. Oh, but we shouldn''t write to the registry either, so we''d have to dig to find out where these applications are installed - again.

Besides, Microsoft advocates the use of the registry as a more centralized repository over .ini files. Good idea? Bad idea? *shrugs* It''s their OS, so they get to design it.

For the record, there are guidelines on what installers should do, but many people don''t follow them. I generally find the use of MSI to be a good sign of compliant behavior.

Finally, installers aren''t designed for picky punks like y''all (no offense). They''re designed for the average user who doesn''t know what a registry is.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

If memory serves, the DOS installer for Red Alert 1 was composed of movies of a soviet shell factory, which would play one stage in production for each bit of the install process. My favourite was the finishing touch, where this little stencil swung round and sprayed a hammer and sickle onto the nose cone of the shell. It was cool. Shame the windows installer didn''t do this.

It would eather make the movie very chopy or make the instalasion very long, or both! probobly both

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I''ve seen one or two installers that actually run a mini-game while installation is progressing. It''s a novel idea, and rewarding to the player to boot. Multimedia installs are usually fun once, but they usually suck when installing for the second or third time.

IMHO, of course

ld

quote: Original post by Oluseyi
On registry keys:
How do you determine if an application is installed? "Look in a standard location". How do you determine the standard location?

Does it matter? If you use relative file paths, as you should, it seems relatively irrelevant where the "Quake3" folder is located as long as the internal structure remains unchanged.

quote: Original post by Oluseyi
On DLLs in common locations:
Many modern games allow for modifications (mods) and other applications to make use of their DLLs. If they weren''t in a logically common location, then we''d have to find where they were installed. Oh, but we shouldn''t write to the registry either, so we''d have to dig to find out where these applications are installed - again.

Common DLLs? Again, to refer to Quake III, common files go in the "base_dir\baseq3" directory, and modified ones go in folders within "base_dir." The "base_dir" directory, of course, can be called whataver you want (usually "Quake3"), and it can be placed wherever you want.

quote: Original post by Oluseyi
Besides, Microsoft advocates the use of the registry as a more centralized repository over .ini files. Good idea? Bad idea? *shrugs* It''s their OS, so they get to design it.

Microsoft says a lot of things...

quote: Original post by Oluseyi
Finally, installers aren''t designed for picky punks like y''all (no offense). They''re designed for the average user who doesn''t know what a registry is.

Yep. You''re right, of course. Installers do need to be simple. So I do understand things like having an "Add/Remove Programs" box and the associated registry keys, etc. I still wish, though, that games (and all programs, with a few exceptions) would be a little more self-contained. I don''t see how this decreases the ease of installation. After all, an installer can copy the files for you.

I understand your point exactly. I just think programs can be a little tidier without interfearing with ease of use.

quote: Original post by TerranFury
Does it matter? If you use relative file paths, as you should, it seems relatively irrelevant where the "Quake3" folder is located as long as the internal structure remains unchanged.

Until another application has to search my 5 drives to determine whether Quake3 is installed. This may not be an issue for video games, but for office/productivity applications that inter-operate (most people would like Excel to automatically install Word export filters or whatever, and for Word to automatically update - even if Excel was a non-Microsoft product). Plus, if you''re interested in multi-tier entertainment applications like I detailed in my Sports RPG? thread (where one application reads data from another to drive the second game), then having a common repository to search is a great convenience.

Even Linux has repositories; RPM maintains an internal database, as does Debian (apt). There''s a very good reason for this (and finding applications not on your path is slow).

quote: Original post by TerranFury
I understand your point exactly. I just think programs can be a little tidier without interfearing with ease of use.

I agree completely.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Personally I believe in limited use of the registry to store the path to where the game is installed and a path to the relevant uninstall information. This is as a convenience to the people who just want to use Add/Remove Programs and don''t want to delete directories or whatever. But everything else I would keep under one subdirectory. Putting shared files in system directories and so on has probably caused more harm than good over the years. It certainly doesn''t help when a novice end-user gets this lovely dialog box: "This file is reported as being safe to delete. But we''re actually not all that sure. So we''re asking you to make the decision. Delete it or leave it?"

Too many programs overuse the registry. It should just be a central point of reference that directs you to the actual info. I shouldn''t lose application data just because I rolled back my registry settings. Nor should a user have to dig through a file containing all their hardware and OS settings just to change a few minor settings for a specific piece of software. If you need per-user settings, either use separate files or use the appropriate directories (which are provided in later versions of Windows and all Unix-likes, I think).

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