Building stand-alone app??

[tc2008]

Is there any way to build a stand-alone .exe of a game (which contains a number of videos, sounds, etc.) that can run on a different computer, without building an installer? The game was developed using media files stored on a usb thumb drive, so when you put it in another computer, it's a different drive (D: vs. F:, for example) and the file paths don't work, so the game really doesn't work (does that make any sense?). What's the most efficient way to work around this?

[Anders]

You should never "hardcode" paths to access a resource.
In MMF2 you have some expressions to get the current drive and folder in which your application runs.
You should use the AppPath$ expression.
Example:

Load image: AppPath$ + "myImage.jpg"

If your exe is located at "D:\somefolder\mygame.exe", then AppPath$ will return "D:\somefolder\". In the previous example that would result in "D:\somefolder\" + "myImage.jpg" = "D:\somefolder\myImage.jpg"

[Novabrain]

I would add that you can hard-code sub-folders in your application if you need to.

As per Andos' example, you could use AppPath$ + "media\" + "myfilename.jpg". And you could go deeper if needs be: "media\sound\" and "media\graphics\", etc.

It depends on how organized you want to be with a project. Throwing everything in the main folder of your application is ok, but organizing things can be useful for the developer and more polished looking.

I just wanted to point out that as long as you keep to the AppPath$ and use the slashes correctly, MMF2 is very flexible without using an installer as long as the folders are created by the application, (using File Object) or present when the user places the main folder.