GDevelop Updated and network friendly

[mattgrimley]

I came accross GDevelop after a request from our IT faculty to investigate deploying it. It looked really nice, but didn't seem to default save to our users' network drives for creating / saving projects. I reported it to the developer and a week later, there's an update and it's working perfectly.

 

I was asked to investigate Clickteam Fusion Free Edition, GDevelop and AppInventor.

 

It seems to me to be more intuitive than Clickteam Fusion (and manages not to have a theme called "Girly Pink") and AppInventor. Having spent several months communicating with the dev team on App Inventor several years ago and singularly failing to get them to remove the reliance on running batch files within the program, i'm not enthusiastic to look there again.

 

When you first install GDevelop, it installs to "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Gdevelop", which isn't ideal for a machine that might have 1000 different users. However, you can just grab that folder and pop it onto a read-only network share.

 

Create and deploy your shortcut with the addition of --disable-update-check and it seems to run really nicely.

 

Just wanted to drop a message on here as i don't think it's had much traction in the UK so far and it may have been down to the default save area issues (which have now been resolved, it saves to My Documents now instead of the local user profile.

 

If you've looked into it in the past, but shelved it, try again with the latest beta74 release.

 

https://gdevelop-app.com/

 

I'm in no way affiliated. Just quite chuffed with the speed and willingness with which the dev team accepted and addressed my issues!

 

[mavhc]

What's the advantage of installing vs online version?

[rush_tech]

Just been asked to look at installing GDevelop, I was amused when it didn't give me any options during install. This is useful going to give it a try

[rush_tech]

Just had a reply fom one of the Mods

 

Unfortunately, GDevelop is not designed to be launched multiple times at once via the same install. It will always attempt to utilize the current user’s path, so launching it from a network share is unlikely to work correctly, if at all.

It is likely closing out because it cannot access the user’s profile folder nor write to it, and therefore cannot access nor create needed settings or files.

[dgsmith]

I have been asked to look at this by our IT dept and observe that there is no MSI for network install, so shared public folder was the next port of call.

 

@mattgrimley: Have you still been running this successfully since your initial post in the way you described, especially after the later post by rush_tech?

[dgsmith]

Just had a reply fom one of the Mods

 

@rush_tech: Did you find a way of working with this or did you concede it?

[mattgrimley]

I have been asked to look at this by our IT dept and observe that there is no MSI for network install, so shared public folder was the next port of call.

 

@mattgrimley: Have you still been running this successfully since your initial post in the way you described, especially after the later post by rush_tech?

 

Hey there,

I have no idea if it's still being used in lessons as i haven't heard much back since deploying it. It certainly did work find when i pushed it out. The developer did address a default save issue related to the way i installed it (as described in the post). It's entirely possible that this change has been reverted as i expect there has been significant work on it since i deployed it here.

 

Launching it here on my Windows 11 machine, it is very slow to load, but when it loads, it works. It just creates local %appdata% dynamically if they dont exist and the default save for me is to my network home directory.

 

I don't know what's the root of my speed issue, but given i'm on Windows 11 and running an old version, things have changed quite a bit since i last cracked it!

 

If it doesnt work in the above way, the next way to approach it would be to create a simple launch script to check if it exists in the expected place and if not, install it:

 

The following would work as a cmd launch script. Powershell, vbs or autoit would be preferable (as you might have cmd blocked for kids).

 

@echo off
SET gdevelopinstallpath={a server location with read access for all users}\GDevelop-5-Setup-5.0.128.exe
IF NOT EXIST "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Programs\Gdevelop\GDevelop.exe" %gdevelopinstallpath%

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Programs\Gdevelop\GDevelop.exe --disable-update-check

Edited March 4, 2022 by mattgrimley

[georgeescott]

The GDevelop installer supports the

/S

silent flag so at least users won’t be shown that it’s installing in the background, but it sadly doesn’t support any flags to install it for all users.

 

Other than installing it at logon (supported), the best (unsupported) option is to run it from a network share or repackage it to install to Program Files [emoji52]

Edited March 4, 2022 by georgeescott

[dgsmith]

Hi both, thanks for the replies. I tried chucking it in a public share but alas does not load, and I am not thrilled at the idea of it installing to local appdata on launch for each user! Repackaging into program files, if it even works doing that, seems like more hassle than its worth though. Quite surprising this is not more intuitive to distribute really.

[mavhc]

Why not run it directly from the website?

[dgsmith]

Why not run it directly from the website?

 

Seemingly this is a lower functionality version and the department have written tutorials based on the desktop version.

[RLR]

Anyone had any success with this? Find it odd they market this to Education but don't provide an easy way to install this for all users. We've just been asked to install this and getting the same issue.

 

Do you think copying the gdevelop folder to c:/program files and then create a new shortcut to program files would work?

Edited October 14, 2022 by RLR

[Bouh]

Hello!

I'm Bouh from GDevelop, I wanted to share with you all the documentation page we've about installing GDevelop on multiple devices.

That is usefull for school for example.

 

In bonus the application is on the Microsoft Store, the package can be grabbed with winget.

See the GDevelop package(s) with

winget search GDevelop

[RLR]

I'm not sure when it changed in the last year but the exe now installs for all users. I currently have version "5.2.165.exe /ALLUSERS /S". Before the exe would only install it at user level.

[Gongalong]

I was just about to add the same thing about the /ALLUSERS switch. We were also trying to deploy and struggling, but GDevelop helpfully (and quickly) replied after initially contacting them on Twitter.