Clean game completely before building distribution

[CaramelCowboy]

Hey guys,

So I think I'm finally ready to build my game but I'm wondering how to completely clean it so it's a fresh distribution. I have a lot of save files I created for testing., and some gallery unlocks (I know about deleting persistent from the renpy launcher)

My question is,
Do I just delete all the files in the save folder?
Right now I have SAVE files and a file called 'navigation'(adobe after effects JSON file)

Is there another way to 'factory reset' the game?

 

[Yooshi]

Just build it, your saves won't be there

 

[CaramelCowboy]

Just build it, your saves won't be there

O thanks. Did some googling and saw instances where peoples saves stayed. Maybe some older version stuff since those posts were old xD ty

 

[Lou111]

O thanks. Did some googling and saw instances where peoples saves stayed. Maybe some older version stuff since those posts were old xD ty

Edit: *This response contains inaccurate information and is corrected below*

According to my research those people who claimed that their saves stayed regardless was due to the save location being in their appdata folder.
If you haven't changed your save location and the saves aren't within the game folder it would be illogical to assume that the packaged version would skim your computer for saves, retrieve them, and pack them for distribution.

This is a common concern for everyone starting out but there's no need to worry about it.

 

[anne O'nymous]

If you haven't changed your save location and the saves aren't within the game folder it would be illogical to assume that the packaged version would skim your computer for saves, retrieve them, and pack them for distribution.

The saves are within the game folder by default. But they are also, still by default, excluded from the distribution.

 

[Rich]

Hey guys,

So I think I'm finally ready to build my game but I'm wondering how to completely clean it so it's a fresh distribution. I have a lot of save files I created for testing., and some gallery unlocks (I know about deleting persistent from the renpy launcher)

My question is,
Do I just delete all the files in the save folder?
Right now I have SAVE files and a file called 'navigation'(adobe after effects JSON file)

Is there another way to 'factory reset' the game?

If you have certain files that you want to have in your game area when you're developing, but don't want to have included in the final deployment, you can use the Ren'py packaging support to do that.

For example, suppose you want to ship all your .rpyc files, but don't want to include the .rpy files. In options.rpy, you can add a line like this:

    build.classify('**/*.rpy', None)

The first half says "any file ending in .rpy here or in any subdirectory", and the "None" says "don't distribute this." Similarly, if you wanted to exclude everything in a testing directory, you could do:

    build.classify('testing/**', None)

I use this feature in some of the games for which I'm the coder. It allows me to keep debug scripts and things like that in the game directory (so that I can run them through the console while I'm debugging) but not have them go out with the game when it's packaged.

There's more about this in the Ren'py docs:

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[79flavors]

My question is,
Do I just delete all the files in the save folder?
Right now I have SAVE files and a file called 'navigation'(adobe after effects JSON file)

Is there another way to 'factory reset' the game?

As a general suggestion for the future...

... try it.

Had you just built your game's distribution files, you would have been able to answer your own question by simply looking in at the built ZIP file. (i.e. that save files and persistent data files are not included by default).

You may not always get the answer you want... but a little experimentation goes a long way to learning how things work.

If it helps, this is my boilerplate build options:

Spoiler: My Build Options

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[Rich]

If it helps, this is my boilerplate build options:

LOL - Mine are almost line-for-line identical. Although I'm still building the 32-bit version, because I had complaints when I omitted it, and the number of false positives seems to be dwindling as the world catches up with Ren'py.