It results in a nice responsive window without visible controls and an icon that can be full-screened (F11) or can be dragged around and everything. Since the “packaging process” downloads the necessary simulator files, this game can be played offline! And since it’s Electron, you can compile it on all the platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux) to generate binaries for all of them! Also, data saved with the settings extension will save!
If you would like to convert your own games, follow the instructions in the repo README. It is still a quite involved process as you need to have Python, Node.js, and ImageMagick installed and also have a MakeCode Arcade game deployed to GitHub Pages. Command line knowledge is highly recommended.
Please let me know if you want any more features, any bugs for me to fix, etc!
With or without @RedSprite good idea to include multiple games in one app - or maybe even letting the electron app load other games somehow (simulator byte code or something) - how small of a file size could you theoretically compile such a single-game binary to, you think?
I do want to make a MakeCode Arcade Launcher, where you input a GitHub repo (ex. Unsigned Arduino/Racers) and it will automatically download the assets/js/binary.js file and the rest of the simulator files so you can play offline. I also plan on having a version and save file (settings extension, etc) manager.
Sounds awesome and I am looking forward to following the development!
If it can launch whichever game you want, the file size doesn’t matter as much as it would’ve if this was about compiling separate standalone games, either.
I’m experimenting with Tauri which should definitely reduce file sizes (I believe by an order of magnitude) as it does not bundle an entire browser - it uses the OS’ browser engine instead to save file size. So your puny MakeCode Arcade game does not take up 270 MB.
Also, ImageMagick isn’t required anymore as a dependency, it uses Python’s pillow instead so it should be easier to use.
I might be stupid but I’ve been trying to get this to work for me for almost an hour now and I can not figure this out.
I’ve followed the instructions as closely as possible and nothing ends up happening it might be because I’m used to watching someone show me how to do something because there are parts where i feel like i missed something.
