Export Tool#

So, you've built your awesome game using GameKit, now what? Well, you need to export it so that others can play, and GameKit makes this very easy to do.

GameKit is a Java-based built using the Maven build tool and dependency manager, and Maven is a plugin-execution framework at heart.

As such, GameKit provides a custom Maven plugin, gamekit-maven-plugin to handle project build and export.

Setup#

To use the gamekit-maven-plugin, we'll configure it in your project's pom.xml file like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<project>
    ...
    <!-- (3) Change the packaging to gamekit-executable -->
    <packaging>gamekit-executable</packaging>

    <pluginRepositories>
        ...
        <!-- (1) Include the plugin repository block -->
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>gamekit-maven</id>
            <name>GameKit GitHub Maven</name>
            <url>https://raw.github.com/kwameopareasiedu/gamekit/master/artifacts</url>
        </pluginRepository>
    </pluginRepositories>

    <build>
        ...
        <plugins>
            ...
            <!-- (2) Include the plugin block -->
            <plugin>
                <groupId>dev.gamekit</groupId>
                <artifactId>gamekit-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>0.1.0</version>
                <extensions>true</extensions> <!-- Enables extensions to include gamekit's custom packaging type -->

                <configuration>
                    <mainClass>mainClassPath</mainClass> <!-- Fully qualified name of your main class (Required) -->
                    <description>Description</description> <!-- The description to include in metadata (Optional) -->
                    <vendor>Vendor Name</vendor> <!-- The vendor name to include in metadata (Optional) -->
                    <jarOnly>true</jarOnly> <!-- Stop build at generated jar file (Optional) -->
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

What we have done#

1. We included the pluginRepository entry. This tells Maven where to look to find the plugin library.
2. We included the plugin block. This registers the plugin to be used in our project:
   • The <extensions>true</extensions> line makes the plugin's custom extensions available to Maven.
   • The <configuration> block supplies the following arguments to the plugin:
     • mainClass is the required fully qualified name of the class containing the static main method
     • description is the optional description to include in the application metadata
     • vendor is the optional vendor name to include in the application metadata
     • jarOnly is an optional boolean directing the plugin to stop after generating the jar file
3. We changed the <packaging> of our project to gamekit-executable. This is a custom packaging type provided by the plugin and instructs Maven on how to build and package the final executable file.

Build#

In the previous section, we configured the gamekit-maven-plugin in our pom.xml. The plugin binds to Maven's package phase, so to build your game, simply run the following command:

mvn package

After building the project, your executable can be found at the path below, where <os-name> is the name of your operating system (windows, darwin, linux), and <project-name> is your project's artifact name in your pom.xml:

target/outputs/<os-name>/<project-name>.zip

Builds are os-dependent, meaning to create Windows/MacOS/Linux versions, you must run the build on the respective operating systems.

The zipped output contains a README.txt with instructions on how to launch the game.