The games leave the browser

Until a few days ago, the line under “The games” on the home page said: “they start in the browser, nothing to download”. It was true, and it was also a limit: a game that lives only in a browser tab disappears when you close it.

Every game page now has a Download the game section, with packages for Windows, macOS and Linux. They are produced by the same server that builds the browser version, without going through another machine.

The first package did not contain the game

The first Windows export “succeeded”. The file was there and the panel offered it. Except that, launched on its own, it stopped immediately with “Couldn't load project data at path”.

Out of the box, Godot exports two files: the executable and a .pck holding the actual game — scenes, code, images. The panel only published the first one. An engine with no game to run.

The fix is a single option, embed_pck: the data goes inside the executable, and the file becomes one. From then on it can even be renamed — which is exactly what anyone does when saving it into a folder of their own.

The scarier detail is another one: games that had already been exported kept producing the empty file, because the preset written the first time stayed as it was forever. There was no way to notice from the panel. Now the preset options are rewritten at every conversion.

Why a zip, and not the bare executable

An executable downloaded from a browser arrives badly on all three systems:

• on Linux and macOS it loses its execute permission;
• on Windows a loose .exe carries the warning reserved for files downloaded from the internet.

The zip solves all three cases at once, and it is also the format itch.io expects. The name follows the convention of the folder where we archive builds — maze-lume-win64-v53.zip — and carries the version in the name: a file from three weeks ago should not look as fresh as one from this morning.

They are not signed, and the page says so

The packages have no digital signature. On first launch Windows shows SmartScreen and macOS blocks the app until you allow it from Privacy & Security.

We could have kept quiet and waited for the questions. We chose to write the instructions under the buttons, system by system: a warning explained beforehand scares nobody, one discovered on your own looks like a broken game.

When the package falls behind

Games here keep changing after release, and a package is a snapshot. On 13 September, for example, Standing Order was on version 22 in the browser and its zip on 16. The page says so next to the buttons, instead of letting you believe they are the same thing.

What we take away

• “The export succeeded” does not mean “the game starts”. The only proof is launching the file, on its own, far from the folder it was born in.
• A setting written once and never read again is a defect that repeats silently on every game that follows.
• Uncomfortable things belong where they matter: the missing signature sits under the button, not on a help page nobody opens.