Question

I made a simple command-line based game in java, only two classes (using Eclipse). But I was wondering how I can make this into a usable application for anyone, without running it through eclipse (ie send it to someone who knows nothing about java but would still be able to play the game)? Thanks!

Answer 1

Just to be clear, “command-line” and “knows nothing about java” are probably not going to work very well for you given that:

java is OS agnostic, therefore, if you send (presumably) a jar file to say…your grandma and she has a mac and you have a PC chances are her getting it to work is not going to be “out of the box easy” so to speak.

Left with this, I think you have a couple choices…first off, you do need to package your classes – a runnable jar will work fine. Aside from that, you will most likely have to build OS specific scripts (batch scripts for Windows, shell scripts for unix, etc.) and you will have to hand these out with your jar file. That being said, the intended user will still need to have java installed, and the batch scripts themselves are not likely to be trivial endeavors.

Your next option would be to use JNLP. However, I don’t think JNLP has a command line mode, so you will likely have to simulate a console with something like a JTextArea.

As far as I see it, your last option it to use one of the many products (not sure if there are any free ones) that package java into native code. I think Exe4j is one such example – but, like I said, I am not sure if there are any free ones and I am not sure how hard they are to use.

Best of luck, and if you can’t get your jar to work you should probably move that to its own question.