Making an installer for an XNA GS 2.0 game

There is an ongoing thread on the XNA Creators Club forums about how to create an installer using Inno Setup, a free and very capable installer program.

The script described by Pelle in the first posts of this thread works great for XNA GSE 1.0 and Refresh, but is problematic for XNA GS 2.0 games because of the dependency on .NET 2.0 Service Pack 1. I won’t bring much new information in this post, but will try to summarize everything I read and tried it into a tested & true solution that I’m currently using for the Fez installer.

Please note that this solution does not work if your game requires use of the GamerServicesComponent of live networking using XNA, since you need the whole Game Studio for it to work. (see this post)
Also, it wasn’t made with 64-bit operating systems in mind, so if you’re going to support them you’ll have to modify it. It has been known to work on Vista though.

The problem

The problem we’re trying to address is the following : XNA Game Studio 2.0 requires many things to be installed, all of which are described in FAQ in the forums and (with more detail) in this excellent blog post by Ed Andersen.

Among those, there is the .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1, which weighs an astonishing 23.6Mb and often doubles (or more!) the size of your average XNA casual game.

The solutions

Knowing this, there are a couple of solutions possible :

• Use the “Download” feature of ISTool to make the user download the 23Mb behemoth only if it’s absolutely necessary.
• Ed and the ZMan both explain that if you have .NET 2.0 installed, only the Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributables suffice, which weighs only 2.6Mb.
• The only lightweight web installer that contains everything XNA 2.0 needs is the .NET Framework 3.5, which at 2.7Mb can be easily bundled to your application. But then, I find that forcing the 3.0, 3.0SP1 and 3.5 .NET Frameworks a bit invasive when all you want to do is get 2.0SP1.

So what I ended up doing is an hybrid approach. If .NET 2.0 is not installed, download and install the .NET 2.0 SP1. If .NET 2.0 is installed but no service pack, install the VC++ redistributable. If it’s all in, nothing is downloaded and nothing installed.

The script

I didn’t find any way to conditionally download different files, for example download the VC++ redist only if needed, AND .NET 2.0 SP1 if needed. All downloadable files go in a single condition, as far as I understand. So VC++ and the DirectX Web Setup need to be bundled to the application, a small price to pay at 2.6Mb and 281Kb respectively.

Here’s the Inno Setup/ISTool 5.2.1 script that I ended up making, starting from the [Files] section, so assuming you’ve got the rest of your script above that.

[Files]
Source: Resourcesvcredist_x86.exe; DestDir: {tmp}; Check: ShouldInstallVCPPSP1
Source: Resourcesdxwebsetup.exe; DestDir: {tmp}; Check: ShouldInstallDX
Source: Resourcesxnafx20_redist.msi; DestDir: {tmp}; Check: ShouldInstallXNA2
Source: MyGameFiles*; DestDir: {app}; Flags: recursesubdirs

// You will usually want an [Icons] section here

[Run]
Filename: {tmp}vcredist_x86.exe; Parameters: /q; Check: ShouldInstallVCPPSP1
Filename: {tmp}NetFx20SP1_x86.exe; Flags: skipifdoesntexist; Parameters: /q /norestart
Filename: {tmp}dxwebsetup.exe; Parameters: /Q; Check: ShouldInstallDX
Filename: msiexec.exe; Parameters: "/quiet /i ""{tmp}xnafx20_redist.msi"""; Check: ShouldInstallXNA2
Filename: {app}{#MyAppExeName}; Description: {cm:LaunchProgram,{#MyAppName}}; Flags: nowait postinstall skipifsilent

[_ISToolDownload]
Source: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90&p=&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=79bc3b77-e02c-4ad3-aacf-a7633f706ba5&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2f0%2f8%2fc%2f08c19fa4-4c4f-4ffb-9d6c-150906578c9e%2fNetFx20SP1_x86.exe; DestDir: {tmp}; DestName: NetFx20SP1_x86.exe

[Code]
var dxMissing: Boolean;		// Are the required DirectX components missing?
var xna2Missing: Boolean;	// Is the XNA 2.0 Framework missing?
var dotNET2Missing: Boolean;	// Is the .NET 2.0 Framework missing entirely?
var onlySP1Missing: Boolean;	// Is .NET 2.0 present but with no Service Pack?

function InitializeSetup(): Boolean;
var spval: Cardinal;	// Identifies the installed .NET 2.0 Service Pack
begin
	// Test the presence of XNA 2.0
	if (not(RegKeyExists(HKLM, 'SOFTWAREMicrosoftXNAFrameworkv2.0'))) then
		xna2Missing := True;

	// Test the presence of required DirectX components
	if (not(FileExists(ExpandConstant('{sys}xinput1_3.dll')) and
	        FileExists(ExpandConstant('{sys}x3daudio1_2.dll')) and
	        FileExists(ExpandConstant('{sys}d3dx9_31.dll')) and
	        FileExists(ExpandConstant('{sys}xactengine2_9.dll')))) then
		dxMissing := True;

	// Test the presence of .NET 2.0 and SP1
	if (not(RegKeyExists(HKLM, 'SOFTWAREMicrosoftNET Framework SetupNDPv2.0.50727'))) then
		dotNET2Missing := True
	else if (not(RegQueryDWordValue(HKLM, 'SOFTWAREMicrosoftNET Framework SetupNDPv2.0.50727', 'SP', spval))) then
		onlySP1Missing := True
	else if (spval < 1) then
		onlySP1Missing := True;

    Result := True;
end;

function NextButtonClick(CurPage: Integer): Boolean;
begin
	// Only download if .NET 2.0 is missing entirely
	if (dotNET2Missing) then
		Result := ISTool_Download(CurPage)
	else
		Result := True;
end;

// The following functions are called by "Check" directives

function ShouldInstallVCPPSP1(): Boolean;
begin
	Result := onlySP1Missing;
end;

function ShouldInstallXNA2(): Boolean;
begin
	Result := xna2Missing;
end;

function ShouldInstallDX(): Boolean;
begin
	Result := dxMissing;
end;

Some might say that checking for every component and not extracting/installing them unless absolutely necessary is overkill, but it does cut down on the install time, and your users get to play your game sooner! :)

So there you have it. Probably the most optimized/less invasive Inno Setup script that can be for XNA 2.0 games.

Comments/suggestions/corrections?