Extreme PALS Game Framework

Pack it all up! - packaging your project

Having the game project in Eclipse is all nice and dandy when you have it installed. But what if you wanted to share your project with your friends or show it off to someone?

Well, quite often it will be too inconvenient to have them compile and run it for themselves.

One of the main advantages of using Java is that you can compile the project into JAR (Java ARchive) yourself. And simply share it - it will run on any machine with Java installed.

You can find the steps for how to do so in the Eclipse manual. But to be fair, that tutorial is so brief, it’s not very good for following along the first time you do this.

Here is a much better tutorial from the University of Texas at Austin: Creating a jar File in Eclipse You can follow this tutorial, but when you get to step 2, choose “Runnable JAR file” instead of just “JAR file”.

Once done, you can run it with java -jar YourAmazingArchive.jar from terminal. And so can anyone who has the Java runtime installed, if you share this jar with them.

Share it with the world - adding release files to GitHub

When your project is packaged, the best place to share it with people is together with the code - on GitHub.

Here is a tutorial by GitHub on how to do so: Creating releases

Explaining to the world what you’ve created

Finally, when your project is packaged and shared with others, it’s a good idea to add your own description to your repository’s front page. This way if someone is interested in checking out your code, they can see what this project is about.

You can also use it to direct them to interest parts or explain how you built it. Or perhaps to explain some more complicated parts.

Here is an article about writing a good README file: Making READMEs readable

When applying for jobs or internships, you may want to share your GitHub profile on your resume. If so, it is very important that your projects have good READMEs.

They don’t have to be particularly long. The README for this website, for example, can be found here: Extreme PALS website repo

That’s all folks! - submit your project

Having done it all, let the Extreme PALS team know that your project is ready. We would love to take a look at what you’ve created.

If you haven’t explored all the advanced guide pathways yet, or want to check back for something, here is a portal back to the guides page: