It turns out releasing my first commercial game was more stressful than I thought. I only got three people to purchase it so far. I can't get a Windows build made yet. And the worst part is that I just realized that I dynamically compiled the game and the version of SFML I used is outdated and the most recent version breaks compatibility (though the version I'm using is the one that is found in the repositories on most Debian based distros so it shouldn't be a problem if you are using the noob distros).
I'm just going to switch to SDL for my next project. SFML has too many quirks and a much smaller community and documentation. SDL is the cross-platform DirectX, while SFML is just some guy saying "what if we do what SDL does and add unnecessary object-oriented quirks and exclude basic shit like depth-buffering". I do not recommend SFML. If you want an alternative to SDL, maybe try Allegro.
Though I am honestly sick of tool-hopping, but I realize that it's better to use what is tried and true than to be different for the sake of being different.
@xianc78 Can you not simply statically link it? Or ship the .so? Or ship an appimage instead?
@frost I tried static linking. I couldn't get it to work. SFML has separate libraries for static files and the compiler can't seem to find them or they simply don't exist. I'm still trying though.
I haven't tried AppImage. Does AppImage allow you to bundle a dynamically linking executable along with the required libraries into one package?
@xianc78 Yes, that is pretty much the point of it
Consider also shipping the .so and a shell script which sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH
I followed these instructions, but when I do so, I get no such file or directory errors.
the version I’m using is the one that is found in the repositories on most Debian based distros
Are you sure Debian ships static libs for it? You probably have to build it from source
@frost >Consider also shipping the .so and a shell script which sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH
That's what I plan on doing, though I'm going to need to test it on a Linux installation without SFML.
@xianc78
You'll get it!