There are two export options:
The first one exports from GDevelop to playable application. This one is limited to 2 export per day for free accounts.
The second one is free forever, and is a manual export. You first export it from GDevelop to Electron, and then you export it from Electron to playable application.
But about manual exports, since it exports to Electron file, wouldn’t the game contain more bloat? Since you use two engines to export the game, it will be more recourse heavy, thus more bloated, right? Also, isn’t Electron in general a bit bloated?
So, manually exporting might cause more recourse heavy game, thus making it a bad idea to export it manually.
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It is unusual to see someone exporting their games and building them using Electron or Cordova due to the complexities and high requirements.
You may not believe but GDevelop servers use Electron to build their games. The proof is that the games exported as a compressed file will find a file named license.electron
The reason for the limitation is that the servers cost GDevelop money from the pockets of the developers (high requirements).
I can’t be sure, but you may be wrong (or I’m wrong). I don’t know… I’m not part of the development team
Not sure where any of this is coming from, but:
The external online build server is doing the same build proccess that you yourself would do to build manually.
It builds your game using electron builder.
If you export manually an electron project file is provided for you to build yourself, but you are welcome to build using whatever target you want (edit: that can wrap an html5/js game) if you manually make your own build project file for that system.
Additionally, electron only adds 80-100mb to your project files. Thats smaller than most modern game exes in a lot of cases.
Are their smaller options? Sure! Is the file size material? Not really no.
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I love building manually. I don’t notice a bloat. If I do a test apk from the online build, then export that same thing to build manually with Cordova I don’t notice a difference.
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So exporting from Electron to EXE is huger than GDevelop direct export? Well, that kinda sucks, that manual building adds more size than direct export…
I’m afraid I have no idea where you are getting that from.
My post explicitly states online builds and manual builds are the exact same thing.
Electron IS the exe. Electron is what makes an html5 game turn into an exe, wrapping it in chromium.
The online server is doing this same thing using electron, just like the manual build process. The online server just already has the build tools installed and is running the build commands for you. That’s it, thats the entire difference.
There is a fantastic bundle right now where you can get 13 months of GOLD GDevelop subscription and a crazy amount of game assets for just $15. Then you won’t have to worry about making manual builds because you have went over your 2 per day limit, or worry that your builds are bigger that way. You will get 100 builds per day! For 13 months!