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Shipping a game

Packs​

balaur export compiles every script to bytecode — with the same compiler configuration dev mode uses, so shipped bytecode is what was tested — and bundles scripts, scenes, and the manifest into a single .bpak:

balaur export my-game        # writes my-game.bpak
balaur play my-game.bpak     # run from bytecode only

Packed runs construct no compiler and no file watcher, and no script sources exist in the shipped build. A pack is written in sorted key order, so exporting the same sources twice gives the same bytes, on any machine — which makes reproducible builds and content-change checks possible.

Because packed execution is pure interpretation of precompiled bytecode, it ships on platforms with JIT/codegen restrictions; CI cross-compiles the headless engine to iOS on every run to keep that true.

Fused executables​

A pack is data — it still needs an engine to run it. To ship something a player can just open, fuse it onto a runtime template, the engine binary published for each platform:

balaur export my-game --target linux-x64     # or macos-arm64, windows-x64

The result is one executable. Fusing appends the pack to the template binary and writes a trailer; ELF, Mach-O, and PE all ignore trailing bytes, so the file still runs. On startup the engine reads its own executable: finding a pack means it is a shipped game, so it boots that; finding nothing means it is the CLI. One binary is therefore the editor, the CLI, and every game's runtime.

Templates for your own platform ship with the editor download in templates/. To export for another platform, drop that platform's balaur-runtime-* binary into templates/, point BALAUR_TEMPLATES at a directory of them, or pass --template <file>.

Two practical notes:

  • Appending invalidates a macOS code signature, so sign after exporting, not before.
  • The exporter sets the execute bits on its output, because templates that came through a zip or CI artifact store usually lost theirs.

Embedding​

For a custom binary, embed the pack directly:

fn main() -> anyhow::Result<()> {
    balaur::boot_pack(include_bytes!("game.bpak"))
}

This route requires a Rust toolchain on the machine doing the shipping; fused export exists so that editor users do not need one.