The logo of the WiX XNA intaller, a cheap montage of the WiX and XNA logos

WiX Installer for XNA Games

My GameSetupHelper library is making good progress. I was finally able to get some insight into the workings of WiX and Windows Installer.

I’m just about to create a small installer template for XNA games that will automatically check whether the required system components are available (for XNA games, these are DirectX 9.0c with the D3DX library from October 2006, the .NET Framework 2.0 and of course the XNA Framework).

Screenshot of a windows installer GUI showing the .NET/XNA/DirectX detection results

What I’m looking for now is feedback on the installer (you can find a download link for an example .msi at the end of this article).

  • Is the detection working for you?
  • Do you think the presentation is okay?
  • Do the logo bitmaps look abhorrent? (I’d happily accept any contributions *wink*)
  • Would people be scared by the additional slide during setup? (I tried to be honest about what the installer does to your system and at the same time follow MS recommendation to just silently install anything that’s required)
  • Do I violate any licenses with this? (I am including the official redistributables inside the MSI file, which to my understanding is legal)
  • Anything else that you think might be wrong or missing?

I plan to release the sources of this template for free once I’m done. If you absolutely need to get that installer sources NOW, just send me a mail :)