Drag and Drop Mac Installer

Overview

This document explains how to prepare a drag and drop installer that can be used for distribution of UDK games packaged for the Mac platform.

Requirements

To prepare the installer, you will need the Disk Utility app (installed by default in /Applications/Utilities) as well as Apple's Developer Tools installed. You will also need to create an installer background image.

Preparing the Installer

The installer is a disk image which, when opened, displays a window with the game icon and a shortcut to the Applications folder on top of a background image which contains a simple message instructing the user on how to install the game.

Creating a Writable Disk Image

1. Open the Disk Utility app from /Applications/Utilities and click the New Image button in the toolbar.
   
2. This will open a panel with properties of the new image. Enter the name, select a size big enough for your game, and select Single partition - Apple Partition Map from Partitions dropbox. Then click the Create button.
   
3. Disk Utility will now create and mount your new disk image.

Background Image

1. Open the newly mounted volume in Finder and create a folder named Background in it. Then, copy your background image to this Background folder.
   
2. Now, make sure the window with mounted volume is selected in Finder and is using icon view, then press Command + J to open the window's properties.
   
3. In the Background section of the window select Picture, then drag your background image to the image area. The main window should now correctly show your background picture.
4. To hide the Background folder, you need to open the Terminal app and use the following command:

      /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/Your_Volume_Name/background
      

   In our case that would be:

      /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/UDKGame/background
      

Game and Applications icons

1. Drag your game to your installer's mounted volume. Then open your startup disk in Finder and create an alias to Applications folder:
   • Select the folder.
   • Choose Make Alias from the File menu. This will create "Applications alias" file.
2. Drag this file to installer's volume and rename to "Applications".
   
3. Now open window's properties once more (Command + J) and adjust Icons Size if desired and adjust the icons' positions and the window's size to fit the background image.

Disk image icon

1. To change the icon of the disk image, select it's mounted volume icon on your desktop and press Command + I to open the info window. Do the same with your game's icon.
   
2. Click the game's icon in the newly opened info window to select it and press Command + C to copy it.
3. Switch to volume's info window, select it's icon in there, and press Command + V to paste.
4. The mounted volume should now have the same icon as the game.

Converting disk image

1. Back in Disk Utility, unmount the installer's disk image and then, with the disk image selected, click the Convert button. Make sure you select Compressed Image Format, then click Save. You may need to confirm replacing old file in case you chose not to use different name for compressed image.
   
2. And that's it. Once Disk Utility is done converting, you have a nice drag and drop installer ready for distribution.

Downloads

• background.png - example background image