Packaged Standalone Not Opening?

I’ve successfully packaged a Win(64-bit) bit game for Shipping. I go to the …/Binaries/Win64 folder and open the executable, and it runs there. However, if I remove the .exe from that folder, and copy it, say onto my desktop. That version won’t open. No error, no black screen, just my mouse changing to the loading circle for 2 seconds, and then nothing happens. Nothing seems to even appear in the task manager.

Is this supposed to happen? As in, does the game simply not work outside of that folder? I’m trying to get my game into a single executable, so it can be easily uploaded to indie game websites. But I simply can’t seem to open the .exe outside the folder it was packaged into. Is it even possible to have a single standalone file, that is my game? Or does it have to be put in a .zip, if I want to distribute it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If you’re moving only the exe without any of the associated content, then the engine will detect that it’s missing required content and just shutdown. This sounds like what you’re seeing.

It sounds like you wan to make an installer? There are already many ways to create an installer for a Windows program (they can sometimes have quite a steep learning curve).

Alternatively you could just zip up your packaged game and distribute it like that (you can even create a self-extracting archive as a pseudo-installer).

Alrightio, so make an installer, or just zip it up. I shall look into the installer idea first. I had seen people posting about about this, and assumed “standalone” meant it was a single .exe file. But an installer does make more sense. Thank you for the help.