Windows development

Developing Defold applications for the Windows platform is a straight forward process with very few considerations to make.

Graphics backends

Windows builds use OpenGL by default. Use Graphics (Windows) in an application manifest to select OpenGL, Vulkan or DirectX 12 (DX12). You can include multiple backends to allow fallback when the preferred backend is unavailable.

Project settings

Windows specific application configuration is done from the Windows section of the game.project settings file.

Application icon

The application icon used for a Windows game must be in the .ico format. You can easily create a .ico file from a .png file using an online tool such as ICOConvert or AConvert. Upload an image and use at least the following icon sizes: 16x16, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48, 256x256.

Source: Microsoft - Windows app icon construction

Creating .ico file locally using ImageMagick software suite.

ImageMagick is a free, open-source software suite, used for editing and manipulating digital images.

1. Install ImageMagick
   • Linux: Install using apt

     sudo apt install imagemagick
     

   • Windows: Download from https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php#windows:
   • macOS: Install using brew:

     brew install imagemagick
     

2. Prepare your PNG icon.
3. Convert PNG to ICO using convert tool:

   magick icon_256x256px.png -compress None -define icon:auto-resize=256,128,96,64,48,32,24,16 favicon.ico
   

FAQ

Q: Why are GUI box nodes without a texture transparent in the editor but show up as expected when I build and run?

A: This error can happen on computers using AMD Radeon GPUs. Make sure to update your graphics drivers.

Q: Why am I getting com.sun.jna.Native.open.class java.lang.Error: Access is denied when opening an atlas or a scene view?

A: Try running Defold as administrator. Right-click on the Defold executable and select “Run as Administrator”.

Q: Why is my game not rendering properly on Windows using an Intel UHD integrated GPU (but my HTML5 build works)?

A: Make sure to update your driver to a version higher than or equal to 27.20.100.8280. Check with the Intel Driver Support Assistant. Additional information can be found in this forum post.

Q: The Defold editor is crashing and the log shows AWTError: Assistive Technology not found

If the editor crashes with a log mentioning Caused by: java.awt.AWTError: Assistive Technology not found: com.sun.java.accessibility.AccessBridge then follow these steps:

• Navigate to C:\Users\<username>
• Open the file called .accessibility.properties using a standard text editor (Notepad is fine)
• Find the following lines in the config:

assistive_technologies=com.sun.java.accessibility.AccessBridge
screen_magnifier_present=true

• Add a hash mark (#`) in front of theses lines
• Save your changes to the file and restart Defold