Sharing the XNA executable of my game on dropbox

Question

I'm currently making a game and I have my artist living in a different city as me. We share a dropbox folder so that I can see her art, and I thought it should be easy to copy the debug bin folder into the dropbox so that she can see it. This doesn't work (I can't even run it), so what could I do?

EDIT:

I run the executable in the dropbox folder, and immediately I get the "game.exe" has stopped working. So obviously I have XNA installed, but my game can't run in this folder.

Answer 1

Just to clarify, your artist will need to install the XNA framework as well. Additionally, if your game requires other stuff to be installed (like OpenAL if you use MonoGame), your artist will need that too.

Also, if you're using the XNA content pipeline, this won't work, because the file formats are all in .xnb and similar processed formats; you need to use straight-up assets instead.

Edit: Beyond that, you will need at least the following:

• Release-built .EXE (it's faster than debug)
• XNA and other DLLs that are dumped out in bin\Release
• Content directory and all subdirectories/files
• Anything else your game needs at runtime (eg. level files or whatever you use)

Answer 2

Select a folder (preferrably empty) where you will publish the contents, and then send it whole to your friend.

Make sure your project is using Reach in its Properties, otherwise it most certainly won't install properly and you'll have to put up with your friend's complaints. :)