Portable Frozen Bubble on Microsoft Windows

Portable Installation walk-through for Frozen Bubble 2.2.1beta1 on Microsoft Windows

It is a bit complex. 
Perhaps best overall would be to use a live CD of Linux or install a Linux distribution.  Then frozen bubble, and many other games and programs, would be just a few clicks away.
Check first if a Windows version is available at www.frozen-bubble.org/.
Also, if you know someone who has the portable version already, copying it seems to work.  It is GPL, so it is legally free to copy.  The compressed size is 94.3MB, so I have not mirrored it on-line.  (Probably it can be made a lot smaller by trimming out downloaded sources, and unneeded perl modules.)

Both regular installation & a portable installation are possible.
I used the portable version, allowing putting it on a removable drive and running from any Windows computer.  This needs slightly more set-up however. 

Regular instructions
mirrored from Frozen Bubble on FaceBook.
----------------------------------------
Windows Install:
1. Download and install Strawberry Perl @ http://strawberryperl.com/
2. After install press Windows key + R.
3. type: cpan Games::FrozenBubble (Step 3 takes about 30mins to download and install.)
4. Press Windows key + R
5. type: frozen-bubble
Do step 4 and 5 each time to launch the game or create a .bat file to launch it.
----------------------------------------
Updating is done by just re-running: cpan Games::FrozenBubble

Portable Frozen Bubble for Windows:
The portable installation walk-through below is an expansion and modification of the regular installation.

System Requirements: About 399 MB.
Other requirements unknown.  Refer to Strawberry Perl, and perhaps SDL.

Installation:
1. Download Strawberry Perl portable.
It can be found at http://strawberryperl.com/. 
I used "strawberry-perl-5.12.3.0-portable.zip".  It is 54.4 MB.
2. As described in "README.portable.txt", extract strawberry portable ZIP into e.g. c:\myperl\
  Note: choose a directory name without spaces and non us-ascii characters.
3. Double click / run "portableshell.bat"
4. Enter in cmd window : cpan Games::FrozenBubble
If it seems like it had errors, or if later steps do not seem to work, running it again might fix problems. 
5. Wait until complete.  Can take 30 minutes to a couple hours to download and configure, depending on network speed and computer speed.
6. Enter: frozen-bubble
7. To exit game, press Esc.
8. To exit cmd window, enter: exit

Running basically installed game:
A. Find directory of Strawberry Perl portable.
B. Double click / run "portableshell.bat"
C. Enter: frozen-bubble
D. To exit game, press Esc.
E. To exit cmd window, enter: exit

Intermediate level of installation:
F. Copy "portableshell.bat" to "frozen-bubble-start.bat".
G. Edit in WordPad (under All Programs, Accessories) or other favorite text editor that handles Unix format files.  (Notepad will not work.)
H. Change last line from:
---
cmd
---
to
---
echo Starting frozen-bubble...
frozen-bubble
---
I. Save as text.
J. Click and drag "frozen-bubble-start.bat" to start menu, all programs, and place it where on the menu you would like it.  A shortcut copy will be created.
K. Now select "frozen-bubble-start.bat" or "Shortcut to frozen-bubble-start" in the menu to start Frozen Bubble.
L. To change the name in the menu, right click on the "Shortcut to frozen-bubble-start" menu item, and select "Rename".

Advanced level of installation:
M. To change the icon, right click on the "Shortcut to frozen-bubble-start" menu item, and select "Properties", then "Change icon".
Files convertable into a windows icon with Gimp can be found at someplace like:
...\strawberry-perl-5.12.3.0-portable\cpan\build\Games-FrozenBubble-2.212-yVOabf\share\icons

Enjoy!


Other Notes:
It seems that this is not exactly the official frozen bubble, as some tweaks were made to it.  So it should be considered an unoffical port, until something is available from the main frozen bubble web site.

I could create a batch script file to do basic and part of intermediate installation, which would depend on wget.exe.  However, it would require updating the stawberry perl link occasionally, and I hope the below walk-through is simple enough.  Once the 2.2.1 version becomes considered stable (or before), I hope a fancier Windows-style installer will become available.  I do not have experience with creating such installers.

Possible options investigated:
    Via Stawberry perl
     WinXP available, but older windows seem to not be supported; Linux boot USB/CD better in that case.
        Works!  Not widely obvious how though.  Hence I wrote it up.
    Live CD easiest?
     bootable for speed
     Emulateable via qemu for quick testing, easier use.
        Gives other programs, like gcompris, as well.
         GCompris not freely available on Windows.
        DouDou Linux seems a good choice for CD bootable.
    FB-win32 @ Sourceforge
        need perl 5.6.*,
         but no longer freely available from FB-win's linked to site.
    Brothersoft at http://www.brothersoft.com/games/frozen-bubble-download.html
     BAD source; tries to install ad-ware.
     AND: labelled as 2.2.0 for windows,
     but 2.2.0 supposedly not for windows.
     but in a bz2 archive, so hard to use, if possbile at all.
     Strongly suspect it is the Unix environment files.

This walk-through is placed in public domain, as described at the  Creative Commons Public Domain page.

Published Revision 2011-05-29-1750EDT