Time is a precious resource, even in people's spare time. If a TV show isn't compelling after seeing 3 seconds of it, we zap on to the next channel. If we don't like what we hear, we skip to another song when listening to music.

The same principles apply to video games. But not only do games have to be compelling and fun to keep players engaged—in the world of PC gaming we also need to provide an uncomplicated experience for installing and launching a game. If players needed to do lots of configuration work to get the game running, then that would drive off most of them from actually playing it rather quickly.

To prevent this from happening and to make launching our games as easy as possible, Panda3D gives us two things: The Panda3D Runtime and the Panda3D applet file that packs an entire game into one file. All players need to do is install the runtime and double-click the applet file.

This recipe will show you how to obtain the Panda3D Runtime and how...