False virus positives on Windows (explained) (Patreon)

Hey there,

I hope you are all doing well. I'm just dropping this quick thread to let you guys know that I've gotten a few messages over the past few weeks (and thanks to Patreon not sending me an e-mail notification about having received a message in the first place, I only saw the latest one that I got sent today) letting me know that some antivirus software has flagged latest builds as having some kind of Trojan.

I've been looking into it, and it seems to be an issue with more recent versions of Ren'Py. I updated to the latest version so I could include the phone messaging framework in the latest update. Apparently, newer versions of Ren'Py, due to some kind of incompatibility or something that I don't quite understand, began bundling two different executable files in them. The regular '[gamename].exe' for most systems and a '[gamename]-32.exe' for anyone still using an x86 installation of Windows. This 32bit-only file is apparently getting flagged by some specific antivirus software (like Windows Defender, Malwarebytes, etc.) as a virus.

This seems to be a problem that has stumped the Ren'Py developers as well. You can even see here (https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=61205) a recent post where the dev of Ren'Py talks about the issue. They've thankfully released an update recently that allows you to add an extra line of code to the options.rpy file so that Ren'Py compiles demos without using the 32bit file, so I did just that. I only hope doing this doesn't cause issues for anyone that might be stuck on an older computer still running x86 Windows, but there isn't much I can do (as I'd rather no risk virus positives, even if they are false).

Here's a new link to download the Windows version without the 32-bit binaries. Hopefully that should solve the issue and I'm sorry for not having noticed this sooner. I'm sorry for anyone that got a false virus warning due to me not realizing this issue with newer Ren'Py versions. That must have been stressful and I am truly sorry.

TL;DR: Newer versions of Ren'Py would compile builds with an extra .exe file called '[gamename]-32.exe'. While this file is safe, it has been flagged as a virus by certain software and been causing headaches to the Ren'Py devs. They created a new version of Ren'Py where you can compile without them entirely. As such, I have recompiled the latest TA demo (only one using Ren'py 7.4.2) so as to not have this file anymore.

Windows download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/kpw1wv8ftyuggek/TennisAce0.47-pc.zip/file