Installing Acron

Acron is installed per project. There is no system-wide engine: each game has its own copy of the engine version it is pinned to, fetched from the Acron archive (archive.acronengine.com) into the project’s folder. The Acron launcher does this for you.

What You Need

  • An Acron account. The engine, its SDKs and Acron Studio are downloaded with it; nothing can be installed without signing in. Licences are per year or per month (see acronengine.com/pricing).

  • A development machine the engine runs on. For a Python game, that is 64-bit Windows, macOS 11 or later on Apple silicon, or 64-bit Linux on an Intel or AMD processor: the platforms the acron wheel is published for. A C++ game can also be developed on an Intel Mac or on 64-bit ARM Linux (see Building C++ Games for the Desktop).

  • A graphics driver with OpenGL 3.3 or later. Install your graphics card vendor’s current driver.

  • Git (optional): the launcher makes each new project a Git repository when Git is installed.

You do not need to install Python: the launcher sets up Python 3.14, the version the engine is built for, inside each project.

The Launcher

Download the Acron launcher for your platform from acronengine.com/download and install it.

  1. Sign in. Start the launcher and press Sign In. A browser window opens; sign in with your Acron account there, and the launcher keeps you signed in from then on. Settings > Account shows who is signed in.

  2. Create a project. Press New Project, give it a name and a location (by default Documents/Acron Projects), and choose the engine version (the newest is selected). The launcher creates the project’s folder, a Python 3.14 environment in its .venv folder, installs the engine of that version from the archive, and installs acronmanager beside it.

  3. Run it. On the project’s page, Run starts the game. The output appears in the launcher’s output panel.

From the project’s page the launcher also builds the project’s assets, runs its tests, packages it for distribution (see Distributing Acron Applications), changes the engine version it is pinned to, and opens it in Acron Studio, the editor, when your licence includes it.

A Project

my-game/
   pyproject.toml     the project: its name, version, engine and settings
   src/main.py        the game's entry point
   assets/            models, textures and sounds, as the tools save them
   blueprints/        the visual scripts Acron Studio writes
   tests/             the game's tests (pytest)
   .venv/             the project's Python, with the engine in it

The engine is an ordinary dependency in pyproject.toml, pinned to one version and taken from the archive’s package index:

[project]
name = "my-game"
version = "0.1.0"
dependencies = ["acron==1.11.0.post60"]
requires-python = ">=3.14"

[[tool.uv.index]]
name = "acron-archive"
url = "https://archive.acronengine.com/api/packages/astracron/pypi/simple/"
explicit = true

[tool.uv.sources]
acron = { index = "acron-archive" }

[tool.acron]
acron_version = "1.11.0.post60"
main_file = "src/main.py"
asset_dir = "assets/"

The file holds no credentials, so it can be committed. The launcher hands your sign-in to the tools when they reach the archive.

In a Terminal

acronmanager is the launcher’s tool, installed in every project; the launcher’s buttons run it. In a terminal, activate the project’s environment (source .venv/bin/activate; on Windows .venv\Scripts\activate) and use it directly:

acronmanager run              # run the game (main_file)
acronmanager build            # convert assets/ into .built_assets/
acronmanager test             # run the tests
acronmanager dist             # package the game (see Distributing)
acronmanager update 1.11.0.post60   # pin another engine version

Commands that fetch from the archive (update, sync, and the builds for the web, Android and the Wii) need the archive credentials in the environment, as UV_INDEX_ACRON_ARCHIVE_USERNAME and UV_INDEX_ACRON_ARCHIVE_PASSWORD: your account’s name and an access token. The launcher sets them for the commands it runs; set them yourself in a terminal or on a build server (see Continuous Integration for Games). With them set, uv sync in the project’s folder installs the pinned engine as well.

Note

The acron package on PyPI is an unrelated project. Install the engine only from the Acron archive, with its version pinned, as the project above does.

Checking the Installation

With the project’s environment active, this prints the engine’s version:

python -c "import acron.core as c; print(c.AcronSystem.get_version_string())"

A window that does not open usually means the graphics driver is missing or too old. On Windows, a message like this one:

:display(error): The application requested hardware acceleration, but your OpenGL
:display(error): driver, GDI Generic, only supports software rendering.

means Windows is using its built-in software driver: install your graphics card vendor’s driver.

C++ Games

A C++ game is compiled against the Acron SDK of its platform rather than the acron wheel. acronmanager downloads the SDK from the archive when the project first needs it, with the same sign-in; see Building C++ Games for the Desktop for the desktop and Distributing Acron Applications for the other platforms.