Ready to publish my game for preview

[Dylan Phan]

I''ve got a version of my game that I would like to publish as an open preview. Could you guys take a look? My Hub username is SuspendedFour.

My audio files are only in mp3 format right now so the game doesn't currently work in Firefox. I will start working on a solution to convert my assets to OGG and AAC after I post this.

Also, I wouldn't mind getting hints on legal implications regarding the music content if someone happens to know :)

Thanks,

Dylan

[James Austin]

You can publish the game yourself.

1. Sign in to the hub.

2. Open the "Versions" tab.

3. Confirm that there are no warnings or errors that would block the publish. If so, fix them.

4. Open the "Edit" tab.

5. Setup as many (or as few) of the details and assets you want. (Background image, game icon, title, etc.)

6. Open the "Publish" tab.

7. Select the desired version in the drop down.

8. "Publish Game" - this will deploy the version to the "Inactive Versions" list.

9. Select the version in the inactive list and select "Set as Active Preview". This will make the game the active version that users will get.

10. Open the "Preview" tab.

11. Either - add users to the "Preview Users" list if you want the preview to be private OR "Enable Hidden Preview" if you want the preview to be public.

12. Share the game link as wide as you want.

Let us know if you hit a sticking point.

[Blake Maltby]

On the music topic, if you want to publicly release the final game then you'd obviously need to get licenses for any copyrighted music included in the game.

You can probably find some decent music to use under a free license like the creative commons license, for example sites like http://freemusicarchive.org/

Another option might be to try and use an api from a service like soundcloud (http://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/guide) using something like that it might be possible to allow people to play the game using their own music (or again music under free license, I think there's quite a bit available on soundcloud)
Using an api like this may or may not be applicable, depends how much if at all you need to process the songs offline. Also it's likely that they won't provide multiple audio formats which may limit browser support.

[Dylan Phan]

Oh okay I didn't realize I could publish it myself. I've been ignoring a warning which is now looking pretty concerning. "Version not publishable as canvas main provided was not a .canvas.js file."

Does this mean I am not allowed to provide my own html? My game is relies on some html controls.

Thanks for the suggestions about the music. The soundcloud API is exactly what I need. I'm using The Echo Nest to analyze the songs so I'll process the songs on the fly for now and maybe cache the analysis on my own servers when I get to that point.

[Dylan Phan]

Just wanted to follow up on this...

Is there any way to publish the html canvas version of my game?

[Joe Kilner]

Hi Dylan,

The HTML template that you can use on local and on the Hub is there only to provide debugging / development controls. To publish your game you must provide canvas.js as the canvas main file.

The reason for this restriction is that when Turbulenz games are run inside the plugin (for example in IE or on Android) they do not have access to an HTML rendering engine and so cannot display HTML controls.

Joe

[Dylan Phan]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the info. So there's no way to publish a canvas-only version, even for a hidden preview? I might write my own backend and host it then.

[Joe Kilner]

Just to be clear, you can publish a canvas-only version, but not with the HTML wrapper that you get on local.

Before you go down the route of writing all your own hosting code, rewriting your UI so that it is rendered to the canvas would have multiple benefits - your UI can be easily styled to match your game exactly and your game will work on a wider range of browsers and devices (via the Turbulenz plugin and the Android wrapper etc.).

Alternatively, if you add your HTML template to your game code and write a bit of DOM manipulation you could inject your HTML UI into the game site manually. But be aware that there may be conflicts between your CSS and the site CSS, and if we change the structure of the site your game might stop working, so this would only be a temporary fix.

Joe

[Jacob Butterfield]

Does anyone know how to get the link for my preview? I can't seem to find it anywhere.