How do I host a Twine story on the new Google Drive?

[Bri Guy]

Hey everyone,

I'm currently dipping back into Twine and just noticed that Google forced the latest version of Google Drive down my throat earlier today. I used to be able to host Twine stories with ease on Google Drive and now I haven't a clue thanks to their recent ham-handed changes. 

Before, things were a little convoluted but fairly simple. I would upload a Twine story's HTML file to Google drive and set the Sharing settings for the HTML file to Public. I would then open the HTML file, usually inside the Google Drive viewer and then forced inside Google Docs, and was presented with a Preview button. I would hit said Preview button and I was then brought to a new webpage where the Twine story displayed as expected and I could navigate along through the branching paths. Easy peasy.

That is no longer possible for me in the awful new Google Drive that was recently forced upon me. I can still upload HTML files and set the Sharing settings for them to Public, and I can even see the Twine stories displaying like I would expect them to in the tiny little Preview window given to me in the fancy new layout. However, when I try to click on that Preview window it brings to the Google Drive viewer. Obnoxious but alright, I'll see if I can open it in Google Docs. And oh wait no it looks awful inside Google Docs and there's no longer a Preview button. Any ideas on what to do? The URLs that I had saved for my old Twine stories hosted on Google Drive still work fine, so there has to be some way to find what those URLs for new stories would be. Google is just making it unduly difficult with these unwanted changes. 

[Melissa]

Yes, yes, yes!  I am so glad you wrote this.  I am struggling with the same thing tonight.  This morning, I still had the preview button.  But now tonight, the preview button is gone.  I still haven't been able to figure out how to get the public HTML URL so I can have others play the game.

I just looked into Dropbox, but you can only host a public file if you have a Pro account.

I found, Philome.la (http://www.philome.la/) but has anyone used it?  What I liked about Google Docs was that I could put up and take down versions of the game as I was making it.  Will I have control over uploading and removing games from Philome.la?  It seems like a one-way street -- you upload and they give you a link?  Can you remove games too?

Mel

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[Bri Guy]

Can't claim to know much about Philome but I somehow managed to forcefully engineer some passable URLs for new Twine uploads. Fortunately, I had the URLs for my old Twine stories sitting about and was able to experiment a bit until I bumbled across a bit of luck. 

Examples:

Here's the URL for say an HTML I uploaded called "Story One"

https://d49f2e68e3ffd78b9962ee2d335af2c1ff4a7bea.googledrive.com/host/0B1IdUtQq-GfLZVEta1R6cHA4QVk/Story%20One.html

And here's the URL for say an HTML called "Story Two"

https://d49f2e68e3ffd78b9962ee2d335af2c1ff4a7bea.googledrive.com/host/0B1IdUtQq-GfLZVEta1R6cHA4QVk/Story%20Two.html

This massive mess of numbers and letters (https://d49f2e68e3ffd78b9962ee2d335af2c1ff4a7bea.googledrive.com/host/0B1IdUtQq-GfLZVEta1R6cHA4QVk) remains identical in both. All that changes is the very end of the URL, where you tack on the name of the actual HTML file. 

I admittedly haven't tried this out with a substantial sample size, but it has worked flawlessly for at least one new Twine story. The unfortunate caveat of this being you need to have a URL of a prior Twine story you uploaded to work with as a jumping off point, since I imagine those mess of numbers are unique to each user. 

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[Bri Guy]

And another update of sorts! It's not ideal or intuitive but I think I've found a method that anyone can make use of in order to craft their own public HTML URLs. Not 100% sure on this but it seems promising. After rummaging around on the stackoverflow forums I had some more ideas on how to tweak the URLs so anyone could make use of them.

Steps

Upload an HTML file and once you have set the Sharing settings on it to Public, right click on it and hit the Share link. Copy and paste the link, which will look similar to this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3IdXtQq-GfLhFevJY3dmejByWWU/edit?usp=sharing

The most important part of this URL is the part highlighted in bold. I *think* this is your unique Google Drive ID. Not sure, but it's important nonetheless. Copy that and paste it somewhere safe. 

Now let's craft a public HTML URL framework for ourselves using the skeleton below.

Frame: bea.googledrive.com/host/

Take that frame and combine it with your alleged Google Drive ID. 

bea.googledrive.com/host/0B3IdXtQq-GfLhFevJY3dmejByWWU

Alright, so far so good! Now for the finishing touches. Think back to the HTML file you just uploaded to Google Drive. What was its name? Because we're going to need to shove it into the tail end of the public HTML URL. In this example, we'll use something simple like "Proof Concept" this is foolproof. 

So now our final URL is... bea.googledrive.com/host/0B3IdXtQq-GfLhFevJY3dmejByWWU/Proof%20Concept.html

Slap that into your browser and tentative testing makes me think that this will work. Again, haven't tried this with a lot of HTML files yet so I'm not going to claim this is 100% effective. It is a promising start though, I think!

[Melissa]

I will try that, Bri.

Anyone use GitHub to host Twine games? 

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[Melissa]

Bri -- I'm getting a 404 message on all your links -- the ones from the first email and the one from the last one.

Mel

[Bri Guy]

Those links were meant as examples more than anything else and weren't intended to be functional. I didn't exactly communicate that very well however, so I'll remedy that with some examples that actually do work this time! In the process I did find that my previous methods failed to hold up after repeated testing. I was overeager to post my results, which ended up being false positives, after what looked to be a bout of luck and didn't make sure they worked 100% of the time. My bad. 

I've dug into this a bit more and would like to present the following steps as a possible workaround for crafting a Public HTML URL that can be given to anyone so that they may see a Twine story hosted on Google Drive. I've verified that this works with at least four different Twine HTML files. 

This time, I'll start off by hitting (Ctrl + Right click). This will bring up a small menu. From this menu, click on "View Page Source." 

I was prompted with the following result:

view-source:https://drive.google.com/drive/#folders/0B1IdUtQq-GfLZVEta1R6cHA4QVk

All I want is what is bolded, so I'm now left with what I'm now fairly certain is my Google Drive ID. 

(I noticed that this value changed each time I grabbed the Share link for the HTML files which proved problematic. The Page Source ID has thus far remained static and unchanging

0B1IdUtQq-GfLZVEta1R6cHA4QVk

Now to grab the URL framework for a Publicly Hosted HTML.

bea.googledrive.com/host/

Combine that frame with the Google Drive ID and we get:

bea.googledrive.com/host/0B1IdUtQq-GfLZVEta1R6cHA4QVk

Finally we're ready for the final touches. I uploaded an HTML to my Google Drive called "Story One." I'll add that name to the end of the URL was have thus far for my final result.

bea.googledrive.com/host/0B1IdUtQq-GfLZVEta1R6cHA4QVk/Story%20One.html

Awesome! As of posting, that link works just fine. Now let's say I upload another Twine HTML file. I'll call it "Story Two." Now that I have a functional URL, editing it to point and host my new HTML file is a breeze. Just update the name at the end of the URL.

bea.googledrive.com/host/0B1IdUtQq-GfLZVEta1R6cHA4QVk/Story%20Two.html

And voila! I have managed to figure out how to host my Twine stories once more.