• How to publish your game
• How to use byond:// URLs
• How to package your game and make an EXE

How do I publish my game on the BYOND site or share it with the world? What is this "hub" thing?

If your game is ready to be released, or even if it's just ready to be tested on a regular basis, it's time to make use of the BYOND hub. The hub is a list of games made with BYOND, holding information like their description, where to find the game's documentation, how to download the game, etc. To publish your game, you need a hub entry.

To make a hub entry, login on the BYOND website. On the My Account menu, select the Manage Account option. This brings you to a page where you can see all kinds of things you can change about your account. At the top of the page are different "button" links, each of which is explained further down. One of those options is Account hub, and in the explanation it says "Publish games, demos, and libraries". That's the one you'll need, so click the Hub "button" at the top of the page.

You may need to login to the secure BYOND site before you see the next page, but after that you should see a page that says "Your Games", "Your Demos", and "Your Libraries". If this is your first time publishing anything on the BYOND hub, each of those boxes will be blank except for a link that says "Add a new ___". Click the "Add new game" link.

Now you will see a page with a lot of blank text boxes, checkboxes, and other information to fill out. The main part of the page says "New Game Info". Before you begin, one thing that's helpful to know is that it's OK to make mistakes or put in information you might want to change later. The info you enter into this form isn't going to be set in stone.

The first items you'll see are the "hub path" and the name of the game. A hub path is just a short way of referring to your game, like if your game was called Robot Invasion then the hub path would be something like "YourName.RobotInvasion", which you'll notice has no spaces. Your account name, in this compressed form without spaces, is already filled in for you. For now, skip the hub path box. There's a checkbox right below it that says "Set hub path based on title", so if you enter Robot Invasion as the title of your game, BYOND will convert this into proper path form for you.

A couple of things you should know about hub paths: They don't have to match the name of the game, so if your game has a long name you can use an acronym instead. The hub path should be unique--you shouldn't have two entries on the same account with the path YourName.RobotInvasion. You can change the hub path later on, but once the game is released and downloaded this can prevent users from upgrading, so any changes should probably be made early on.

After you've given your creation a name, you're asked for a short description. If you've seen other games on the BYOND hub, this is what appears just below the title on their pages, and this is also what will be seen if someone finds your game in a search. Keep it simple: "Your squadron of space fighters stands between Earth and certain destruction!"

Once the short description is done, it's time for the long description. If people go to the hub page for your game, this is what they'll see. This is usually a good place to talk about the type of game it is, what features players can expect, and maybe give them a little dash of the story. You can use HTML here to make your page a little more colorful, but it'll look best if you don't go overboard. Great examples of effective descriptions are Flick's Mano A Mano and Unknown Person's Ultimatum, but even plain text will look good. For a really great polished look, look at the back of some software boxes and see how they're written, what info they tell you about the game's capabilities, and what they use (such as screen shots) to grab your attention.

At this point you have the information for a basic hub entry. Before going further, go to the Options box on the right and check the box that says "Hide this game in the hub index". That will let you keep tweaking your entry until you're ready for people to find it in a search. Now at the bottom of the page, press the Submit Changes button.

The page has reloaded now, and you'll see some new information. The first item that wasn't there before is a URL for your game: http://www.byond.com/games/YourName/RobotInvasion. That is the hub entry for your game. Go ahead and click the link to see how your page looks.

Now back to the editing page. You'll see the date it was created listed there too. You'll also see that the path has been set to YourName.RobotInvasion. Before you do any more editing, fire up Dream Maker and open your game project. Somewhere in the code, add this:

world
    hub = "YourName.RobotInvasion"

What's the point of setting the world.hub value? When your game is being hosted online, the page that you just created for its hub entry will show any servers in a special "Games Live" box along with whoever is playing the game at that time. If someone does a search for live games (once your entry is no longer hidden), they'll be able to find your game.

Forums, game help, and making your game downloadable

OK, that should be set now, so go back to the editing page. It's time to look at some other features you can set. The first one is Forum URL. You have the option of creating a forum for your game, and it can be on BYOND or on another site, wherever you want. BYOND Members can create forums right here on BYOND's site. If you have a forum already set up, put in the URL for it now. Otherwise, just leave it blank because you can add that later.

The Info URL box is a lot more useful. If you have a website for your game, you can put the URL for it here. This is very helpful if you have a lot of documentation and help files and want to give users an easy way to find that information.

Next comes the download information. You don't need to do this if you don't want to, but making it possible for people to download your game means more people will play it--otherwise they can play only when you host the game for them. In order to make your game downloadable, you need to have a .zip file already made for it. See the section below on packaging files for information on how to create a .zip. If you're a BYOND Member, you can upload this file to your own Member file space. Otherwise, you will need to find a web host such as freewebs, and upload the file there. (File download sites like megaupload and rapidshare don't work for downloading BYOND games. You'll need a web host that will just deliver the file to whoever asks for it.)

BYOND Members can upload directly from this page by just choosing a file. By doing that, the file will be uploaded as a hidden file in their Member file space with a name like Author.Game.zip that matches the hub path. If the hub entry is freely available to download, or if the user who wants to download is a subscriber, they have access to this file. Uploading a file this way fills in the download URL automatically.

If you are not a BYOND Member or you don't want to use the direct upload feature, you can choose any URL for the download that you like. In the Download URL box, type in the URL for the .zip file you made for your game. If you're a BYOND Member, you'll see a box just below this with a list of files you have uploaded to your Member file space, and if you pick a file it will fill in the Download URL box for you.

The Hub Version box should contain the number 0. You don't need to change this now, but once your hub entry is officially ready and people start downloading your game, add 1 to this number any time you change your game and then create and upload a new .zip file. Increasing the version number tells BYOND that you have an update available, so anyone who has downloaded an older version will be notified.

Below this you'll see a Display Version box. If you leave this blank, your hub page will show "Version 0" or "Version 3" or whatever number you put in the Hub Version box. However, you can use any version system you like so you can put in "0.1 alpha" and your hub page will say "Version 0.1 alpha" instead.

Before moving on, press Submit Changes again, and take another look at your hub page now that you've added this new information. If you provided them, you should see a "View website" link for your info URL, and a "Forum" link for your forum. If your game is downloadable, you should see a link offering users the chance to download and play your game.

Adding banners and icons

On the right side of the editing page are more options. For now, skip over the Options box. Below that is a box called Graphics. Your hub entry can have a banner, and a small and large icons. The large icon will probably be seen the most, so do that first. Create a .jpg, .gif, or .png file that is 64 pixels wide, 64 high, and make sure the file isn't bigger than 10 KB (which shouldn't be a problem). Hit the Browse button underneath Large Icon, and find the image file you made. Hit OK. You can do the same thing with a 32×32 file for your Small Icon, but this is optional--BYOND will just use your large icon and display it at a smaller size if you don't have a small one available.

Below that you can include a banner. BYOND banners are 250×60 pixels in size, and the file can't be bigger than 16 KB. If you have a file like this, follow the same steps you did for the icons.

Press the Submit Changes button again. This should upload your icon and banner files, if you supplied any, and they'll now appear on the editing page. If you visit the hub page to take a look at any changes, the banner (if you used one) should appear.

Advanced options

Take a look at the Subscription Options box. BYOND does provide a subscription system so you can provide extra perks to users who subscribe to your game, or you can make it available only for subscribers to download. If you chose any of these options, and pressed Submit Changes to activate them, a new box would appear where you could manage your list of subscribers. You would also have the option to create terms of service for your subscribers.

Below that, a Helpers box lets you add other people who can help create your game. This box will only appear once you have already created a hub entry, which by this point you should have already done.

Back at the top of the page, look at the Options box again. You should see information about a hub password here. What's a hub password? When you set world.hub to "YourName.RobotInvasion" in your code, that linked the game to your hub entry. The problem is that anyone else can use the same thing in their own game, and their game would appear in your hub entry as if it was yours. This "spoofing" doesn't happen often, but if you're concerned about it, you can create a password for your hub entry. The box that says "Require authentication for live games" has to be checked in order to use this feature, so check it now. Also check "Generate a random password for me", and now click Submit Changes once again.

Now there's a password for your hub entry, like 3qb77RnAX0. Copy the password, and go back to Dream Maker and paste it into your code:

world
  hub = "YourName.RobotInvasion"
  hub_password = "3qb77RnAX0"

Another choice in the Options box is to say whether your game is intended for just one player, or if it's multi-player, or if it can be played either way. This makes a difference in how the game is presented on the hub and how it is used by players. A single-player game, for instance, is automatically launched in Dream Seeker after download.

If you're ready for people to download your game, just use the Package Files menu option again to create a .zip, and re-upload it. You won't need to change the Hub Version number this time because no one has downloaded your game yet, but later on remember to increase the version number every time you upload a change to the file.

Now for the last step. Go back to the Options box and uncheck the box that says "Hide this game in the hub index". Now hit Submit Changes again. Congratulations! Your hub entry will now show up on the BYOND website.

You can now search for your game. Go to the search bar at the top of the page, pick Games as the search, then type in "robot invasion" (with or without the quotes) and hit Enter. The result should have something like this:

Robot Invasion by Your Name

Your squadron of space fighters stands between Earth and certain destruction!

Using BYOND URLs for fun and profit

On the web you use URLs starting with http and https every day, and sometimes you'll see ftp, file, and other forms like mailto or torrent. Each of these protocols behaves a little different. You have probably seen URLs starting with byond now as well. This protocol is installed along with BYOND's software, so your browser can recognize it and open up those links in the BYOND pager. What you might not know is that there are a lot of ways to use the byond protocol to link people to your games.

The most basic URL you can use is this:

byond://Author.Game

Author.Game is the hub path for your game, so your URL might look like byond://YourName.RobotInvasion. In the pager, this URL will download the game if it can, and then ask if you want to launch it in Dream Seeker or Dream Daemon, or play live. If no download is available, the user is taken to the hub page for your game. As of BYOND version 430, all of the following are supported:

byond://Author.Game##local

This URL downloads the game if need be, then opens it in Dream Seeker. It does not check for any updates to the game.

byond://Author.Game##host

This URL downloads the game if it is not already installed, then opens it in Dream Daemon so you can host a session without having to be one of the players. This can be combined with some options like ##version.

byond://Author.Game##hub

Using ##hub takes the user to your game's hub entry page, http://www.byond.com/games/Author/Game.

byond://Author.Game##remote
byond://Author.Game##live

The ##live and ##remote options will connect users to a live server for your game. If only one server is live, users will be taken directly to it. If more than one server is live or none are yet, the user is redirected to the live games list on your hub entry page.

(Note: Prior to build 428, ##live always went to the hub page. ##remote will work as expected no matter which version the user has installed, so at least for now it's a better choice.)

byond://Author.Game##info

If your game has a URL for documentation, the user will be redirected there. Otherwise the user will be taken to your hub entry page.

byond://Author.Game##guest

byond://Author.Game##version=X

You've probably seen this URL format on the BYOND Website. If the user has your game installed but the version is lower than X, they will automatically upgrade; otherwise not. It can be combined with ##host. If you just use the ##version=X flag itself, the pager will ask whether you want to open the game in Dream Seeker or Dream Daemon, or play a live game after the download.

byond://BYOND.world.123

This is the format of a URL for a specific server. The number changes for each new hosted world, so you'll never need to use this directly.

byond://1.2.3.4:2000

This is the actual direct URL for a BYOND game. If you just started a server and know your IP address and port, you can use this byond://IP:port format to invite other people to join your server. When you host the world in Dream Daemon, you will be given this URL in the World tab so you can easily copy it and paste it into the BYOND pager, MSN, AIM, forums, or whatever else you use to contact your friends.

Since the byond:// URL format is so versatile, you can use it in your games, or even in the new EXE packager in Dream Maker. When building an EXE file, just include your game's URL and anyone who runs the program will be taken directly into your game after installing BYOND.

Packaging files and making EXEs

To make your game downloadable, you will need to package it into a .zip file and upload it to the web. To create a .zip file with Dream Maker, go to the Build menu and select Package Files. The option you'll want to choose is "World executable files".

Press the Next button. The next page will ask you to enter information about the file. Choose a name for your file--the default choice is usually good enough--and also tell Dream Maker if you want any additional files to be included in the .zip package. Additonal files might include help files, any file your game uses that wasn't put in single quotes and so didn't get included in the game's .rsc file when it was compiled.

Press the Finish button, and a .zip file will be created for you.

Once you have created a hub entry and made the .zip downloadable from there, you can create an .exe file for your game that you can share with friends. This isn't necessary for people to play your game, but it's a great way to introduce your game to people outside of the BYOND community. The .exe file will look for a BYOND installation, and if the user has not installed BYOND it will ask them for permission to download and install BYOND for them. After BYOND is found, the file will launch a URL of your choice which can take them right to your game.

If you use the standard byond://Author.Game URL, the user will end up downloading your game automatically from the BYOND hub and will be asked if they want to run it in Dream Seeker or Dream Daemon, or play a live game already in progress (if any). Using the ##local option will always start the game in Dream Seeker; ##host will start it in Dream Daemon. Adding ##remote to the URL will take the user to the main server or hub page for your game.