Uploading games

From Whirled

Contents 1 Uploading your game to the Whirled 2 Setting your creation loose 3 Playing with other people 4 Selling your game 5 Updating your game

Uploading your game to the Whirled

1. Choose Me → Games to see the games you own.
2. Scroll down to the "Create your own Game" section.
   

   Click "Upload" to bring up the interface.
3. Click the Upload... button to get the game uploading interface.
   

   The game uploading interface.
   1. Under Name, type the name of your game.
   2. Select an appropriate Genre, Game Type and set the minimum and maximum number of players for your game. If you have a single player game, you can leave it as the default for Game Type and the number of players.
   3. Under Game Media tab, hit Browse..., and select your .swf file in the file system browser that appears. When the file has finished uploading, you should see a preview of your game in the window.
   4. Optionally upload a Screenshot of the game for other players to get a preview of the game.
   5. Optionally upload Furniture Media and 'Thumbnail Media. The former determines what the clickable game looks like when a player encounters it in Whirled. The latter is used to represent the game in e.g. the Shop.
   6. Optionally provide custom parameters.
   7. Optionally specify your game's .abc file if your game uses a server agent
   8. If your game uses a server agent and a custom server class, provide the class name
   9. Optionally include a description of game.
   10. You can ignore the other options for now.
4. Finally, hit Save at the bottom. Your game should show up in your inventory!

There is also an article describing the options for games in more detail.

To test play your game to make sure the upload worked, click on it, and then click on Play.

Setting your creation loose

Once you've confirmed that your game works, there is one last step to publish it on Whirled. Click the "List Item" button, give the game a description and pricing, and then click the "List it!" button. Once it is listed, you should be able to see it in the games area under the "Games" tab.

Wait! It ain't over :) Be sure to check back to read the comments on your game! Whirled players will often give you extremely valuable feedback on how to improve your game and better take advantage of all of Whirled's unique features.

Playing with other people

Right now your game only exists in your inventory, and you're the only one who has access to it. If you'd like to play with other people (why else would you make a multi-player game?), then you need to put it somewhere that other people have access to. This is where your room comes into play.

If you go and edit your room, you can add your game as a piece of furniture. Once it's in your room, anybody that visits your room and clicks on the game furniture will be transported to the game lobby, where the fun can begin!

Selling your game

For even more wide-spread multi-player fun, you can list your game in the shop for other players to purchase and put in their rooms. You will also receive some coins back for each purchase of your game that other players make.

Before listing your game in the shop, many people will wish to temporarily change the name of their game in the Edit Item page, in order to reflect a game version. Simply putting something like "v1.0" at the end of the game's name should do the trick.

In order to list your game in the shop, click on the game in your inventory, and click on List Item.

A new window will pop up with the following instructions:

"Listing your item creates a snapshot of your item as it is just now and adds it to the shop."

What this means is that people who buy your game and play it from their own room will be joining the game lobby for the copy of your game, not the same game you have. Players who play the purchased version of the game will all be playing together, and you need to play from the shop in order to play with them.

Updating your game

Nobody gets everything right the first time. In the course of developing your game, you're likely to have many version for fixing bugs and introducing new features. Fortunately, updating your game is very simple.

• Simply click on the item in your inventory again, and click Edit.
• Click Browse again, and locate the swf file on your local computer.
• Click on Save and your new game version will be ready for testing in your inventory (and your room, if you've put it there)

If you've listed your game in the shop, updates of this nature will not affect it there. The game that is in the shop is a completely separate copy. In order to update the version in the shop, it is you will need to hit the Update Listing button in the item detail for the update to affect all copies of the game.