Deployment

[Arythorn]

So, Anybody have any preferred ways to deploy there games and if so, how they do that. As I am just A) Wondering What the Most Common Deployment method is and B) Would like to know the best and easiest ways to go about them (Probably going to use HTML 5 for now).

Thanks in Advance :D
BeeTree02

 

[Dad3353]

It's close, and I'd have liked to tick 2 boxes, as HTML5 to Web is good, too, now that I have (I hope..!) sorted out web hosting on a modest scale. I can (and do...) deploy to Mac, of course, but as I have no way of knowing if it works or not, it's really 'just in case' there's someone wanting to download stuff in that format.
As for Android and such, there's the double problematic of not having any such apparatus, and it being, for a whole host of reasons, extremely clunky (a technical term...) to do. As my 'target audience' is basically family, one or two friends and some kind folks on this forum, I'm quite content to provide 'click'n'play' through my web versions, and downloadable Windows and Mac versions for local installation. No complaints so far; being an Official Old Git gives me excuse enough to not really know what this Android stuff is, anyway..!

 

[Arythorn]

It's close, and I'd have liked to tick 2 boxes, as HTML5 to Web is good, too, now that I have (I hope..!) sorted out web hosting on a modest scale. I can (and do...) deploy to Mac, of course, but as I have no way of knowing if it works or not, it's really 'just in case' there's someone wanting to download stuff in that format.
As for Android and such, there's the double problematic of not having any such apparatus, and it being, for a whole host of reasons, extremely clunky (a technical term...) to do. As my 'target audience' is basically family, one or two friends and some kind folks on this forum, I'm quite content to provide 'click'n'play' through my web versions, and downloadable Windows and Mac versions for local installation. No complaints so far; being an Official Old Git gives me excuse enough to not really know what this Android stuff is, anyway..!

Added multiple tick box thing! Also, I am considering using Windows and Mac, but a HTML5 would be easier, yes, it works when you click the index file in the folder but I need to figure out how to integrate it into a site using HTML Code... (Though I am going back to school co I can just ask one of my IT/Computing teachers if needed... Thanks again for the Info/Help!

 

[LTN Games]

For me I would have to say Windows and HTML5, my reasons being is that Windows is popular, I personally love it again and I was a heavy Linux user for quite a few years but since windows 10 I've been impressed. Anyways, windows is not just popular but it usually has users with better system hardware than say an android and it's guaranteed to have WebGL in their browsers. That being said I also work with other game frameworks, mostly all programming required and the test environment is browsers so HTML5 is a big thing for me, I'm already used to deploying HTML5 as well as making sure it has good performance, I like HTML5 overall because it's a rising platform and it's has a lot of momentum at the moment and it's able to target all platforms with a browser which means there are a surprising amount of people who play, sell, and develop with HTML5, mainly Javascript and it' one of the easier ways to get your game noticed, it's simple, fast and relatively easy to setup.

 

[Companion Wulf]

For me it's HTML5 first, as I usually play most deployed games - including when I test it - locally anyway. Second is Windows because I'm with @LTN Games. I also prefer Android because that's the phone type I have and have been able to experiment (successfully) with deployment there. I used to have a Windows phone, but hated it, and have NO interest in Apple stuff, so... more than a little bias there. ;)

 

[Arythorn]

Thank you all for replying. By any chance does any of you know how these Games are integrated into websites? I'm using the HTML5 code and/maybe using iframes? I'm incredibly new to all of this so all this help is really beneficial to me! I'm sure you will see me here often as this forum is incredible and the members are really helpful and kind. :D

 

[Companion Wulf]

Yes, I'll be doing a video tutorial about that later (I hope). In the meantime, when you deploy your game find the index.html file and see how it's constructed. If you want to learn HTML5/CSS3 itself, there are plenty resources (including here) and its easy enough to learn/implement.

 

[Arythorn]

Thank you. Will keep an eye out! Will have a look once I have this game Demo finished. :)

 

[Isaac The Red]

I stick to Windows deployment unless someone asks me to deploy to Another platform, like mac or Android. I won't ever get around to deploying to iOS, simply because I don't own one and am not going to pay into their exclusive little club. Since there are plenty of container sources about Releasing the Linux is an option as well.

But under normal Circumstances, I just shoot it to windows.

 

[Xilefian]

The only reason not to deploy to Mac as well as Windows is because you don't want to archive and upload a second copy of your game to your host. I do not believe that's a very good reason.

So if you're deploying to Windows, deploy to Mac as well, it's another desktop platform and it makes you look like a cross-platform friendly developer with zero effort involved.

Both Android and iOS should receive more work for good deployment targets, which to me means webview apps inside native wrappers. Licensing for iOS development makes it a harder choice to argue against Android (which has a cheaper license fee for the Play Store, or no fee at all if you're distributing it on your own).

HTML5 I think deserves a specific type of game, like Afar which takes advantage of its web platform and makes the game into an online asynchronous multiplayer experience. I don't see much value in deploying a single-player, regular MV title to HTML5. I think HTML5 is an excellent place to do game demos, before people buy the Win/Mac/Android/iOS standalone version.

Linux deployment is also a possibility for MV, but requires development to create a native wrapper. QT does have a webview component, but there's so many flavours of Linux and so much can go wrong with missing libraries, so I suppose the MV developers skipped Linux to avoid the headache of support.


TLDR: No one should have a "preferred deployment method", they ALL should be targets - where it makes sense. Everyone in this community who aims to make games commercially should certainly be ticking every single box in this poll.

 

[Arythorn]

I agree with deploying to both Windows and Mac - I do that anyway because my brother does use a Mac (Though it does have Windows on, i still Deploy in Mac) and I use Windows, as for IOS and Android, the only real options are to Pay for the Licenses, Same with steam Greenlight too. But, I will have to wait till the game is at least 80% Complete before I even CONSIDER paying for the Licenses, Cause it's a matter of whether or not, the game will sell and provide profit...

 

[Xilefian]

I will have to wait till the game is at least 80% Complete before I even CONSIDER paying for the Licenses, Cause it's a matter of whether or not, the game will sell and provide profit...

That's a smart way to go about it.

For my project, its primary target is Android due to rapid prototyping being easier on the platform and the license fee being cheaper. The iOS version will happen after Android is launched as a result, despite the iOS market being provably significantly more profitable compared to Android, and I'll likely get the license for iOS once a prototyping phase is completed for that platform.

I don't think anyone using RPG Maker MV should be immediately buying an iOS license with the goal of deploying to iOS, it should certainly come after some development has started and after the other platform choices have been considered and explored.

 

[Phil]

There is really little rpg on mobile, if your game is good, it will easily get featured.
Windows,mac,html5 have alot of competitor.

Personally, I would love to release my game mobile, :P because I can play my game on the go,
but if you're looking for selling and sales, steam,GOG, etc are very good way to release your game.
The only downside of mobile releasing is they are a little bit more complex than windows deployment.

 

[Isaac The Red]

You don't have to seperately build for mac and windows though, you can actually with a tiny amount of manual work, release one package that will suffice for both platforms. [in theory] I don't have a mac to test it on, but if you build for mac, and then copy into the "Game" folder of the Mac build game the contents of the NWJS-WIN folder from your MV install directory, minus the www folder,and Edit the package.json file to point to "Game.app/Contents/Resources/app.nw/index.html" you will essentially have a built game that should run if on a mac, and can be run from the executable on a windows machine. Just a tip for those who want to release for both, but do not want to host the entire contents of their game as two separate downloads.

Should I make a video on that? ._. I dunno if anyone else has thought of this yet.

[also make sure to point the package.json file to the proper icon as well "Game.app/Contents/Resources/app.nw/icon/icon.png"

 

[Xilefian]

You don't have to seperately build for mac and windows though ...

Exactly this, I've done this myself loads of times and I've written out a couple of tutorials for people on how to do this. If you release your MV game for Windows but not Mac, then your customers can themselves make a Mac version, so why not do that yourself and claim the credit for it?

 

[Isaac The Red]

I knew I couldn't be the only one that realized this ._.

 

[Arythorn]

@Isaac The Red
@Xilefian
Great Ideas you two! Will consider this a very good option as it means, as you said, only needing one distribution package (no one complaining it won't work cause they downloaded the wrong version :D)

It's good that so many people have given such detailed responses and opinions! Thank You Everyone!

Stay Srong! :)

 

[Xilefian]

Great Ideas you two! Will consider this a very good option as it means, as you said, only needing one distribution package (no one complaining it won't work cause they downloaded the wrong version :D)

It's not a very good option as it requires a lot of intervention from the user. They'll likely give up and ask for a refund rather than waste an hour figuring out how to package their own game. It should simply work when they download it.

The best option would be to serve both copies of the game on your website and highlight the copy that corresponds to your platform. This is what most games do these days.

The absolute best would be to have a server side script that packages each version of the game as the user requests it. So then you'd upload the game data, and when someone click their OS download your server packages the data with the OS' player and serves that as the download.

But that involves some technical work from the developer. It's only worth doing if you're expecting a good volume of sales. I'd definitely do this if I was selling an MV desktop title (along with an HTML5 game demo).

It also gets more complicated if you wish to have an installer for Windows and a disk image for OSX. Makes sense that the absolute best scenario that makes it easiest for customers and development is also the hardest to initially set up.

 

[Isaac The Red]

@Xilefian well, at the least that setup only is required to be figured out once.

I'll admit to being fairly clueless on how mac os handles applications. Cost being a large barrier to entry for myself and none of my schools ever covered macs. I feel like an illiterate when it comes to working on them. Alien beasts they are.

 

[Xilefian]

@Xilefian well, at the least that setup only is required to be figured out once.

I believe this is a very important point to consider and exactly why I see this as the best scenario. You only have to do the hard thing once, then your customers and you reap the benefits forever after.

I'll admit to being fairly clueless on how mac os handles applications. Cost being a large barrier to entry for myself and none of my schools ever covered macs. I feel like an illiterate when it comes to working on them. Alien beasts they are.

OS X is just BSD Unix, so from the point of view of the computing world, Windows is the alien beast (and if you know about how both OS's work, you'd see how terribly made Windows truly is and how ingenious OS X is).

Apps in OS X are literally folders with .app stuck at the end. The internals can be a unix binary, a terminal script, a webpage, a Wine emulated Windows application, or whatever and all the data the app uses can be stored inside the .app itself (which is what MV does, hence the port-to-OS-X trick being possible). It's a very clever way to do apps, however the drawback is you can't simply upload the .app to a webserver as it's a folder. You need to archive it into a disk image (.dmg) which are mounted and treated as folders too (which is really clever; to install an app you just drag it into the applications folder, 1 drag from installing anything).

Windows the situation isn't any better as most applications have their data external to the compiled exe binary, so you still need to archive it in just the same way either as an installable exe/msi (which opens up an install wizard) or a .zip to let the user figure out how to extract it themselves.

Also, I just realised I've been saying OS X still, but it's been renamed to macOS. Need to get used to that...