How to Release Your Game?

[imnotsmart]

Though I haven't finished the game yet, I finished the demo ver. and would like to post it in ideas/demos to see if there's any interest in seeing the finished game. However, considering this is my first game, I don't know at all how to upload it, lol x _ x

I tried googling it, but all the articles I read couldn't get anything across to me... Any simplistic tutorials you know of or just flat out instructions?

[Suwamoto]

Uhm, build the distribution of your game. Then upload the .zip file onto mediafire, mega or other online storages? owo Then post it in a thread with a summary owo
You can optinally make your game into an .exe file too owo But that's not 100% neccessary.

[Donmai]

The documentation is here: http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/build.html

Be sure that inside your project game folder are only the files needed by your game (don't let your work files there, especially the big ones, like .psd files or others, because everything inside the game folder will be packed). If for some reason you want to keep that work files inside your game folder, then you will have to give some commands to exclude them from the distribution (see below).

If you want your game assets and scripts to become invisible (obfuscated) after packing, then you will have to add some information on your options.rpy script. On the launcher, click on "Build Distributions". Ren'Py will scan your project and give you the message: "Your project does not contain build information. Would you like to add build information to the end of options.rpy?" Click on "Yes", than click on "Edit options.rpy". Look for these lines at the end of the script:

Code: Select all

## Classify files as None to exclude them from the built distributions.

    build.classify('**~', None)
    build.classify('**.bak', None) #here is an example of a file that may be inside the game folder, but will not be included in the distribution.
    build.classify('**/.**', None)
    build.classify('**/#**', None)
    build.classify('**/thumbs.db', None) #Ditto.
    
    ## To archive files, classify them as 'archive'.
    
    # build.classify('game/**.png', 'archive')
    # build.classify('game/**.jpg', 'archive')

You will need to edit the commented lines to match the files you will want to be included in you archive.rpa file. As an example, this is how I edited those lines for my distributions:

Code: Select all

## To archive files, classify them as 'archive'.
    
    build.classify('game/**.png', 'archive')
    build.classify('game/**.jpg', 'archive')
    build.classify('game/**.mp3', 'archive')
    build.classify('game/**.ogg', 'archive')
    build.classify('game/**.wav', 'archive')
    build.classify('game/**.rpy', 'archive')

Good luck with your demo!