Ready for beta-testing

Playing Beta Testing Requests and Discussion
1

I am sure that my game is ready to be beta-tested, so I clicked on the ‘Release for testing’ option. The program compiled the game and put it in my Release materials folder. I am sure that I want to release it along with a website, however I want to do that later. Right now, I want to give my testers a link so that they can test my game. How do I do this? I have looked around the manual and I can’t seem to find that information.

Thanks.

2

(Assuming Inform 7 from your description.)

You can send them the .gblorb file from the Release folder, which they can play if they have an interpreter. This is the easiest option if your beta-testers are experienced IF’ers who will have Glulx interpreters on hand or be able to get them.

Alternately, if you have I7 “release along with an interpreter”, it will create a website with a “Play In-Browser” link. (For example.) You can take that site and put it online somehow (any free web hosts which allow arbitrary HTML should work), then give testers ta link to that page. This is easiest for testers who don’t have interpreters on hand and don’t want the hassle of finding and installing one (especially on OS X), but is significantly more work for you.

EDIT: I should add that the release of Lectrote has made finding a suitable interpreter significantly easier. However, it doesn’t support certain Glulx features (such as images).

3

If your testers don’t have an interpreter but you don’t want to release publicly, I think you can do the following:

  1. Include “Release along with an interpreter and website” in your source code.
  2. Release.
  3. Find the “your project name.materials” folder. It should have a folder named “Release” inside it.
  4. Send your testers the folder. Then they should be able to run index.html or play.html in their browsers, offline, without you having to upload anything.
4

(Yes it is I7)
Many thanks to both of you. Your help and advice has been valuable to me in this project. There will be more to come.

5

Another question–
Naturally, over the course of testing, I may need to make changes to the game–can I just make the changes to the source code, as usual, and ‘Release’ again? And will the program substitute the code already in the Release folder with the changed code, or will it just create a new folder?

Thanks

6

It will replace the files in the Release folder.

7

thanks zarf.