Publishing your IF (updated 1/21/2014)

Looking ahead in the new year I was thinking about the different ways we can publish IF today: desktop, web, mobile, free, commercial, hosted, self-published…we’re blessed with many options. I started to summarize them and realized there was no way I could know all the ins and outs of the many IF platforms, and so this post springeth forth.

I’d like to know where to upload your game, how you can sell your game both self-published and hosted, etcetera. However I’m not planning to cover any of the competitions here, for now at least. This is definitely a work in progress so all comments gratefully accepted!

[size=120]This thread is about how to publish your game. So you’ve written some IF. Now what?
[/size]

[size=150]Community[/size]

[size=130]IFDB[/size]
[size=130]IFWiki[/size]

[size=150]Platforms[/size]

[size=130]Twine[/size]
desktop: via browser
web:

[size=130]Undum[/size]
desktop: via browser
web:

[size=130]Quest[/size]
desktop: Windows
web:

[size=130]Inklewriter[/size]
desktop: no
web:

  • free hosted
    mobile: £5 conversion to Kindle

[size=130]TADS[/size]
desktop: yes
web:

  • self-hosted server
  • tads.io free hosted server
    mobile: Son of Hunky Punk, etc.

[size=130]Inform[/size] (see also inform-fiction.org/)
desktop: yes
web:

[size=130]Choice of Games[/size]
desktop: via browser
web:

  • self-hosted
  • hosted (see below)
    mobile: iOS, Android, Kindle Fire (see below)
    CoG will host your game, if it passes their approval process, under one of two labels. “Hosted Games” works receive a 25% royalty. “Choice of Games” works are work-for-hire and receive $10,000, see choiceofgames.com/looking-for-writers/

[size=130]StoryNexus[/size]
desktop: no
web:

[size=130]ChooseYourStory[/size]
desktop: no
web: hosted
mobile: no

[size=150]Self-publishing[/size] (will not work with all platforms)

[size=130]itch.io[/size]
[size=130]Patreon[/size]
[size=130]The Big List of Payment Processors[/size]
[size=130]Gumroad[/size]

[size=150]Magazines[/size]

[size=130]Inky Path[/size]

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github.com/erkyrath/iosfizmo/ , for Glulx games.

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And iOSfizmo/glulxe are astonishing. Sorry for the OT, but sooner or later I had to congratulate with you, zarf, and to thank you so much for your awesome job. It takes 30 minutes to release a game in the IOS format and that’s because of you.

I think the next step now is to Open a publishing company to release games for non-developers like me. Maybe something giving the opportunity (at a price) to add some eye candy to games in the way (sort of) inkle has done with Morris’ Frankenstein.

Dunno if you’ll want to add InkyPath anywhere here… inkypath.wordpress.com/

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Thanks all, I’ve updated the OP.

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Another payment processing / sales platform that doesn’t seem to be on the linked list is Gumroad, which handles selling digital files of any kind (and they seem to have some support for physical things as well). I received a copy of FJORDS as a holiday present and can confirm that the Gumroad interface is simple and pleasant to use from a buyer perspective.

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This list is incredibly useful! It would be nice to have it as a stickied thread.

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Good call tove, I just read some positive comments about Gumroad the other day in fact. And, stickied.

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I will have something to add to the list this year. Online version of Inform 7, widget based Web Interpreter Editor, and publishing mechanisms.

I know, I know. Show me the money.

David C.
www.textfyre.com

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Might wish to delete Versu and maybe add ChooseYourStory, since it made a debut in SpringThing.

Also, it may seem silly and redundant to add this forum to the list, but it IS an important place to publish your games…

And I just realised, whoopsie, you seem to have left out Adrift. :wink: And ALAN and HUGO, of course, but of the three, Adrift is certainly the most active (though only comparatively so, at this stage).

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Thanks Peter, I’ll update the OP. Yes, I intentionally left out Adrift, Hugo, and a lot of other platforms; I tried to include the ones that seem of the moment and that are flexible enough to publish to various formats (mobile, web, etc.).

Perhaps add ZILF. If outputting Inform-compliant Z-code, then some of the similar things to Inform could probably be done. (My own Z-code systems are not Inform-compliant since they use a different specification, so a different implementation will be required; but this is currently not of interest until such thing is released.)

OASYS is another system, although it does not seem to be used much. I have the original C codes for it (in the public domain, and they seem to use some C++ features); I have also documented the VM and file format, and written an implementation in BASIC. (Note that the original OASYS implementation only supports story files that were compiled on a computer with the same int size and endianness, although a new implementation can be implemented to be portable.) (I can write an implementation in JavaScript if you want.)

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And I’ll amend my comment:

  • I have no plans on an online Inform 7 - that was a bold and overly-ambitious statement.
  • My online plans involve ifpress.org, which will be a host of fyrevm-web stories with a built-in WordPress-like designer.
  • FyreVM-Web is a stand-alone glulx-ish web interpreter that still needs a standard implementation and probably a non-standard implementation to prove its usefulness.
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You forgot Dashing Don for free ChoiceScript game hosting and philome.la for free twine hosting.

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Great thread for newbies like me!!

I could show you QML but I could not add to the list, because this project is a bit obsolete. I don’t know computer science but Html and Css are easy languages. So when a friend told me about QML, stands for Quest Xml, I wanted to try it, it is just blank files like .txt in Windows although full of tags. QML can be use in web browsers and it is really powerfull because it is just Xml. You can edit .xml files with a basic text editor or you can use the official software, the Qml Editor. I have created a pair of short adventures with QML some years ago.

You can visit QML website here: questml.com/

And you can play a short adventure here: questml.com/cgi-bin/index.py?quest=madventure

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I cringe at my past horribly ambitious thoughts.

These days I just hope to write a little on a WIP once a week.

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