Publishing
Congratulations, you've made a game!
In this chapter, you will learn how to publish your game so that other people can play it! Easel's servers will host your game for you, so you don't need to worry about setting up a website, renting servers, or anything like that.
How publishing works
When you publish your game, Easel's servers will host your game for you. You can choose your URL, and share that URL with your friends so they can play your game too. Don't worry, once you've published a game, you can always update or delete your published game later on if you want to.
When you publish, your game will remain private by default, which means that only you and the people you share the link with will be able to play it. If you think your game is good enough, you can set your game to discoverable, which means that it will be listed on the Easel website and anyone can play it. See the Play page to browse through discoverable games submitted by other creators!
Save your work
If you haven't already, this would be a good place to save your work. Click the Save icon in the toolbar. This will save your project to a file on your computer, which you can load back into the editor later to continue working on your game.
If you are using Google Chrome, you will be asked to choose where to save your project. This is what we recommend:
Go to your Documents folder
Create a new folder called Easel Projects, and go into that folder.
Create a subfolder called Astroblast, and choose that folder.
Now any changes you make from this point forward will be autosaved to your Astroblast folder.
Other browsers (e.g. Safari and Firefox) will simply download a copy of your project to your Downloads folder,
as autosave is not yet supported in other browsers.
Publishing your game
Go back to the editor and click the Publish button on the toolbar. It will prompt you to log in or create an account if you haven't already. Once you've logged in, you will be given the chance to customize your game's name, your name as the author, and your game's URL. You can simply accept the defaults if you like. Once you are ready, click Publish!.
Now your game is live on the internet! You will be given a link that you can share with your friends, so they can play your game too.
In the future if you want to update your game, simply make the changes in the editor and publish it again, just like this.