Tutorial 8 — The game's home page and publishing

The home page: site/

A games/<id>/site/ folder (an index.html page, images) becomes the game's page on this site, and the root of your domain if you deploy it yourself (the game being in play/). Examples: Rainbow Islands, Sapiens.

• in the game's colors, with its real images: screenshots (bin/jumphp shot), its sprites, its tiles;
• a big link to the game: href="play/";
• SEO: <title>, <meta name="description">, Open Graph (a 1200 × 630 og:image), an <h1>, alt on images, VideoGame structured data;
• absolute addresses are written https://{{DOMAIN}}/…: the site replaces them with the real address;
• readable on phones (390 pixels wide, no horizontal scrolling).

Check it with bin/jumphp build:site <id> then bin/jumphp siteshot <id>.

The description, in French and in English

The site exists in French and in English: it shows the game's description in the visitor's language. Write it in both languages in config/game.yaml:

game:
  description: "A brick breaker: 3 lives, a new wall every level."
  descriptions:
    fr: "Un casse-briques : 3 vies, un nouveau mur à chaque niveau."
    en: "A brick breaker: 3 lives, a new wall every level."

Without a translation in the visitor's language, the project's description is shown.

The directory image

assets/thumbnail.png (16:9). Otherwise the site uses the home page's og:image, otherwise the game's icon, and failing that it photographs the game itself in a browser.

What the site adds to every game

• Install: every game installs like an app (on phones and computers), with its icon (assets/icon.png);
• Share: the phone's share sheet, or social networks on computers;
• players' ratings (1 to 5 stars, no account) and the play counter;
• the sources and the online editor.

Publishing

Every push to your repository's main branch is published within a minute. In the Studio, the project page shows the publishing status, the errors, and lets you hide the game from the directory.