Testing, Sharing, and Publishing Games

Testing Game

Once you create a game, you can find it in the rollick player app (as a working version) and you can play it. If you also allow player move simulation (see playground configuration), then you can test your game (i.e. play it) as you design it, check what the player experience will be, and make the appropriate improvements and optimizations.

The ability to test your games as you build them is fundamental to effective game authoring. If however, you want before publishing a game to be tested by more rollick users, you can add ¹ them (their email) to the list of Authorised players of the Working Version.

Sharing Game

Rollick allows collaborative authoring of games (more than one game designer). To share your game with other users of the rollick platform, add¹ their emails to the list of Authorised Designers under the Access tab.

Scheduling Gameplay

Before publishing a game, you have to configure its temporal availability by setting the appropriate time restrictions. The game’s temporal availability is set by

• Start DateTime. That is, although your game will be publicly listed on the rollick platform at the publishing time, you may want to define that it will become playable (i.e. the players can enter the game) on a specific date and time. Before that, rollick users can find the game and see its details, but cannot enter (play it).
• End DateTime. A time limit for your game, after which no new players can enter, and existing games are ended (expired). After that point, existing players can still enter the game, but they cannot play (the game is not active). What they can do? Only what you have permitted in the game capabilities configuration of your game.

Restricting Gameplay

Rollick supports games that can be played only by authorized users. That is, users that may know in advance (e.g. a school class) or who have previously applied into a registration form (rollick does not support registration workflows at the moment). In any case, rollick allows to provide access in a published game into a restricted number of users. To do that, add¹ their emails to the list of Authorised Players for the Public Version under the Access tab.

Publishing Game

Once you have designed, tested, and configured your game properly, you are ready to publish it to the rollick platform so any user can find and play it. Game publishing is done from the Design environment.

Publishing your Game

With the first publishing, a public game version of your game will be created and become available to all rollick users. The game spec in this public version is immutable, i.e. no changes can be done. If an update is needed, you can do it in the working version, and when ready, publish the game again. This will lead to an** updated public game version**. If your game was not played by anyone, then everything is ok. If there are active game instances, these will adapt to the new game specification while maintaining their previous state (i.e. the players and the game world state will be maintained).

Thus, updates to a public game version must

• be very rare,
• be carefully designed,
• not introduce significant changes to the game spec