Hi fellas. I'm tired, and I need a bit of help regarding publishing.

I hope this post doesn't come across as entitled because i don't mean it that way at all. I've been trying to get this to work for hours now and I simply can't find my words so its going to be pretty stream of consciousness-y.

I'm going to try and be as detailed as I can because all the information I've used has been gathered from all over the place, and hopefully this serves as a "State of Quest Publishing 2015" wrap up for people from the future who can help make this work/need help with this topic.

I'll probably come back and reformat it again after i've had some sleep.

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WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO:

I have a prototype of my game i want to share privately to get feedback.

I want to be able to:
1: share the game across the internet easily.
2: have the game be playable without players needing to download anything at all.

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WHAT I UNDERSTAND:

From what I understand, when you make a game with quest, you can only export it as a "game.quest" file. The intended use of this file is to go into textadventures.co.uk or to be opened with a Quest client somewhere else.

Alternatively, you can try and get this file made into a html/javascript thing... where your game gets packaged in a folder, and the code gets put into a "game.js" file, which is accessed by running "index.html" in your web browser, theoretically running your game in chrome.

This can apparently then be packaged into an exe or mobile app using third party software such as HTMLexe (haven't tried that yet).

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PROBLEMS:

I used a lot of images and audio so the *.quest file is quite big, and i can't upload it to textadventures.co.uk without the upload timing out.

I don't want users to have to download the quest client so that is a last resort. (can you believe how many people refuse to try your game simply because they have to go through a 2 minute download/installation???)

I've downloaded and used Quest-JS [https://github.com/textadventures/quest-js/releases] to convert the .quest file into html/java, but the conversion is not successful.

This is where I'm stuck.

I noticed that there's no documentation on how to use the Quest-JS source code, so here's what I did. Hopefully it helps someone else in the future:

The source for Quest-JS was really confusing to me. I ended up unzipping the file and running QuestJS.sln with Visual Studio Community (which i've never used before).

I then got an error saying a bunch of stuff I didn't understand about not having Microsoft SQL Express Database 2012, but I couldn't figure out how to get it installed. I think I installed it but the error didn't go away.

Anyway, I went on anyway because the file was still usable.

I continued by then hitting Build (ctrl+shift+B I think) on the Solution, since it looked like the parent object. This created a "QuestCompiler.exe" in \quest-js-master\QuestCompiler\bin\Debug.

I ran that exe and got a GUI for converting my *.quest file into a HTML/JS folder, and so I did that without touching any of the options.

When I try to run the resultant "index.html" I just get a empty game running in my browser with nothing but a dialog box saying "Tap Links or Type Here...". The game doesn't run, and there seems to be no action I can take to get it to run.

In the top right corner of the "index.html" there's a menu you can access that correctly lists my game's details (title, author etc), and allows me to "restart", "undo", or "wait". None of these options seem to do anything.

So I tried again with the other options:

In the Quest Compiler GUI there are a few settings for your output: "Debug Mode", "Minify", and "Gamebook".

"Debug Mode" and "Gamebook" do not appear to make any difference.

"Minify" allows the game to run, but strips away all media and replaces the quest interface with a much simpler version that breaks my game's playability specifically. (It might not be a problem for others depending on how the game is built)

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MY QUESTION:

Did I do something wrong along the way or is the Quest Compiler simply bugged out and unable to compile my game? I feel like I'm really close but something's just stopping the game from running.

Could it perhaps be an option in the quest project itself that I forgot to check?

I want to reiterate my goals here:
1: share the game across the internet easily.
2: have the game be playable without players needing to download anything at all.

Is there another way to go about doing this?

Oooh fireworks outside my window! Happy New Year everyone!

QuestJS is not being maintained, so I wouldn't bother using that. You might be able to make some progress with it if you look in your browser's console log - there's probably an error in the generated JavaScript that is causing your game to not load properly. That might be because of a bug in QuestJS or because of some error in your game script (a common one is an empty "if" condition).

The reason I'm not maintaining QuestJS is that I've started work on an official JavaScript interpreter for Quest games, which will mean it will eventually be possible to just upload some JavaScript and your .quest file and have the game run entirely locally in the user's web browser. This will be part of Quest 6.0 which I'm hoping to release some time in 2016. (I'll get round to blogging about the updated Quest roadmap soon too)

The simplest solution for you would be to upload your game to the site and set it as unlisted. If it's timing out that's a sign that your game is too big. You can reduce the size by making sure you haven't got any massive image or sound files in there. When generating a .quest file, Quest scoops up everything in your game folder, so make sure only stuff is in there that you want to be included. Resize images as small as possible and make sure you're using compressed sounds - no huge WAV files.

I know this probably is not what you want to hear, but it's all I can offer.

Your two goals are met simply by sharing the link to your game. There is no need to download anything at all either, although downloading your game may be helpful especially if you are using the map and have image/sound files.

As Alex said and I can attest to... Convert all sound files to .mp3 files using a sound converter that allows for a quality edit (I used Switch Sound Converter). I cranked all my sound files to the lowest quality ("telephone" quality) and I jumped from 100,000+ down to the low 30000s. Then I picked some less important pictures and decreased their quality. And BANG!! Down to the low 20000s at which point I was able to upload. It did not make a noticeable change in my overall game quality, at least that I noticed.

Good luck!

When generating a .quest file, Quest scoops up everything in your game folder

In my game folder, which I assume you mean the folder containing the .aslx file, I have all kinds of supporting stuff - copies of libraries (including ones I don't use, and unmodified standard ones like CoreCommands.aslx I use for reference), saved games, notes, and a subfolder for Graphics. Do you mean I should put these elsewhere? Or do you just mean things in the side pane in Quest?

BTW your new java player looks like it might solve my own problems with large games being too slow online, so thanks for that

I'm also quite interested in this, actually. Being able to host it elsewhere, or turning it into a quick and easy html file like Twine, would be rather useful.

Watcher55 wrote:

When generating a .quest file, Quest scoops up everything in your game folder

In my game folder, which I assume you mean the folder containing the .aslx file, I have all kinds of supporting stuff - copies of libraries (including ones I don't use, and unmodified standard ones like CoreCommands.aslx I use for reference), saved games, notes, and a subfolder for Graphics. Do you mean I should put these elsewhere? Or do you just mean things in the side pane in Quest?

BTW your new java player looks like it might solve my own problems with large games being too slow online, so thanks for that

Yes, you should move all of that stuff out of your game folder. Anything unnecessary will just take up space in the final .quest file.

A .quest file is just a zip archive. You can see what has happened in your .quest file by renaming it to .zip and then opening it up. You'll probably see a lot of stuff in there you don't want.