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Installing an HTML5 game


PrimeArwyn
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Hello everyone,

how are holidays going? 

When I send my non-developer friends a link to my games, they usually ask "Well, how do I install it?". I am pretty sure that you too had to answer this question before.

For now, I usually resort to explaining that there is no installation needed, or to compiling an apk file for each update, but this has proven to be time consuming. Are there any other ways to address the issue? What worked for you? 

 

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Yeah, exactly, send them the url and tell them to have fun!

If you're talking about packaging HTML5 into a native wrapper like Electron or NW then follow instructions in those projects, if it was a client-side game just stuffed in a wrapper then you'll almost certainly need no installation, just build for the platform and pass them the executable, run it, and boom, have fun playing the game!

On a slightly different note, stuff like producing a build should be automated, it should be zero effort (or near) for you. Simplest is to add a script which produces your bundles and run that whenever you need, but even better is to have it connected to your SCM, for example, if you use Git then you can trigger a build whenever you push a tag, or a commit, and have it continuous and automatic.

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  • 2 weeks later...

What about the Web App Manifest:

MDN article: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Manifest

W3C Spec: https://w3c.github.io/manifest/

Caniuse: http://caniuse.com/#feat=web-app-manifest

So the idea is that you can specify this file in a <link> tag and it will allow the user to install it onto their device. It will also look like an actual app by the way (thumbnail and all). You can also specify the app to open in fullscreen.

So actually, tell your friends to get Chrome on their mobile phones and install your game lol.

Ok, so from what I read on the google's guide for this, the user has to use your app for at least 5 minutes. You can read more about

https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/engage-and-retain/app-install-banners/

Here's an example of me installing this website onto my pc.

e7HoOWa.gif

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