Instant Play

From YoYoGames Wiki

What is Instant Play

Instant Play is the mechanism used on the YoYo Games website to make it possible that visitors can play a game by simply pressing the Play button on the web page. This gives a much better user experience that having to download the game, unzipping it, and then running it.

How does it work

Instant Play works through a plugin (either in Internet Explorer or FireFox). The user has to install this plugin once. When the user clicks on the Play button, the plugin checks whether the game has been played on the computer before. If not it downloads the game data. (So the game data is downloaded only once.) After this it starts the game, using the correct version of the Game Maker runner.

Game Maker 8 Compatibility

Currently Instant Play has not been implemented for games written using Game Maker 8. YoYo Games will provide an update in the site news section when this issue is resolved.

Everybody uses Instant Play

It is clear from the site statistics that almost everybody plays the games using Instant Play and that it considerably increases the popularity of your game if it can be played using Instant Play. Hence, we strongly recommend you to create and upload your games in such a way that they are compatible with Instant Play.

Make your game work with Instant Play

To this end you should do the following:

• Either upload the executable of your game directly or use a zip file containing the executable and other files your game needs. The other files can be in a subdirectory if you want but make sure the game executable is in the main directory. Don’t use a compressor other than zip.

• Don’t use an installer for your game.

• If you want to upload an editable version of your game, also include the executable in the zip file. (In the future we plan to create a different place on the website for editable games.)

• Make sure there is only one executable in the main directory of the zip file. If you need additional executables (such as a level editor), make sure they are in a subfolder.

• Use Game Maker 7 or 6 for your game.

About screen resolution

Instant Play does not allow screen resolution changes in the game as that gives a very bad user experience. You are strongly recommended to take care of the following in your games:

• Don’t use the possibility to change the screen resolution. (It simply won’t do it.) Simply use the option (in the Global Game Settings) to scale when in full screen mode (this is the default setting anyhow).

• Don’t start the game in full screen mode. It is fine if the user can switch to full screen mode in the game but if you start in that mode, this can be somewhat of a shock to the player. (This is caused because players don’t expect that from games that you play directly from a website.) So make sure the game works perfectly fine in a window.

• If your game window is too small because you use very small sprites and rooms (or views), in the Global Game Settings, set the Scaling to a Fixed scale of e.g. 200%. This will solve the problem without the need to change the screen resolution.

• Make sure it is always easy and clear how to end the game. Nothing is more frustrating than games that cannot be interupted. Also try to include such possibility during e.g. an intro sequence.

Compatibility issues

• There are some incompatibilities with gmthreads. If you want to use gmthreads in your game you have to make a blank game with a single room with a room creation code that runs the actual game from a subfolder. This bypasses instant play's restrictions and lets you use gmthreads. However, it will lead to warnings on Vista systems with high security settings.

• Currently Instant Play only supports FireFox (up to version 3.5) and all versions of Internet Explorer. A version supporting Google Chrome is under development.