Questions about Hosted Games

Good afternoon. This is my first post, so the tags may not be the correct ones.
Despite that (sorry if it’s not), i have been developing my own interactive fiction game for a few weeks and all goes smoothly. My question is about what comes after creating the game.
I have a personal website where i post and upload everything I write for free. I saw the oportunity to create my own game using Choicescript as a way of challenging myself.
I’ve been reading other posts and I can’t seem to find an answer to my question: After I finish my game, the only (easy) way to have that game compiled as an app for Android and iOS is to send my game to Hosted Games, where they kindly compile the app and publish it. What if I just want my app compiled in an APK file for example to upload to my website so my readers can download it directly and install it? Is it possible, since the Hosted Games section of this website says that they keep 75% of the reveneus? What if I don’t want to monetize the game and therefore, I don’t want to have revenues?

Welcome to the forum.

You can upload it to dashingdon (dashingdon.com) for free and provide your readers with the link.

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Thank you for your reply. I was considering more the app version because of the ability to save the progress of the game.
Does the dashingdon website let players save their progress between sessions?

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not automatically like the app, but you can build in a savefeature that allows multiple saves

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Dashingdon is the easiest way. Otherwise you’d have to build the app UI by yourself since it’s not part of the cs package.

For saving features you can take a look at @CJW’s save plugin. But I think Dashingdon already has it built in. I’m not sure though.

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The Dashingdon save plugin is super easy to add once you’re ready to post, even I managed.

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@MeltingPenguins, @malinryden Thank you so much for your kind replies.

You too @cup_half_empty, obviously. Aparently, I’m only allowed to mention two users at a time…

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CoG generally allows anyone to publish any game made using their engine (ChoiceScript) as long as said game is not monetized. Otherwise, if anyone plan to self-publish and monetize their CS-made game, they’ll have to adhere to CS commercial license.
https://www.choiceofgames.com/LICENSE-1.0.txt

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It is possible to compile your game and run it off your own website (should work on all platforms. That’s not in app store form though if that’s what you want. I know you can run downloaded compiled games from a PC. Not sure about a phone, you’d have to experiment. ) As long as you’re not making money from it, you can host it elsewhere. Alternatively look at dashingdons or itch.io for hosting. As others have mentioned dashingdons has a built in save feature that’s easy to activate. You used to be able to mod compiled games to do the same but not sure if that’s easily possible anymore since Firefox messed around with the ability to use it for compiling CSGs.

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