Distributing

This covers how to package and distribute games and assets.

Deploying to the Ambient platform

Deploying to the Ambient platform is the easiest way to share your content with the world. Any package can be deployed with:

$ ambient deploy
Package "my-project" deployed successfully!
   Join: ambient join 'https://api.ambient.run/servers/ensure-running?package_id=pkgid&package_version=0.0.5'
   Web URL: 'https://ambient.run/packages/pkgid/version/0.0.5'

This will package and upload your creation to the platform. The web URL in the output can be used to browse your game or asset. If you’re on a WebGPU enabled browser, the game can be played directly on the website. Any content upload to the Ambient platform is subject to our terms of services.

If a screenshot.png is present in the package’s directory, it will be used as the game’s thumbnail on the Ambient website. We recommend you include one.

In the case your package is a game, it can be played directly on the website (if you’re on a WebGPU enabled browser). Additionally, game servers will automatically be spun up when someone wants to play your game.

Putting your game on itch.io

To put your game on itch.io, you just need to deploy it to ambient.run first, and then upload the html app for your game which you can download from your games page on ambient.run. Here are the detailed steps:

Run ambient deploy to deploy your game to ambient.run (see above for details)
Go to your game page on https://ambient.run, i.e. something like https://ambient.run/packages/uigiqyr7qugdncpzkyzinvwxh26daahx
Download the itch html app (in the sidebar to the left)
Go to http://itch.io and create a new project (arrow next to your profile -> upload new project)
Change the “Kind of project” to “HTML”
Click “Upload files” and pick the .html file you just downloaded from ambient.run
Click “This file will be played in the browser”
Fille out any other information you’d like, then hit “Save”
Done! Your game should now be playable from itch.io

Self-hosted

An important principle for us is “freedom of movement”: if you don’t want to use the Ambient platform for your work, you don’t have to. Packages can be deployed to your own filehost, and game servers can run on your own platform.

As this path is less well-trodden, we’re still working on making this as easy as possible. If you encounter any issues, please reach out to us on Discord or GitHub.

Packages

To distribute your packages (games and assets) using your own servers, use ambient build, take the resulting build folder and put it on any file server (e.g. a S3 bucket).

You can then use ambient run https://address.to/your/content to run that content.

Game servers

We provide a Docker image that can be used to deploy your game servers.

Distributing a desktop version of your game

It is possible to distribute a native desktop version of your game, but support for this is still experimental and subject to change. The assets will still be served from the Ambient platform/the URL you specify, but the game will run natively on the user’s machine.

Create a launch.json that looks like this:

{
  "args": ["run", "https://assets.ambient.run/1QI2Kc6xKnzantTL0bjiOQ"]
}

The address should point to a deployment of your game. ambient deploy can be used to deploy your game, and will give you an address back.

Package the launch.json together with the ambient.exe binary. The ambient.exe can be renamed to your liking (i.e. my_game.exe).

This can then be deployed to any platform that expects native desktop apps, including Steam and Epic Games.

Ambient Documentation