webmathematica to share my game?

Question

I wrote the code for a puzzle game. It's written in a notebook that I would like to share on the internet:

game[] := 
  Dynamic[DynamicModule[{pt = {0, 0}}, 
    Magnify[EventHandler[
      ClickPane[
       Dynamic@Graphics[display[]], (pt = #) &], {"MouseClicked" :> 
        clicks$manager[pt[[1]], pt[[2]]]}], 
     7]]];    

display[] calls a Graphics[...] user interface. There is a Rectangle[{0,0},{1024,1024}] background and images appear in top of it. clicks$manager[x,y] triggers actions depending on what is currently displayed by the UI. game[] is the single-line input I shift-enter to begin playing the game.

When I shift-enter the code, the game imports the images that will be used by the UI from "path/images/image01.jpg", "path/images/image02.jpg", ... . All images a stored on my computer.

The game is single player: one vs the AI. The AI has a few difficulty levels. One level calls a log of all the previous games to be able to pick the best decisions. This database is actually only a table written in a log.txt file stored on my computer. At the end of each game, the log is exported to "path/log/log.txt". At the beginning of each game, log.txt is imported from "path/log/log.txt"

My question is from that point, what do I need to do to share this game on the internet? I'd like to have a webpage that starts to display the UI at once. I consider webmathematica to let anyone, not only Mathematica users, have access to my UI. Is that the only option? If yes, where will I put the notebook, the images and the log.txt that the game requires? What modification will I have to make to the code? Am I sure that I will be the only one to have access to the log.txt file? Are there examples of websites for puzzle games made by amateurs that are powered by webmathematica? (I googled it but I can only find www.wolfram.com pages)

Thank you.

Answer 1

This applies to any Wolfram Cloud based web application, not simply to your question, but there are say 4 steps involved in creating a web app. Hopefully some of this carries over from WC to webMathematica.

1) Create root directory on server

This will be the main way people access your app. Give it a short, easy-to-remember name.

2) Save all resources

Toss all your jpgs in a imgs directory under your root directory, put your log.txt in a difference directory (maybe log) so you can make that directory publicly accessible at some point. Put your code in a pkg directory. This is just good housekeeping but it will make your life easier.

3) Configure interface

Interfaces in the Cloud are very different from those on the desktop. Various UI structures we use in Mathematica look and behave differently in the Cloud. You'll need to test and tweak this to get everything right. Use FormObject and friends when possible, as these render faster, work cleaner, and generally are just more efficient than Cloud notebooks. Toss all your interface pieces into your main directory. Give your primary interface a simple name, such as your root directory name or main. Note that Cloud doesn't accept index.html as a name. Clearly that's reserved.

4) Set permissions

Usually you want your resources to be read only: (Permissions->{All->{"Read"}})

Your interfaces to be read and interact only: (Permissions->{All->{"Read","Interact"}})

and your logs to be write only:

(Permissions->{All->{"Write"}})

When you have all these pieces in place simply provide the URL to your main interface notebook. Generally this will look like: "https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects//root/main" or if they're coming from Mathematica: CloudObject@"user:<user-short-name>/root/main.

Make sure that all the pieces reference each other, not whatever directory structure you had in development, and you're good to go.

One word of warning: Cloud is not good for highly interactive structures unless you have functionally infinite Cloud Credits. Every interaction someone performs (calling Alpha, moving a slider) will eat some of your allotment. Moreover Cloud is too slow and buggy for games (this will probably improve in the future). The kernel connections are iffy (this is why one often gets weird failure messages on even simple computations) and the notebook rendering takes forever.