We're super-excited to announce that our Game File Hosting Service is now available for everyone. All you need is to register an account on the Phaser site and you'll have immediate access to our new file hosting service.
Because of the way browser security works it's often quite complex to simply put a file somewhere and get a URL that you can use in your games. Direct linking to files, such as those stored in imgur or GitHub, is nearly always blocked via restrictive CORs policies. And if you're wanting to test something quickly, using our Phaser Sandbox is perfect for that - but again, how do you access your own files from within it?
Previously, you'd need to run your own server and manage your security settings manually to achieve it. Now, you can use our new drag and drop file hosting service!
To use it simply register an account and go to the new Game Files Hosting section.
Choose your own domain
The domain name we use for this service is files.show. Pretty cool, no?
To make it even better, you can pick your own sub-domain to really personalise it.
A sub-domain is the part that appears at the front of the domain. For example, you could choose the sub-domain metalhead which means that the full domain your files will be available from would be metalhead.files.show.
Uploading Files
Once you've set a sub-domain, you can then upload files. To do this, click the big shiny 'Upload Assets' button. This will pop-open our upload widget:
From here you've a number of options. To keep it simple, either drag and drop a file onto here from your desktop, or click the 'Browse Files' link to open a file selector window and pick a file that way. As you can see, there are also options for uploading from Dropbox and other places. Feel free to explore those at your leisure.
Once you've picked one or more files to upload, hit the button and watch as they get processed.
Using the Files
When complete, the files will appear on the file list. Here's an example of what it looks like with several files uploaded:
From this list you've a few options. The most important one is clicking on the filename itself. This will copy the full URL to that file into the clipboard, so you can paste it in your Phaser code. From the list above, if I click on the top link it copies this URL to my clipboard:
https://photonstorm.files.show/ax-batlar.png
I can then use this in my Phaser code, to load it as an image:
this.load.image('axe', 'https://photonstorm.files.show/ax-batlar.png');And voila! It appears in my game perfectly :) Meet Ax Batlar, one of the characters from the classic game Golden Axe:
Managing Files
As well as getting the URL to the files, you can also rename them, or delete them. Use the icons on the right of the list to perform these actions. Once deleted, it will be immediately purged from our server and CDN, so please only do this if you no longer require it.
There are some limits in place. For example, there is a maximum file size and types of file we will host. Also, all files are scanned for adult / NSFW content and viruses and malware, so if you trigger any of those warnings, please don't upload those files.
We wanted to make this service as simple as possible for everyone, so we've kept it clean and free of fuss. All registered users get 50MB worth of space for free! And subscribers get 1GB, which is more than enough for even the most die-hard file hoarder :)
Our plan is to roll-out a full game publishing service in the coming weeks as well, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, enjoy this easy way to host files for your games and tests.