The Discord Activity Launcher is a handy tool designed to simplify the process of creating and launching Discord Activities with Phaser. It streamlines project creation and proxy URL generation with minimal hassle. Here's a guide to how it works, and how to use it effectively:

Download the Discord Activity Launcher

This app is available for free for both Windows and macOS as a Universal Binary, suitable for both Apple Silicon and Intel hardware.

To download it, login to your Phaser account, go to the Downloads page and select Discord Activity Launcher on the menu. If you don't have an account, register for free.

Select the correct version for your OS. Uncompress the Windows version zip file before running the exe using File Explorer.

The macOS version is a DMG and will need installing as an application:

Before you start you will need to have npm installed on your machine. If you don't already have this, please follow the npm installation guide for your operating system.

With npm ready, you can launch the application.

Create a New Project

When you launch the app you have the option to create a new project, or open an existing one:

Click on "Create New Project" and then choose from two pre-built templates:

  • Phaser Discord (a singleplayer game example)
  • Phaser Multiplayer (uses Colyseus for a multiplayer game example)

It will ask you to select a folder into which it can install and configure the project. The app will then perform the following tasks, giving you progress at each stage:

  • Downloads the selected template and extracts the archive.
  • Configures the .env file.
  • Installs all dependencies via npm.
  • Installs cloudflared if it's not already installed.
  • Generates the proxy URL.
  • Copy the proxy URL link into the clipboard, so you can paste it into the Discord Developer Portal URL Mappings

The summary screen shows you everything you need:

You can now open the project folder into your IDE, such as VS Code and get working. Use the pre-configured dev server for development and the Proxy URL for remote testing directly on Discord. Not sure what any of this means? Don't worry, we've tutorials that cover it 😀

Select Existing Project

As well as creating new projects, you can also use the app to quickly generate proxy URLs for existing projects. To do this, launch the app and select 'Open Project Folder'.

Navigate to the folder using your file manager and then the app will perform the following tasks:

  • Read your package.json file to execute the tunnel command. It also installs cloudflared if it's not already installed.
  • The tool automatically generates a proxy URL for your project.
  • You can paste this generated URL into the Discord Developer portal in the Portal URL Mappings section.

Your app is ready to launch on Discord!

Troubleshooting

The app informs you of any issues during setup or project creation. If it fails to inform, you can always go for manual debugging by opening Dev Tools within the app itself:

Windows: CTRL + SHIFT + I
MacOS: Option + ⌘ + I

Bonus Tip

If you set the APP_ID within your project .env file, the launcher will automatically take you to the Discord Developer Portal page, and will copy your Proxy URL into the clipboard ready for pasting into the "Mapping URLs" field.

Have fun!

With the Discord Activity Launcher combined with our tutorials, setting up and working on Discord Activities is as easy as a few clicks.

We are looking forward to see what you create!

Happy developing! 🎮