Send alpha versions of game

Unity Engine
1

I’m really not sure which forums this question should be going to specifically, but I’m hoping it will be alright to put it here! I’ve been googling but can’t find much information to help, but I might just be looking with the wrong words.

I’m working on an app game and I want to send the current build to a few friends but I’m not sure how to go about doing this. The file size is currently rought 33mb, too big to email directly. I suppose I can do a dropbox, or a site like mediafire, but I’m not sure if either of these are reliable. I’ve had problems in the past sending complex files through dropbox (something about the encrypting causes problems)

Later in the project I’m going to need to be able to send the file to lots of people for beta testing, so a solution that will work for that later would be great too!

Thanks!

2

I’d just zip it up, and stick it in Google Drive or Dropbox, as you’re doing. If you’re going to start doing “real” testing later, then you’d probably want to look at using a real distribution platform. For example, if you’re deploying on Steam, there’s an approach to doing test deployments to specific users. If you’re deplying to iOS, TestFlight allows a certain number of beta testers, etc.

1 Like
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Yeah that sounds like an ok option to zip it. I’m testing with dropbox for the time being.

Can a mobile game be downloaded directly to a phone and played, or does it have to be downloaded to a pc then added to the phone?

Do you have any suggestions for android games for large alpha testing?

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I don’t believe it’s particularly easy to get an iOS app onto someone phone via the internet. I think they’d need to install XCode to load the game onto their device (probably not something you want to make them do), or install TestFlight (which is much easier, but now you need to go through Apple’s fairly annoying review process, even for beta releases). Maybe it’s easier now than it was a year or two ago when I last released on iOS…

I don’t know much about Android, but I think it’s more lenient, and you can probably just sent them an APK file. They’re probably have to adjust their security settings, though, to allow potentially harmful apps to run on their phone. In general, it’s probably simpler to get it in the Play store, and look into adding internal testers. It would be easier to push out updates and make sure everyone’s running the right version.

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It appears you can just download the apk file at it runs, so good to know android users will be able to alpha test without much trouble.

Good to know about the iOS though. I’ll have to keep all this in mond, thanks for the advice!