ShiVa3D Curation

This guide will show you how to curate ShiVa3D games using Flashpoint Core.

Recognizing ShiVa3D

There are a few ways to know that you found ShiVa3D content on the web:

• You see the text "Application created with ShiVa" somewhere on the page.
• You right-click the page and choose View Page Source, and see one of the following
  • A reference to a script with a name like stkobject. For example, you might see stkobject1.8.js.
  • A reference to a file with a .stk extension.

Notes

Before you begin, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• The ShiVa3D browser plugin relies on servers which are no longer online, so it will not work. Instead, Flashpoint uses the standalone ShiVa3D runtime.
• You can install the ShiVa3D runtime from here. Once it is installed, you'll be able to open ShiVa3D (.STK) files by double-clicking them. Or, right-click the STK file for more options.
• The standalone ShiVa3D runtime does not obey the system proxy settings, nor does it have its own configurable proxy settings. Instead, Flashpoint's ShiVa3D setup uses Flashpoint's server as a standard localhost. As such, connections made by ShiVa3D will not show up in the Redirector.
  • The Application Path for all ShiVa3D games is FPSoftware\startShiVa.bat.
  • The Launch Command for a ShiVa3D game is a URL matching the folder structure inside the content folder of your curation. This is the same as any other Platform in Flashpoint. startShiVa.bat will automatically convert the launch command into a localhost URL before passing it to the ShiVa3D runtime.

Curation Steps

Flashpoint comes with a copy of the ShiVa3D standalone runtime, and a launcher script called startShiVa.bat. This section explains how to create and test a basic ShiVa3D curation. We will use The Hunt as an example: http://www8.agame.com/mirror/shiva/t/the-hunt/TheHunt.html

1. Open this page in your browser. Right-click anywhere on the page, click "View Page Source", and search for .stk. You should see a line that looks like this:

   stkobject( '950' , '533' , 'http://www8.agame.com/mirror/shiva/t/the-hunt/TheHunt.stk' , '' , '' , '' , 'http://www8.agame.com/mirror/shiva/t/the-hunt/TheHunt-startup.stk' , '' , '' , 0 , 1 , "<V t='2' n='S3DStartUpOptions.BackgroundColor'>038,038,038</V>" , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 1, null , null , null, 0,'262626',0);

   It's possible that .stk file location won't be expressed as straghtforward path to file. For example, path to file definied by:

   var stk_url=url.substr(0,url.length-4)+".stk";

   url.substr(0,url.length-4)

   yelds http://ezis.appspot.com/ShiVaChess since the URL is http://ezis.appspot.com/ShiVaChess.htm .stk file location parameter in .htm file is stk_url

2. Find and download the main STK file. In this case, TheHunt.stk is the main file. As a general rule of thumb, the main file will be the largest file, while the smaller file will be a loader.
3. In your Flashpoint Core directory, navigate to Server\htdocs. In htdocs, create a directory or series of directories to match the original site's structure. In this case, we'd create a series of directories matching this path: www8.agame.com\mirror\shiva\t\the-hunt\. Finally, move your STK file into the the-hunt directory.
4. Now, we are ready to test the game in Flashpoint Core. Click the "New Game" button on the bottom right corner and enter the game's title, platform, application path and launch command. In this case, they would be:

   Title: The Hunt
   Platform: ShiVa3D
   Application Path: FPSoftware\startShiVa.bat
   Launch Command: http://www8.agame.com/mirror/shiva/t/the-hunt/TheHunt.stk
   

   The Application Path will always be the same. The Launch Command will always be an HTTP (not HTTPS) URL pointing to the main STK file that you downloaded. You can run the game by double clicking its thumbnail in the launcher. You should now see the game running in its own window. Press Alt-Enter to toggle fullscreen mode.

5. Create a curation by following the Curation Format. Then, follow the steps explained in Instructions for Curating to submit the game.