Community
Publish the scene you are looking at, hand somebody a link, and they can play it in their browser, open it in the editor, or remix it into something of their own. Contests give you a reason to publish every couple of weeks.
Everything on this page lives on theprototype.app — the hosted app loads it as a cloud plugin. Browsing, playing and remixing never need an account; publishing, liking, commenting and entering a contest do.
Self-hosted and local builds
A copy you build yourself has none of this: no Publish row, and the Templates window's Community tab shows the open GitHub gallery with Submit yours on GitHub instead.
Publish
The Publish row sits in the logo menu directly under Save. Its hint tells you what a click will do: Publish · sign in when you are signed out, Publish · update when this scene is already published by you, Publish · remix when you loaded somebody else's scene from a link, Publish · to ‹contest› when you arrived through a contest link. With a view-only role it is greyed out (View-only — ask an editor).
The first click walks you through what is missing, once:
- Sign in — Continue with GitHub or Continue with Google.
- Pick your handle — your pages live at
/u/‹handle›. Lowercase letters, digits and dashes, 3–24 characters, and it is claimed once: there is no rename. Your peer nickname in sessions is a separate thing and is never touched.
Then the dialog itself:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Destination | Community — your account, instant, with likes, comments and contests. GitHub gallery — the open archive, via a pull request a maintainer reviews. |
| Hero shot | The image on the card and the page. Current view, or pick a saved camera bookmark; Use current view re-captures. |
| Title, Summary | 80 and 300 characters. The summary is what a stranger reads first: say what to look at and how to play it. |
| Tags (up to 6) | Type and press Enter; suggestions come from tags already in use. |
| License | CC-BY-4.0 (the default: use and remix with credit), CC0-1.0 (public domain) or MIT. There is deliberately no all-rights-reserved option — remix is the product. |
| Visibility | Public — listed on /community. Unlisted — only people with the link; the page is not indexed. |
| Contest | None, or an open contest to enter with this scene. |
| Includes | Read-only chips built from the scene: objects, flow, audio, game, modules, size. |
Publishing sends a copy of the open scene, with its assets and flow graph, exactly like saving a .tpscene. Nothing is saved or renamed locally. The bundle must stay under 25 MB; if it does not, the dialog names the largest files. By publishing you agree to the Terms and the Content policy, both linked from the dialog.
When the upload finishes the dialog shows Published with the link — https://theprototype.app/s/‹id› — plus Copy link and Open page.
Updating, and publishing as new
Publish again from the same scene and the dialog offers Update "‹title›" — same link, likes and comments stay or Publish as new. Update replaces the file, the hero shot and the card facts on the same page. Publish as new makes a second scene; if the original was somebody else's, the new one is recorded as a remix of it.
There is no unpublish button in the app yet.
The GitHub gallery destination
Choosing GitHub gallery downloads ‹slug›-gallery-entry.zip (the scene, a thumbnail and an entry.json) and opens the gallery repository: fork it, add the folder and a row to gallery.json, open a pull request. Contest entries need the Community destination, and the dialog says so if you pick both.
A scene's page
Every published scene has a page at /s/‹id›: the hero shot, the title, the author's @handle, the license, a ♥ like button (sign in to use it), the summary, the tags, and four actions:
- ▶ Play — opens the app with the scene loaded and Play mode already running.
- Open in ThePrototype — the same, in the editor.
- Remix — opens it in the editor and remembers where it came from, so your Publish credits the original.
- Download .tpscene — the file itself, to keep or import anywhere.
Below that: what the scene includes, its lineage (Remix of … by @handle, and how many remixes it has), and comments. Report this scene is at the bottom — see Reporting.
/community is the browse page: Featured, Recent and Top, tag chips, and a strip for the contest that is open.
Links that open the app
A scene link is https://theprototype.app/?s=‹id›, and the app treats it like an invite: the first-run welcome stands down so the scene you were sent is the first thing you see. Two flags ride on it — &play=1 starts in Play mode, &remix=1 loads it for editing and toasts Remixing "‹title›" by @handle — Publish when you're done. If you are already in a session, your peers get the usual load proposal before anything changes. A scene that was hidden or never existed says That scene is not available and leaves you with an ordinary empty app.
Play and remix
The editor is the player. Play opens the real app with the full scene, not a preview: the game's HUD, its flow graph, its physics and its sound all run, and a click on the viewport takes the pointer.
Remix is a local load. Nothing is created on the server until you publish. When you do, the dialog shows a ticked Remix of "‹title›" by @handle line and the new scene carries that lineage on its page. Every license in the picker allows this; a remix of your own scene is simply a new scene, with no lineage line.
The Community tab in Templates
Menu ▸ Templates ▸ Community lists published scenes inside the app — featured ones first, then the most recent — with the author's handle, the license, the size and the like count on each card. Tag chips narrow the list; Clear resets it. Clicking a card loads the scene through the ordinary template path: a backup of your current scene is stashed first, and connected peers are asked before anything changes. The small button in a card's corner saves the scene to your Library instead, without loading it.
When a contest is open a notice row says so (Contest: Make a mirror — 9 days left) with a More link to its page, and the tab's Publish yours link opens the Publish dialog.
Contests
A contest is a brief, a starter scene, a two-week window and a page at /c/‹slug›: the rules, a live countdown, the starter, the entries, and the results once it ends. The first two are Make a mirror and Follow the beat; windows overlap by a week, so there is always one open and one closing.
Three ways in:
- Start from the starter scene on the contest page — it opens in the editor as a remix with the contest preselected in Publish.
- Pick the contest in the Contest field when you publish any scene.
- Enter with a scene I published on the contest page, from a list of your public scenes.
One entry per scene per contest — a second attempt says Already entered. Once a day, while a contest is open and you have not entered, the app reminds you with a toast and points at Templates ▸ Community. Winners are picked from likes plus a judge's pick, get Featured, and wear a badge on their profile.
Profiles and handles
Your profile is /u/‹handle›: your avatar, your public scenes, your total likes and any contest badges (Winner, Judge's pick). The handle is the one you claimed the first time you published. There is no profile editor yet, so the page shows what the sign-in provided.
The site and the app share one sign-in. Sign in in the site header offers the same GitHub and Google buttons; signed in, the menu under your name has My profile, Open the app and Sign out. Inside the app the same account is under the logo menu's profile block as Sign in to cloud.
Reporting
Every scene page ends with Report this scene: pick a reason — Spam, Not safe for work, Stolen work, Illegal content or Other — add a note if you like, and send it (this needs a sign-in, and counts once per person per scene). A scene reported by three different people is hidden from every list and page until a maintainer has looked at it. Assets an author had no right to license are exactly what Stolen work is for: the license picker cannot express "all rights reserved", so a report and a takedown are how that is handled.