Customizing the theme

Happy Halloween from Hyzonia!

As a Game Publisher you always want to have something new to show to your visitors. Having a game in for the season promotes better “playability.” This Halloween is a good opportunity to seize it. Customizability is a  big feature of Hyzonia games. Depending on the type of the game a publisher is able to customize the look and feel, language and locale, and even the game dynamics. One of the simplest kinds of customization is changing the theme.  In this post, I will guide you through the easiest way to change backgrounds for your advergame.

Let’s take Hidden Objects game type as an example. Its default background is underwater, and we want to change it to halloween.

NOTE: Before doing the customization, you need to check the Game Customization Guide that can be found at http://docs.hyzonia.com. To get through in this example, select Hidden Objects. You will see the 3 categories to customize the game – Theme, Basic and Advanced Configurations.

REMEMBER: On this game, background in defined as “LAYERS.” You will find the LAYERS definition under Advanced Configuration. The documentation describes how that object is used, what kind of file type works best. It shows the code you need to edit; and it also shows you Related Graphic Elements you could use to replace the layers. Although, you are always free to use your own images, provided you upload it somewhere. I assume that you will go through it yourself as it is not really the subject of this blog, well, not for now.

Going back to customizing, here are 5 simple steps to change your game’s LAYERS / background images (Click screen shot images for larger view):

1. Access your Control Panel at http://www.hyzonia.com/UI/IslandMaster/IMProfile.aspx. Click on  "Customize your adver-game link" (or directly go to this address http://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN_NAME.hyzonia.com/im/).
   
   
   
   
   
2. In reference to the Game Docs, we knew that LAYERS can be changed under Advanced Configurations, so click on it on the right menu panel.
   
   
   
   
3. Advanced Configurations is in JSON format. You must find the code defined in the Game Docs easily. Here is what we need to look for in this example:
   
   

   LAYERS: [{
           url: "http://fs.hyzonia.com/hyz.islands/hiddenobjects/themes/halloween/pbg/bg-4.jpg"
       },
       {
           url: "http://fs.hyzonia.com/hyz.islands/hiddenobjects/themes/halloween/pbg/bg-3.png"
       },
       {
           url: "http://fs.hyzonia.com/hyz.islands/hiddenobjects/themes/halloween/pbg/bg-2.png"
       },
       {
           url: "http://fs.hyzonia.com/hyz.islands/hiddenobjects/themes/halloween/pbg/bg-1.png"
       }],
   

   
   
   
4. All you have to do is replace the URLs with the new URL of your new Halloween LAYER images. And click Save.
   
   
   
   

Congrats! Refresh your advergame URL to see the changes. Easy isn’t it? You can always revert back to the default theme by clicking the restore default button. That’s it! Again, you could save time and understand the graphics specs and have a better procedure by always referring to the Game Customization Guide first. Happy Customizing!