Show your version and offer updates
Print your game’s version, and tell players when a newer one is out.
For creators. All guides
On a Board’s screen, your game is the only thing that can say which version it is, and that a newer one is out. BoardFlight on a player’s computer can update the game, but it is not on the screen they are playing on.
The card you get without writing anything
On a channel’s SettingsIn-game, switch on Update notice. A build published there then shows a card in the running game when a newer build lands on that channel: Update available, the new version, a code to scan that opens your game’s page, and two buttons, Later and Quit.
For a web game it is on by default on the playground and public channels, and your choice wins either way. On a Unity game the dashboard asks before it switches, because the switch changes how the builds you publish from then on are signed.
Asking from your own code
Your game can ask BoardFlight which build it is and whether there is a newer one, and draw the answer itself, such as a version number in a corner or a pill on the title screen.
- Unity: BoardFlight.Version, in the Unity plugin: GetCurrent, Check, the UpdateAvailable event, and ShowNotice to have BoardFlight draw its card.
- A playground game does it already. The starter’s title screen shows the version and an Update available pill, through version.current(), version.check(), version.onUpdate() and version.showNotice() from @boardflight/game, which the starter includes.
Worth knowing
- The version is the one you declared when you uploaded the build, read back from BoardFlight.
- Where there is nobody to ask (in the Unity editor, or in a build published with none of the in-game features on), the answer is “not supported”, and nothing throws. Show nothing.
- Asking about updates means your game handles them. BoardFlight’s automatic card then stays away for that run, and ShowNotice is how you have it drawn. Reading only the current version changes nothing.
- The card’s code opens your game’s page on boardflight.app, which is where a player gets the newer build.