Enable playable links for a Threadbare fork

[Stregoica777]

What does this guide show?

This guide explains how to turn on playable web links for your forked Threadbare game in GitHub. Once enabled, these links let you and your team instantly play, share, and test your game right from a browser

Note: this guide works only if you forked the Threadbare repo, which includes the functionality to create, in a really fast way, a playable link.

Steps

1. Enable GitHub Actions

• Open your forked repository on GitHub.
• Click Actions in the top menu.
• Click the green I understand my workflows button in the center of the page.

This activates GitHub Actions for your repository so workflows can run.

2. Check Your Pages Settings

• Click Settings in the top menu.
• On the left-hand menu, select Pages.
• Under Build and deployment → Source, open the dropdown and select GitHub Actions.

This tells GitHub Actions to build and host your game on the web whenever your workflow runs.

3. Run the Build Workflow

• Go back to the Actions tab.
• From the list on the left, click Build and Export Game.
• On the right-hand side, open the Run workflow dropdown.
• Click the green Run workflow button.

To confirm it’s working:

• Click All workflows in the sidebar.
• Then click Build and Export for Web. This opens a detailed view showing the build process in progress.
• When it finishes successfully, you’ll see a ✅ green checkmark next to the Build for Web job icon.
• This means your game has been built and published to the web for the first time.

4. Make Sure the Playable Link Points to Your Fork

• Go back to the main page of your forked repository.
• Click the Settings cog icon on the right-hand side of the page.
• Check the box next to Use your GitHub Pages website, then click Save changes.

This ensures your playable link points to your forked version of the game instead of the original upstream project.

5. Generating Automatic Playable Links for Branches

Once playable links are enabled, every time you push changes to a new branch and create a pull request, GitHub automatically generates a playable web link for that branch. You’ll see the link appear directly in the pull-request view.

• Click it to play the version of the game that includes those changes.
  Note: These links only show updates that are visible in gameplay, like new art, dialogue or scene edits.
  Technical or backend changes may not appear when you play.

6. Getting Playable Links to Specific Scenes
If your change happens later in the game:

• Open the playable link for that branch.
• Play until you reach the scene you modified.
• Copy the URL from your browser’s address bar.
• Paste that URL as a comment on your pull request.

This lets teammates go directly to the scene you updated without replaying the entire game.

7. Updating the Main Branch Link After Merging
When a pull request is merged into your main branch, GitHub automatically rebuilds the playable web link for the main branch.

This means the playable link on your repository’s homepage will always show the latest version of your game.

Video

[wjt]

**https://<YOUR FORK>.[github.io/threadbare/](http://github.io/threadbare/) where <YOUR FORK> is the name of your GitHub user or organization.** For example:

@Stregoica777 This doesn't work because < has special meaning in Markdown files, opening an HTML tag, so <YOUR FORK> is invisible:

I would instead just use YOUR FORK or similar.

[Stregoica777]

@wjt I changed the line to what's shown below (see image)

Can you confirm that the change is adequate?

[wjt]

Looks fine!