Heroku Setup

NOTE As of 2022-11-28, Heroku no longer has a free tier. However, it is still our recommended way to deploy, as those are our clearest instructions.

To install and run

Install git on Terminal
Sign up for a free Heroku account
Install Heroku CLI on your Terminal
cd to the location where you want to put the TM web app folder
git clone https://github.com/bafolts/terraforming-mars.git
cd terraforming-mars
heroku login
Enter your Heroku credentials
heroku create [app name] ([app name] is whatever you want to call your server. The server will eventually be [app name].herokuapp.com, and the git repo will be https://git.heroku.com/[app name].git.)
git remote add heroku https://git.heroku.com/[app name].git
git push heroku main. If you want to push from another branch, for example, dev, use dev:main ref

To update

cd to the root directory of the terraforming-mars repo.
git pull origin main
git push heroku main (or dev:main)

To customize your server

Edit the dot env file to customize your server such as how many days to keep unfinished games before deleting them.

To set up a database for game seeds

The free Heroku server falls asleep after 20-30 minutes of inactivity. You can set up a database to contain seeds from previously played games. Without setting this up, the seeds will be wiped after Heroku server goes to sleep. This instruction is from 13and3.

Go to your Heroku dashboard
Click on your TM server app
Configure Add-ons
In the add-ons search box, type "Heroku Postgres" and select it. Plan name: [Hobby Dev - Free]. Provision to add it to the server.
Go to Settings
Reveal Config Vars
Copy the text postgres://... from the text field next to DATABASE_URL to the one below next to POSTGRES_HOST.