A method to play all Parchment applicable formats online on itch.io (TADS, Hugo, ADRIFT 4)

Authoring Publishing
,
1

This wasn’t obvious to me, so I am posting this in case other authors are not aware of this either:

image
image1131×761 221 KB

Or take a look the website: Adrift 4 demo using Parchment on itch.io by kenped

I found a quite simple way to make online play available on itch.io for all formats Parchment can handle. So besides Glulxe and Z-code, there is a simple way to make TADS 2, TADS 3, Hugo and Adrift 4 games playable online at itch.io by utilizing Parchment. Well, I have only tested it for ADRIFT 4 games but I would assume it works for the other formats as well.

I simply upload an html-file with the following code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<head>
<center>
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; url='https://iplayif.com/?story=http://www.adrift.co/files/games/DenkAdrift4demo_1.taf'" />   
</center>
</body>
</html>

It is necessary that your game is available somewhere on the net unzipped unless it is in the IF Archive, then it can work zipped as well.

This works well on itch.io. It would be interesting to ask the textadventures.co.uk-team if this would be acceptable on their site too? (Perhaps @The_Pixie can answer that?)

I don’t see their site getting flooded with z-code games so I don’t think allowing this approach would change that for other formats either. E.g. being able to play The Mulldoon Legacy or other great non-Inform games there would be great (assuming the authors allow it).

8 Likes
2

This might be rescuing me soon, lol. Thanks!

2 Likes
3

Another option is:

  1. Download the “parchment-single-file” zip from the Parchment releases page.
  2. Extract parchment.html to a new directory and rename it to index.html
  3. Put your story file in that same directory.
  4. Modify the script tag right at the top of index.html from:
<script>parchment_options = {single_file: 1,}</script>

to

<script>parchment_options = {single_file: 1, story: "your story file here.ext",}</script>

(Naturally replacing “your story file here.ext” with the full filename of your file.)

You can now zip this directory up and upload it to Itch or wherever.

(I will confess I haven’t done exactly this process myself - I used a different offline version of Parchment which isn’t the single file version - but I can’t find wherever I got it from…)

3 Likes
4

That’s really great! I suppose that would work with ifcomp.org too(?) so no need to host the story file somewhere else.

1 Like
5

There’s also this method that hotlinks the files: Parchment Styling? - #5 by Dannii

IFComp already handles making websites for formats supported by Parchment.

2 Likes
6

IFComp.org does not currently handle online play for Adrift 4 games. Choosing Adrift online play allows for submitting an html file though and I just tried @Pacian 's method and it worked perfectly with both itch.io and ifcomp.org so that is great.

In case anyone wonders why I talk about Adrift 4 games for IFComp:

Summary

It is because I actually think it could be useful to some after Parchment included the Adrift 4 interpreter, allowing for online play. Adrift 4 is nowhere near as versatile as Adrift 5 but Adrift 5 currently has no good online interpreter. And having played around with it this year, I see it as a strong alternative to all “easy” IF authoring tools. It certainly has limitations but within its limits it is one of the easiest tools out there.

2 Likes
7

Adrift 4 support was only added to Parchment after the last IFComp. If someone enters an Adrift 4 entry to this year’s comp then I’ll add support for it to the comp software.

2 Likes
8

I did think about making one this year but will most likely not finish in time. And if I did, I could use Pacian’s method and I doubt anyone else are considering it for this year - at least I haven’t heard about anyone over at the Adrift forum where everyone is using Adrift 5. So no hurry.

2 Likes