So, I’m writing a game that will run in a browser, but it would be nice to make it downloadable also. Does anybody have experience doing this with itch.io? It seems to be a good choice for web-based interactive fiction.
Thanks in advance!
4 Likes
From my understanding, Spring Thing will handle the hosting of your game, both for downloads and for online play.
5 Likes
Unless it’s changed from last year, Adrian is right.
However, I’ll also say that uploading games to itch.io is incredibly easy (so easy that even I’ve figured out how to do it). If your game is just an HTML file (for example a Twine game with no additional materials) then you can just directly upload that. If it’s got extra stuff as well as the main HTML file, then all you have to do is put it in one zipped folder and make sure that the main file is called “index.html”.
(note: I’ve only done this with Twine, Ink, and Inform 7, all three of which very easily create .html files. If you’re using something else it may be harder to get it all running through an HTML, but once you’ve got that sorted you’re ready for itch.)
5 Likes
Everyone on here is right. Uploading stuff to itch is fine and a great way to host your game, but this year I’ll only be accepting games that can be archived completely or almost entirely. In the recent past years, a few authors have been submitting games to comps that are hosted only online, and then they disappear and are lost permanently from the internet. So to avoid that, Spring Thing is only accepting games that are capable of being downloaded and archived in some fashion. This is an old rule, I’m just enforcing it a bit more than before.
15 Likes
Thanks for this choice!
3 Likes
Thank you @mathbrush for handling this! Yes my entry runs through a browser with html and js and some css. I can make a special competition version of this game that would embed the script and styling in one html if necessary.
2 Likes
If you just throw it all in a zip file that should be fine. Thanks for being thoughtful!
1 Like
To check for my understanding: The author is emailing the game file for SpringThing and it will be hosted somewhere? Or do authors need to prepare an IFDB page first, and email the IFDB link?
2 Likes
Directions will be given later on, but if it goes like previous years I’ll set up a Dropbox that authors submit things to. Those will be hosted on the Spring Thing website (this is the most technical part of running Spring Thing and the place I’m most likely to struggle).
Authors can, if they want, also put a version of their game on itch and publish it once the competition has started, but this is secondary to the Spring Thing upload. I anticipate most authors will not put their game on itch, and don’t plan on including any encouragement or directions to do so (the main reason I could see for doing it is just so more people outside the comp see your game or maybe to join other game jams simultaneously).
Publishing publicly on itch before the comp starts counts as a prior release and disqualifies the game (unless it was done in error and fixed relatively soon).
5 Likes
Okay, this is gonna be my first publicly-released game and first time following/joining a comp, so I’ll be excited for the instructions!
6 Likes
Wait, hold on. Last year I submitted a multiplayer game which required a server for the two players’ clients to talk to each other. Is that class of games now blanket ineligible?
I mean it’s a real edge case, I don’t know of any other games like it in the scene, but I am hoping to make more. Would releasing the server code satisfy the requirement?
4 Likes
Yeah, some games require specialized code, but as long as you submit enough that the full game could be reconstructed by a sufficiently dedicated person, that should be fine.
3 Likes
Cool, thanks for the clarification. I think that the “sufficiently dedicated person” clause with regards to the game I entered last year is doing…a fair bit of heavy lifting, but you know, people have, like, emulated World of Warcraft servers, so nothing is impossible with sufficient gumption I suppose.
5 Likes
@MiloM is quite right. Uploading to itch.io is incredibly easy…once you know how.
One additional proviso is that the index.html file must not be inside another folder. It must be at the top level within the zip file, but your other resources can be in sub-folders. Just make sure that you use relative URLs for everything. They are relative to the index.html file.
If using itch.io, the zipped file that you submit could be exactly the same as the one you submit for Spring Thing. Problem solved.
You can leave your itch.io page private until Spring Thing starts, then change it to public. On your itch.io game page, you should probably provide a link to Spring Thing and encourage people to play and review all the games there. Don’t forget to change this when Spring Thing is over.
4 Likes
I don’t know if this got mentioned, but you can certainly have a game browser-playable on itch and then also upload separate files that players can access, like a downloadable version or documentation or feelie-maps.
2 Likes
I really don’t know what I’m doing with anything technical, but I’m not sure that’s true… I uploaded an Inform 7 game to Itch just a few days ago with the index.html file burried 3 levels deep in the file structure and it works fine…
1 Like