Great! I searched for something on this forum about how to do that, but I can’t find anything. I have no idea how to get it to play online on itch. Which option do I pick? How do I make that work?
I do think I tried something before that someone suggested, but the images didn’t display. And I can’t find that thread now. But releasing along with an interpreter didn’t support my images last time when I tried that.
Maybe put the gblorb up on ifarchive or Google Drive or Dropbox or something and make that another link on your HTML page?
I can’t upload to the IF archive, because then it will be public and disqualified from Parser Comp. And since response times have varied wildly when I’ve uploaded stuff before, this doesn’t seem like a good way. Or am I missing something?
And I don’t understand how putting it in Google Drive would help. I mean, I have a walkthrough altered from an html template (which I was super proud of figuring out), but I don’t know how to do anything else to it.
Well we had quite a long discussion about it last time:
If you’re still not feeling up to using ifsitegen.py yourself, then you could just give us the .gblorb and one of us would do it for you. Once you know how to set everything up it’s literally only a thirty second job.
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Ah, there’s that thread. Thanks. I simply could not find it. I just ended up using Borogove last time because everything else was so far above my pay grade. I’ll relook at it now that I have the thread, though
Oh, and there’s also this option, which is probably the simplest if everything is working already in Borogove:
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Thanks again. I sure have asked variations on this question many times, and I’m obviously no closer to figuring it out. I didn’t write it in Borogove, just uploaded it there.
I think I’ll just do what I did in TALP, which is put the borogove address as prominently as possible. Nobody likes that, but it’s easy.
I didn’t know that was a criterion. Surely you’re allowed to edit the HTML after the fact, right? So couldn’t you just add a link to a Google drive copy of the file when ParserComp goes live?
It can’t be public until the Comp starts or it’s disqualified.
I could probably do that if I knew what it meant. But on reflection after looking through the stuff in those threads again, which means less each time I look at it, I’ll do what I did for TALP (put up the downloadable file, put the Borogove link everywhere as prominently as possible), which seems to have worked out fine. I don’t think I can add the html walkthrough, so I’ll figure something else out.
Inform 7 is easy compared to all this other stuff.
I found blorbtool.py to be better, though I can’t remember why (Release Along With an Interpreter - #25 by Jonathan). Do you think when the Inform IDEs get updated this year they will be able to do this by themselves?
No idea how to use that. If someone wanted to do a heroic thing for no money, they could make a tool for this that idiots can use with itch.
Back at the original post – can I just clarify what your goals are here, Amanda?
Why do you want this game on itch if it can’t be available to the public ahead of parsercomp? Is it that you’re trying to learn how to put it on there in order to enter it into parsercomp? How does all this fit in with the keeping-it-hidden requirement if you’re trying to put it online now?
-Wade
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I want to know how to do it so that it is ready when the time comes. You can keep things hidden on itch until you’re ready. I always have a massive freakout in the days leading up to the comp trying to figure things out and then doing them poorly, so I thought it would be good to try and figure it out now and get it all squared away so I can just hit “publish” on the due date and skip the freakout part.
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Right. Well, I have a game on itch, but not with the playable-on-itch element in place. I feel like we just need one of the many people who does have a game on itch that is playable on itch, to heroically appear in this topic, or to PM you.
-Wade
I have a parsercomp game on itch right now. I uploaded 3 files:
- a zip folder with an index.html file in it (my game actually came with a ‘play.html’ that I renamed to index.html).
-a walkthrough
-a z8 file
The online play is set to open in fullscreen and use scroll bars.
So this all works. But is the problem that the images don’t look good with the standard parchment interpreter that comes with the standard interpreter?
Edit: If you also want the game to start right in standard play mode, you can delete Inform’s Index.html and just rename play.html to index.html
EditEdit: I re-did my last year’s parsercomp game, Grooverland, to look like what I’m talking about: Grooverland by mathbrush
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The images don’t show up at all with the standard interpreter! There was a lot of fuss before Spring Thing about this since several of us couldn’t figure this out, and Borogove was the solution. The problem with that is that you can’t have a play online button off the jam page, so it looks like you have to download it. Unless you visit the game’s page, you won’t see the Borogove link. It obviously worked out OK for me in TALP, but I keep hoping there will be a magical solution. I think the magical solution is to swear off images.
The Grooverland page is beautiful.
This is really really worth nailing down, because I’ve done things a few times and I still bungle it. In fact I figured I was probably being clueless about something too embarrassing to ask about.
I’ve been stung by a few things when uploading, and I can’t imagine everyone else has avoided it. It’s this: if I build for release and rename play.html to index.html and find a bug, then I build for a release again, my “new” index.html is overwritten. I also find I need to tweak the style.css file at times. This also can be overwritten.
My solution is to have a script that renames things as need be. This requires a batch file.
I suspect there are others better, but I’d also like to propose one thing that worked really, really well for me, for anyone else who runs across this: make a trivial project you can delete from itch.io. A one-room game. Don’t worry about the content. Set it to private and keep uploading it until you get it right. This includes anything like the effects for grooverland.
For me, this helped isolate the “upload the ZIP file with Index.html” bit to get it right.
Does anyone have screenshots of the options to set? I think the descriptions are good, but it’s worth nailing down. (If no one does so, I may try them myself once I upload my own parsercomp game.)
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That’s only because the version included with the current Inform IDE is 7-8 years old, and it didn’t support images yet at that point. With any luck the new IDEs will be released before the comp starts and you can just use them to build the online package. They’ll include the same interpreters as Borogove currently does.
If not, here’s the interpreter package that Borogove uses – open the zip, replace story.gblorb with your own story file (the file must be called story.gblorb), zip the files again and upload to Itch. The end result is identical to what you get in Borogove. The caveat is that this one won’t work if you open index.html on your own computer so you can’t test it locally but it will work when uploaded to Itch.
borogove-parchment.zip (363.0 KB)
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I feel your pain. I just tried this with one of my own games that was written in Inform 6, compiled to a ulx file, then bundled up with all the resources into a gblorb file. Everything seems to work fine, except that music and sounds don’t play. I think this is a known issue with Parchment.
Firstly, make sure you have the latest Parchment files, as the Inform 7 stuff is really old. See How do I get Parchment working? for a good (albeit incomplete) discussion of this.
Use option 2 in your original message. The zip file that you upload to itch.io must contain an index.html file and all your resources. In other words, the contents of your Release folder as created by Inform 7, but not the Release folder itself. I’d suggest that you delete the index.html file created by Inform 7 and rename play.html to index.html as suggested by @mathbrush. You can modify the index.html file to suit yourself (assuming you know how) and the two css files (again, assuming you know how). However, if you make any changes to these files, make sure you copy them somewhere safe so that they don’t get clobbered the next time you publish your project.
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I don’t even know what that means!
Seriously, all this is way too advanced for me-- like not only do I not know how to do any of this, I barely even understand the words. I’m going to stay in my lane and just stick the Borogove link wherever I can. Not optimal, but good enough.