I have a text-only project I want to load on Itch in the game window. I saved it as html and uploaded it, and it shows just fine in the embedded game window. But when I click the fullscreen button in the corner, it’s just a black screen.
I chose “book” as the type of project even though it’s not a book. I don’t know if that matters here.
Any ideas on how to get rid of that black screen on pressing the fullscreen button?
Have you looked at the styling? And do you use black text? I have noticed the background color is white normally, but if you go into fullscreen mode it turns into black for some reason. You can set that manually with CSS and it should work.
What engine are you using?
OK, so here’s where I explain that I don’t know what any of this means, because I’m totally computer illiterate. Like, totally and completely. I know what CSS is, but not how to use it at all. I can copy something and tinker with it if directed to the right place, and that’s about it.
If there’s not a super-easy fix on Itch, like just toggling a switch, I’ll figure something else out. It’s a tiny project that’s not worth fussing over a lot.
Try dumping this: <style>html{background-color:white;}</style> in your html file and see if the background turns up white.
Thanks! I think for this to work the whole thing needs to be coded, so I can’t just plop that in somewhere or it just shows up as part of the text.
But after toggling every button on Itch, I discovered that if I toggle “Click to launch in fullscreen” instead of “embed in page” it works.
My alternative was just to put a downloadable pdf in, which also would have been acceptable for such a tiny project.
Maybe one day I’ll sit down and learn the basics of CSS. It has to be easier than Inform.
Thanks for the effort! I know it always requires some deep breathing to tackle tech questions for folks like me.
The best is to change the Embeded to Click to FullScreen in the itch.io page setting (Edit Game). Then the background will be a lighter version of the colour on your page.
EDIT: OR you edit the style.css file in the release folder. You can add a colour on the body element for the background and the text colour.
EDIT 2: SORRY I ASSUMED IT WAS FOR INFORM 
Nope, the html selector applies the background color to the <html> element, so the root of the page. Doesn’t matter where you put that block, it just has to be somewhere inside the <head> or <body> elements.
Ah, there’s the misunderstanding. I just wrote a text document and saved it as html. There is no head or body element. Just my plain old text.
The least you should do is this:
<html>
<body>
<style>
The CSS
</style>
Text
</body>
</html>
Or write it in Twine. The formats should all work on itch, and you can just not use passages or anything and copy in our giant text block.
That’s super helpful. Thanks!
Maybe one day I’ll learn Twine, too. Everywhere I look there are things to learn and it’s difficult to prioritize them or decide if I really want to do any of it. The perils of not learning a single computer-related thing until age 50.
Alternatively, if you don’t know any HTML, don’t use HTML… just put your text in Word, export a nice, well-formatted PDF and upload that on itch.io.
Twine is super straightforward and there are lots of resources for it. Sugar Cube is better than default Harlowe IMO.
That’s been my experience.
The only thing I’ve noticed on occasion is some Twine games when in fullscreen cut off the bottom of the page - which may hide choices. I don’t know if that’s using “click to launch in fullscreen” or embed with the full-screen icon. it might be something to do with an odd aspect ratio? The solution for that is you have to CTRL-minus to zoom out in your browser to see the entire page.
Sugarcube is very powerful for almost any game. I do find Chapbook the easiest mid-ground - especially if you’re a parser-experienced author looking to make a prose choice-based narrative with just standard text formatting tricks like delayed/reveal/cycling text, but don’t need all the glitter/fade/shake major text crafting that Harlowe allows.
It’s because you need to ALSO enable the scrollbar in the game page settings 