Putting a Borogove play link on itch.io

Hey All–

So I have my TALP game hosted on Borogove (it displays images well, so that’s the interpreter I want), and of course I’d like to have that be the “play online” link at itch, where the jam is. But the box for “Product URL” on itch has the

https://author-name.itch.io

prefix, which cannot be deleted or changed, as far as I can see. And I can’t see any other place to put a “play online” link.

What is the correct and best way to put a link to Borogove for playing the game online?

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When I last did this, I just posted the Borogove link in the ‘install instructions’ section.

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Thanks, Dee. I thought there was probably a specific place to put a “play online” button and I was just missing it, but I guess not. Easy to put it in “install instructions.”

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I don’t think itch.io is really set up to allow you to host your game elsewhere.

You can fake it though by having a game file that contains an iframe (a sub page within a page) that leads to your game on borogove.io.

First make a text file that contains this:

<html>
  <head>
    <style>html, body{margin:0}</style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <iframe src="https://ifdb.org" width="100%" height="100%"></iframe>
  </body>
</html>

But replace https://ifdb.org with the link to your page on borogove.io. (Be sure to use https and not just http or it won’t work.) And save this file as whatever.html.

On your itch page, set the Kind of project setting to HTML.

Then upload that file to itch.io and select the “This file will be played in the browser” option. I also enable scrollbars though they might not be necessary with this sub page approach:

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If you’ve also written the game with Borogove, you can go to the Share tab and click the “Download Web Site” button to get a zip file that you can upload to Itch as is and it plays inside the “Run game” window. If you used the offline Inform 7 editor (I’m assuming this is an I7 game) you can add a “Release along with an interpreter” directive and then zip and upload the interpreter it creates, although IIRC the interpreter might be so old that it won’t show images.

Nils’s iframe trick is a Russian doll of a website inside another website inside another website, but if it works it works :slight_smile:

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Thanks! I did not write it with Borogove, but I bet other people did, so this will be extremely useful. I think many folks with any graphics in an Inform game write it or host it on Borogove, but all the jams are on itch (TALP, Parser Comp, etc), so I bet folks will be interested in all this info.

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Thanks, Nils. I’m shocked to learn that itch is not catering to the large and mighty bloc of Inform writers. I’ll give this a whirl.

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Darn tootin’! Thanks for the iframe tip, @nilsf ! Will use with prejudice! :grin:

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Hmm. My itch page isn’t showing the “This file will be played in the browser” option when I upload the html file. I only have the “hide this file and prevent it from being downloaded” option.

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You have to change the Kind of Project to HTML.
I’m sorry I forgot to mention that, I’ve edited my post above.

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That’s not entirely true, it just doesn’t cater to the smaller and less mighty bloc of Borogove users. (Although, as demonstrated above, it does cater to those as well, you just need to jump through a couple of hoops.)

Itch is a game store like Steam, and Steam also doesn’t support linking to external games from a store page. It’s just that Itch is also very popular for game jams nowadays.

On the off-chance that you want Itch users (ones that aren’t heavily into IF and also joined the same game jam) to discover your game organically and also bother to play it, Nils or Juhana’s solutions are probably much better than sticking an external link to Borogove on the page.

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One of the good things about itch is that you can get analytics to see the views, plays and downloads of your game. Can you see that with Borogove and IPlayIF?

You can also charge for your game on itch, if you so desire.

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I’m just dipping my toe into this, so I’m not clear on how itch can host an Inform game for online play. I have only thought about game hosting for a few weeks and I’m a blank slate. I haven’t seen that there’s an interpreter there that can support an I7 game. Is there? I picked Borogove because it displays images in Inform well (and is so easy to use that even I can figure it out).
Is there a way to just use itch to do this without messing around with other interpreters?

And one of the things I love about IF is that it’s free. I just can’t see myself charging for it.

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There’s a good discussion of how to use Parchment in this thread. This is specifically for Inform 6, but the principles are the same for Inform 7. I also discovered that there’s some good topics on this in the Inform 7 documentation.

Me too. I have never charged for one of my games and probably never will, but there’s probably people out there that would like to charge.

Itch has this really nice model where you can charge a small amount for a game, but players don’t have to pay it if they don’t want to. It’s like a try-before-you-buy. I think this is a nice model for anyone that wants to use it.

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You need to “release with interpreter” etc. When you upload the folder, you can associate the play.html file and get the thing to play. I did get this to work (with @severedhand 's kind assistance) with images on itch. For some reason, the same solution wasn’t working for Spring Thing, so I had to resort to Borogrove in that instance. ADRIFT by pinkunz

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Thanks. I’ve seen that thread, but it’s way above my head. Things like “go to that directory and execute something” are Sanskrit to me. I have absolutely no computer experience at all. I turn it on and use it, and that’s it. And I think Parchment relies on Quixe? That does not display images.

I did as Dee suggested and just included a link to Borogove in the “Install Instructions” and that will have to be good enough for now. When I’m feeling more adventurous, maybe I’ll try learning about the stuff in that thread.

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I believe Parchment can use Quixe or Zvm. I was using a z-code game without graphics, so Zvm was the appropriate interpreter for me. If neither of them support graphics, then that’s an issue.

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