Hi there! Where do I report supposed bug? I can’t play ‘‘As the Fire Dies’’. It keeps going Full page on my smartphone after I choose to PLAY and doesn’t sctoll down.
It’s more a costructive “technical criticism”: albeit I reckon that the majority of the games are done with a web-based engine (and an excellent one), the lack of single-story DL is perhaps questionable (ex. itch-io isn’t classifiable as “neutral, discrete platform”, at least by my standards). I have no problem in DL the entire half-gigabyte archive, and running the story files in local mode, but a more variety of approach to online/offline playing and appeasement toward privacy concerns isn’t a bad idea…
… oh, a major technical issue in the archive: it’s a major screwup of directory permissions. prior of playing I must do a cleansing of all 777s (that is, full read/write/exec permission to practically eyeryone with access to the machine, a major no-no in computer security) given to every directory and subdirectory… Oh, well. let’s close the Amnesty day’s sorce debate & criticism first…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Sorry for phrasing. “Technical feedback” is what I should have written. Thanks Piergiorgio for your explanation 
I will pass this on to the authors. There’s a simple itch setting that should make it work!
1 Like
Yup, echoing @Piergiorgio_d_errico on the lack of a single game download seeming strange. I’ve now downloaded the big ZIP file. I usually play games offline. But I would have expected to be able to download each entry - or at least some of them - singly. To be fair it’s a couple of years since I last played Spring Thing. Looks fun though!
1 Like
The website is created by a javascript program that Aaron Reed wrote that automatically takes in author survey results and their files and creates a website. For games with a play online link, it generates a PLAY button to let you play online. For games without such a link, it creates a DOWNLOAD button that downloads a zip file containing the game.
It should be possible to alter the script to automatically add a DOWNLOAD button for each entry. I plan on putting all of the code on Github this year (just making to strip out passwords). I’d be happy to tinker with it before them. It looks like when Aaron was running it, links were automatically created for downloading individual zip files; looking at the website, it seems that each entry was duplicated (a zip file and a regular folder structure). That seems a bit inefficient in terms of storage (especially this year’s files are close to a gigabyte), so I’d love to find a dynamic solution that just zips the current entry’s folder and creates a download on the fly.
Edit: Looking at the code, it looks like it will automatically generate individual download links if the zip files are duplicated as mentioned above. I’m going to try to get on-the-fly zips working next year with something like outputzipstream.
6 Likes
The downloaded version of Chronicles of the Moorwalker isn’t working for me – when I launch index.html, it takes me to an error page with links to go back a passage or restart, neither of which do anything.
The play online option is working, though.
1 Like
I just tried the big ‘zip’ version. Like you, I had an error, but when I click on ‘hard restart’, it reverted back to the normal version.
I’d like to think that maybe it got updated after I made the zip, but in fact I haven’t updated any game since then; I made the zip this morning by compressing the entire folder of games, so it should be identical to what’s online. If anyone has further insights, I’d be happy to try them out.
Also, it looks like I can add download links for some individual games fairly easily, but not all of them (for a variety of reasons, including authors who specifically don’t want download links).
Are there any specific games or categories of games that would benefit from a prominent individual download link?
and thanks so much for all your work on Spring Thing, Brian! I can tell there’s a lot more behind the scenes than I comprehend, but it’s much appreciated! 
11 Likes
Well, that makes two of us. Thanks for your kind words!
6 Likes
Just to echo that sentiment - a huge thanks to Brian for organising everything! As a short-term / temporary solution to downloads, I just downloaded the full .zip file and I’ve put each game up in a OneDrive folder so they can be downloaded individually. (Note: This is entirely ‘unofficial’ and they won’t be updated, but they should all be correct as of today).
17 Likes
This is brilliant. Thanks. I was able to download just the files I was looking for.
2 Likes
This is fascinating ngl, but it also brings to mind, perhaps the games can be hosted on a github repo too, and the code you mentioned could also run with a github action. This will take away the need for any hosting costs.
1 Like
Selfishly, I like the idea of individual downloads because I submitted a bugfixed version yesterday that I’d rather people see. Not that I don’t understand the importance of due dates!
6 Likes
Due to popular demand, individual download links have been added. Three games are too large to host at Springthing and do not have download links, including Chronicles of the Moorwakker, Social Democracy, and Spring Gothic. Also, neither Vorple games has a download added, as vorple doesn’t work well offline. Do note though that on Ryan Veeder’s play online link, he has added a downloadable gblorb for accessibility reasons, although it is not the intended method of play.
This was done by hand and may likely contain some errors.
All updates sent by authors will now change these individual links and not the itch.io Spring Thing download. At the end of the competition, a zip of all the most recently update versions will be sent to the IFArchive.
12 Likes
Parser games are a must for me. I generally play them in my choice of interpreter, with suitably adjusted font and display settings. I do not play these online if I can. So especially any Inform, TADS or similar.
I have already downloaded the big file. But download links on these games may help some other folks. And certainly in the future years.
Many thanks!
9 Likes
Thank you! 
1 Like
Where do we send updates?
1 Like
You can upload them to the same dropbox or email that you uploaded your original files, but just add something like ‘updated-apr-2’ to your file name.
1 Like