itch.io

It's been a while since I started developing this game, but I didn't want to post it here until it was really worth it. Now I think the time has come.

Runnin' Late! is a casual 16-bit game, free-to-play for browser and mobile devices (Android and iOS).

The premise is simple: you have a date with your girlfriend at 9:00 a.m. but you wake up a few minutes earlier. You need to collect all your clothes and meet your girlfriend before the time runs out.

Gameplay is also simple: tap, click or press the space bar to jump and double jump, collect the clothes and avoid obstacles.

What makes this game interesting? Well, starting yesterday, we have daily levels: a new level is available every day at 00:00 UTC.

This is currently only for the browser version, but we're already working to take these daily levels to the mobile version.

Play and rate the game here, every comment and feedback is well appreciated! 

Any help here... please? :(

I love this functionality, but I have one question: I do have two versions of the HTML game: a jam version and a more polished one; the latter is public in the game page. I want to create an embed for the jam version, but the drop down menu only allows me to select the one that's public. How do I select another version of the game to embed?

I found that butler includes an "ignore" flag, just don't know how to use it at there is no documentation available :(

I want to create a buttler channel with some game assets but I need to exclude a couple of files. Is this possible? Or is there a workaround you know?

I'm glad it helps!

Hey leafo! Thanks for your quick response! Yeah, I figured it out... I hope this lesson helps someone in the future, this is what happened:

I created the game with Game Maker, so the exported game includes an index.html and a folder containing its assets. It just so happens that I created a custom html to be my index file and set it as an included file. When GM exported the game, it was also exporting my custom html file inside the assets folder, so I had 2 index.html files: one at the root folder of my game and one in the assets folder. For some reason, itch was loading the one in the assets folder instead of the one at the root, so yeah, it obviously wasn’t able to find its assets in a relative path to the assets folder. Finding that the embedded game wasn’t changing te index.html source code no matter what I changed in it was key to figure this out... I deleted the unwanted index and the game is back in business.

By the way, I noticed that the index.html file is not being refreshed, no matter if I use butler or a direct upload and change the executable, when I inspect the source code it remains the same as the one that fails. :S

I have this HTML game: https://exagames.itch.io/runnin-late and I've been updating some stuff there. Today, I uploaded the newest version using butler, but when I go the game page, I only see a dark screen and a 403 error in the console:

I had to roll back to the oldest (and ugliest) version of the game (which is now active in the game page). Please help!

Awesome, thanks a lot. I gave it a try and finally got it to work. It's way faster than uploading a zip from the edit page, so that's a good thing.

I figured out the answer to some of my questions, which I write here below for what is worth for any beginner:

• First of all, what to upload: the traditional publishing process for HTML games on itch involves:
  • Zipping the entire directory containing the game
  • Go to the edit game page.
  • Delete the old zip you had published (if any).
  • Upload the new zip.
  • Go grab a coffee,  walk the dog and watch The Godfather trilogy while you wait.
  • Check the "This file will be played in the browser" field and test your game.
• However (and this is what the docs don't mention), with butler you don't upload the zip but the directory; no need to create a zip, delete old versions, waiting for hours or reconfiguring the new version. BTW I created I batch file beneath my game directory with the push command, so when I want to upload a new version I just double click it and wait (much much less than before).
• The mystery of "channel names": It would be great if the docs mentioned what this is. They just say "The name of a channel has meaning..." ok but what are they? It would be worth to mention they're like arbitrary tags set from butler, and a small example of how they look. For instance, in my case, doing something like "butler push gamefiles edu/beginning:html5" where  "gamefiles" is the directory that contains the index.html file and "html5" is my "channel name", once butler is done you'll find something like this in the edit game page.

The image is necessary in the docs because this is something you never see before using butler, so it's hard to understand.

• Once butler is done, a message appears in the console indicating "Build is now processing, should be up in a bit (see 'butler status')" but I couldn't find anything in the docs about the status option. I just figured out I had to use almost the same syntax as "push" to see the status of my upload (butler status user/game:channel).
• The only strange thing I found was when I actually tried to run the game after uploading it with butler. I went to my game page and pressed the "Run Game" button. Unlike other situations, when a loading bar appears with the message "loading game for the first time", it just printed a dark grey screen with black text (almost unnoticeable): "AccessDeinedAccess denied. Anonymous caller does not have storage.objects.get access to itchio/html/[a_number_here]/index.html". I have no idea why this happened, but it got fixed after I uploaded my old zip again, set it as executable, saved the game, then changed the executable again to the one pushed with butler and saved the game again. WEIRD.

Gotcha, but I'm still confused. Where do these channel names come from? The docs say "Tagging a channel as 'HTML5 / Playable in browser' needs to be done from the itch.io Edit game page, once the first build is published", but in the edit game page there's nothing like "channels".

Is there any "butler for dummies" tutorial out there? I really have a lot of questions and I can't find any well-explained resource. :(

Hey! I know this is an old post but I just started trying the same thing, use butler to update an HTML game. I'm still lost, what exactly is a "channel"?

¿Cómo se juega?

:D

Hi! Is it possible to create an embeddable widget for a game I don't own?

We're starting an indie game review section in our blog, and currently we're using simple links to the creator's or game page, but I'd like to use the "official" itch widget.

No hay link de descarga ni ninguna manera de jugarlo...

Algunas recomendaciones:

• Pon música y efectos de sonido.
• Agrega imágenes a la página del proyecto para hacerlo llamativo.
• Expórtalo como ejecutable, no como instalador.

La idea es muy buena... lo jugué un poco y aquí te dejo algunas recomendaciones:

• Publícalo como juego HTML para que la gente lo pueda jugar en la página sin tener que descargarlo... o por lo menos como ejecutable en lugar de hacerlo como instalador NSIS, de manera que se pueda jugar sin tener que instalarlo.
• Agrégale efectos de sonido! Eso le da muchísima vida a los juegos.
• Revisa el movimiento del personaje; se traba mucho y en ocasiones está caminando para un lado pero el sprite está viendo para otro lado.
• Agrega instrucciones de qué es lo que se tiene que hacer, porque de repente llegué a un cuarto, recogí todos los corazones y ya no pude salir.

Muy bueno! Y una excelente decisión ponerlo como HTML para poder jugarlo sin tener que descargarlo :D

Ahora ponle música y efectos de sonido! Y también te recomendaría incluir una breve descripción en la página (de preferencia en inglés para que atraigas más jugadores) sobre la temática del juego y cómo jugarlo.

No hay ningún archivo para descargar!

Muy bueno! Ahora agrega fotos del juego y una descripción en esta página y expórtalo como "Single runtime executable" para que se pueda jugar sin necesidad de instalarlo.

Muy buena la música... queremos más avances!!!

Algunas sugerencias para mejorar este juego:

• Expórtalo como "Single runtime executable", no como "Windows NSIS Installer". De esta manera se podrá jugar con solo darle doble click, en lugar de tener que instalarlo.
• Ponle sonido! Música de fondo y efectos de sonido.
• Agrega fotos e instrucciones de cómo jugar a esta página de itch.