itch.io

Thanks, good to know the reason behind it. I'll try adding a more noteable button.

Earlier, when I made a browser game and selected Embed in Page, it would embed in page. If I clicked Fullscreen, it made it fullscreen.

Now, clicking Play game opens it in a new maximized browser window. This can be made into fullscreen, but the button for this is easily overlooked. This annoys me a great deal, because I want my game to be played in pure fullscreen, but the design discurages this.

Does anyone have a workaround?

I guess some folks love it, but for me, it is just frustrating somehow. I would much rather prefer a fixed price. Does anyone know what the norm are here?

Nothing wrong with pixelart, but I just want to try something else. But this is hard, with roughly 99% of the sprites being pixelart. I found this old thread, but it just refuses to work. Am I doing it wrong? Is there another workaround?

Dunno what goes wrong, it runs fine on my Valve Index. Which HMD are you using?

Nope, sorry!

I've noticed there were no post about this, so thought I'd made one, spreading the word and whatnot.

The deadline for submissions is closing in, so hurry up!

Bundle Submission for the Worthy of Better, Stronger Together Bundle for Reproductive Rights

Thanks, glad you like! Let's just say it's Public Domain.

Absolutely! AGK is basically BASIC, with some extra stuff added, so you pretty much code everything from scratch. I personally prefer AGK Basic over AGK Studio, the later feels a bit bloated, with multiple dockers and such, whereas AGK Basic is more pure code.

The concepts are explained on the images on the right of the sales page. But granted, it's very easy to overlook. Thanks for good feedback!

Ah, thanks! Didn't have Java installed, so I just tried unzipping it with 7-Zip.

Hi, I think your game is missing an executeable!

Hi, thanks for your interest! Yes, you can add add your own stereoviews, by placing the left and right images in \media\stereoviews Check out the manual for further details

I have quite a lot of games, both bought and freebies, but the library navigation is pretty much unusable. I know there is a website to help navigate those in That Very Big Bundle, but is there any script or something for my entire library?

Yeah, free games are hard to sell. I think people naturally assume they aren't worth much. And you can't put them on sale. I wonder if it would give more downloads if I stuck a price on them, so I could put it on sales...

Even if your game is pixelart, avoid use that pixelart font on your sales page.

Bookmark itch.io pages with juicy design, and use them for inspiration. Personally, I'm quite habby with the design of this one: https://kasper-hviid.itch.io/the-shareware-motherlode

Also, don't be humble. Try selling your stuff as aggressively as possible. Like, if you made a mobile game called A Dream of Amber, which has a truly original concept and is totally addictive, try using the flimsiest of excuses to push it into the conversation.

An advice I once heard is that for the hours spent making your game, use half that that much time promoting it. Don't make the mistake of feeling burned out by finally finishing the game, clicking "publish" and then moving on to your next project.

Understand the concept of the marketing tunnel, that is, the way a potential buyer slowly gain more interest in your game. At the top level, he doesn't care about you game at all, he doesn't even know it exist, so you only have a few seconds to make him interested.
- At the top opening state, the potential buyer looks a the front page of itch.io and let his eyes pass over the games available. Here, you have about 0.1 second to make him focus his attention on your games cover image instead of any of the others.
- At the next stage, his eyes are focused on your games banner. Good. You now have about 3 seconds where he skims the art and read the title.
- At the next stage, he may hover his mouse over the cover, to see what pops up.
- At this stage---oh boy---he actually clicks!  Once on the sales page, he skims it over, quickly deciding if he want to venture further, or go looking for another game.

Looks truly original. Hope there will be a PC version at some point!

Hi, thanks for letting me know! I just gave it a test drive, and it still work at my end. Good for me, but doesn't help you. :-/

The line 30 is this one: (line 116 is the exact same)

    writtenFile = OpenToWrite( "raw:" + GetDocumentsPath () + "\" + saveDir$ + "\" + activeDoc$) 

I can't figure out anything which could go wrong here, if the directory string (as shown in the error message) is legit. The only other instance I could find of "Failed to open file for writing" is this one (an Android app where the dev forgot to checkbox writing permission)

Some stuff can be adjusted in \media\settings.txt and in the file C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\AGKApps\AuthorsPassage\media\authorspassage.json But none of those should have any influence on the ability to save a file. I never touched bytecode.byc, but doubt that it's the culprit.

Do you think you could check if there might be something on your machine that is blocking the writing? I can't really think of anything else, sorry!

Got this one with the Indie bundle for Palestinian Aid. Started reading it because, well, necromancy is fun! Okay, the ending was a bit rushed, but the rest is just so good it doesn't matter. The underground necromantic city is such an wounderous setting and the lore further shapes the world without weighting down the action. A lot of modern novels simply describes the events with as much engagement as a weather forecaster, but here, the language is alive and inventive without being showy. The story gave me a bit of a Discworld vibe; cozy and fun, but with a more serious core.

You got Jill to work? Splendid! Please tell me how. My mail is kasperhviid over at gmail

Thanks, good selection! Will see if I can get them added in the next update. This is still pretty much an in-dev project, so lots of classics are missing.

Had a bit of trouble with Jill of the Jungle though. It didn't return to the batch file it was run from (the menu) so I ended up just removing it. Might try it again!

No, I don't look for games to buy in my library! I meant on the main page, of course. Sorry I was unclear.

As I see it, it wasn't that this bundle specifically broke the UI. The UI is simply not suitable for anyone owning more than a handful of games. The site has hundreds of thousands of games available, so it's no surprise if people's libraries grow pretty big over time. Recently, I wanted to use a music asset I once bought. To find it, I had to go to the itch.io main page, find the right category and scroll down through the results until I found the asset so I could memorize its title. Then I had to click the upper-right dropdown to go to my library, click "View all", scroll down repeatedly so that everything was loaded, and finally do a Ctrl-F to search for the asset name.

So the library kind of has this upper limit. Once it grows larger than you can manage by scrolling through it, it becomes kind of broken and unmanageable. Admittedly, collecting more games than you can play may seem silly, but it's quite normal for a lot of players. That's why we have bundle sales pretty much everywhere. I think the site should do its best to cater to those who actually play games. After all, we upload our games here in the hope that others are going to play them.

So, what do you think?

IMHO, the library really needs a makeover. I mean, some people literally created an alternative website, specifically to enable customers to browse the games in a specific bundle. I often see some games I want to buy, but then I end up thinking about how awkward it is to locate the game I already bought, and then I won't bother.

Hello again!

Just wanna say that a black-and-white version was a pretty good idea. Also, I have given some thought to your feedback, and here's my brainstormy roadmap for the next version:

— I scrap the tokens. Each player simply collects their victory points in front of them.

— Instead of the current missions, each player has a blueprint, a certain hex shape that must installed on the board. Three Laser towers in a row, for instance. (There's no rules for the placement of the hex.)

— This one I'm not entirely sure about, but I consider adding some progression so that the game starts slow and the points begin rolling in faster and faster. The players can't place Goo Farms before they reached 4 goofication. And after getting 7 in HEGTA, Laster Towers give double points. This could also be a card drawn at the start of the game, adding a specific rule.

Thanks, that’s some solid feedback! I wasn’t really thinking of it as a euro game myself, since I’m a bit of a board game newbie and that word isn’t really a part of my normal vocabulary. But whatever direction the game may take, I think I'll try to hold on to that euro game core.

 I should have spelled out that you discard the suits after use. Thanks for catching this! Also, yes, the rules certainly are in need some illustrations.

 The goal of the game is to avoid ending up with the ticket. But it kind of demand more than two players, since the ticket is passed on (or not) when you count your score. While it doesn’t alter gameplay, I think it gives the game another feel when the whole game is just to not be the one losing. I liked it in Looping Louie and that old eighties card game Dynamite where you had to avoid being the one setting the dynamite off: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35253/dynamite

But those games both have a gradual countdown mechanic—your eggs get smashed one by one, the timer on the dynamite timer ticks down—and this element is missing from my game. I felt Terraforming Mars had a bit of a weak end-game, where you just ran out of stuff to do and stopped, so I wanted ‘something’ to spice things up. 

I’ll add polishing up the components to my todo-list, but more important is how to make the stuff on the board relevant to the game. And in a way that doesn’t take attention away from the primary card mechanic. Need to do a serious brainstorm session on this! 

About making the game more printer-friendly, could you tell me more about the issues? I pretty much designed it to be print’n play, so this needs fixing!

@Billiam: That sounded like it was supposed to work, but alas, it didn't. But thank you for trying!

@Cimento: Sorry, that was poorly worded. I only meant that, when editing the theme of the page, I had set the screenshot dropdown to hidden, to no longer display the screenshot sidebar. Instead, I pasted the raw url of the images into the games description.

I have found a workaround at this page: It simply uses 1000px wide images instead of 1080px, so that the margin doesn't matter!
https://colorfiction.itch.io/blue

Hi, thanks a lot for your suggestions, but I still can't get it to work. I think I saw one page doing it, or maybe I'm mistaken.

Transparency is fun, I guess, but not really what I'm after at all, or do I misunderstand something?

I have screenshot set to hidden, and places the images inside the middle column. But the image gets a 20 pixel border at the left and right, despite being 960 pixel wide. Any way to make it fill out the entire column?

AppGameKit Classic!

Solid experience, but not knowing the context made me feel that I experienced it wrong. You can improve it a lot by simply adding an English description to this page!

When I saw the title, I read it as HERPES UNIVERSITY :-O

Sure thing, here ya go!

The reason we create games is that we want people to play them. But sadly, site has never really priotized players. To even access your library, you need to go to a submenu in the upper-left dropdown menu. There's no ability to sort your library by existing categories, or to see which games you already own.

Someone created randombundlegame.com to help people get an overview of the games in the BLM bundle. But this is basic features which should had been in the library to begin with.

Itch.io has always been sort of a hangout place for indie game creators. So there were loads of games and very few people playing them. I think its time to priorize gamers. Because, I kinda want people to play my games, you know.

I looked into GameGuru since I thought it could make making 3D levels easier for AppGameKit. But it just way to bothersome to convert to AGK.

Right now, I'm trying to to learn Godot since it got a lot of 3D features lacking from AGK, while still having a kind of simplicity to it.

Found it! Sadly, it looks like the itch page was pulled. Here's a backup of the original sales page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170917043604/https://rodneylives.itch.io/atplay

But I found a version for sale here:

https://www.routledge.com/Exploring-Roguelike-Games/Harris/p/book/9780367482596

Good point. I didn't even think of the practical implications. Also, you can place GUI elements outside of the arena, so it don't obscures the action.

If the borders were a part of the gameplay, something physical you can bumb into, then it makes sense to let it be a visible in-game element rather than just the monitor edge.

I tried splitting Resistance is Fruitile up, so that the play area is to the left, with the non-playarea stuff marked with red. It really take up alot of screen area! Might be worth it, but it's really a bold design decision.

Here's a screenshot from the very old game Robotron 2084. Notice how where is a sort of arena (the red line) encapsulated the action:

The same design was seen in Smash TV, which made the arena design a part of the story:

And here is a couple of modern Robotron-like games, Cecconoid, Retromancer and Resistance is Fruitile which sticks to the arena design:

(All three games are way fun! I got them with the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality)

In older games in general, the interface often took up a lot of the screen estate. Just take a look at Dream Web, Wolfenstein and Wing Commander. Of course, this was a practical decision to keeping the requred computing demands to a minimum.

Today, the trend is to have a discrete HUD giving some basic information. Some games even try to clear the screen of any GUI element altogether.

I'm currently toying with a Robotron clone of my own. This has made me wonder what value it has to the experience that there is this visible arena around playfield, as opposite to just let the screen edges makes up the border?

A hidden jewel! The retro aesterics has a really unique look, and the frantic action makes Nuclear Throne feel like a turn-based. Good job!

Also, I found a bug! When you select Continue after you die, and get to the "Choose Your Class", it won't accept any xBox controller input until you click somewhere with your mouse.

Purely AGK, but I'm trying to get into Godot.

The .pdf isn't designed for onscreen viewing, but for printing: You print the odd pages, turn the stack over, print the even pages, and fold the stack in the middle. As you might gather, this requires the pages to be presented in a rather weird order! :-)