itch.io

Please answer these questions:

How do I exclude on Newgrounds? How do I exclude on Gamejolt?

You claimed it is possible. I want to know how.

And can you or anyone else describe in a use case how multiple tag exclusion would be actual useful. Please.

Because, well, I have access to tools and ways to implement client side full multiple tag exclusion. It takes a minute to set up, but it works. But I just see no benefit in it. Convince me, that I can find my favorite game only by using multiple tag exclusion. Or at least, much faster. And also convince me, that I will not miss my future favorite game by having accidentally used a tag exclusion.

I do see a tremendous benefit in ticking games off, so you do not see them again. Like described here https://itch.io/t/1018893/a-never-show-me-this-again-please-button And this will be heaps better than ignoring tags. The first pages of popular do not change fast. Ticking off games takes a minute and they stay ticked off and will not clutter your browsing.

That is what I use, and it is very effective. Tag exclusion is nice on paper, but it is of questionable use when you consider how the games are tagged. It is the developers that do it, and they have different opinons about tags. So they might not tag the unwanted tag, or have the unwanted tag, but the content does not qualify for the tag in your opinion.

If you want a feature, please hit the feedback button and describe the feature and why you think it would enhance the browsing for games.

It takes a few seconds. Why do you think you do not need to ask for a feature through the official channels? It will not reflect actual demand for a feature, if everyone just is silent in the official channel, but laments in community.

In other words: suggest the feature on the official suggest feature button. And ask in community how to browse for games without such a feature.

Megalomania is more than obsession with power. But even if this is what your definition is, this 100% would fit Trump. He was so obsessed with it, that he made claims about election fraud out of thin air and with no proof, after he learned that he lost. He also repeatedly mentioned a third term for him, should he have won the election 2020 or would win 2024. If that is not obsession with power, then what is?

One trait of megalomania would entail constantly talking about how great you are. Something Trump is not known for, or is he? ;-)

Promising to build a wall and have the other side pay for it does also fit the bill. Or fabricating stories how people would break in tears over their worship of you.

Or where did you hear that fairy tale that he made a fortune out of a measly one million dollar loan? It is lies he tells. Read it up. It is about half a billion that flowed from father to son over decades. The exact amount is hard to tell, because of all the fraud and obfuscation that was done. But that it was a million is a delibarate lie to look like a self made billionaire. It is understating the true amount by a factor of x100 to x1000.

Note, I am not exactly talking about how good or bad the candidates are. But I do talk about how you deny his megalomania. That you fell for his 1-million-dollar-loan boast lie is concerning. Please do not form your opinions  on the basis of lies. 

And a lot of them embrace multi platform. Including Itch with their Steam support.

https://itch.io/games/steam-key

Look out for jams with that topic.

Take your pick from the plethora of lgbt tags. Unlike Steam, where there is one and only one, you will find any tag here.

From yuri to bara. Make sure to check your account's adult settings depending on what you are looking for. About 1 in 4 lgbt game is adult and ratio might change depending on the sub nieche.

Itch can host digital files. That can be comics in the usual comic book reader formats. PDF is not especially suited for this, but many use it anyway. There are comic book readers that use more suited formats. But those are usually just zip files with a special file ending and conventions how to name the files inside the archive.

Using Itch as a online display for a comic series is tricky. Itch offers not really much help there. Just like you could upload a movie here, but there is no video player, unlike a specialized site like Youtube.

Webcomic series are ususally hosted on the site of the developer. Itch is not suited for frequent updates of comic strips. Hosting archived versions of a series is more suited to Itch.

Have a look at Backpack Hero. They have rng maps. But there is a limit in size due to the map being on a grid that seems to be fixed size.

You can judge from there if the concept of your game would benefit from "chaotic" maps or from similar size maps. Ultimately it is a game design choice.

but this does not work

It does. Just checked. The feature only works if you are logged into your account. And it is a browse feature. Not a search feature. I guess people use a bookmark to use the feature for their usual search.

We either need a blacklist tag attached to our accounts or an exclude tag option next to the search bar. 

I agree that filtering some content account wise would be nice. Mostly "mature" stuff with more granularity like yes/no. Steam has like 4 or 5 of those filters.

And a user interface for existing features would also be nice, but unfortunately, this is an "inofficial" feature. Making it official would also be nice. We do not know the reasons, as for so many things. This is not something unusual. Itch does not talk a lot about reasoning why certain things are like they are.

or the same story LGBT games while you are not logged in. While I am at work I can't find a game to play unless I endlessly scroll past all those aforementioned games, which takes ~10 minutes of looking for any changes that day to the top games section.

For changes in the top games section, tag filtering is not a good solution. Especially for lgbt. There are like 10-20 different tags for this.

The thread below talks about what might help here, but such a feature is of course also missing, hence the thread.

https://itch.io/t/3477347/add-an-option-to-exclude-owned-games-when-searching

I made a client side solution. Basically you would press a key while hovering over each item you already checked out. After that, those items will be hidden and stay hidden. This is quite effective for a slowly changing list - and it can spoil your browsing habits, so turn it off once in a while. It is the tampermonkey script on my project page. Doing it in tampermonkey was inspired here https://itch.io/t/1018893/a-never-show-me-this-again-please-button

Newgrounds is old as dirt and has exclude tags, Gamejolt has exclude tags

Interesting. Where is their interface button for this?

https://gamejolt.com/games/tag-action

So how do I remove the horror games in that tag search?

https://www.newgrounds.com/search/conduct/games?tags=adventure

Same for newgrounds. How do I remove horror games from that tag search?

that has a solution that no longer works

You need to be logged into your account for that solution to work. It works fine. It just is a hassle to add the url filter. If you use the same search parameters often, use a bookmark.

Did you hit the feedback button and clicked feature request and suggested a multiple tag exclusion with user interface?

Sounds like the faq could use some work.

Something like non-claimable keys are not mentioned there. Explanation of such a use case is what I would expect from the faq, as it is bound to create confusion.

If it previously worked, maybe the key was flagged for "supicous" behaviour...

The faq is not very clear if keys are supposed to be share-able. What with the bulk keys, it rather reads like they are not share-able and the dev can even manually revoke them, if used for downloading too often.

Is there even an appropriate option to use?

I just read https://itch.io/docs/creators/download-keys and nowhere is it stated that unclaimable keys are a thing.

If only one key was used to be printed as a qr code, how should this even work? Not by keys to my reading of the faq.

A download key’s URL is unique and should not be shared.

I would imagine the developer wanted to share a link to a restricted page or something like that. This would be possible with one qr code for all. 

Maybe take the reason for the dungeon dive into account. Is there an objective or time/ressource restraint? And is this as linear as you wrote it or is there branching? If each room always only spawns one other room, that is not a map, but a road.

Is there backtracking, can you go in circles? Do you have to go back? Can you get lost? Does the player see a map? Is the map size/length a factor to decide if the player can win the crawl? Will there be more levels? Is the player expected or required to explore the whole level or is it: search the stairs to advance.

Arbitrary/rng artifically prolonged level size typically is not fun. So you should restrict size in some fashion.

https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed

We generally review these within a few business days after a project is published.

If you find your page isn’t immediately indexed, then we ask that you wait a bit before reporting it.

If you just published the page, please wait at least a day before contacting us.

Those bits do not reflect reality. The weasel words get lost in translation and do not indicate that the few bit least waiting time could just as well be over 4 weeks in some cases. I am sure 99% do get indexed very quickly. But the devs that are not will get panicky, since they did publish it on a respectable publishing site that has phrased like "wait a day" before contacting us, they do just that. Wait a day and then contact and of course do not get a response since the waiting time to get a response is also in a waiting queue. So they get even more panicky.

You and the admins know better how much confusion or additional work for staff there really is, just because people did not read the faq or did not grasp from the faq that waiting for a week actually is normal - if you have to wait. We only see the cases surface where the devs reached out to community threads. I would guess, there are many that just email support every few days.

This community's tag line is: "Get help from the itch.io community. Have a quick question or issue, other members of the community can assist you in finding an answer." It is not a technical support hotline. We should be lamenting on the waiting time together and exchange tips about what to do (wait and contact Itch after two weeks seems reasonable).

It should not be mandatory to read here at all for such issues. If it is needed, that means that the faq and the actual publish button and information there should be improved.

That's of course just my opinion, but all these threads surfacing indicate to me to a general problem that should be tackled, instead of applying squeaky wheel greasing. It could be as simple as a simple disclaimer near the publish button or a more clearly worded faq. Or even some short faq near the support button on the support page.

There's only so much that can be explained in advance; that's why we have this forum category, too,

Then make a sticky thread. Something like this should have a sticky. The actual board usage is more like squeaky wheel tactics. People see that it works, so why bother reading. Even if they do read, the best tactic they will learn is to make a thread here. Because unlike the board tag line, they will get here, what was promised on the faq: "If you have any questions or need to be expedited, then please contact us through our support page.".

You have 260 followers. By Itch standards, you are very successful. Especially considering your use of stable diffusion and the nieche nature of your content.

You might want to polish your game page and your tag usage a bit. There are tags your game needs that are not there. So people looking for that kind of content can find it by tag search.

If you did what you say you did, you might even be put on a list for suspicous behaviour and never be indexed. Do you not realize that this is exactly what a scammer and spammer would do?

There is no  guarantee for indexing to begin with. The faq does not make this very clear, unfortuantely.

Also, if you read the board, you will notice, that you will always be told to not rely on being indexed.

I contacted support who told me that it was already indexed, though I was still unable to find it

Was your game called blow up? And how did you "not find it"?

Waiting time to get indexed can be up to 30 days. Sometimes longer.

after 1 day as per the FAQ

Please tell the people responsible for the FAQ to update it to reality. Some people do read the faq and take it for something that should be how things actually work.

No. My reply was about words and their meaning. 

You used a word to describe Harris. That word has a meaning.

If you do not care for words, but deeds, Trump changed party membership several times. He is not standing for any party's values, but for his own.

Read the sticky.

https://itch.io/t/253885/help-us-make-devlogs-better-what-should-we-do-with-this...

Basically there are two places, because they did not lock this obsolete place in community yet. 

You do realize you can release on both, and people that bought on Itch can be given a complementary Steam key?

https://itch.io/games/steam-key

Do you expect your bought game on itch to be supported long term and include all future additions ?

Uhhhhhm. Yes? Why is this a question. If you release a digital retail version of a game on a platform, it is expected to have the updates for said retail version included that would be included on every other platform as well. 

If you release an early access version here, just make to sure to be specific what people will get. As long as you have not "released", it does not matter much. After release, Steam will have terms that will make you have same minimum price on all platforms. And if you plan to release on Steam and advertise as such, be specific, if a future Steam key will be included or not.

If you offer pay what you want, any payment will make a buyer eligible to download the project, even after a price change to minimum price. Which might be intended by the publisher, to reward the early supporters with basically a discount.

How do you feel about paid expansions to a cheaper base game

Depends. A lot. Mostly it depends upon the base game being a finished product or if it is basically unplayable without the dlcs and could be considered a bait.

People that like a game usually are inclined to try out or buy a sequel. An expansion is a kind of sequel. A loot box is not.

You could make a purchased collection. A wishlist collection. A favorite purchased collection. And so on.

The purchases only look similar to your collections. It basically is just a history line of your purchases. I do not think it is intended to be able to sort or remove items from there.

But it would be nice to be able to "hide" it from library view. Or if you want to brag with your purchases, to select which ones do appear there and in which order. Right now there is only a button to show it or to not show it.

You could show a collection with purchases, but this does not prove you really did purchase the game.

if you design with accessibility in mind

putting the information how accessible a game is for the visual impaired in screenshot form only, kinda defeats the purpose. So those games that are bound to have a good description to begin with, at least I would hope so

;-)

I stand by my opinion. Screenshots are the alt-picture of the description of a game. A "correct" alt-text for a screenshot would be "screenshot of the gameplay".

The alt-text feature is intended for on-page images that are used to convey meaning. Screenshots on the other hand, as handled on Itch, are a separate area that have an advertisement function, but they do not change the meaning of the description, if they are exchanged with newer screenshots or different screenshots. So describing them, to describe the game is kinda moot, since that is the purpose of the description.

You do not have on-page images on your page. You do have one on your devlog though. Could you not use the alt-text feature of html with the edit function of Itch, or was it deemed unhelpful?

As I have pointed out, no one hinders you to design a regular html page, complete with regular alt-text for your embedded on-page images. There just is no alt-text feature for the designated screenshots.

Or is the alt-text really disabled in the description? I always thought except for css and js, it would have regular html capabilities.

I don't think trump is a megalomania.

Oh please. Just look up what megalomania is. I do not know if Harris fits the bill, but Trump does. It sounded like you think this is a good trait for a president.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=character+traits+of+a+megalomaniac&ia=web

It is interesting that you would use an established character trait of Trump to describe Harris. Since you seem to approve of Trump's megalomania, it seems you want to see such a trait in a president, so in your opinion that should be a green flag.

Concerning your lack of knowlege about Harris, can you name any deeds of any other vp? Is lack of knowlege about a vp anything special?

Also, Trump is not someone that gets things done, but he is good at making people believe that, with his constant self display. As you have observed, he is all talk. If cought in a lie or a blunder, he repeats and attacks. Instead of giving reasons why he would be a good president, he gives reasons why the other candidate would be a bad president. 

And unfortunately the last two elections were all about voting for the perceived lesser evil. Not the better candidate, nor politics.

And this election again it is not about the better candidate, but about slinging mud at the other candidate. And unfortunately it works, since the election system is broken - Trump did lose by popular vote in his first election.

They should talk about politics, not people. This distracts, as it is too easy to attack people, like their age...

Bit clumsy. Especially when editing your post. But apparantly you can use some html here. Interesting.

This is what is done, and as html it works, but how do you enter it in the comment box? By changing your profile settings to use markup.

<details>

<summary>Description</summary>

Hidden Text

</details>

Since you mentioned Steam, their most recent ranking does not exist. They have a general sortable and filterable list, where you can sort by "Release Date".

You try to equate "most recent" on Itch with "sort by release date" on Steam. But there is no such thing as an official release date on Itch you could sort by. Oh, you can enter such information, I have seen release dates in the future and from before Itch existed.

The default list has every release status in it. Even on hold / cancelled items. So it stands to reason that changing that status should not directly change order. Neither should indexing, as it is not an action by the developer.

Discussing about the expectation from a list called "Most Recent" is interesting, but the term is ambigous. Whom is it most recent to? From developer's perspective, or Itch's, or the user's? I have seen most recent lists, that are more like this "list" here:

 https://itch.io/feed?filter=new_games

... only for downloads. Or views. Or search terms. Or like the list of recently made postings.

So what makes a game "recent"?

Itch chose to order it by publishing date, mixed with staff aproved major updates.

You would have it by release status change and indexing change on top.

I would prefer it by updates without need for a devlog. Maybe with a cooldown of up to 3 months, to prevent update spamming to get on top of recent. So it would be a glimpse of the projects currently being worked upon in a most recent ordering.

Oh, and the standard response about anythign related to not being on the index at all or at the wrong place, is, that a developer should never rely on the circumstancial bonus traffic that existing on such lists might give, but to do external promotion.

I don't know what the problem is

The problem is, that Itch does not verify users and gets abused right and left. So they have some mechanisms to catch bad agents. Unfortunately this also gives false positives.

What this means is this: everytime a game is published or updated, the system tries to guess, if it is something a human should look over.

You updated two of your games last day and uploaded the third hours ago.

My guess is, that all of them are now in a waiting queue for staff to give ok to put them on index.

Search your username. Your fourth game is still indexed.

Unfortunately, there is not much you can do and waiting time can be up to four weeks (not kidding).

You might want to complain in 3-4 weeks again.

Till then, your games are merely not on the index. No one is gonna search for them by name, if you do not promote them elsewhere and if you do, a direct link is not affect by this. 

Well, my answer was of course just my take on why source code is not typically released. It makes no sense for a typical user computer. The necessary development tools to compile the code are missing.

It is a bit different on Linux. There you could have dependencies and all and a makefile to actually distribute your game as source code. And there were times when this actually made a lot of sense, since there are different architectures and such, so you would have had to compile for each target architecture - or just distribute the source code.

It also depends on the type of source code you are interested in. Unless you code your basic stuff yourself, you will probably use an engine or another.

Is that a serious question?

What use is the source code to a normal user? They do not have the knowledge, nor the tools to create the game from the source code. And even if they have some of it, chances are the game might not work, because of slight oversights or technicalities.

Users are here for the game, not the source code.

And this is not even considering that some developers might not want to share their code.

It is also kinda the name giver for open source. Everything not open source could be called closed source. And you do not share code from closed source in general. So it is unusual to see source code outside of open source projects.

"Indie" is just not a tag anymore. On Itch it has no information value anyways, but browsing for indie games is just not feasible.

You need to browse for a nieche. There you have less "saturation". Two or three tags should do the trick. That can bring you down to less than 1000 games.

This here currently has 375 games

https://itch.io/games/genre-puzzle/tag-pixel-art/tag-rpgmaker

It is unusual to share the source code, even if the game is free.

But those that do, probably used one of those two tags

https://itch.io/games/tag-open-source

https://itch.io/games/tag-sourcecode

Me neither. I had to check the release date and age of the account to be sure. But I did not check, when they submitted to Steam. As far as I remember, there was or is some kind of greenlighting process, so it could just as well be, that they did try to release on Steam earlier and on Itch they just released as is. But their account is old enough to claim they started on Itch.

Baba has this Nordic Game Jam tag line on it's splash screen. But that games from this jam are on Itch is not something anyone not familiar with Itch would know. https://itch.io/jam/ngj17

Something more recent would be Backpack Hero. Not a jam game, but their web and dl version was on Itch long before it was released on Steam.

There are sometimes issues with routing to the Itch file servers.

The alternative download buttons did not work?

Depending on location, it can happen that the routing is bad. You might want to try a vpn. If you have no vpn, try using Opera's built in vpn.

There are some threads that have this topic, but it usually is a whole area that is temporary blocked off. But maybe it is a different issue in your case. I think the error messages were also different.

Maybe a network outage routed traffic over a location that could not access the servers.

https://itch.io/randomizer

Did you try the alternate download button: Downloads not starting?

Baba Is You, Hempuli

Doki Doki Literature Club, Team Salvato

Those might be the most "famous" ones. I knew both before I even knew that something like Itch exists.

You will find many games that classify as Indie on Steam, that also were released on Itch. Some will have released here, while they were not approved yet on Steam. Itch is self publishing. That is like printing your own books, because you do not have a publisher yet. Or releasing your songs on youtube, because you do not have a record label.

Though Baba Is You started as a game jam game, which would probably count as the most Itchy way to start.

Your test game is not indexed. And why should it. Read here  https://itch.io/docs/creators/quality-guidelines

Your topic is a different question than the text in your posting.

How does itch.io sort games by these criteria: popular, new&popular, top rated, top sellers, most recent?

As far as I know and have observed:

Popular: secret metric of popularity. Horror games are popular on youtube, so they are also popular here. What a surprise.

New & Popular: same as popular, but with added weighting for newer games.

Top rated: weighted metric for the rating average. 1000 ratings with average 4.5 are worth more than 10 ratings with 5.0, this kind of weighting. I do not know the specifics, but a similar or the same system is used in jams.

Top sellers: some metric concerning money. Could be total money spent. Could be individual buyers. Could be anything. But it includes the pay what you want games.

Most recent: Sorted by date. Publishing date, or approved major update devlog.

Your games are NOT quarantined!

They are merely not on the index. Which means they are flagged for manual review. I do not know why the mod phrases this as being flagged by a bot. He shoulda use the phrase "in the waiting queue for getting indexed".

Flagged has no inherent meaning. This game here was flagged as suspicous. 

Also, there is no guarantee for getting on that index. Neither is there a guaranteed time frame. And Itch's stance on indexing is, to not rely on it.

Itch will not tell you, why your game is on that list. They do not talk about these things. It is secret. 

What is known, the waiting time tends to be longer, if a game has payments active. As your games have.

Also, you were just answered in a community thread, where a developer had to wait four weeks for indexing.