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HTML5 Gamemaker studio 2 game not loading fully

A topic by 8-bitsloth created Oct 23, 2021 Views: 1,979 Replies: 16

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Hey everyone,

This is my first time uploading a game on itch, and I'm running into kind of a weird bug and looking for some insight! So, for some background, I created my game in Gamemaker Studio 2 and exported it as HTML5 as a zip file. Inside the zip file is just the classic index.html file, options.ini, favicon.ico, and a folder called html5game with all my assets (textures, sprites, sounds, etc.). I think this is what you normally get when you export as HTML, so everything should be good there.

When I run the game on itch, the start screen loads just fine and functionally works. When I press [Z] to advance from the start room to the game room, that's where I start running into issues. Here's some screenshots below:

Start screen

In the start screen/start room

Game Room

The Interstitial screen that changes based on if you're a new or returning player

In the black screen/headphones picture above, the player is now in the game room ("rm_game" in GMS2), but I've placed what I've been calling an "Interstitial" screen as the top layer in the GUI to see if you're a new player or returning player. This specific Interstitial screen gets shown for returning players, since there's a "Saved file found" in the option on the right. But this specific screen isn't supposed to show up unless a save file exists - which is weird because if this is the first time I'm running this game, there shouldn't be an existing save file. When I try the option on the right, it just loads into a black screen. When I start a new game with the left option, it goes back to the start room (which should happen) but when I advance with [Z] I just get this same exact screen, and am back at square one. Also, the game is extremely laggy at this point.

I'm thinking it might be a problem with the way i'm save/loading. I followed shaun spaulding's save/load method here (Save / Load tutorial) which I think is pretty standard, and called my save file "dive.save" and saved it in a global variable called save_file.

Here's the error I'm getting in the console when it hits the interstitial screen. There's a huge number of requests being made, and it seems like my browser is hitting up itch's CDN (where my game files are hosted) multiple times without success. I think a 403 is a permissions denied error.

In any case, sorry for the super long post, and any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks so much,

bitsloth

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FieryLion3 years ago(+2)

please note that ALL HTML5 games on ItchIO share the same localStorage! You need to create very specific naming for your save file, or put your save files in a special folder to avoid accidentally reading other games save files

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FieryLion3 years ago(+1)

also you should add “working directory + “ before your file names like file_exists(working_directory + “save.txt”)

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8-bitsloth3 years ago

Hey FieryLion, thanks so much for the response! Tried both things you suggested and neither have worked for me yet. Tried naming my file something very specific, like "dive-bitsloth-129304878321094" and no success. I also tried creating a new directory called "Saves/" and using working_directory like you suggested - no luck there either. I may be coding it wrong, so will take another look, but is there anything else you know of I could try?

Thanks!

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FieryLion3 years ago

what browser are you using to test your game on Itch? I know that Brave browser won’t save your game data, also make sure you are not in Incognito mode

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8-bitsloth3 years ago

Oh, good point. But yeah, just using classic Chrome without incognito mode.

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FieryLion3 years ago (1 edit)

this is my short load code that works in html5

if (!file_exists(working_directory + "profiles.json")){
    var file = file_text_open_write(working_directory+"profiles.json");
    profiles = ds_map_create();
    file_text_write_string(file, json_encode(profiles));
    file_text_close(file);
}else{
    var file = file_text_open_read(working_directory+"profiles.json");
    var content = file_text_read_string(file);
    file_text_close(file);
    profiles = json_decode(content);
}

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8-bitsloth2 years ago (1 edit)

Hey FieryLion,

Hope all is well and thank you for the in-depth code. Apologies for the late response as I haven't gotten a chance to work on this till now. Your code was helpful, but I'm actually saving my game in a bit of different way. I write all the information into a data structure first, then push to array. Then using "json_stringify" I turn the array into a json string and save to a temporary buffer that includes my save file.

Here's my code after I've determined which values I want to save:

// STEP 3 - JSON STRINGIFY data (convert from array to string)
var json_string = json_stringify(save_data);
// STEP 4 - BUFFER: create, write, save, delete
// (size is string length+1, buffer_fixed means size of buffer doesn't change, alignemnt is 1)
var temp_buffer = buffer_create(string_byte_length(json_string)+1, buffer_fixed, 1);      
buffer_write(temp_buffer, buffer_string, json_string);    // write our json_string to the buffer in string format     
buffer_save(temp_buffer, working_directory + "Saves/" + global.save_file);      
buffer_delete(temp_buffer);     
temp_buffer = -1;    // reset to -1      
show_debug_message("Game saved! " + json_string);

When loading files, it's the same process but backwards. Read from the buffer, then "json_parse", then pop values off the array and back into the objects. After working on this tonight, I feel like I've tried everything. With and without "working directory" and also using a save folder like:

if (file_exists(working_directory + "Saves/" + global.save_file)) {
...
}

Also, here's the name of my save file currently:

global.save_file = "dive-bitsloth-fIt0QNLgfAlboxByK9zdWOKRXRvzbMWeafIm4Q6LLlV9vykE5T.save";

I've tested this locally and other than some visual glitches, the saving works functionally. The screen that's coming up can only possibly appear if a save file exists, which I don't see how is possible if it's my first time running the game and have never saved before on itch's server. At this point I'm thinking there's something wrong with itch's CDN as my game saves perfectly on my local server and the 3rd set of characters is a randomly generated 50-character string. Not sure what else to do at this point.

Thanks for all the help so far,

bitsloth

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FieryLion2 years ago

So your saving and loading mechanism is working, but somehow the screen that should only show up if a save file exists still shows up on the first run?

Did you clear the save file to make sure the save file doesn’t exist? Could it be detecting a previous save file?

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8-bitsloth2 years ago

Yup, exactly. This is the one that's showing up:

Game Room

which should only appear if a saved file was found. I've tried doing the "Start New Game" option which finds and deletes the current save file, but it doesn't really do anything and I still see this screen. Also, the 50-char randomly generated string for the save file variable was a pretty new addition, but after uploading that and running for the first time, same problem. There shouldn't be a duplicate of it on itch's server I believe.

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FieryLion2 years ago

since your saving and loading mechanism work, I guess you can try to read that phantom file first, and if the read operation is successful then display the dialogue xD

(Use try-catch to try and read that file first)

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8-bitsloth2 years ago

Gotcha, so I tried loading the game (which reads from the phantom file) as soon as it enters the room, but then the game just freezes. Getting this error:

However, I think I know what's going on! I was doing some research earlier tonight and starting looking into the actual errors themselves. 403 is a permissions error, which I think means my game isn't able to access the save file on the remote server. So what I believe is happening (just an educated guess) is that somehow, the game thinks a save file exists, but when it goes to grab it from itch's remote server, it doesn't actually exist so is producing the errors above. I checked GMS2's documentation for "file_exists" and found something really interesting: https://manual.yoyogames.com/GameMaker_Language/GML_Reference/File_Handling/File...

They specifically say:

"Note that the function can only be used to check local files, but not any files stored on a remote server."

So I'm assuming that's the error, since the way I'm checking save files is using that function. However, I do know that you're also using that same function in your code and it's working, so I'm really not sure what's going on 😅.

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