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PWA Support (Again)

A topic by Adventuron created Dec 09, 2019 Views: 999 Replies: 2

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Hello,

I'm writing to follow up on a request for information (by leafo) on how PWAs work with Itch games (original post).

"Since games are standalone pages, I supposed individual games could implement PWA support themselves. You're welcome to try that out and tell me your findings."

Well, the result is that PWAs don't offer an install button via the itch wrapper it seems.

Here is a PWA (password = testpwa) :

https://adventuron.itch.io/testpwa

The same PWA is available here:

https://adventuron.io/games/two

One PWA offers to install (via a browser popup), but the Itch version does not.

I would very much like for players to be able to install their games as offline enabled PWA's from the Itch game page, but it seems that the iframe method is having problems with this. Maybe there is a way that you could click to a dedicated game page rather than embedding in an iframe? (I could just use a checkbox on the game page?). I don't mind experimentally trying out such an approach.

Chris

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leafoAdmin4 years ago (1 edit)

For security reasons we have to serve any code uploaded by users within an iframe. I’m not familiar with the nuances of PWAs with iframes. You may have to find a work around to get it to work.

I suppose itch.io could provide some kind of global system system for doing PWAs for html5 games. We tend to avoid having direct links to games made available though since we want people to interact with the itch.io UI when they play the game. So I’m not sure how this integration might work.

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Adventuron4 years ago

I think the goal is to have a game installable (and updatetable) via the Itch page itself. This is actually similar to the way that Itch supplies static game files such as executables. I suppose there is a risk of hot linking, but as game author, I prefer that to not having PWA available as an option. As far as the platform goes (itch), maybe that's sub optimal at scale?

I also think that having a payment / unlock api is a way to mitigate this (for non free games), as it doesn't matter if the game is hot linked if it requires an api response to play the game (hackers will always be able to subvert this, but better to deal with customers as good actors rather to assume they are bad actors).

I guess you need to wait for other game creators to lend their input before deciding the best course of action.

Thank you for taking the time to consider and respond anyway.

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