1. Uploading Your Game To Itch

It can be quite intimidating to release on itch.io, so I’ll run through the process here.

Even though this section is long, the process is actually quite straightforward.

What you will need.

  • An Itch Account.

  • Your game compiled to HTML in Adventuron (select Menu / Compile in Adventuron).

  • A high resolution image (or upscaled image) to represent the game in the itch directory (a thumbnail). This will usually be the "loading" screen of the game (the image that appears at the start of the game).

Step 0

(After going to https://itch.io and creating a new account)

Go to the top right of the itch website (whilst logged in, and select "Upload New Project").

start

Step 1

Enter Your Game Name

Enter the name of your game, spaces and a mixture of upper and lower case are acceptable.

Step 2

Enter your game URL

This should all be in lower case, and seperate words by hyphens '-' character.

Step 3

Enter a short synopsis of the game.

Step 4

Select classification of "Game".

Step 5

Select "HTML" as the kind of project.

Step 6

Select the release status
"Released" if you are ready to release, other options are available too if the project is not fully ready. If you make the wrong choice here, it’s easy to change this later.

step 00

Step 7

Select a cover Image.

Click the "Upload Cover Image" button to bring up a file requester where you can select the cover image (more steps to follow).

Step 7A

Navigate to the image file containing the cover image.

Step 7B

Click Open To Upload The Cover Photo

step 07

Step 8

Select "No Payments".

Step 9

Click "Upload files"

step 08

Step 9A

Navigate to the html file containing the compiled Adventuron game.

Step 9B

Click Open To Upload The Cover Photo

step 09

Step 9C

Wait for the Adventuron game to upload to the Itch server

step 09c

Step 9D

Select "This file will be played in the browser"

Step 9E

Select "Click to launch in fullscreen"

Step 9F

Check the "Mobile Friendly" checkbox.

Step 9G

Select "Portrait" as the mobile orientation (Adventuron is not optimized for landscape mode on smartphones).

step 9d

Step 10

Type in description of the game, this can be as descriptive or as brief as you like.

Step 11

Select "Interactive Fiction" as the genre (itch does not have a TEXT ADVENTURE category).

Step 12

Select "Portrait" as the mobile orientation (Adventuron is not optimized for landscape mode on smartphones).

step 10

Step 13

Choose if you want comments enabled on your entry (default is comments are enabled).

Step 14

Select if you want the game to be public or not, certainly don’t do this at first. If you want playtester to try, it you can select "restricted" mode.

Step 15

Save and view the page (do this a few times before making the game public to make sure the page is set up correctly).

step 13

Step 16

Submitting the game to the jam comes is a final step - as I haven’t done this myself yet, I will document this later.
Note
 Adventuron is currently for non-commercial use only.

2. WARNING - compatibility_version

Adventuron’s save slot mechanism (and auto save mechanism) save the game state corresponding to the game source code file that created the game.

For normal logic updates (changing command order, game text, if statements), you do not need to do anything when updating the game on Itch. Uploading a new html (or zip) file will automatically update the file (the next time the player revisits the page), and the players current save state will be compatible.

If however, you decide to fully update the game, and add in more objects, or more variables (such that the default value would not be appropriate for a running game), then the players existing saved games or autosave may be incompatible with the assumptions made by the game logic.

In these cases (and ONLY in these cases), you should update the 'compatibility_version' field in the game_settings {} block.

The compatibility version contains a value of '1' by default, so any value above that will force the game to understand (when loading from a save state), that the save is now incompatible, and instead to restart the game.

This is obviously hugely troublesome for a player invested in your game, so use of this flag should be for emergencies only - or for the beta testing stage.

game_information {
   game_name                    = YOUR GAME NAME
   game_version                 = 0.5.0
   game_shortname               = SHORT GAME NAME
   written_by                   = YOUR NAME
   uuid                         = UNIQUE UUID
   year_of_release              = 2019
   // DANGER - INCREMENTING THIS VALUE POST RELEASE WILL DELETE THE AUTOSAVE / SAVE GAMES.
   compatibility_version        = 2
   copyright_message            = YOUR COPYRIGHT MESSAGE
   short_synopsis               = ONE SENTENCE DESCRIPTION OF GAME.
}

3. End of Tutorial

Click here to return to the Adventuron User Guide.