HTML5 game embeds allow you to deploy your browser based game directly to a page on itch.io. Visitors can start playing immediately without having to navigate anywhere. Although this is convenient, some game engines (ahem Unity) can cause your browser to lag when loading a game. This can be quite troublesome if you've just opened a dozen tabs while browsing around. Starting now you can enable "Click to run" on your account for all HTML5 embeds.
In place of the game frame you'll see a Run button, just click it to launch the game.
In order to enable it, head to your account settings and select "Require a click to run HTML5 game embeds."
We were also considering adding the ability for some developers to force their projects to be "click to run." If you think this would be something useful for you leave a comment.
Enjoy
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yeah but that defeats the purpose of them paying for it, doesn't it?
Any developers at itch.io care to share a snippet of the basic idea of how you implemented this to work around the new Chrome s**tstorm? Thx.
The way we implemented it might not work for you, but since we load all games in an iframe, we have the "Play" button insert the HTML markup for the iframe into the page so it loads then, instead of having it in the page already when it first loads.
Hello!
I have set 'click to play' in my options, but my game embed (found here: igame.audio/test) still loads straight away...any thoughts?
"Click to play" only applies to games that show up on itch.io game pages, it doesn't effect our embed code placed on other websites.
I have an issue with my html5 game in that it loads but doesn't always become interactive. Sometimes it works, and other times it just sits on the menu screen. It works every time locally and elsewhere. I assume it's some sort of focus thing, so I wonder if the click to run embed would help address this as well. So if i could enable it on my game that would be good.
Is there a way to style the click to enable functionality? If I could add a background image then it would add a bit more personality to the experience.
I think the player is always going to have to click on the iframe to give it focus. With "click to run" there isn't an iframe on the page yet so it doesn't have focus. I could add a JavaScript callback to transfer focus to the frame after clicking the button though.
Regarding background images, I think it's a great idea and I considered it when implementing the feature. Since I wasn't sure how many people would be enabling this option I held off adding it. If we add a way for developers to force "click to run" then I think it definitely makes sense to allow for uploading a background image.
I think it'd be cool if we could enable force projects to be "click to run." Especially if you know the file is big or intensive to run.