I have an HTML game that's around 50MB. It takes a while to upload the whole zip files when updating the game so I installed butler.
However I didn't really understand how does it work for HTML games. Is butler only good for downloadable games ?
Actually yes :)
On this page
https://itch.io/docs/butler/pushing.html
Just under "Channel names" headline, another headline "HTML / Playable in browser Games" should do the trick. Also adding this headline to the contents column on the left, under "Pushing builds" could make it even more visible.
So, you always have to specify a channel when pushing with butler, like so:
butler push folder user/game:channel
If your game was previously uploaded via the website, you'll just need to upload it once with butler with a channel name of your choice (that contains 'html5'), delete the old one, and mark the new one as "This file will be played in the browser", and you're all good to go!
The next time you want to upload an upgrade, use the same channel name you just created, and it will update the embed, and distribute patches to itch.io app users. Hope that clarifies things!
As Amos showed above:
butler push folder user/game:channel
A channel is just a name for you to use to distinguish between different files offered on a game. So for example, I always upload a ZIP file for Windows, for Mac OS, and for Linux. So I use channels named "windows", "macos", and "linux" to keep track of which one is which.
Gotcha, but I'm still confused. Where do these channel names come from? The docs say "Tagging a channel as 'HTML5 / Playable in browser' needs to be done from the itch.io Edit game page, once the first build is published", but in the edit game page there's nothing like "channels".
Is there any "butler for dummies" tutorial out there? I really have a lot of questions and I can't find any well-explained resource. :(
You make up whatever names you want when using butler. Once you have pushed the first build with butler, they will show up on the edit page for a game.
Ask away, and I will answer what I can. I can also look into getting Amos / Leafo to look into changing the wording of the docs to be a little easier to understand if I can think of a better way to word it.
Awesome, thanks a lot. I gave it a try and finally got it to work. It's way faster than uploading a zip from the edit page, so that's a good thing.
I figured out the answer to some of my questions, which I write here below for what is worth for any beginner:
The image is necessary in the docs because this is something you never see before using butler, so it's hard to understand.
Even in my usage of butler, I've actually never seen an image like that while editing a game. o.O Perhaps because I haven't done web uploads with it? To be honest I find your confusion with the channel names mystifying because it was obvious to me, but if one person has difficulty with it, there's likely to be more, so I agree the docs should be modified.
As for the error you encountered, you really should point that out to the Itch.io team because that's probably something they need to look into. Glad it's fixed for you now though. ^^