WebGL build doesn't load in browser

I'm creating a fresh URP project using Unity 2020.1.1f1. Then I build a WebGL project and zip the output files so that .zip contains index.html and TemplateData and the Build folders. I have tried uploading that zip to itch.io, and gamejolt.com but it doesn't work in either. It simply gets stuck right at the beginning like this:

I have tried building with following settings with no luck:

• Compression Enabled
• Compression Disabled
• Compression Enabled + Decompression Fallback
• Development Build

but none of those settings seem to make any difference. Project itself works, because if I use Build & Run and let Unity create fileserver to serve the game it works just fine. So it has to be something related to building the WebGL project. There are also no errors in the browser console. Same issue happens in all mainstream browsers.

 

Did you figure it out? Running into similar issues with itch.io and unity 2020.1.3f1

 

Ran into it again this ludum dare. Iirc there were no errors in the console.

I eventually got it to work, by using some permutation of suboptimal compression settings, can check tomorrow.

Should be quite easy to reproduce though... I see a lot of ludum dare submissions stuck loading.

Also, for me it happens in chrome, but not in ff, so maybe my issue is different than ops.

 

These are the settings that finally worked for me.

 

Here it is https://jhelsing.itch.io/petridish

And this was the first one: https://jhelsing.itch.io/vincent

Note that they don't exhibit the bug, though, as I disabled compression completely to make them playable for Chrome users.

Also, like OP, it worked fine for me on the server that unity spun up, but not when deployed on Itch.

 

Thanks for looking into it.

I was curious why it failed originally, though, so I reproduced the issue today by creating a new clean 2D project in 2020.1.8f, building and pushing with default settings: brotli compression and no compression fallback.



It looks like itch.io does not set "Content-Encoding: br", though, and since there is no compression fallback, it fails. I guess that particular issue should be reported as a bug to itch.io, then?

Anyways, I also tried enabling decompression fallback. This time however, I see no errors in the console, just a warning that the fallback is being used, but then it's stuck with no errors:



This, to me, looks like a bug in the unity compression fallback, though I'm not super-familiar with all the http response headers. WebGL.framework.js.unityweb has content-type: application/octet-stream for instance, which I don't really know whether is wrong or not... maybe it should say application/javascript?

Anyways, you can try both projects if you want, password is "bug"

- https://jhelsing.itch.io/compression-bug
- https://jhelsing.itch.io/compression-bug-fallback

I will delete them in a couple of weeks so they don't clutter my dashboard, though.

 

That's what it should show! It's just a fresh and clean unity 2d project, so blue means it works.

What browser were you using? I tried the following browsers on the decompression fallback version:

- Chrome 85 (on several machines): Hangs with empty loading bar, no errors. Tried in incognito as well.
- Firefox 80: works
- Edge: works
- Chrome Android: Hangs
- Firefox Android: Works

 

Interesting... For me it downloads WebGL.wasm.unityweb almost instantly, and then it just hangs forever (or at least for 20 minutes)



I did some further testing, and found some really weird connections:

- It only happens in Chrome and Chromium, not in Firefox, Edge, Epiphany
- It happens in Chrome/Chromium on all my devices (2x Windows 10, Linux, Android)
- Was an issue in Chromium 81 as well
- I tried disabling wi-fi on my phone to see if that helped, but it didn't
- The issue happens in both regular mode and incognito
- BUT! If I log out of chrome it disappears, so it's somehow tied to my user, or perhaps just being logged in (I only have one user) and the weird thing is that being logged in seems to affect incognito mode as well.
- I tried disabling all browser extensions, but it still didn't work

So yeah, it seems somehow tied to my Chrome user.

@jukka_j were you logged in when testing on Chrome?

Would be interesting if @BuoyantOtter could do some similar testing.

As for debugging the issue itself. Here's a screenshot of the profiler.



So at least it looks like it gets done decompressing then some stuff seems to be happening, and then sporadic "Task"s every other second (it just continues like that to the right). Sometimes I see GC and some event handling. Not really sure how to interpret that, though.

 

It says "Finish" after 1.12 s, then nothing else happens.

I got someone else to try it, and he had almost the same issues as I have:

- It's stuck in normal mode
- It's stuck in incognito mode
- It works in guest mode (click your user in the top right and then guest)

However, for him it started working in normal mode after he had visited the page in guest mode... This does not work for me.

 

Yeah, as far as I can tell, though it works with the node server unity spins up... Not sure how it serves its files encoding-wise

 

Extremely helpful thread, thank you!

@bobbaluba I think you forgot to delete it because it's still there. Just wanted to let you know in case you forgot

 

Similar problem here - except I can't even play on my computer. Web Player just starts to load and doesn't finish.

 

Hello, I'm running on a similar problem, I've uploaded my game to Game Jolt and it's not playing, but it's available on Unity Play and working pretty fine: SkyKart - Unity Play what am I doing wrong?

 

@BeorGames
When I turn off hardware acceleration in Chrome, it works for some reason.

 

Hi! On Unity Play it's working 100%, the problem here is the build on Game Jolt, it's not working over there.

 

The site doesn't support Brotli.
Try compiling and uploading it uncompressed.

 

Hello! It's been a while...

I can't upload an uncompressed file:

 

It doesn't matter whether you upload it in a zip or not. What matters is what you select in the unity player settings, which affects how the individual files in your project are compressed.



As far as I know, the zip itch wants you to upload is just used as a way of transporting everything at once. It will be unzipped in the other end before it's served.

Also, even though you don't select compression format in publishing settings, itch will still compress your file with gzip before serving it, but iirc this type of compression doesn't cause issues.

 

Hello, actually my game has already been published using Gzip from as the compression format, I didn't understand if this is required or if I should leave it Disabled as in your screenshot.
Also, I'm not trying to publish on Itch, I'm trying to publish on Game Jolt.

Just a quick update, I managed to publish it using a Developer Build, but the Release Build don't load...

 

I am getting:

"11.loader.js:1 Unable to parse Build/11.framework.js.gz! This can happen if build compression was enabled but web server hosting the content was misconfigured to not serve the file with HTTP Response Header "Content-Encoding: gzip" present. Check browser Console and Devtools Network tab to debug."

When trying to upload a project to GitHub Pages. It works on itch.io which is strange.

 

So ?
is unity able to output a webgl-functionnal app ?

 

Greetings All,

I have just started playing around with Unity and export it to WebGL. The incomplete game is at https://sodeve.net/unity/index.html

It failed to load, I documented the debugging process at https://sodeve.net/2021/10/hosting-unity-webgl-game-using-nginx/

Any pointers, please? I'm using Unity 2020.3.20f1

Thank You.

-Hardono

 

Strange....
1st of all, nothing works when launching the index.html in local folder. It has to be on a server...

2nd, when using gzip, the .gz files contain another .GZ that is broken....

This is quite weird....

 

browser console shows these errors, so can search about those

 

But I can build and run to Windows though... weird right?

 

Thanks everyone. After re-checking everything again, the problem was caused by build.data.br not having the correct content-encoding

 

Changing the compression in Edit -> Project Settings -> Player -> Publishing Settings to Disabled got it to work.
Thank you bobbaluba!

 

I am in the same problem.

 

It's years later but I just wanted to shout out that the compression format = disabled worked for me. I'm hosting the files in s3 and embedding in weebly

 

I think compression needs to be disabled in the Player->Publishing Settings.

 

This is also the case for me. My 2D game won't load in the local browser, but my 3D game will. Not sure what's going on.

 

I got mine working by simply turning on Decompression Fallback. That is all I did, the rest are default settings (untouched)

 

Confirming that I just had the same result with this approach. I was getting a dark gray screen when I uploaded my initial HTML build to itch.io. Toggling on Decompression Fallback solved the problem.

 

I was having trouble, but this thread fix it thx's

 

Hilarious that the default setup for a unity 2021 LTS after swapping to the webGL target is unable to run because of this problem. With the build-in build-and-run option.

 

For anyone having similar problems with WebGL, I assure you that long-term you're better off running an active web server (e.g. express.js) that serves that content. This costs you, ofc, depends on what you're after.
If you have a small project, no addressables, limited connectivity, you could get away with it.
You have incredible control over caching, headers, compression etc. Took me like 2-3 weeks to fully master front-end stuff, since I'm not a web dev myself, but it really paid off

 

Thank you it helps me alottttt

 

Thx!!

 

Follow these simple steps to run unity webgl game locally.

1. Install python server in your local machine.
2. Build your project from unity.
3. Navigate to your build folder
4. open cmd in current directory.
5. Run command for windows user : > python -m http.server and > python3 -m http.server on Mac.
6. It shows the port number.
7. Open any browser in your system and type localhost: portNumber in my case it is localhost:8000 hit enter your game will run locally.

 

This is a great tip. Thanks!

 

I can attest to this, been using it for years for literally everything as a fallback when I wanted to start a web server, either a website-like, or simply transferring files, usually involving one windows device (on unix you'd use scp or the like)