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The message might be cryptic if you have no ASMI instance in your design. The basic altserial_flash_loader has e.g. no access granted signal. But you didn't tell about the SFL ip used in your design.
You'll be always able to program the serial flash by loading the default Altera SFL image for your device instaed of your design.
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I created the JIC file using Quartus, and was trying to load the file using the Altera image through the programmer, not my file.
Because of the problems, I was considering adding the ASMI to my design and see if it worked.