Ok, so the -applaunch launches the specific game. But, do you not need HL2
in order to play CS:S or even DoD:S when available? Also, HL2 offers a base
set of commands and features as a game engine, then MODs add on top of that.
Are you telling us that we have to still maintain a list on our side of
features available on what games offered by Steam, than having steam tell
us?
CS:S is a separate game (indepentdant of HL2) you don't need one to run the other. Same with DoD:S when it gets released (you don't need HL2 or CS:S to run DoD).
It's much like BlueShift was with HL1. Blue Shift was NOT a MOD. Blue Shift was it's own stand-alone game that had a slightly different game engine. It was based off the Half-Life engine, but it wasn't a HL1 MOD.
Likewise, Bloodlines is a Source engine based game, but it is stand-alone. Bloodlines is not distributed via Steam (since it's not a Valve product).
Steam is a distribution system. Period. That's all Steam does is distrubute files to clients. There isn't a Steam query protocol that's accessible by end users or MOD authors (as far as I'm aware). I think you are thinking of the Source query protocol that allows applications to query Source servers for information about the games there is running. There isn't anything like this for Steam that determines which applications Steam is supporting (other than internal proprietary stuff that Steam does all the time anyway).
I should probably review the steam query...
Do you mean "Source query"?
What's also interesting, is that you're re-defining the term "MOD" with the implementation in Steam it seams. In HL1, everything created with the HL SDK was considered a "MOD" to HL. This included CS and DoD. Now, you're saying that MOD teams working with the HL2 SDK are creating "games" not so much "mods". Does this mean, that a MOD team could release their MOD on steam and also charge money for it? How is this controlled? Do these 3rd party MODs fall under a different category than *:S you're releasing?
MOD is a change that someone has made to a base stand-alone game. You can MOD HL2, you can MOD CS:S (well, sorta). You can MOD DoD:S (once it comes out).
With HL1, CS and DoD started out as MODs. They eventually became stand-alone games (and at the same time also remained installable MODs to HL). If you bought the retail version of CS (stand-alone) you didn't need to have HL1 installed on your machine.
There are no MODs for Steam, since Steam is only a distrubtion system and not a game. There are MODs for stand-alone games that are distributed via Steam. As far as I know, Valve doesn't currently support MODs (like Frontline-Force, Action Half-Life, Firearms, etc.) being distributed via Steam, although it has been mentioned in that past that Valve may provide bandwidth to make some MODs supported by Steam, but these still aren't "Steam MODs", they are MODs to stand-alone products that Steam will automatically update for you.
-- Jeffrey "botman" Broome
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