I think the confusion for me, and possibly others is as follows. In terms of Blueshift or possibly Opposing Forces were expansions (I think, its been a while). You needed HL1 to install and play, however it was sold "stand alone" (most probably I'm very wrong so will try another approach now ;).
You need to OWN HL2 to play CS:S so one would assume it's a standard free included expansion, say for example team deathmatch could be for quake3. I know its not in terms of engine design etc, but its the relationship developed since you need to buy one game to get the other. Or possibly its saying you buy HL2 and some people will get 3 or more games, CS:S HL2DM, HL2 single player (for the price of one, essentially). Yet some people may also own DOD:S as they purchased online and got the silver service. There is certainly a lot of confusion when compared to the rest of the industry. CoD (although a quake3 engine game) is its own game and each expansion requires the last installed but its clearly an expansion purchased separately, same with MoH. So after this mini brain dump and thank you Alfred for your quick reply, I shall now assume the following: - I will list CS:S HL2:DM and HL2:Mods (community made mods) as their own game on : http://www.serverspy.net/site/stats/ - My GameLauncher will be configured in the same manor: CS:S HL2:Community Mods HL2: DM DoD: Source .. Will have their own section for launching (browing for servers and searching for players) I may come back to this thread as I'm sure I may get reconfused as per master server query for community mods filter, ie, show me all non official mods. Also, what's the offical term for HL2 valve games that were free mods, Mods, Expansions or Stand Alone Games that Require the Base Game? :) P. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jeffrey "botman" Broome Sent: 29 December 2004 17:12 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [hlds_apps] Steam Games,, HL2 Mods or Their own entity? HoundDawg wrote: > 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 _______________________________________________ hlds_apps mailing list [email protected] http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_apps _______________________________________________ hlds_apps mailing list [email protected] http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_apps
