On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 03:02:42PM +1100, Charles Dang wrote: > Hi all, > > A couple weeks back iceiceice and I discussed the possibility of putting > 1.12 through Steam Greenlight to assess interest of our userbase for > distribution via Steam and the possibility of moving to Steam as a primary > release platform.
I have nothing in general against making Wesnoth available through Steam, but I'm strongly objecting against making it the primary release platform. However, I have some reservations against Steam since I still have a lot of unanswered questions. > Last night I asked Ivanovic about this possibility. He does not have > objections to the idea. Many users on the forums have been asking for > Wesnoth to be put on Steam as well. I believe 1.12 is a good enough (and > good-looking enough) starting point to give it a shot. We should at least wait until 1.12 is stable. How disruptive are the changes to add Steam access? IMO it is a new feature and we are in the feature freeze for quite a while. > A major plus would be the automatic update system. Currently every time a > new version comes out the user has to manually download and install it and > the uninstall the old version. What most often changes between releases is > the source code, meaning our players have to constantly redownload the > metadata all the time, when there's likely not much change to that at all, > especially in stable series. Distribution via Steam would mean much smaller > updates for releases, and would also serve double benefit of making sure > players always have the latest up-to-date version, which would save us from > bug reports on old versions. Redownloading, of course is a waste of bandwidth, but I'm not sure how bad that is nowadays. Also under Linux most distribution have solved getting the latest version easily. (Not only for Wesnoth, but for all software.) > There are also some Steam features we might conceivably want to make use of > in the future, such as allowing matchmaking with your Steam friends, etc. > Should be implement an in-game profile system? We might also consider > things like Achievements or Steam Cloud storage for user's preferences. > We'd also have to decide how to deal with the Steam Workshop. Should we > allow the Workshop as a staging ground for UMC authors? Should be keep our > current forum-based development model? I take it we will be keeping our own > add-on and MP servers, but the Workshop and Friends could be made to > complement them. I don't mind to add Steamspecific features, but the game should be possible to play without Steam. So storing user's preferences in the Steam Cloud sounds like bad idea. But, for example, MP ladders could be added there, _if_ the MP devs decide we want to allow ladders. (But that's another discussion.) > The very first step, however, is Greenlight. According to the Greenlight > FAQ: > > *You'll need a valid and non-limited Steam account (yes, that means you'll > > need to own a game on Steam). Then you'll need to fill out the submission > > form, including some information about you and your game. There's also a > > one-time $100 submission fee per Steam account. The submission will > > require:* > > > 5. The fee. I believe Ivanovic handles our finances, but I don't know > exactly how much we have. If someone who knows could reply to this, that'd > be great. I assume it's a one time investment of $ 100,= or do we need to invest more? > Assuming we get Greenlit, we have figure out setting up the app on > Steamworks and distribution via Steampipe. There's a large amount of > documentation available at https://partner.steamgames.com/ , but as with > Greenlight, you need a valid, non-limited Steam account to log in and view > it. T*here's also an NDA, so PLEASE restrict discussion of material within > to this ML, the moderators forum, email, or private messages on IRC*. Don't > use public channels, we don't want GabeN drones to come knocking :P > <https://partner.steamgames.com/> Where can I view the text of the NDA? Note that this mailing list is public, so it would not be a good place for discussions. I think there needs to be a dedicated place to discuss it where only developers who have signed the NDA have access. Also keep in mind, that when accepting new developers they need to be /offered/ to sign the NDA. Signing the NDA *SHALL NOT* be mandatory! How much will it hamper development if a developer doesn't want to sign the NDA and there are bugs in his/her code? How compatible are the NDA and the SDK licence with the GPL? > Then there's several practical technical questions: What happens if our Mac > dves leave us? Who's going to continue to provide Mac support? Since we're an open source project and are driven by volunteers I think it's hard to prepare against this problem. If the Mac dev leaves we have to hope a new one pops up or an existing dev who wants to volunteer to do the job. > What about Linux? Idem. > From the docs, it seems from the docs they recommend "Ubuntu 12.04 or > 12.10 LTS" (12.04? What about later?). No idea. Do they only support Ubuntu or also other Linux distributions? > What is involved for getting updated binaries out for multiple systems? No idea. But since you propose to move to Steam I hope you will do some research to answer that question. > Will our users still be able to access core resources for reference when > creating UMC? They /must/ be as said before Steam can be optional, and not mandatory. > Basically, there's a lot of work to be done and decisions to be made. I > don't know how it's going to work out, but all opinions welcome. I had a short look at https://partner.steamgames.com/ and the technical FAQ [1]. It basically only tells me I need an account :-( So that FAQ is rather useless. I want to know what changes we need to do to the Wesnoth codebase to be able to get the game on Steam. Before we proceed, I'd like to know which developers are willing to make the required changes for Steam and maintain it. [1] http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/FAQ.php#Technical -- Regards, Mark de Wever aka Mordante/SkeletonCrew _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list Wesnoth-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
