motorsep

There are a few games with their own login systems and by-pass of Steam's in-app purchase, but those games from top publishers that have special agreements. You can't expect to pop up on Steam and do the same as a few mighty can do. Again, do you know how to store content as-is on Steam's servers? I don't. And I suspect it's not possible. The only way I know of is to make use of Steam Workshop feature and package each mission as DLC / mod. Which again, eliminates the downloader. Or you can package all missions and release TDM as normal game that doesn't require any extra external downloads. This way any new missions released will be downloaded using downloader, and since it's not going to be whole a lot of missions, no one will overload your servers. Eventually you can push new missions as an update. Also, I would be surprised if you can't have player browse and read up on already downloaded (the ones that should be bundles with TDM release) missions before playing them.

If Steamworkshop was that bad, Valve would have changed it already. But apparently it brought $50M to mod makers already, so... You can't be naive and say "we'll use Steam as free platform to gain more users and do whatever we want". There is gotta be a trade off. There are certain things Valve won't let you do, and that's why I suggest reading more about Steamworks (it's a general documentation for Steam, not just Steamworks). There are certain things on Steam people already used to. No need to make negative image just because you unwilling make certain adjustments. Anyhow, if TDM devs can make a list of questions / concerns, I'll ask Valve if it's all ok

Well, that's something you want to read on Steamworks. The documentation of how Steam works is free and extensive.

People expect downloading and playing right away, not downloading, then downloading again and only then playing. It doesn't make sense to provide game without default content.

It sounds messy. Sure you can leave it there and have people download mission from some servers, but why?! It will be slower, much slower than downloading from Steam. What is the reason now to bundle the game with all missions? (or some missions) You gotta understand that TDM and certain of its ways (downloading missions on demand) are obscure. It's not user friendly way. Download on Steam > launch the game > download mission > wait forever for map to load > play. Then if user wants to play another mission, he needs to download it yet again! Sorry, but it's nonsense. Can someone logically explain why do you have mission downloader and why should it be in Steam version?

That is the problem right there. Steam doesn't need any extra downloaders. I bet the reason downloader was implemented is to allow storage of all those missions and data on different mirrors. Steam takes care of all of that. If downloader was meant to save HDD space by selectively getting / deleting missions, we are actually in 2015, and HDD space is no issue.

Steam doesn't really do any advertising per se. A new game gets on the front page and quickly disappears from it due to sheer amount of games released nowadays. So the only way for a free game to get noticed is to get people to review it, with thumb up preferably and have various game press outlets to write about it. I would certainly release TDM with only a handful of good maps/missions and then shortly after release the best ones as an update. And then release the rest as a series of updates. But that's just my opinion. Also don't release when anything else big gets released on Steam.

Post #244 on page 10

I offered to publish The Dark Mod through my account. Get it on Steam, direct. No Greenlight and no hassles associated with it. Twice. And I still see "when TDM gets Greenlit" (unless it's already on Greenlight, in which case I would be able to publish it). So that makes me think TDM team either not interested or there is no agreement whether to go on Steam or not any time soon.

Greenlight, really? You guys are funny, in a negative way unfortunately I've never seen anyone being offered a good thing, ignoring it as if it was never been offered and keep pressing "we will go the hard way".

That's not necessarily true. The point of Steam isn't just centralized and worry-free update system. It's the whole ecosystem of Steam. Trading cards is one of the non-invasive and critical features that brings a lot of people to your game. Announcements is another. Video streaming. Not to mention PC gaming for the most part happens on Steam.

So I take it as going Greenlight beats getting on Steam right away

I don't believe you have to put anything Steam related into the code. I would recommend injecting DRM into .exe just so Steam version is attached to Steam and at least you could track how many people playing/played the game in a certain timeframe, but I don't think it's a requirement. It would be nice to add closed source launcher with Steamworks functionality, because being on Steam essentially entails participating in the Steam's ecosystem, with trading cards, etc. (trading cards don't require any code btw).

Aye, cool. So do you want to be on Steam or not really ?

Beth doesn't have a trademark on "Elder Scrolls". They have it as "Elder Scrolls". "Elder Scrolls" != "Scrolls". It was one of those opportunities to shake up a money sack (Notch), and they took it (I wonder if they got any money out of it). You can trademark "The Dark Mod", but you can't trademark "Dark" or "Mod" or "The"

What happened in 2010 ?

Have you forgotten lawsuit Bethesda vs Notch ? They got sued just because the game was about dungeons and used "scrolls" in the title. Anyhow, I recall TDM team consulted with lawyers a few years ago (or so said the article about some law firm that specializes in FOSS cases). I wonder about it. If TDM was cleared by the lawyers, I could inquire Valve about getting AppID and publishing it on Steam. Some one from TDM team would need to be added to my account to push updates. Unless TDM team isn't interested.

Is it even legal to put The Dark Mod on Steam without whoever owns rights for Thief coming after the person/company who put The Dark Mod on Steam ? There is nothing hard about putting it up on Steam and updating it. No need in Greenlight either if you know someone with publisher's account (and if totally free games are allowed to be put up there anyway)

Afaik engine doesn't support MD3 (I tested it, and MD3 doesn't load correctly) - why use it in the editor? Not to mention there aren't any current tools to properly and in straight forward manner author MD3 models.

Lol, develop for consoles and don't deal with drivers? Or use extensions to make it run fast on Nvidia? Neither DP engine nor Storm Engine 2 use anything special for Nvidia, but run fast. No need to blame vendor, if shaders are poorly written or use obsolete instructions/functions. Different story when shader are fine and written per standards, but the game runs horribly slow on GPU from a vendor who swears by purity of their OpenGL specs on driver. So, running fine on Nvidia, Intel and even on AMD R9, but not on anything else from AMD - that means OpenGL driver sucks. Note that it seems like D3D renderers have no issues with AMD. Only OpenGL ones.

No, Nvidia, Intel and AMD R9 (somehow R9 line runs the game as fast as expected, unlike older models). Nvidia btw will be looking into optimizing driver a bit more, but I am sure since Doom 3 BFG and all id Tech 5 based games run just fine on Nvidia, our game will too (since render is from RAGE). It already runs fine on all decent Nvidia models. But from any perspective, better release game that plays on Nvidia + Intel, rather than not release due to issues with AMD. I am pondering the idea of raising funds and hiring someone to re-write renderer for DX11 / 12. This way Linux people can (hopefully) play with OpenGL, and 98% of the rest of us can forget about all these driver issues and enjoy performance on Windows with DX11/12.

So, AMD got in touch with me. Supposedly assigned an engineer to look into the issues. And then reassigned him to more important project, saying basically "unfortunately you are out of luck". This is plain clear show case of what goes on in AMD - short on staff, priority is in consoles and AAA projects. The only option for us in particular is buying AMD GPU, fixing crashes, and officially supporting only R9 line.

The core issue that AMD blindly adheres to OpenGL specs, disregarding the fact that doing things per specs doesn't always yields optimal performance. Nvidia understands it, and thus accommodates for non-compliant solutions for games. AMD refuses to do so, and thus we have crappy performance or crashes in OpenGL. Sometimes I feel that it would be better having DX11/12 render in addition to OGL, specifically to avoid drama on Windows with AMD and Intel (Intel at least has decent OGL drivers on Windows).

I am 99.99% certain AMD doesn't care for older hardware, PC and OpenGL. I tried my best getting in touch with them, but they don't give a sh#t. Hell, iD Software / Bethesda could not convince them to fix the drivers. Needless to say small obscure developers have less power of persuasion than AAA companies.

That's interesting. It would be a good idea to check the engine and see what r_primitives does in W:ET (gotta be the same engine as RTCW).