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Steam: Greenlight


PPoe

Greenlight  

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  1. 1. when we shall start presenting TDM on Steam Greenlight?

    • Imediately, classified as the "concept". We will change that on "playable" after going standalone. We need to take advantage of the attention drawn to the greenlight.
    • After going standalone. We dont want to present something that cant be playable at the moment (via Steam).
    • Never. The competition is just too strong.
    • Imediately, classified as the "playable" (DOOM 3 Steam version required). We need to take advantage of the attention drawn to the greenlight.


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If the community is serious about growing TDM (this isn't a foregone conclusion by any means - I think the goals need to be clearly established first if they haven't been already) then Steam should be the be all and end all of distribution. Rightly or wrongly, if it isn't on Steam, most PC gamers won't know that it even exists or will think that it isn't good enough to pass Greenlight.

 

Steam has just grown to such a scale where it's basically a necessity to reach the masses.

 

11520350-digital-marketshares-2011.jpg

 

This is great news for TDM because all the hard work has already been done - the game is good and a couple of years ago it wasn't possible to get decent distribution without going through a large publisher which was next to impossible unless you had some serious weight behind you.

 

I don't know much about it but to get on Steam there's two paths as far as I know: Greenlight or by submitting directly where they make their own internal assessment.

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Making FMs is great but it's not for everyone. We'd be quite happy if the people wanting to donate money spent five minutes talking up TDM on the net instead. Find a gaming forum and post about how much you enjoyed TDM. Find a Youtube video and comment on it. Find a mission thread here and tell the author of your favourite mission how much you enjoyed it. All of those are better than money for a community-driven project like this.

Well you can see the result of my work here. I will find time and post a topic on top 5 russian forums.

Now i really can not do any programming i even dont know basics so maybe next year i will gain some skills and will try it in making FM for TDM. But i i think that animation is main problem now. Indicaion of several stances of NPCs like searching or hearing close/distant sound is needed.

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If the community is serious about growing TDM (this isn't a foregone conclusion by any means - I think the goals need to be clearly established first if they haven't been already) then Steam should be the be all and end all of distribution. Rightly or wrongly, if it isn't on Steam, most PC gamers won't know that it even exists or will think that it isn't good enough to pass Greenlight.

 

Steam has just grown to such a scale where it's basically a necessity to reach the masses.

 

11520350-digital-marketshares-2011.jpg

 

This is great news for TDM because all the hard work has already been done - the game is good and a couple of years ago it wasn't possible to get decent distribution without going through a large publisher which was next to impossible unless you had some serious weight behind you.

 

I don't know much about it but to get on Steam there's two paths as far as I know: Greenlight or by submitting directly where they make their own internal assessment.

 

This post pretty much shows how important getting this game on steam would be. If it's released on steam then we would get a humongous PR/Playerbase boost, guys.

Edited by MacD11
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I have read 0 posts in this thread... ok like half of the last one above this.

 

I just think there are some major quality bits to be fixed, and portability issues to be fixed before something like this is even through of. It would be great for abusing their bandwidth tho. But how long until 'we need achievements', 'why cant I save onto steams savegames storage?' etc etc.

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I have read 0 posts in this thread... ok like half of the last one above this.

 

I just think there are some major quality bits to be fixed, and portability issues to be fixed before something like this is even through of. It would be great for abusing their bandwidth tho. But how long until 'we need achievements', 'why cant I save onto steams savegames storage?' etc etc.

 

Your right, if there are some major issues to be fixed it might be a pretty good idea to fix those before doing a steam release.

 

As for stuff like achievements and cloud savegame storage, those arent required for steam games so i dont think we would have to worry about them until we wanted to add them and had the manpower to do so, its not really much to worry about.

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As for stuff like achievements and cloud savegame storage, those arent required for steam games so i dont think we would have to worry about them until we wanted to add them and had the manpower to do so, its not really much to worry about.

What I mean is expectations, it sure as hell would give rise to things like that. Not to mention 'BUT MY STEAMBOX CONTROLLER!'.

 

Edit:

And today the guys over fron Xonotic covered this topic. The steamworks bit is a pretty big point.

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What I mean is expectations, it sure as hell would give rise to things like that. Not to mention 'BUT MY STEAMBOX CONTROLLER!'.

 

Edit:

And today the guys over fron Xonotic covered this topic. The steamworks bit is a pretty big point.

 

It would give rise to those questions, but perhaps we could just tell them to wait or to try and contribute something to work towards that. That or we could wait until we have enough coding manpower to cover the useful/"important" steamworks features. Really this shouldnt mean that we shouldnt or cant move to steam at all.

 

EDIT:

 

Really, I think we should stop trying to find ways to say that a steam version with steamworks for this game is impossible and instead find ways that we could make a steam version of the game possible, start working towards them by fixing glitches/bugs and adding more features, and then eventually when we have the people, time, and resources to get it done, we get it done.

Edited by MacD11
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What I mean is expectations, it sure as hell would give rise to things like that. Not to mention 'BUT MY STEAMBOX CONTROLLER!'.

 

Edit:

And today the guys over fron Xonotic covered this topic. The steamworks bit is a pretty big point.

Seems reasonable enough. I heard someone say there was still a bit of work to be done, so having to worry about extranous Steam BS on top seems unwise at this point.

 

As for the Xonotic thing, it sounded like the biggest problem with Steamworks was integration of their exisiting scoreboard tracker. I didn't know TDM had such a thing.

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As for the Xonotic thing, it sounded like the biggest problem with Steamworks was integration of their exisiting scoreboard tracker. I didn't know TDM had such a thing.

Your journey to The City will be long, but when you are there -- perhaps if you ask the Wizard nicely enough -- you may find a brain.

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Really, I think we should stop trying to find ways to say that a steam version with steamworks for this game is impossible and instead find ways that we could make a steam version of the game possible, start working towards them by fixing glitches/bugs and adding more features, and then eventually when we have the people, time, and resources to get it done, we get it done.

 

I agree. Abusing their bandwidth and getting some FM makers to approve their missions being bundled with the game would be a good start.

 

Linking into Steam Cloud, Achievements and Steam Workshop should be a simple case of linking into the relevant DLLs from the SDK and making use of the functionality. Again, something only if so inclined. I do feel that Workshop would be a must to easily add more FMs.

 

I reiterate. I'm more than happy to chip in $10 towards the cost of getting onto Greenlight.

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I agree. Abusing their bandwidth and getting some FM makers to approve their missions being bundled with the game would be a good start.

From the sounds of it, this requires use of the closed steam library stuff. Then again I got bored after about 3 pages of legalese.

I guess you could stub it all, but then we're also tying ourselves to a duplicate system (which is also pretty much out of our control as to how its managed). Double the work to maintain.

 

Remember: Steam doesn't run everywhere.

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There's always the possibility of having steam and non-steam builds using #ifdef to isolate steam-based code? My C++ is pretty weak but I've used similar in C# to allow for debugging and release code to be compiled differently

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There's always the possibility of having steam and non-steam builds using #ifdef to isolate steam-based code? My C++ is pretty weak but I've used similar in C# to allow for debugging and release code to be compiled differently

Sure, point being that you still require duplicate systems for when Steam isn't there. Steam would become more of a platform dependence than any other part of the TDM codebase, and on top of that - duplication.

Having a single mission downloaded is a lot easier than having two etc (and that wouldn't really be possible to host via Steam).

 

Once again, I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but it's certainly one which creates a lot of expectations, which would mean a lot of let-downs. Managing expectations is important.

 

Edit:

I think realistically it'd be nice to just work towards fixing bugs and making the engine and deployment way more robust. Ignoring the whole mission hosting and all that, we could just use it for the initial download and do nothing extra towards Steam. However -- there's a lot of work to do before then.

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how much of ID software code is still in the stand alone because if there's any then that will block it from being on greenlight. unless you can get a license from ID software and who ever own them. Even thou the code went open source ID software put conditions on the code for it to be used in a certain ways. And am not sure if the conditions would actually block it from being on greenlight anyway.

Edited by stumpy
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how much of ID software code is still in the stand alone because if there's any then that will block it from being on greenlight. unless you can get a license from ID software and who ever own them. Even thou the code went open source ID software put conditions on the code for it to be used in a certain ways. And am not sure if the conditions would actually block it from being on greenlight anyway.

 

The majority of the idsoftware code base would be there, minus a few bits that were stripped out since no longer use them. TDM either altered or added to the existing code base. It's still a variant of the idtech 4 engine. I couldn't tell you how much it makes up, maybe 3/4's?

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Would Steam code have to be integrated to have functions like the Steam in-game overlay? Or does it work wihout it? It's a very handy feature.

 

I have gotten the steam game overlay to work on non-steam games without any coding work, i just simply add it to my library of games very easily and then launch it on steam.

 

So far I have tried it with alot of the games i have that don't use steam and it works just fine usually, unless it also uses another program to launch like Origin or something like that, and even then it likely works just fine anyhow. I really doubt that the in-game overlay would require any coding work.

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I read some and skimmed some of the posts here, so perhaps what I'm saying doesn't contribute much. Plus I'm new here and have hardly touched TDM yet (the Thief series is some of my favorite games, though, so I'm delighted to have finally discovered TDM).

 

There are some games on Steam with no DRM whatsoever. At least on Linux. Crusader Kings 2, for example, published by Paradox. You can copy the directory and run it on another machine without Steam if you wish (unless they changed something recently). I see no reason why TDM would require DRM.

 

Some of the Steam features would be great, like Achievements. I dunno how invested other Steam users are in their Achievements, but if they're anything like PS3 Trophies or Xbox 360 Achievements, then people will want them. But there are many games without them, too.

Users may cry in the Steam forums, but that can largely be ignored. And maybe coders will be attracted to the project to help - especially if you put up the Linux version too, as I suspect a greater percentage of Linux users might be programmers compared to the percentage of Windows users who are programmers, and Linux has far less games than Windows, so TDM would likely get attention from a higher percentage of Linux users, compared to Windows users, who have much more game selection (this might be changing sooner than later, with the impending release of SteamOS and Steam Machines). Speaking of Steam Machines, TDM on Steam would put this project essentially into living rooms... If it's one of the few hundreds of launch games available, I see more potential for attention there.

 

I was playing Anodyne earlier and it has Steam Achievements... Now, I don't know how the API works exactly or anything like that, but I was surprised that an Adobe AIR game could integrate with Steam in that way... It makes me think that it couldn't be all that intrusive. But again, I'm not much of a programmer (well... it IS my day job, but perl and db stuff moreso than C++ or whatever).

 

The main thing I like about Steam is the automatic updating of my games. I guess if I could apt-get install darkmod on my distro, I'd be happy, but the repos likely wouldn't update as quick as Steam games would. So if I had a choice, I'd be going with the Steam version for convenience.

 

Sorry if I wrote a lot, talked out my behind, overstepped my bounds as a newbie, or whatever. I'm enthusiastic about Steam and Thief and now TDM, and I do have hopes to find some spare time to contribute to the project soon (likely high-res texture photos taken with a DSLR, maybe I'll read through that script, or try my hand at sound effects - something).

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We had a long debate about it in the past and came to the decision TDM won't have achievements (I mean as a general feature; Individual mappers can do whatever they want if they can script it for their own maps). What we have is what you see on our stats screen -- things like the number of alerts, loot, stealth score, etc.

 

For the same reasons as we talked about in that debate, I don't think TDM should add achievements or a few other Steam related things even if it goes up on Steam. We shouldn't ever be changing the game except in terms of its own design principles IMO, or else we'd be changing the character of the game or gameplay in a direction that runs against what the game has stood for in its core design from the start -- stuff like minimalism (UI & gameplay), immersion, simulationism, playing-style "neutrality", etc. I personally think sticking to the core principles has been good for us so far, so it'd be good to still stick to them.

 

But if there were a way to upload the statistics to some online board by FM or whatever that might be cool; e.g., to compete for speed ghost runs or whatever.

 

Edit: Anyway, like I said at the start, even if we did have achievements, it would be up to individual FM makers to actually implement them. I mean they're already free to do that now; they always have been. If there's a contingent of players that want to see them enough they want to make FMs with them, more power to them. That's the way I think it should be done IMO -- for a lot of features TBH -- leave it to mappers to decide for themselves, and the toolkit itself is agnostic on it.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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We had a long debate about it in the past and came to the decision TDM won't have achievements (I mean as a general feature; Individual mappers can do whatever they want if they can script it for their own maps). What we have is what you see on our stats screen -- things like the number of alerts, loot, stealth score, etc.

 

For the same reasons as we talked about in that debate, I don't think TDM should add achievements or a few other Steam related things even if it goes up on Steam. We shouldn't ever be changing the game except in terms of its own design principles IMO, or else we'd be changing the character of the game or gameplay in a direction that runs against what the game has stood for in its core design from the start -- stuff like minimalism (UI & gameplay), immersion, simulationism, playing-style "neutrality", etc. I personally think sticking to the core principles has been good for us so far, so it'd be good to still stick to them.

 

But if there were a way to upload the statistics to some online board by FM or whatever that might be cool; e.g., to compete for speed ghost runs or whatever.

 

Edit: Anyway, like I said at the start, even if we did have achievements, it would be up to individual FM makers to actually implement them. I mean they're already free to do that now; they always have been. If there's a contingent of players that want to see them enough they want to make FMs with them, more power to them. That's the way I think it should be done IMO -- for a lot of features TBH -- leave it to mappers to decide for themselves, and the toolkit itself is agnostic on it.

 

 

Makes sense, but still this shouldnt mean that TDM shouldnt be on steam. It would likely do just fine without any steamworks features if we wanted.

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