Steam Dark Days Ahead

Game Talk The Drawing Board
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63

Additionally, task you are taking as developer to improve the game is enormous. DDA in development for more than 8 years - and it still infinitely far from Beta.
On Steam page you are claiming to reach release state in few years.
I am not going to say that it is impossible (because it is possible), but do you really undestand task you are taking? You will definitely need a team to pull that off.

Cataclysm: Bright Nights, for example in development for year. And we have team and contributors currently. But still I do not see plans to reach 1.0 in few years.

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Still I totally understand your desire to spread info about the Cataclysm and bring more players. Thank you for trying regardless of the result.

Feel free to discuss it on Bright Nights discord server (you can find link here: https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmbn/comments/q0ic05/cbn_changelog_october_3_2021_helicopters/). You are unlikely going to be judged there.

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Well, while I get kevinā€™s points, I donā€™t think the existing page art is bad, like Aid said things can be changed anyway, so as long as someoneā€™s reponsible in charge, itā€™s better to have it done now, just for the sake of ease (versioning/fast Steam servers, cloud saves and other benefits compared to non-Steam game), though I do know that maintaining the game in one another store can be troublesome.

@Air Can you elaborate on translations? Polish is still being worked on and close to being done, not sure about the others, but Itā€™s best to keep them in Transifex, as they are pulled automatically anyway.

And there are (unfortunately) games that announce particular language support, even if itā€™s machine translation on Steam, but they generally donā€™t fare well.

Either way, Iā€™m hopeful about the project going far!

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66

To me the steam page is fine, but you need to fix some critical things. Like adding links (to github for example) and you really need to fix that early access disclaimer. And like Kevin says, you need to fix some tags for the game, like supported languages.

I also noticed tag ā€œcasualā€, i donā€™t think that this game can have that tag, it will confuse players. Also franchise canā€™t be ā€œairem gamesā€ itā€™s just weird.

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There are no plans to support any of that, you donā€™t get any of those features for free, you have to implement them yourself.

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I meant Air (or whoever else would publish on Steam) adding those, IIRC outside of maybe achievements no change in code should be required, but yeah, nothing comes for ā€œfreeā€.

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Hello, sir! A large number of folks, including myself, kevin, and others, would not like a listing on Steam.
Our communities on Github & Discord would much prefer to release it through our own channels.
Feel free to help develop the game and make it better for everyone to play.

Please do not make a Steam version.

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70

Going to agree with Kevin and some others. Not out of sycophant leanings, but out of practicality.

Donā€™t get me wrong.

Steam serves a purpose.

I can get patches and updates drama free for the AAA and even smaller games I play. I can install mods (if that game supports it) with a touch of a button. Tasks that in a previous era (I am a greybeard) would have been a huge pain in the ass.

BUT

We have a launcher that already does this. CDDA comes with most of the better mods installed.

Also, I could only see this for stable. Many of us like the experimental branch (even if it breaks from time to time) and the launcher handles this pretty good.

Steam also must be launched to play any game on Steam. Taking forever to load on start up. If I want an awesome game of getting killed over and over by zombies, I donā€™t want to have to load a friggin 3rd party DRM program.

Now, you could claim Dwarf Fortress will be on Steam. But, the Adams brothers and Kitfox (a LEGIT publisher) have a full team of artists on that and, more important, the blessing of Bay 12. Nor is DF open source. Tarn guards his source code zealously.

You could also claim that, ā€œif you donā€™t want to use it, you donā€™t have toā€. But, it goes beyond that. It seems misleading for you to be a publisher. Also, all these things you speak of doing which seem pretty complex?

Please reconsider what you are proposing. Because you wonā€™t be able to get updates. These devs will probably do zero to let you introduce code to enable the features you say you will implement, and will be a headache for you. And is really not needed.

Thanks!

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Itā€™s worth to mention that - to my knowledge - both brothers didnā€™t actually want/like to see Dwarf Fortress on Steam, but ā€œhaveā€ to do it for financial reasons (I think it was also mentioned in at least one Future of the Fortress post and a podcast, but I wasnā€™t able to find it right away).

Itā€™s possible that they changed their opinion and I somehow missed that (or they didnā€™t state it publicly), but Iā€™d say itā€™s unlikely.

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72

Indeed.

However, (off topic), its probably a good thing for that game.

Someone is finally hitting Tarn and Zach Adams upside the head with a UI and graphics design textbook.

Improvements (at least UI) that will be in the non steam version.

Plus, I love it when talented modders like Meph and Mayday can get paid.

As far as CDDA steam woes, I am quietly sitting back with popcorn in the microwave while the Illuminate of the project nukes his page (which seems to just cross market some of his budget tier games) with DMCA.

Take a look at his discussion page. He does not even speak on it or moderate it.

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No offense, Iā€™m sure youā€™re working hard on it, but this is terrible idea.

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Look what I got from the system :wink: .

Congratulations, youā€™ve earned the New User of the Month award for May 2021 . :trophy:

This award is only granted to two new users per month, and it will be permanently visible on the badges page.

Youā€™ve quickly become a valuable member of our community. Thanks for joining, and keep up the great work!

Like I said, there is no problem with removing CDDA from Steam. I wanted to help and improve a bit CDDA is a fun game, but it has some problemsā€¦ But if you donā€™t think you want it, it will be removed from Steam. I am already talking to Valve to remove CDDA. The Steam product page can always change because nothing has been released yet (some people were supposed to help me, games are my hobby, I just have a normal job). So, I prepared the page in my free time and now we should change and correct it. But now weā€™re removing it from Steam.

So, I am stopping work on the Steam version, maybe later I will share tilesets, translations, sounds and music in my free time because I did a lot and could be used by someone (but I have to finish it, games are my hobby and I have normal job). Of course: no effects: animation, darkness, dust, etc., Of course without any effects, animation, darkness, dust etc. (code).

In my opinion, like Kevin ā€œsaidā€, sooner or later someone will come to create a product page for CDDA (without any discussion on this forum) #NetHack (As you can see, the topic is hot). I would prefer CDDA on Steam to be community managed. You know that in private messages or in previous posts (I also wrote the e-mail the same to Kevin.), I wrote that the game will be transferred when one of you decides to create an account on Steam (this should be Kevin or another lead developer in the future).

If you ever need help with the Steam version or Steam SDK/API (achievements, servers etc.), let me know. For now, we just need to wait a few days for removal.

PS. Thanks for all the feedback and good game :smiley: .

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I completely agree.
As a nice side effect; it also gives (insane) people like me who made it their personal goal to never touch a credit card or PayPal an option to support them.

Eh, I see the vandalism, but I think thatā€™s pretty normal for a project like thisā€¦

Honestly, I donā€™t really have an opinion about Cataclysm:DDA being on Steam or not. The only problem I see are the wrong statements (if they are wrong): Supported languages, release goals and (since nobody mentioned it yet) minimum system requirements.
Unless there were some big changes to the code, 200 MB will not be enough. The game itself (looking at the Frank release) is almost 170 MB in size (for Windows), and just wandering around for a bit can bloat up saves to over 50 MB in no time.

Oh, since Iā€™m already writingā€¦ thatā€™s also one point I donā€™t like: Fearmongering. ā€œTake my poison or another might be worseā€ is a bad way to start off.

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Haha. Like I wrote many times, I can transfer you CDDA, only send me your Steam login (before it is removed).

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Like Iā€™ve wrote once before, I donā€™t care if CDDA is on Steam or not, I only care when there are wrong statements. And fearmongering.

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Some of the features you outlined would be complex and require embedding steam SDK code deep into the game, which is not something Iā€™m ok with doing.
Even something as hypothetically innocuous as achievements means that your game is now in constant communication with Steam servers, which brings up security vulnerabilities that I am absolutely not interested in dealing with, either as an implementer or maintainer of the code.
Cloud saves likewise require the same kind of invasive networking and authentication features to be added, which again means itā€™s something Iā€™m really not interested in dealing with.
Versioning is likewise an issue Iā€™ve carefully architected DDA to avoid. Itā€™s not something you can just bolt onto an existing game, and I am not ok with making the very extensive changes to both the game and our development process to make it work.

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79

No constant communication: Eg if there is an achievement ā€œKill 1,000 zombiesā€, so when the variable 1000_zombies++ reaches ā€œ1000ā€, then the achievement is awarded and itā€™s over.

There are two versions: Steam Cloud API and The Steam Auto-Cloud API requiresā€¦ Nothing (the CDA version is available to me for a developer and I have added some things like Steam Auto-Cloud). Steam Auto-Cloud requires you to configure it only in Steamworks only (no code).

I can agree that in some situations you need to embed code (1-3 lines), but remember that we are talking about an API. But it doesnā€™t matter anymore - CDDA will be removed soon :D. Like I said: thatā€™s why I wrote to you and then made a topic here for everyone to give feedback. English is not my native language (maybe I am misunderstood sometimes.). Just to be clear: itā€™s fine for me, nothing is happening, the Steam version will be removed soon :D. Hope you keep working on CDDA is a fun game. Cheers Kevin.

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It wasnā€™t fearmongering. Keep in mind that Air isnā€™t a native English speaker
and there are likely to be losses in translation. Any FOSS game run the risk of
having their code base uploaded to some kind of store, like google play or
whatever. It has happened before and will happen again. The tale from the
developers of said FOSS said that it was a massive problem on their end, not
because somebody else made the game available but because they stopped
maintaining it, meaning that there is now a rotten code base that people not
only use but reports bugs about. Think about the Linux distro repository and
upstream development: the version of the software in debianā€™s repo are so old
that any bug report sent upstream is likely to be irrelevant.

What I see in Airā€™s attempt is somebody whoā€™s enthusiastic about the project and
wanting to help, albeit clumsily.

I donā€™t think CDDA on the steam platform would work without the involvement of
the current community (developers, contributors, Ć¢Ā€Ā¦). I also believe that Air,
not being a native speaker, would have understood the intent of not wanting the
game on steam if it had been strongly stated. For example stating: ƂĀ« The
license allows you to do this. ƂĀ», can be understood as a go ahead when in
reality it means ƂĀ« We really donā€™t want a presence on the steam platform. ƂĀ».
It can be difficult to discern each others intent when there is too much
ambiguity. Not trying to point a finger at anybody here, just trying to state
that this result is most likely from miscommunication.

Anyhow, keep calm and keep bashing zombies.

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Wikipedia:

Fearmongering [ā€¦] is a form of manipulation which causes fear by using exaggerated rumors of impending danger.

As written: ā€œTake my poison or another might be worseā€ is exaclty that. Air didnā€™t only state this once, but multiple times. Thereā€™s no need to state that, as probably most developer are already aware of this issue.
Sure, there is always the possibility for it to happen. But thereā€™s also no garnatuee that Air would not have dropped the support at some point, leading exactly to that situation.

I - as a non-native English speaker as well - do interpret ā€œIā€™m not a fan of steamā€ as ā€œI donā€™t like thisā€, but while this might be easily skipped over, ā€œthe license allows thisā€ clearly means that you have to follow the license that allows this, otherwise there is a problem.

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Iā€™ve been reading this forum for upwards of two years now, but had to make an account just to say:

This is a terrible idea, and reeks of someone clout-chasing. I sincerely hope it does not happen.

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