Spring RTS Engine

So how does DRM on steam negatively affect you? Oh that's right. It doesn't.

Forboding Angel wrote:So how does DRM on steam negatively affect you? Oh that's right. It doesn't.

Can I transfer my game from one pc to another without redownloading it?

Forboding Angel wrote:So how does DRM on steam negatively affect you? Oh that's right. It doesn't.

• I can't play my game without an internet connection. (Yes I know about and tried offline mode).
• I won't be able to play my games when Steam goes down.
• I can't share my games with friends by lending them the CD.
• If I get caught using a hack, I lose not only one game, but all my games.
• If my Steam account gets hacked, I lose all my game collection.
• In fact, I'm completly at the mercy of Steam, which can remove my gaming ability anytime, for any reason they want, without me able to do anything against.

Regret wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:So how does DRM on steam negatively affect you? Oh that's right. It doesn't.

Can I transfer my game from one pc to another without redownloading it?

Yes, copy the steamapps or whatever folder.

You can play without a connection, I've done it often. You can't share the CD but you can share your account itself. If you hack in a VAC protected title you deserve to lose your access.

zwzsg wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:So how does DRM on steam negatively affect you? Oh that's right. It doesn't.

• I can't play my game without an internet connection. (Yes I know about and tried offline mode).
• I won't be able to play my games when Steam goes down.
• I can't share my games with friends by lending them the CD.
• If I get caught using a hack, I lose not only one game, but all my games.
• If my Steam account gets hacked, I lose all my game collection.
• In fact, I'm completly at the mercy of Steam, which can remove my gaming ability anytime, for any reason they want, without me able to do anything against.

Yes, copy the steamapps or whatever folder.

Yes you can, it's called offline mode (and the switch is automagic).

You answered this yourself, copy your steamapps folder and install steam on your friends computer, or just give them a guest pass.

If you get caught using a hack, you don't deserve to be playing the games anyhow (online games I mean of course).

You'd have to be a real dummy for your steam account to get hacked... honestly.

At steam's mercy? As if steam is some merciless tyrant that gets in your way no matter what you do? Wtf? That isn't logic.

Forboding Angel wrote:At steam's mercy? As if steam is some merciless tyrant that gets in your way no matter what you do? Wtf? That isn't logic.

It is logical to actually take the agreement for what is is.

Regret wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:At steam's mercy? As if steam is some merciless tyrant that gets in your way no matter what you do? Wtf? That isn't logic.

It is logical to actually take the agreement for what is is.

Indeed.

@ Forboding Angel: You're so naïve!

I wish I could say time will prove me right, but I know from experience that by then you'll already have moved to accepting the inacceptable.

Anyway, to answer your points:

Forboding Angel wrote:Yes you can, it's called offline mode (and the switch is automagic).

You failed at reading. Anyway, here's a practical exemple: If I bought DoW2 to play the campaign during winter's holiday at my uncle house that has no internet, I couldn't even install it because of Steam DRM. Offline mode would be of no help.

Forboding Angel wrote:copy your steamapps folder and install steam on your friends computer

No, it would not work unless I also would gave them the login and password to my Steam account, or else Steam DRM would prevent the game from launching even if all the files were copied.

Forboding Angel wrote:just give them a guest pass

No. Only Steam choose when and for which game guest passes are issued. If had made a promise to lend Portal to a mate monday, I could not keep it because there's like 0.1% chance that I get a guest pass to offer for this precise game just on monday.

Forboding Angel wrote:If you get caught using a hack, you don't deserve to be playing the games anyhow

Maybe I don't deserve to play that game, but I still deserve to play the other games. I find it wrong that Steam takes away all your games for having fooled with one. Also, this could very well happen by accident: let's say I installed a mod that was incorrectly considered as hack. Or let my little teenage brother play some CS. I would then find myself gameless, and have to write Steam email pleading for mercy and pray for them to be kind, to which they could very well reply a polite no and there'd be nothing I could do against it.

Forboding Angel wrote:You'd have to be a real dummy for your steam account to get hacked... honestly.

Dishonest insult. Could happen very easily. For instance, by playing Steam's game on my mom's computer, who happens to not be very compurate litterate and so has left a keylogger slipt through couple monthes ago. Or maybe I didn't pick my password carefully and brute force dictionnary attack guessed it. Or maybe, fed up with Steam restriction, I lent my account to a trusted friend who.. I'll never for sure what happened on his PC.

Forboding Angel wrote:At steam's mercy? As if steam is some merciless tyrant that gets in your way no matter what you do? Wtf? That isn't logic.

Steam's primary goal is to make money. Yes, in good business, that often entails staying in good term with the customers, so I can hope they won't be gratuitously mean to me. However, as soon as the costs of helping me outweight their benefit, simple logic dictate they'll drop me. For instance, I don't think they'll hire a private investigator to find out if and how my account was hacked precisely, when they could just send a generic email telling it was my responsability to use a strong password and never install steam on computer in dubious state, but hey look, we're just having a great promo on the collection of games you lost! Click here to put in cart!

Then there are the case where it would make sense from a commercial point of view to be subtly mean to milk more money for me, for instance removing modding ability from TheGame I, so that I'd have to buy them TheGame II to get the same functionnaly that a free mod of TheGame I would have provided.


Lastly, like Regret meant, it's never a good idea to let someone hold your neck in his maw, even if that someone doesn't look that mean at first glance, because if you ever realize later he's not always so well intentionned, it's already too late.

Right now, I am at the mercy of Spring DRM. They can decide to deny me the right to play any of my game, at any time. No money back, no trial, no justification.

They can do it, and there's nothing I can do to stop them except not buying on Steam. Yes they won't do it, not to all of their users, not now at least. But suppose tomorrow they get bought by another company. Or that I am amongst a percentage of people low enough that helping me is profitable for them.

I have 2 steam games, TF2 (gifted to me) and Torchlight (bought it through steam because it was 75% off that day)... so far my experience has been perfectly acceptable... if steam ever denies me access to the net $5 worth of entertainment (minus whatever enjoyment I have thus-far gathered from the products) I would be very upset... and likely yell and scream until they gave it back... I am not the kind of customer that most companies want to have... I make them no money and complain when they try to screw me over. Sorry, just felt like ranting a bit... Anyways, yeah, steaming the spring engine sounds like a dumb idea to me... I still like the idea of an Open-Source Steam Equivalent tool but sadly I am far too lazy to implement one myself.

I'm not real sure what your hangup is. You imagine all kinds of doomsday scenarios that simply don't exist in reality. Caught up in the "What ifs". I've had my steam account since I can remember, I have 10-20 games through it (didn't bother counting), and have never once had a single issue.

I don't have to keep track of boxes, cd codes, cds, nothing. Daddy liek. Even if spring were on steam or impulse, you could still download it from this site, so what are you on about? It's stupid not to try to market spring as much as humanly possible, and steam is a great way to do that and reach millions of untapped potential.

I have over a hundred Steam titles. I know people who have been banned, and their appellate process is deplorable. This from somebody who is supposed to reform Spring's appellate process.

Protip: Don't be a dick.

I skipped a few posts there, but I'm sure I didn't miss anything good.

So anyway... Steam is a pretty good system but with terrible service. I've emailed them on several occasions on various technical matters and never received a reply. Not even a robotic one.

But at the same time, they often offer very good prices, and as long as you're in the 99% majority, chances are you'll never have a serious issue that's actually something you can blame them for.

I think that basically, as far as they're concerned, all they offer is the same service that a retail outlet does. When you think about it that way, honestly there's not much difference between Steam and Gamestop. Neither one takes returns for any reason, neither one has helpful employees, etc. However, Steam adds a lot of convenience and will often be cheaper, even without factoring the cost of either shipping or gas.

In the future I hope that some greater percentage of their undoubtedly overflowing coffers are put to good use in reworking customer service and some more comprehensive pre-release testing. For now, digital distribution is still such a new thing that I don't expect a totally seamless experience. I bought the games because I'd like to be "honest" and I think the games I bought were worth the price I paid for them. Developers need money, especially PC developers.

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More constructively, I think if you wanted to get your game on Steam, a good place to start would be to ask other indie developers that have got their games on Steam how they did it. Maybe try that...

But I really hope Spring doesn't get any wide attention until we've made some good progress towards typical Windows-level ease-of-use. The control panel, the startup system, the lobby, and hardware compatibility are all in dire need of attention. If we try to push something commercial, anything at all commercial, the only press we'll be getting is negative.

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Besides, facing reality, we don't have any kind of anti-piracy ideas yet, let alone truly effective anti-cheating systems. Without those two pieces of the puzzle, trying to make a commercial game release is a waste.

Were I in a position to release a commercial game, personally, I'd want to use some kind of Stardock-like system where you need to validate your key in order to install updates or log on to the internet multiplayer server, but the game is otherwise completely without any form of overt or covert "protection" for offline or LAN play.

[list][*] Two simultaneous logged-in users allowed per key (so people can give a copy to a friend and do netplay), beyond that comes warnings and suspensions, then a permanent ban
[*] Bans are done in random 3-15 day cycles to frustrate pirates that think they got a good copy.
[*] Correlate serial numbers to geographic area and if someone connects from two different continents in a short period of time, ask them to contact customer service within 2 days or their key will be banned until they are able to contact customer service.[/list]

...that kind of thing. People can make cracked servers, or they can get the updates by alternate means, but the frequent and long-term hassle might be enough to convince someone to actually pay the $5 or $10 I might charge. Frustrate the pirates enough that if they are able to pay, they will. At the same time, use only measures that are simple and virtually impossible to even cause inconvenience to a paying customer. Make the "DRM" a convenience rather than a hindrance. (free servers, free post-release support and updates, game always available for re-download, organized tournaments, map downloads, etc)

Look for abuse patterns and target them randomly, at random intervals, to cause confusion and frustration among the pirates. If someone's going to steal it, they're going to steal it, but you can at least cause disruption and chaos.

Finally, rather than using a typical warning that tells you to find a lawyer because you're going to jail for a long, long time, the warning is a popup message that says "Hi there, we're pretty sure you're running a pirated copy of this game. If you're not, please email our customer service department _here_ within the next two days if possible. If you are using a pirated copy, thank you for trying our product, and you will continue to be allowed to play online for the next 48 hours. In that time, please decide whether the game is worth $10 to you. No legal action will be taken and your IP address has not been logged. Enjoy!"

As someone who is well-versed in the ways of the pirates, I can't imagine anything more motivating for a purchase than a reasonable developer that lets you pirate their game for a short amount of time, if you happen to be caught. The randomness, with people who have been running a bad serial for weeks being just fine, while other people get caught after only a few days, would be very disruptive of someone's enjoyment of their ill-gotten goods. You never know if maybe tomorrow you'll have to go searching for another serial, and even then, how long will it work for?

Maybe there could even be a basic version of the game that was always free to play, but it has only half the number of units and a 60 minute time limit per game. The removed units are special things akin to nukes, pop-up guns, fleas, etc... units that aren't really vital to the core functioning but you'd want to have them.

Finally, for a little bit of black hat psychology... release the game with known flaws that detract from the experience without being severe. Camera glitches, units that cause slowdowns, exploitable units. "Fix" them over the course of a month, and prevent old versions from connecting. For bonus points, each new version should close security holes that you knew about beforehand. Wait three days after each patch, then make your own "cracked" version with the patch's fixes included. When the well of fixes dries up, many of the pirates that are remaining probably wouldn't have bought the game anyway. The pirates get frustrated, while the end-users and pirates alike see awesome post-release support and word-of-mouth encourages more people to buy. During this period, you've been working on the REAL improvements to problems that you DIDN'T know about pre-launch, as well as lots of improvement and free add-ons. After 3 months are up, split your time between an official pay add-on that costs half as much as the original game, and continued improvements to the existing game.

You, as the developer, come out looking like a star as far as the paying end-users are concerned, the pirates that were on the fence probably bought the game if they enjoyed it, and the pirates that weren't going to pay regardless might have been convinced that your $10 game is worth buying. As for the rest, there will always be people that get a free ride, nothing you can do about that...

Why aren't I getting paid for this?

TL;DR: No sense in complaining, you can't do an effective commercial release without a hell of a lot of things that are way above all of our collective heads, and I have Argh's sales numbers here to prove it.

Actually I don't, despite the fact that his game's been released for some time now, which you may infer is the reason for my certainty that it's impossible.

Also, I am an evil marketing genius who will one day make you all graciously thank me for undoing things I'd done in malice to begin with.

My sales numbers aren't any of your business.

Let's just say that while I certainly haven't gotten rich, it was worth doing, and I'm not done yet.

Whether the months spent working on 1.3 were a total waste of time or not... I really don't know, but that I continue to work on it should tell you something- it's not like I don't have other game ideas, many of them involving a lot less content, that I could deploy on this engine and sell.

I plan to do marketing for about a month solid after I know that the release is stable (there will almost certainly be 1 or 2 patches post-release, I just have that feeling, there's so much new stuff, surely I will make mistakes that will get through testing).

As for the rest of your post:

1. I don't think Spring needs its own distribution system- there are plenty of good ones, reinventing the wheel's pretty pointless and the competition has massively deep pockets and is probably sitting on some very inconvenient patents.

2. I didn't really see a big issue with piracy and P.U.R.E., and I don't think that's a really big deal unless a game's selling well enough that any indie guy should be happy with the money made.

3. What Spring, the engine, mainly needs is a really good, multiplatform frontend, that looks good and can be skinned, which supports missions, campaigns, and variant SP gametypes as well as providing a central launchpad for the Lobbies, manuals, etc. We have a number of competing projects attempting to deliver this, and none of them really pop yet, imo. And there certainly isn't anything like a universal system yet (zxswg's is closest, and if people haven't checked it out, it's a nice hack).

Note that all of this SP stuff- what people pay for, when they buy a RTS. Other than DemiGod or people buying WC III to play DotA, few buy RTS games for online play over offline.

i neither read everythign here, but the main question i get to mind is:
if spring/spring games would be made available through steam, would we still be allowed to distribute it/them in other ways, eg.. as separate installers, freely downloadable from our sites? or is there some legal thing you have to sign when getting your software into steam, which disallows that.

Short answer, no. For real life examples, look at world of goo.

Regret wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:So how does DRM on steam negatively affect you? Oh that's right. It doesn't.

Can I transfer my game from one pc to another without redownloading it?

1) buy games
2) Download games
3) Maek Backup CD file via steam
4) install on other computer
5) ????
6) Profit

Argh wrote:My sales numbers aren't any of your business.

So can you comment on what percentage of the raw sales $$$ reaches your pocket, or are you under NDA? I would be very interested to know what kind of a cut Impulse takes from a developer with no alternative mainstream distribution system. Does it vary with sales?

You should tell your Impulse buddies that your game doesn't show up when searching for "PURE". And tell them the same about "STALKER", too... I bitched about that a while ago AND THEY MOVED IT TO THEIR STALKER TECHNICAL SUPPORT FORUM. Srsly...

That stupid racing game really buggered everything up on impulse. If you search for P.U.R.E. you will find it.

Eh Pure marketting is a bit of a red herring here, mainly because its aimed at pulling people to the website, yet the website is dead. Sure I built the damned thing, but its pointless if the place ot be to see the latest and greatest of 'Arghware' is not arghs site, but the spring engine forums.

Heck arghs caydr response with the none of your business is better copy pasted as is into that site as a blog post than nothing at all, a lot of forum posts here with images would be better as blog posts to keep people checking back, or even to help people once 1.3 is out by showing them what is in the update and that there is a track record of improvement, even if the forum posts are mostly the same but copy pasted into blogposts with forum specifics culled.