Valve To Put 3rd Party Mods On Games Menu In Steam
DOOManiac
Worst. Critic. Ever. Join Date: 2002-04-17 Member: 462Members, NS1 Playtester
Worst. Critic. Ever. Join Date: 2002-04-17 Member: 462Members, NS1 Playtester
<div class="IPBDescription">neat...</div>Saw this on PHL:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->We'd like to begin collecting builds from Mod teams interested in distributing their Mod on Steam.
Players will be able to click on the icon for your Mod in the Games list to install your Mod and then get all of the files they need. This means they won't need to visit a web site to download the content and install it manually. We will be able to release new versions of your Mod on Steam so everyone will automatically get the updates.
Dedicated servers will also be able to get the content for your Mod.
We should be ready to start distributing Mods on Steam in the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you'd like to have your team's Mod included, please put together a complete build of what you'd like to release (.zip or .exe) and send me an e-mail with a link to the file so I can download it and get things ready on our end. Make sure the build you give us has been tested with Steam.
Please also include contact information for a Mod team member for us to communicate with if we have any questions/problems.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Eric Smith [erics@valvesoftware.com]
Valve<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is great news for mod authors. More people will know about your mod, and by statistics alone there will be players who will get curious and download it. Another awesome feature will be instead of having a mod come out then having to release like 4 patches to fix things, just have STEAM automagically update everything. You know, like what it was originally supposed to do! The biggest advantage however is that you're taking bandwidth load off your servers and putting it onto Valve's (finally somewhat acceptably equipped) content servers.
For everyone else, its both good and bad news.
Good news being now players will be able to play mods they never even knew existed. So for hundreds of thousands of players who have never heard of (for example) Natural Selection, they might check it out.
Bad news is now every freaking mod that Valve puts in the menu is going to be cluttering everybody's menu. I mean what if 100 HL mods apply for this? And you know every single HL2 mod made will want the same thing...
Methinks this service will really start to shine with HL2 mods though.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->We'd like to begin collecting builds from Mod teams interested in distributing their Mod on Steam.
Players will be able to click on the icon for your Mod in the Games list to install your Mod and then get all of the files they need. This means they won't need to visit a web site to download the content and install it manually. We will be able to release new versions of your Mod on Steam so everyone will automatically get the updates.
Dedicated servers will also be able to get the content for your Mod.
We should be ready to start distributing Mods on Steam in the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you'd like to have your team's Mod included, please put together a complete build of what you'd like to release (.zip or .exe) and send me an e-mail with a link to the file so I can download it and get things ready on our end. Make sure the build you give us has been tested with Steam.
Please also include contact information for a Mod team member for us to communicate with if we have any questions/problems.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Eric Smith [erics@valvesoftware.com]
Valve<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is great news for mod authors. More people will know about your mod, and by statistics alone there will be players who will get curious and download it. Another awesome feature will be instead of having a mod come out then having to release like 4 patches to fix things, just have STEAM automagically update everything. You know, like what it was originally supposed to do! The biggest advantage however is that you're taking bandwidth load off your servers and putting it onto Valve's (finally somewhat acceptably equipped) content servers.
For everyone else, its both good and bad news.
Good news being now players will be able to play mods they never even knew existed. So for hundreds of thousands of players who have never heard of (for example) Natural Selection, they might check it out.
Bad news is now every freaking mod that Valve puts in the menu is going to be cluttering everybody's menu. I mean what if 100 HL mods apply for this? And you know every single HL2 mod made will want the same thing...
Methinks this service will really start to shine with HL2 mods though.
Comments
It was said long ago, if i remember right, that the current builds of HL/Steam are really just test-beds for HL2. That's why voicecomm was added to HL and that's why Steam was launched this early.
I don't really think that we'll get the problem of hundreds of mods cluttering the steam menu so much because there are a damn sight more HL mods in (some stage of) production than actually up and running. At the very least, they'll tab them alphabetically.
Why not implement a maturitytest to spare the game experience for thousands? <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
You know, if someone went through and corrected the titles.txt in the NS folder for 3.0, I bet Flayra would be eternally grateful.
*Hint, Hint* <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Edit: I don't know the diffence between an and and. Could someone please beat me with a tire iron?
People wanting to DL ns is not even close in number to the people who need CS updates...
dooms right, looks at the cs users, then look at BOTH of the NS players.
Instead of that silly little window with just the names.
Make a searchable mod DB. Nice descriptions by the Authors, posibly links to/actual reviews, and the manuals right there (or again, links to em). That would be fun <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Especialy once HL2 comes out, if it ends up as moded as people want it to be, then well..... weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee:)
Instead of that silly little window with just the names.
Make a searchable mod DB. Nice descriptions by the Authors, posibly links to/actual reviews, and the manuals right there (or again, links to em). That would be fun <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Especialy once HL2 comes out, if it ends up as moded as people want it to be, then well..... weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee:) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
yah that would be nice, also possibly linking you to said mods site.
I think that was in the article itself.....
And woah, people actually paid money to play CS with a few additions? ( condition zero)
Dude, don't say that <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I think it's a great thing, I'd love to try more mods, but I don't want to visit all those sites and wait 60 min in line at fileplanet.
Yep.
I got the flashy bot that speaks to me over the voicecomm and plays better than 3/4 of the playerbase of CS and doe's not speak "l33t"
I got some superb singleplayer missions.
Oh and did I mention the Half-Life 2 footage?
Thats what <b>I</b> would do anyway...
Don't the uninstalled games go to the bottom of the list?
That's because they've only done it twice. :P They coulda gotten lucky both times. And from UI design standpoints, the Steam UI is pretty much the first thing to come to mind when thinking about possibilities, its actually pretty run of the mill except for the color scheme. ;)
That's one thing I love about steam, the in-game and outside UIs. Looking at other new multiplayer games, it's so much simpler and easier to use.