[PIGMI] Locally produced game: Eets: Hunger it's Emotional - Released

[Chris Kruger]

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 9:37 AM, Anthony Sweet <anthony at rockethands.com> wrote:
> Congratulations on the release Chris! It looks fun, I'm just getting a copy
> now.

Thanks!

> I don't suppose you'd be willing sometime to give us a rundown of your
> experience with preparing for and releasing on Steam?  =)

Sure. I just did the most basic "loose files" type distribution. I
didn't do any direct API integration (for scoring, matchmaking etc).

The Steam content tools are pretty flaky, especially on the Mac side
of things. Actually you have to hand edit XML to get it working for
the Mac, the Valve guys are pretty helpful, but they'd rather "do it
for you" than explain it to you.

- Get your base app id from Steam.
- Create your applications depot (ContentTool)
- Create your application depot and assign appid (based on Base app
id) (ContentTool)
- Map your completed game build directory to an application depot and
it will sync from there. (Contenttool)
- Make a binary blob build. This creates a ContentDescriptor xml file
and your binary blobs.
- setup your contentserver and depot and publish the build to contentserver
- setup config on steam client to point to your testing contentserver
- test fetching content and installation process, cycle and repeat as necessary
- all working - send binary blobs to valve

The mac has the extra step of needing to run a contentprep tool in
order to create a simple install script that sets permissions etc.
this happens before you map your build directory to a depot. The mac
version will also need to have some mac specific fields added to
ContentDescriptor file.

I'll write this all up in more detail if people are interested. I
could post it on my blog, but I think Valve would get annoyed, so let
me know who would be interested in this info. A lot of this info is
available on the Steam Developers website and wiki anyway. The pc
version certainly doesn't need any secret sauce different from the
wiki, the mac version does.

Chris K.
chris.kruger at gmail.com