The irony of it is that removing those Steam features would, by the sounds of it, at least allow Special K to be released on the platform… None the less, a separate optional plugin would do the trick for those that want to use those features.
But hey, did you hear that Epic Games implemented an achievement overlay recently?
Problem is almost certainly that there’s too many degrees of separation between whomever you were in talk with at Valve and the manager or whatever of whatever outsourcing company/companies they hire to provide staff for their international support.
I think I and many other mod makers would be fine paying a small fee a month to be able to upload our mods so that’s not a terrible idea. If you could make it more streamlined so that noobs can install them that’d be great. Too many people get confused when they don’t read mod decriptions telling them to put it in a folder in My Docs. Common sense apparently goes out the window with mod install instructions.
While removing the Steam Enhancements is something I find disappointing, I completely understand why you’d want to distance yourself from it and the platform.
I’d be fine with a separate plug-in for those enhancements though.
As for the Plug-in itself, would a plug-in be able to add the enhancement menus back to the UI when enabled? Though maybe under Plug-ins instead.
Yes, that’s not a problem. I’ve already designed the plug-in system to be able to insert new sections of SK’s control panel as well as add additional terms to the EULA that everyone loves (lol). This is a case where those extra terms in the EULA are necessary because the Steamworks license won’t be part of the base SK install.
So about the tiers list, maybe do instead of a beta access tier, an early access one? (most patreons that have some degree of success funding themselves use this style like Cemu and Yuzu for example)
Also about the removal of features from the Steam version of Special K, after it gets mostly stripped off will SKIF still be usable or SKIM will be redesigned for something of that purpose? (Also is it possible to have the profile check for the games without the Steam structure?)
I actually had a thought on this, there might be a way to cut down on server hosting for those downloads. If the project is open source, you could put it on GitHub or BitBucket or SourceForge, or some other code hosting service, and you could use the releases feature that they have to host SpecialK releases. Then for autoupdate, you could maintain a simple Chocolatey package, and users can both install and update by using Chocolatey.
GitHub’s out of the question, I have an account, but I cannot use it for anything important. The last time pirates decided to play dirty, they went and got my code repository deleted from GitHub by mass reporting it as malware.
My current plan is to run an isolated instance of GitLab on my own server. Pirates can piss and moan all they want, but with me running the whole thing they’re yelling at a brick wall.
I have no idea what Chocolatey is, I will have to look into it. I do have a functional install, update and DLC system in the form of SKIM already; I kind of gutted that stuff when it looked like SK was going to release on Steam, but it still works.
Chocolatey’s just a package manager for Windows; if you’re happy with your existing autoupdater you probably don’t need it. It’s a nice way to update some applications like packages, like you would on a GNU/Linux distro with apt or pacman. Here’s the website: https://chocolatey.org/
That might work, thanks for pointing it out. Ideally I’d like to see a solution in the form of an API rather than command line tools, I like to keep the number of executables distributed with Special K down to 0 or 1 If it’s possible to integrate that directly into SKIF using an API, I’ll consider using it instead of my old system.
Signup/Login options exists though, but I believe those would create a new account on these forums.
Then again, I’m not sure whether I want to actually connect the accounts together because my Patreon account is generally kept separate from my other accounts.
But it does seem weird that the “connect” option is missing for existing accounts?
Ya, i was wondering about being able to link other accounts. I initially just signed up with my email, which is fine, but I wouldn’t mind being able to link one of my other accounts for easier sign in, plus I was wondering how it was gonna work with Patreon. I haven’t backed the Patreon. I’m just waiting till probably the 2nd or 3rd. I only get payed at the beginning of the month, so I like timing my monthly payments at the beginning, with a little bit of leeway. But I’d like to make sure things are linked properly when I do.
I don’t see any option to add additional logins on that page. I can add an alternative Email, but that is the only thing remotely close. I was mainly thinking of just adding Steam and Google as that is how I would normally login to a site with those options.
If I am reading the code correctly (I know very little about Ruby), it looks like the whole thing works by cross-referencing E-Mail addresses associated with Patreon and the forums.
That’s not the most brilliant thing in the world, but I think the only reason Patreon integration exists in the first place is because Patreon uses Discourse to provide private forums for creators to communicate with their patrons. This is the inverse of that
This whole thing is problematic, because I see many users are creating throw-away E-Mail accounts for the forums. xyz+SpecialK@gmail.com seems popular, and is guaranteed not to be the E-Mail address on record with Patreon.
Also, how did you create your account? Was it using just regular mail? I intend to set up a dummy test account for myself in the same way and test the functionality out.
Ah, yeah, that would explain it. I know Patreon’s Discord integration works in a similar way, and I believe SteamSpy’s integration did as well.
Ah… I have heard of that technique, but never realized it worked for Gmail as well… Which is a shame as I’ve been a Gmail user since it was in closed invitee beta stage over a decade ago…
I really need to start using that method going forward.
If I can figure out how to code in Ruby, I may be able to add an extra field to store the Patreon E-Mail separate from forum E-Mail and add account linking.
For now, I’ve just manually added the one pledge I know of with a forum account not correctly linked to Patreon.
Yep, 2FA was it. I disabled it and I saw the option to link my Google, Github, Discord and Steam accounts. And ya, I just signed up for a new account with my normal email. I think that was the only option at the time.
If it’s possible to integrate that directly into SKIF using an API, I’ll consider using it instead of my old system.