Exilian
Game Design and Project Resources: The Workshops Quarter => Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley => Game & program tutorials => Topic started by: Jubal on February 06, 2024, 04:57:44 PM
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Using Steampipe
Steampipe is the system used for uploading games to Steam as a developer. This is a "tutorial" which is really just me writing shorthand notes from the Steampipe user video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoNH-v6aU9Q) because I loathe video content and never want to have to watch that thing again.
Things you need
- Steamworks set up
- Steam account with appropriate access
- Latest steamworks SDK
- An app ID for the game
- A game
Config
- Go to steamworks (on the web) then Dashboard -> Steamworks Settings -> Installation -> General Installation
- Add a launch option and point to the executable
- Set the OS it can be used with
Depots
- Depots are zipped type files that are blocks of content attached to the AppID
- Go to the Depots page on steamworks and make sure you have a Depot ID.
File Prep
- Go to the SDK. Steamworks SDK -> tools -> ContentBuilder -> Scripts
- There'll be a basic app and depot file in there. Recommended by steam to make renamed ones with your relevant ids in the trailing code.
- Open the app build script, change the app id to match your app id and the depot id to the depot id (and relevant filename). Other parameters optional & explained in code comments.
- Open the depot build script and change the id. Default location is set to * which means things in the default location Steamworks SDK -> tools -> ContentBuilder -> Content will get packaged. Can be amended for a subfolder, etc.
- Put the files in the location.
Build
- Go to Steamworks SDK -> tools -> ContentBuilder -> builder and run steamcmd.exe. This will make and unpack a bunch of stuff the first time you run it.
- Log in (this seems to be done with "login Username Password")
- Use the run_app_build command pointing to your app build script.
- Assuming it works, the build should now be visible on the Steamworks website under the Builds tab.
- The build can be set to be the main live build by making it default branch.
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Explaining what Steampipe is and why someone might want to use it could be a good idea!
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Good point, duly added: it's the process for uploading games to Steam if you're a developer :)
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I think the switch to video content encapsulates the changes in the web after smartphones and the 2008 financial crisis:
- most people are not fast and comfortable readers (most people in the USA say they read less than 3 books a year)
- most people search with Google and Google owns youtube and has an incentive to make videos rank highly (and YouTube engineers go jogging with Google search engineers)
- since Google gave up on downranking SEO content farms, videos with the person's face (like Reddit posts) used to be a pretty reliable way of finding something written by a person who cared (generative AI may change this)
- investors and megacorps throwing money at things which seem like they might make a lot of money one day because money is free today and tax minimization is in fashion
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Yeah. Also relatively low costs to expanding storage (indeed almost none for anyone other than Google because YouTube has been so dominant).
Another thing I've been discovering in this process is just how little support Steam has beyond one or two big game engines (Unity, Unreal). There may be more tutorials to come as I try to navigate what's possible in distributing very homebrew games right now.