The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Infinitron]

 

[LESS T_T]

Oh, this war of Auto Chess: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/ri...t-tactics-its-own-auto-chess-later-this-month

Riot Games Is Launching Teamfight Tactics, Its Own 'Auto Chess,' Later This Month
The developers of League of Legends are stepping into the autobattler ring.


Riot Games has announced a new game mode for League of Legends today called Teamfight Tactics, its entry into the growing autobattler genre. This mode, accessed through the League of Legends client, will go live June 25 for all players.

The genre of board vs. board fights between customizable squads of warriors is commonly called "auto chess" after its originator, a mod for Valve's Dota 2 called Dota Auto Chess. While Valve and original mod developer Drodo Studio are both working on their own standalone versions of the game, the genre has soared in popularity within the Dota 2 client. Riot's foray marks another major developer, and a fellow MOBA at that, moving into the space.

"Players have expressed a tremendous amount of interest in the autobattler genre," says Richard Henkel, product manager of Teamfight Tactics. "And we hope League of Legends fans are excited to see the game's signature art, style, and deep gameplay come to life in this new mode."

Teamfight Tactics will be populated by many existing League of Legends characters, like Morgana, Mordekaiser, Graves, Garen, and Lucian. It takes many nods from other efforts, like combining units and challenging other boards, but Henkel told USgamer that Riot is trying to address "pain points" in the genre, while also adding a unique spin on the formula.

Teamfight Tactics will be available to any players with a League of Legends account through the game's client. For more information, check out our interview and hands-on impressions of the game's early stages.

Looking forward to Blizzard Auto Chess at this year's Blizzcon.

 

[Sentinel]

Auto Chess is an Epic Store Exclusive.

 

[LESS T_T]

Yes Epic snatched Auto Chess from Valve.

Valve is making its own. Sounds like they still have rather amicable relationship with the original "modder" team: http://blog.dota2.com/2019/05/dota-auto-chess/

So in February we flew the Drodo team over from China to chat about the future of Dota Auto Chess, and to see if they’d want to collaborate directly with us (this was also during one of the worst weeks of snow we’ve had in years, sorry about that, Drodo). We had great conversations, but we both came to the conclusion that Valve and Drodo could not work directly with each other for a variety of reasons. We ended up agreeing that we’ll each build our own stand-alone version of the game, and support each other to the fullest.

 

[Sentinel]

New Steam UI is much easier to customize and make skins for, and you can customize a lot more stuff this time around via CSS and view changes in real-time.

 

[Jigawatt]

Oh, this war of Auto Chess

We'll have to pick the best implementations and have them square off in semi-automated combat

 

[Outlander]

What the fuck is an Auto Chess?

 

[Morgoth]

What the fuck is an Auto Chess?

Sounds like chess for people who don't like playing chess.

 

[pakoito]

What the fuck is an Auto Chess?

It's a random draft game without a shared pool of pieces. Each piece has an auto-attack and a single skill, and can be upgraded by buying multiple copies. You place them on a board and the AI takes over to play the combat. If you lose you lose some player HP. There's a draft-place-combat cycle per minute until all players but one are eliminated.

 

[Sentinel]

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/1597002662762032240

New asset types for the Steam Library
12 JUN @ 12:39AM - THE GISH
In March at GDC we announced that the Steam Library is getting an overhaul. The new Library brings together a player’s experience with a game and new content/communications from the developer and community in a richer, more visual layout.

You can start uploading and previewing the new assets today
We are weeks away from the public beta of this new feature set; now is the time to start uploading new assets for your updated library presence. Download the library asset templates here

Steam will create a fallback treatment for both the capsule and header treatment, but adding your branding assets is the best way to showcase your products in your customer’s Steam libraries.

This treatment will apply to all products on Steam, so we encourage you to back-fill older products so they look their best.

Here's an example of the Library Home, with new capsules:

Here's an example of a product detail page with new header treatment, showing the Hero image with Logo image laid on top:

Here's how to upload and preview
To upload library assets go to "Edit Store Page"...

...and then to "Graphical Assets"

Library capsule
(vertical orientation) - Please provide at '300px x 450px' or '600px x 900px' High res images are used for 4k monitors. They are not required, but will be in the future.

Library hero banner
1920px x 620px PNG, or 3840px x 1240px (for 4k).

Library product logo
640px x 360px PNG, or 1280px x 720px (for 4k) Ensure that the logo extends the full width of the PNG, without extra padding.

How to use the Placement tool
At the bottom of the page is the Placement tool. Once you’ve added the Hero and Logo images, you’ll be able to preview how they’ll look in the client. The two assets are layered and move independently when the page is scrolled, creating a subtle parallax effect. This will help you find an ideal placement of your Logo.

The four green anchor points relate to the four possible positions your logo can be pinned. Bottom-left, top center, mid-center, and bottom-center.

In most cases, the bottom-left position should be used.



Once you have determined your logo position, use the blue logo box to size your logo appropriately. The blue box acts as a bounding box for the logo, it will not scale outside this box. The right edge of the blue box determines the maximum proportion the logo will scale to compared to the background hero graphic (this is useful if there is background art you don’t want the logo to overlap.) The top edge of the blue box determines the maximum size the logo will scale to (this is useful if you are finding the logo is too big when the window has been scaled up.)

Typically you can take the top edge and leave it higher than the bounds of the logo. Play around with it and try scaling your window to get a sense for how your logo will adjust as the window scale changes.




Please let us know if you have any questions

- The Steam Team

 

[Rahdulan]

I feel sorry for interns who have to create new assets.

 

[Sentinel]

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/valve/about/

 

[Silentstorm]

Wait, did they really post that!?

That's suprisingly humble and hilarious of them!

"Yeah, we know that if we didn't post that, you guys would all talk about Artifact, but Valve is always one step ahead...most of the time at least."

 

[LESS T_T]

It's definitely not referring to Ricochet, that game released in 2000 and single-handedly prevented the Y2K apocalypse.

 

[unfairlight]

Wait, did they really post that!?

That's suprisingly humble and hilarious of them!

"Yeah, we know that if we didn't post that, you guys would all talk about Artifact, but Valve is always one step ahead...most of the time at least."

They have had the "(and one that didn't)" on their various pages for a long while, since they redid their site last year and before the launch of Artifact. On their site, it links to Ricochet.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Sure am glad mobile application design principles are coming to desktop. Imagine making a music player that cannot run smoothly on a 2 core 1,4GHz processor.

Mobile has ruined everything. Web design and now desktop applications.

Sometimes I load up a site in the wayback machine from 2006 just to marvel at how much better everything looked. Pages filled with actual content instead of just having 3 jumbotron tiles, etc. FWIW this site is still relatively sane.

 

[Silentstorm]

Wait, did they really post that!?

That's suprisingly humble and hilarious of them!

"Yeah, we know that if we didn't post that, you guys would all talk about Artifact, but Valve is always one step ahead...most of the time at least."

They have had the "(and one that didn't)" on their various pages for a long while, since they redid their site last year and before the launch of Artifact. On their site, it links to Ricochet.

Huh, wonder if they will update that, anyways, i completely forgot about Ricochet, i am serious, every other game of theirs quickly came to mind except for that one, so i guess they aren't lying when it comes to people like me.

 

[LESS T_T]

*gasp* Look at Valve releasing a new game after 6 months from the previous game!: http://blog.dota2.com/2019/06/dota-underlords/

Dota Underlords

A few weeks ago we posted about our love of Auto Chess and how we were working on our own standalone version of it. In that same post we promised we would share information about the game soon. As it turns out, “soon” is today.

Dota Underlords is a new stand-alone game that pits you against seven opponents in a battle of wits that will have you building, combining, and leveling-up a crew in a battle of dominance for the city of White Spire. In this game, victory is determined not by twitch reflexes, but by superior tactics.

DOTA 2 BATTLE PASS PREVIEW

For the last few weeks, we’ve been running a Friends and Family Beta, and today we’re expanding it to include all Dota 2 Battle Pass owners. With your help, we’ll be stress testing our servers as we prepare for our Open Beta. In the preview version, you’ll be able to:

• Play online against seven other players.
• Practice offline against our lineup of advanced bots (from easy to hardcore difficulty).
• Party up and play together against bots or other players.

Battle Pass owners can find a link to add Dota Underlords to their Steam library on the Dota 2 dashboard. After approximately a week of stress testing we’ll transition to Open Beta.

OPEN BETA

Once the open beta begins, Dota Underlords will be available to everyone for free on Steam (Windows, Mac, and Linux), Android, and iOS. In addition, the team will be enabling the first set of new features, including:

• Ranked matchmaking.
• Cross-play across all devices.
• Rank and progression shared across all devices.

Because the game is in active development, both the Preview and Open Beta have one important thing in common: we’ll need your help to make the game the best it can be as we work towards Season One.

BETA FEEDBACK

We’re sharing Dota Underlords fairly early in development. And while we intend to constantly be updating the game and adding features throughout the Beta Season, your feedback is critical to help the team know what issues are important to you. On the main screen we’ve added a ‘Submit Feedback’ button to the game. Feel free to wear it out. Tell us what you love, and tell us what could be better. We welcome it all.

See you in the game,
The Underlords Team

 

[unfairlight]

It feels like the Autochess craze has already died down, so it seems a bit late to the punch. Autochess isn't keeping a top 10 spot on Twitch any more, but it's wait and see until Valve, Riot and the original Autochess guys all get their games out. It's insane how fast Valve has shat this out, though, after making next to nothing for 6 years. It's just a crying shame they're making more Dota shite instead of innovative FPS games.

 

[Sentinel]

This reeks of Valve rushing the game out the door to gain traction before Riot and EGS's games hit the market.

 

[unfairlight]

I wonder if this is running on Unity? Source 2 is still in early stages of development (more accurately, it's another dead Valve project, and it gets updated only when Dota 2 needs it to be updated) and as far as I know it has no support for mobile. Valve has historically made these smaller spin off projects and VR titles in Unity.

 

[Irata]

Looks like Valve's hands-off management style can be turned off when there is an urgency.

 

[Sentinel]

Steam update brings streaming outside the house. In-Home Streaming renamed Remote Play. Proton development continues and updates to Vulkan/Steam's pre-caching system.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/51761/

A new Steam client has been released and will be automatically downloaded.

General

• Fixed Windows cursor sometimes showing as the incorrect type, most often in system tray menu
  
• After workshop updates, 'View News' on the download panel will now navigate to the list of subscribed items, rather than to news for the base game.
  
• Fixed a bug causing Steam UI and some Steamworks games to have occasional performance hitches for users with large friends lists or large numbers of blocked friends

In-Game Overlay

• Fixed a bug where the Big Picture in-game overlay could be abnormally pixelated for titles using the Vulkan graphics API
  
• Fixed mouse cursor intermittently disappearing while mousing over certain windows (e.g. full-screen videos) which caused mouse input to not work in the overlay until restarted
  
• Full-screen views in chat windows now render in the chat window rather than in a separate full-screen window on top of the game
  
• Fixed certain keyboard events being sent incorrectly when in a web browser window.
  
• Fixed dark rendering of windows in the overlay in titles that use the Vulkan graphics API.

In-Home Streaming (AKA Steam Remote Play)

• Steam In-Home Streaming is experimentally available outside the home, and is now known as Steam Remote Play. Your Steam clients can now stream games from each other wherever they are, as long as there is a good network connection on both sides and they are close to a Steam datacenter
  
• In-Home Streaming settings have been renamed Remote Play settings
  
• Paired Steam Link devices now show up in the Remote Play settings
  
• You can now remove all paired Steam Link devices
  
• Fixed the PC to PC streaming client hanging when you alt-tab away from it
  
• Added a network status icon to indicate that the network connection is slow.

Steam Input

• We will now download official Steam Input configurations during game installation for Steam Input users. This should fix the issue where Steam Input games would need to be run once before controllers worked in offline mode
  
• Joystick ranges are now saved for Switch controllers after performing controller calibration. This fixes joystick drift when first connecting the controller
  
• Reworked the Controller Options screen to better show device specific options
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause some game’s official configurations to not show up in the configuration browser
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause Steam to open Big Picture Mode immediately when connecting a Steam Controller via the wireless receiver
  
• Fixed some cases where Steam Input’s haptics or rumble could ignore the user’s enable/disable and intensity settings.
  
• Added support for the Astro C40 PS4 controller
  
• Improved rumble on Nintendo Switch controllers – there should now be a wider dynamic range of rumble values
  
• Fixed a case where glyphs shown through Steam Input API are incorrect when converting a configuration between controller types, ex: loading a Xbox controller configuration on a PS4 controller.

Shader Pre-Caching

• Re-worked the shader system to enable downloading and pre-compiling of the whole collection of Vulkan pipelines for a given game. As a result, some shader data downloads will now show in the Steam download manager. Pre-compiling will be enabled in a future Steam update.
  
• Fixed some cases where shader depots could get downloaded even when the feature was disabled.

SteamNetworkingSockets

• Fix bug causing P2P connections to sometimes fail to migrate to another relay when the relay became unavailable or shut down to apply an update.
  
• Fix bug causing repeated connections to the same relay to fail.

Linux

• Fixed a random Steam client crash when launching games
  
• Fixed a bug where copying/moving files bigger than 2GB would fail with an I/O error
  
• Improved the client's responsiveness to network changes
  
• Added support for rumble pass-through for virtual controllers. This fixes missing rumble support for any controllers opted into Steam Input, and rumble emulation support for the Steam controller.
  
• Fixed library ordering to prefer the Steam Runtime's libcurl over the hosts'. Fixes "Risk of Rain" and other GameMaker titles
  
• Added support for removing old Proton versions by aliasing them to more recent ones
  
• Added support for developers and Valve testing specifying default Proton configuration options for games even if they're not yet white-listed

macOS

• Fixed a random Steam client crash when launching games
  
• Fixed playback of streaming videos from library

 

[LESS T_T]

But Swen three of them are high budget action RPGs, and one of them (yours) is suspected as one.

So I wondered what actual "niche" CRPG is highest on the list?

• Subverse at #9, maybe. But no.
• Dwarf Fortress at #12, mechanically maybe. But not an RPG as it is currently.
• Gloomhaven at #38. Close one, but this doesn't sound like a "full-pledged" RPG.
• Stoneshard at #48. Rougelike with cool 2D graphics, we're getting closer...
• Encased at #64. Ah, here we are, we found the chosen one. This is the most anticipated niche CRPG on Steam. Not surprisingly it's a post-apocalyptic RPG from our Russian comrade

Also Iratus at #80, Stygian at #128, Disco Elysium at #165, and Colony Ship at #248.

 

[Sentinel]

But what differentiates a cRPG from an RPG?