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Steam Status Update, Plans, & 122 Release

Started by Roboron, October 13, 2020, 06:51:08 PM

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Isaac Eiland-Hall

Quote from: Roboron on October 28, 2020, 07:57:49 PMI don't want players to avoid participating because they don't have a Reddit account.

I'm confused. Maybe I didn't communicate well. The forum is, in my mind, the primary place for Simutrans discussion, so allowing voting here makes sense. It also makes sense to me to allow folks on Stream to vote.

It sounds to me like you thought I was suggesting only allowing voting on reddit? Nothing could be further from my intent. I was trying to suggest that it might be nice to also post on reddit and allow voting there, but not as the only or even primary place. It's a small subreddit and a very small part of the overall Simutrans community.

If I've misunderstood and you got what I was saying but I misunderstoof you and for whatever reason you specifically want the subreddit to not participate in addition to other places, no worries, I wouldn't argue against that.

Roboron

Quote from: Isaac Eiland-Hall on October 28, 2020, 11:35:59 PMIt sounds to me like you thought I was suggesting only allowing voting on reddit? Nothing could be further from my intent. I was trying to suggest that it might be nice to also post on reddit and allow voting there, but not as the only or even primary place. It's a small subreddit and a very small part of the overall Simutrans community.

¡AH! Yes. I missunderstood. Of course, we can open participation on Reddit too! And maybe even Twitter, using a hastag (I know some japanese players like this way of sharing simutrans stuff). Only platform I won't allow is Discord, since I really can not keep track of submissions on a chat platform, and images are not as widely available. But Reddit is welcome.

Mariculous

If we want votes on Discord, we should setup a locked channel for this.
votes on Discord usually use reactions. Post what's to be wvoted for, define which emote relates to which opionion and it's done.
No need to actively track anything.

Isaac Eiland-Hall

Quote from: Roboron on October 28, 2020, 11:46:42 PM¡AH! Yes. I missunderstood.

:whew: Okay, I'm glad that's all it was. My apologies for saying it poorly the first time! :)

On Discord - I or someone else could surely help with that if wanted, too. :)

Roboron

nonono, voting on Discord is a no-go. We barely have any control over the voting process!

I can only agree on it being used as another platform where users can submit their screenshots - and only if someone wants to volunteer registring such entries (I don't see much sense on using yet one more platform where nearly all of the users are already registered on the forum..). One could create a special channel for that, #screenshot-contest or whatever, to better keep track of entries.

I will start the contest this weekend. Probably tomorrow, if I have enough time. And it will last until December.

Mariculous


Roboron

With "emoji vote" we can't define a maximum of votes per user, per category.

Isaac Eiland-Hall

Sooooo, all we have to do is not use emoji voting, but require people to reply instead.

Alas, the same would be true on reddit anyway - we'll have to tally up votes from peoples' replies.

I can help with the vote tallying, I don't mind. :)

Flemmbrav

You could just allow everyone to upvote every image.
Approval votings aren't that bad, don't fear them!

Roboron

Quote from: Flemmbrav on October 30, 2020, 09:54:51 AMYou could just allow everyone to upvote every image.
Approval votings aren't that bad, don't fear them!

You say that just after a troll wave hit the server :-/ . Of course I fear.

Quote from: Isaac Eiland-Hall on October 30, 2020, 03:18:45 AMwe'll have to tally up votes from peoples' replies.

I really, really, don't understand what you (all of you I mean) have against voting on the wiki. A survey everyone can vote on. No account required. No manual vote counting. No need to waste time preparing 5 different surveys.

I can see the benefit of increasing the number of platforms where you can participate (more participants, more exposure), but I don't see the benefit of splitting the voting system if we can avoid it. Someone please explain to me.

Roboron

Quote from: TurfIt on October 13, 2020, 07:17:59 PM
5. Steamcloud savegames.
^^ that's really the main purpose IMHO.

Today, I was taking a look at the Steam API documentation in order to implement Steam Cloud savegames. Then, I discovered that there's a way to use Steam Cloud without using the API (and without writing any code), "Steam Auto-Cloud".

I then went to see if I can configure it for Simutrans, only to find... that it was already enabled*!

I have been wrong all this time, thinking that the preloader was taking care of the cloud syncing, when in fact it was not. I'm confused now. The preloader implements some Steam-related code, since it needs the Steam library and it complains if Steam is not open (however, it will continue anyway).

Quote[S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; SteamAPI_IsSteamRunning() failed.
[S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; unable to locate a running instance of Steam, or a local steamclient.so.

But then what it is implementing? Well, after some reverse engineering, it seems that the preloader is in charge of dealing with workshop items. Not downloading them, but copying an renaming the items (i.e.: Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/434520/2269211835 => Steam/steamapps/common/Simutrans/pak32.comic). It will also check if they are removed(unsubscribed) and then delete the copy.

Reimplementing this (if I can make it) will surely take more time than the steamcloud savegames feature..

*Only it was not enabled/configured for multi-platform, but now it is.