Steam & Steam SDK Support?

2dguy

Does anyone have their game on Steam? If so, did you latch into their leader boards, achievements? Is there a stable ANE that supports Steam? Thx!

kupo_games

Here's the stuff I've made so far:
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=ebf

All of my games use the FRESteamworks ANE to unlock Steam achievements - it's pretty simple to set up. It's free and hasn't been maintained in a while, but it still does everything I need it to do.
Bullet Heaven 2 also uses the leaderboards from the same ANE - it loads a list of the top scores, and uploads your best score, etc. So a little bit more work than the achievements but not too complicated. I'm happy to share some code if you ever need it.

There's also some features for working with Steam cloud, but in my experience you don't really need to do that in code - it's enough to specify which files Steam Cloud should backup in the Steam dashboard.

Another thing to remember is that the Steam overlay may freeze if there is no animation happening in a display-list Flash game - so always keep something animated in there. I don't think this was an issue in Starling though.

2dguy

wow..your games look amazing. 🙂 Thank you for the reply. At this point I'm just doing some research to find out what's available before I make any long term plans. Looks like the FRE ANE hasn't been updated for 5 years. Surprised Distriqt didn't produce an ANE for the Steam API.

https://github.com/Ventero/FRESteamWorks

ma

(It's in the works, just been delayed, unfortunately had a lot of unexpected things happen over the past 6 months)

2dguy

ma (It's in the works, just been delayed, unfortunately had a lot of unexpected things happen over the past 6 months)

Awesome! 🙂

Shaun_Max

ma Just out of curiosity :- which all anes can we expect from distriqt in future?
Do you have any plans to support Nakama, colyseus or similar multiplayer services?

ma

Currently we don't have any other new extensions in development, there has been a lot of work lately in keeping the extensions updated to support the latest OS versions, so that has been taking up the majority of our time. Along with the release of apm etc

We generally just respond to requests / needs of the community so happy to take any suggestions. We used to rely on our uservoice site, but that hasn't been used much recently https://distriqt.uservoice.com/ but I would still recommend posting anything you need there.

Cheers

FlashFix

A Steam ANE would be sweet because we can only release for Android, iOS and Windows/Steam with Air and consoles are a bit of a mystery. It would add a little more to the PC release with 64-bit support.

By the way... my new game is this action packed 2D shooter single player or 2 players.
If you play single player you get an A.I friend to help you.

After playing Street of Rage 4 with a friend on Steam using multiplayer mode we decided to play 4 players one night and found out Steam remote play is perfect for hosting multiplayer game and its easy to play with friends(no lag and better than TCP/IP connected multiplayer games).

I have not published yet to Steam. My game is almost ready to publish to Steam, I did publish to iOs and Android(.aab) for closed testing. I already have a dev account for Steam and did all the setup for developer account and now need the Greenlight. If remote play is built in already and works flawlessly that would make multiplayer games awesome. Did anyone test out remote play with Air built games or do you need a special extension ?

Here are some few interesting links for remote play.

https://store.steampowered.com/remoteplay
https://store.steampowered.com/remoteplay_together

paulp_games

My games https://store.steampowered.com/app/1073810/Shapik_The_Moon_Quest/ use the FRESteamworks ANE to unlock Steam achievements.

FRESteamworks ANE is very old but works fine.

FlashFix

Did you use a 64-bit FRESteamworks ANE ? I use 64-bit architecture in my game for desktop.
I found this on the web. https://github.com/waveofthought-code/FRESteamWorks

Cool game by the way !

paulp_games

FlashFix

Cool game by the way !

Thanks! I used the old 32-bit version(0.7).

FlashFix

Just a wanted to give a update. I have successfully uploaded my game build made with AIR to Steam.

Everything is working perfect even got it working on my custom built arcade with X-Arcade setup and Xbox controllers.
You can play touch screen or with keyboard/mouse. I need to fix some bugs before getting the build reviewed by Steam.
Also be adding more Power Ups and Bosses. 😉

The remote play function is amazing and works out of the box with my game for COOP multiplayer.

paulp_games

FlashFix Cool! Good luck!
I found steam ANE with 64bit support https://github.com/waveofthought-code/FRESteamWorks

kupo_games

paulp_games
I used this 64-bit version of FRESteamworks with my latest game on Steam, Epic Battle Fantasy Collection.
Works just like the 32-bit version - I haven't had any problem with it. I switched to the 64bit Flashplayer for this latest game because the 32bit one was running out of memory occasionally when playing in resolutions higher than 1080p, so I guess it's best to update and stay safe.

FlashFix

Very interesting indeed. Wondering if debugging on local machine can work or I have to send the build over to steam and make a custom debug UI. Its worth the try after getting performance and bugs fixed.

The game should be Steam Deck compatible 😉

kupo_games

FlashFix
Testing new builds on Steam is pretty easy - you can just put your latest build into the Steam installation folder and replace the local files of your game, and all the Steam features should work. There's no need to upload it to Steam, but if you want to, you can easily make beta branches that users can opt-into. Achievements, cloud, overlay, etc, can be tested before a game is public, but users won't be able to see the "see all achievements" page on Steam until the game is live.

And when you do push out an update to all of your users, it goes live pretty much instantly, but users may need to restart Steam before they see the update. IMO testing on Steam is a lot faster than on mobile!

FlashFix

Wow @kupo_games nice work with your games. I got a Final Fantasy nostalgy feeling looking at Epic Battle Fantasy Collection on Steam. I'm curious about the Steam Deck about how to make it compatible with my game.

I will have to test out releasing my game on the Steam Deck but I don't have one yet...
Do your games work with the Steam Deck out of the box ?

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/testing

It looks like you need a Linux build of the game for Steam is it possible or just a Windows build .exe works ?
After looking at the documentation I am still a bit confused about that part.

I have a Razor Kishi for my Android phone and my game is working great with controller support. (Xbox input)

kupo_games

FlashFix My games all work on the Steam Deck to various degrees. I haven't made any changes to them to work on the Steam Deck - they are all Windows games only.

Bullet Heaven 2 is a Starling game with controller support and works perfect on Steam Deck.
Epic Battle Fantasy 5 is a Flash display list game, and the performance is not perfect, but pretty decent. I've heard that some of the resolution options cause some issues on the Steam Deck (I used quite an old version of AIR and an external app to change screen resolution). The text in the game is slightly too small for comfort. But I think the biggest issue is a lack of controller support, which means you have to play with the trackpads or the touchscreen - some people like them, but I personally don't.

So in summary:
Performance on the Steam Deck is decent, even with the Flash display list.
(If it's been optimized for mobile, it will probably run very well.)
Windows games run just fine, I haven't seen any issues with Flash running on it.
Controller support helps a lot.
Use a mobile-friendly UI with big text.
Don't do anything weird with resolution options.

FlashFix

FliplineStudios I did not include the Steam SDK and it is not a requirement for your build. However it is recommended to add some extra stuff like achievements for users.

I enable the remote play option and managed to play my game in COOP mode. It was awesome and worked out of the box with a friend on Steam.

In my game I have a Top Score so I will probably put the leaderboard feature from Steam SDK in 64-bit.

kupo_games Ok thank you for the tips. I have made my game in Starling with GPU optimizations. I'm curious on how to get better battery performance. The game last long but if some hack or some tricks exist to lower the battery consumption even more with Air that would be worth the shot.

FliplineStudios

Somewhat related question: Does anyone know if Steam SDK integration is required for releasing a game on Steam? If I didn't plan to use any SDK-specific features like achievements and leaderboards, it sounds like the Steam Overlay is automatically injected into anything that's uploaded. Does anyone have any experience of how well AIR apps handle that injection if you're not integrating the SDK using an ANE? Or are you better off to just include the ANE even if you don't use anything with the SDK?

kupo_games

FliplineStudios The Steam overlay requires no work - it just works. But something to keep in mind is that the overlay will freeze if there is no animation happening in the Flash display list - so you need to have some animation somewhere at all times to keep it updating. With Starling I haven't noticed this issue though. Other Steam features are not required (you don't even need any DRM), but achievements and cloud saving are quite popular. Cloud saving is just a case of specifying which files in the installation folder should be backed up by Steam - super easy if you choose to do it this lazy way.