About Xonotic and Steam

Hi there!

We've published a blog post in a Q&A form about Xonotic and Steam.

You can read it on the official Xonotic blog.

Feel free to comment it in this thread!

Does there have to be a synchronisation between xonstats and steamworks? Okay, I don't know how it works, but couldn't you just track stats in xonstats as usual and let the kids have their achievements in steam separately?

"let the kids have their achievements in steam separately"

I'm using Steam too, tywm. On the separate stats, that'd be pretty dumb. Also, soon we'd like to introduce our own achievements too (note: this is one of the earliest features we wanted to do!), it'd be bad if there'd be two kinds of stats and achievements.

graphitemaster said however, that Valve just updated their Steamworks terms and conditions. He says Valve will opensource the API, so we might reevulate the statement about Steamworks later.

Xonotic on steam would definitely change the game.
Btw. is xonstat server capable of handling thousands of players at the same time? Its a bit lose-lose situation right now.

I think the decisions concerning xonotic on steam should be done very carefully.

The biggest issue I see with that, is that currently, the minsta servers are by far the most popular.
And a large portion of the steam community is NA based. The problem I see here, is that in NA 99% of matches are on minsta servers. The last thing you want is a player joining into the most populated server, only to have to wait a while for a bunch of map/mod downloads to finish, and being greeted with an unfamiliar game type that is not advertised when they first download.

I think that the first priority here should be popularizing the core game play before going the steam route. Not only in the EU region, but in NA too.

Besides that, having xonotic on steam would be very nice, finding a way to link xonotic stats to player's steam profiles would also be nice. I think it's a nice idea but should be done only once the core game play is more popular and no major changes are scheduled (such as lg, etc).

At least, that's what I think.

I think that the first priority here should be popularizing the core game play

That's exactly why we'd like to introduce server list sorting in the next version:
http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=4535

and no major changes are scheduled

Lemme quote myself from the blogpost:

"we’re still in beta stage, and the game has tons of bugs and half working features that we first would like to fix, and fully implement before introducing it to larger audiences"

&

"we’d like to iron out the largest wrinkles before"

Btw. is xonstat server capable of handling thousands of players at the same time? Its a bit lose-lose situation right now.

What makes you think it wouldn't? Remember when Gronkh brought down the main website, flooding us with requests and saturating our network? Stats was up the whole time.

I'm not sure how XonStats work internally, but I woudln't see how that could be a problem. If there are "too many" matches stats incoming to the DB, then just quoe them up and let the matches come on stats some minutes after, the responsivness of the web pages is probably most important.

Also, I suppose we could make it decentralized too, so in case one of the servers is overloaded, others can take off the load, and synchronise later (or is this a wild idea?)

The problem is that Steam basically has the total Monopoly on PC Gaming right now. If a game isnt present on Steam it simply will not be played by the majority unless its niche or has some heavy advertisment going on.

Sad but true. I recently tried to get myself a commercial game in order to enjoy the capacities of my new GPU and found out that it was REALLY hard to get anything interesting where I don't have to register online and let some company track my playing behavior all the time. In the end I decided to go for something that has been released 2007... *sigh*

Did you get bioshock by any chance Halogene?

XonStat already has a queuing system, but it isn't what you'd think, and it isn't as robust as I'd like. The short story is that a more complex architecture could be supported, but was rejected due to "premature optimization being the root of all evil".

Did you get bioshock by any chance Halogene?

No, I think bioshock uses some sort of online registration, too? I don't remember, but apart from that it didn't appeal to me so much with its focus on violence.

It is a good idea to bring the game to a bigger community, but if Xonotic would be published over steam, would it be neccessary for the user also to use steam to play on Xonotic servers? I can speak only for myself, but i dont like all this steam startup, connect and update procedure.

It will never happen that you need a steam account in order to play Xonotic.

would it be neccessary for the user also to use steam to play on Xonotic servers?

No. The "normal" game will be just as good as the "Steam version", there won't be any difference. Just like the Desura client already is.

I'm really happy that you guys are listening though . For a long time I thought the devs had abandoned the project, but that's great that you're continuing it.

Thats one interesting thing with steam.I hope when xonotic gets on Steam there wont be too many trolls and hackers.But let's hope for the best!

I think that the Xonotic Team have their reason to this waiting, 'cause the game isn't ready for Steam. Xonotic is free, and Steam is a good way for promoting it to more people. So let's see what the Xonotic Team have in servant for us !!!

Seeing this game on Steam would be amazing!

Thanks for taking this into consideration and we all wish the best for you guys and Xonotic.

I play bunch of Steam games since there's a lot of Linux-friendly games there, and can even play some Windows games using Steamplay. I would really like to see Xonotic on Steam just so we can get more players! I'd love to see this game get more popular.

I play bunch of Steam games since there's a lot of Linux-friendly games there, and can even play some Windows games using Steamplay. I would really like to see Xonotic on Steam just so we can get more players! I'd love to see this game get more popular.

+1 to that.

As you can see from earlier posts, this has been talked about for years.

So Xonotic is  not perfect.  If we wait for perfection, it will never be ready.

So people might find bugs
So people might all go to insta servers and decide they hate the game
So noobs might get put off by the learning curve

If there is even 1% retention, the exposure should massively increase player numbers.  What is there to lose by trying?

I'd like to see Xonotic on Steam too, just because of the player boost it would get

I'd like to see Xonotic on Steam too, just because of the player boost it would get

People seem to believe that being on Steam = boost in Playerbase. But i think that is not the case anymore. I mean if nobody knows a game no one cares if it's on steam. There has to be some kind of marketing and in my opinion that is almost impossible for Xonotic (becasue promotion costs money). I mean Xon isn't free 2 play, it is free. There is no money involved.
I think the best we can do to promote Xon at this moment is adding it as "Non-Steam game" so our friends on steam see us playing a game called Xonotic. And you can always add Xon to your Profile Showcase (sadly you need to be on a certain steamlevel for that, i got there for selling some cards i think). So people who check out your profile might see some nice Xonotic Screenshots and might get interessted in the game. Sure that doesn't mean we will get 100s of  new players but it is at least something we all can do. Same goes for having xonotic-related signatures in forums. 
To be honest i think that will help boosting the playerbase more than just throwing it on steam (but of course i'm not against having it on steam).