Steam Community

[Simizen 1,100]

So, the other day on the SC4D Discord server, there was talk about problems within the SC4 Steam community, and after looking at some of the topics within the Steam community, and how things are, I realized that, we should probably address this directly.

Now, I'm not saying we can stop or weed out trolls, but, I realized that, while it would be wonderful to guide people over to both here and the SC4D forums, possibly a pretty serious issue is being strictly limited to these forums, when everyone's got access to so much more. The idea is to open up integration of sorts with places like steam, cause it seems like there's not as much intermingling of the fans of the game from one area to the other. I'm sure this can also be applied to other related sites (I haven't interacted with the GOG community as of yet).

I'd also like to note that, my interaction with the Steam community in general, is very small (literally the past couple of days after it was brought up and I began investigating to see how things were), so my thoughts and opinions may not be best for improving things within that branch of the SC4 community. That said, I'm not entirely clear on how to improve this, thus why I created this topic, as I feel everyone here would be better able to bounce ideas around.

This initially started with the idea of attempting to establish Steam integration with the game, where we could drop a few, rather simple mods that people could quickly and easily grab, without having to come out to the STEX or LEX. Now this wasn't to say that it'd eliminate the need for sending people back over to both here and the Devotion forums, as I'd love for the fans to join the SC4 community forums in general. During an initial chat over in the Devotion Discord server, I learned that attempting any form of Steam integration would be rather difficult, because, we're either heavily reliant on EA going back to SC4 to establish the integration (and considering their Origin version of the game, I don't think that's going to be a good thing if they did), or, find a way to create some kind of a wrapper program to allow a sort of superficial integration, but, even with that, it's highly likely that we'd need to interact with the game code directly to pull it off, which of course falls under the weird legal issues that come with the game and EA. So, for now, any integration with the Steam workshop of any kind, will be put aside until something's been sorted out with any of the legal issues that could pop up.

I forget who it was, but, someone mentioned that parts of the Steam community are out of touch with the SC4 community (which I very much saw with my limited exploration so far; there's a lot, so it's going to take a while), and that many of them often complain about issues with the game, when they could just do some quick searches. This is why I asked about the workshop integration, as we could at least be nice enough to give out the bug fixes and other related patches to help the Steam side of the community out. I know there's tons of mods for the game, and I would absolutely love to see many of them on the Steam workshop, however, I'm aware of the many problems that have been plaguing the SC4 community across both forums sites, which, even if we could add them to the Steam workshop without any particular legal issues, it would still be problematic trying to post the mods there, simply because of legacy code, and weird quirks with the mods. Case in point, it'd be a serious pain attempting to add the thousands of dependencies if Project Zip wasn't already underway. So, if we're ever cleared for it, I'm sure the dependencies will be super easy to deal with adding to the workshop (relatively speaking).

My goal, and interest, is to find a way to integrate the Steam community into the rest of the SC4 community, where they don't feel separated or alienated, and hopefully, won't be as aggravated with the game, and just blame the company for "not making SC4 to modern standards" due to it being a 20 year old game. I may very well be misunderstanding the situation, and that in reality it could be that the Steam side of the community is well integrated, but, it just seems like there is a level of disconnect, and I'd love to, at least, reduce it, if not remove it entirely.

Would love any feedback on this.

[catty-cb 4,413]

14 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

This is why I asked about the workshop integration, as we could at least be nice enough to give out the bug fixes and other related patches to help the Steam side of the community out. I know there's tons of mods for the game, and I would absolutely love to see many of them on the Steam workshop

Which sounds a great idea in principal, but I mainly play Banished these days and Banished does have workshop integration and it turned into a nightmare of people downloading other people's mod's then re-uploading them under their own names, or the modder would upload a current version of a mod having deleted the old mod and someone would upload the old obsolete mod under their name or they would tweak someone's else mod and then upload it to the workshop .... most of the Banished mods are on community websites these days, I mainly download mods from these sites

World of Banished - http://worldofbanished.com/

Banished Ventures - https://www.banishedventures.com/

The Colonial Charter site is currently offline for maintenance - https://www.blackliquidsoftware.com/forum/

[Ulisse Wolf 4,461]

I've been giving some attempts at SC4's Steam discussions but have now stated that talking to people about Steam is a lost cause. They are too detached from reality because they publish false information. They don't feel like doing a search on ST and SC4D sites where there is extensive documentation. I can understand that forums can be an old-fashioned thing but we have Discord which is proving to be a useful thing to unite more communities. Surely the moderators will have an extra job because of the trolls but this solution is the safest to follow. 

Steam Workshop is a useful tool but now it is proving that it is actually a malicious tool because

1. Made people stupider to install mods
2. Anarchy
3. People who upload other people's mods 

So I'm strongly against integrating Steam Workshop on SC4. Also because LEX and STEX are already doing a great job on mod management and what SC4 lacks is a toll that allows you to configure SC4 but also to install and update mods. So it's better to invest time on this tool than to do bullshit with Steam Workshop. An example of steam workshop bad management is Cities Skylines where there is anarchy and the creators of the mods are betting on the Paywall model severely limiting the circulation of mods and causing a black market of mods that is the most disgusting thing that can exist. The same thing is happening with The Sims 4 etc...

Now we are at a point where the community must finally solve the last problems and complete all those projects that are on paper but that have never moved forward. Also because there are two projects to make SimCity 4 Open Source and there are various projects to create an official community launcher that interfaces with STEX and LEX in downloading mods, installing them and updating them automatically as well as setting SC4

So recapitulating

1. Post the SC4Devotion and Simtropolis Forums and Discords links to the Steam discussion page. 
2. Definitively solve the last remaining problems of the SC4 community (for example: modpack, paywall mod, etc ..)
3. Do not use Steam Workshop but complete our infrastructure to create our own SC4 mod loader and configurator
4. Make an effort by the whole community to create an OpenSC4 alpha

Outside there are many people who want to return to play with SimCity4 but are discouraged because there are problems that we have dragged on for a long time but that has now become urgent to solve for the good of our community

[Simizen 1,100]

Yeah, I was unaware that the modding scene on the Steam workshop was a mess. I think I've only ever downloaded a couple things from there for Cities: Skylines I believe; possibly one other game, but, I can't think of which one that would be currently.

3 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Steam Workshop is a useful tool but now it is proving that it is actually a malicious tool because

1. Made people stupider to install mods
2. Anarchy
3. People who upload other people's mods

Have to say, I didn't even consider how the more simplified aspect of getting mods installed could be an issue, but, that totally makes sense. I mean, I'm interested in learning complicated things within computers and programming, so, to me, I've typically been one to stick with some of the more complex and difficult stuff. Hell I've got a game that I have 2 copies of, and I stick with the old DVD file's I have of it, over the complete version found on Steam and GOG, and I have considerably more control over it as a result.

Though, tbf, some of the mods in the community are just overly complicated to install, but, at least work has been made towards fixing that (thank god for ProjectZip).

[slink 1]

I am not sure how helpful my input will be, but the best mod manager I have used is Mod Organizer 2 for Fallout 4 (among other Bethesda games).  The mods themselves for that game come from Nexus, which has suffered its own problems in the past few years.  But I contrast MO2 with Skyve, which purports to be a mod manager for City Skylines, and I found Skyve lacking somewhat.  In MO2 I can arrange the mod load order to my satisfaction,  but with Skyve I am not sure what is causing their load order.  Skyve does indicate missing dependencies, as does MO2.  I subscribed to a collection for City Skylines and to my dismay the mods were all jumbled together when I viewed them in Skyve.  Hundreds of them, not counting a few dependencies.  The mods on the Workshop for City Skylines are not sorted in any way, while the assets are incredibly tightly sorted.  If you look at the mods published by one author on the Workshop, it indicates that you are not subscribed to any of those mods, when in fact you may be (as I was).  In desperation I went looking for another city builder, any city builder, tried my old copy of Cities XXL, and then saw that SimCities 4 Deluxe had gone on sale for about $2 on Steam.  I checked my archives and saw that I still had my SimCity 4 Plugins directory from 2003.  I bought the new copy of the game, and copied the Plugins over to the Steam game directory.  I am now playing my old saves.  I am amazed.  But this doesn't help your discussion, other than that I would be delighted if there was a tool to manage the SimCity 4 mods.  I have mine sorted in directories by author, then by building, with the dependencies in the root of Plugins.  I can at least locate them, which is better than I can with Steam's numerical coding for game and mod.