Steam release push

I call upon all of you, brave developers, let's focus on tasks needed for Steam release NOW to have more players tomorrow.

Pause your beloved pet projects, and join the great steam quest.

Here is the current list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_l117qQxgc8lk8D66oPFIWjngl7cWKnsMoIdHIDuiSI/edit?usp=sharing

If you are volunteering for entire task, let us know. If you just want to contribute, PR that are related to those tasks will be most welcomed.

Thank you!

Some things I think should be added to that:
Forum PM - useful for communication across timezones etc
Public logs of everything said in public channels - useful for digging up old discussions and for evidence regarding reported abuse
Multiple UI presets - having a few different UI layouts available in the settings menu could help player retention slightly
A better settings interface - IMO all technical and graphical settings (including things currently in config files) should be in the lobby leaving the ingame settings for gameplay and widgets
Sort out map tagging - currently a lot of featured maps are garbage and would give a bad impression to new players

I would like to be able to properly subscribe to forum topics instead of posting in them like i do now to help find this topic later.

"Design offline mission system"
As far as I know, missions in ZK are just games that have dependencies to current ZK version.
The problem is you can't distribute them as games because you'd have to constantly change the ZK dependency to point at whatever zk:stable is.

There's a goal to fix this by allowing rapid dependencies in modinfo.lua, which would be resolved at runtime to point to the current local version.
There's been some work regarding that: https://springrts.com/mantis/view.php?id=4431 although it's not completely done yet.
Help out with that? Might not be "weeks of work" hard anymore then...

Tranlsatons not mentioned? Yay, I dont have ot work hard.

I think taht forum generally should be reworked. Now it is a total mess not containing quite a few must-be features (like i.e. search option). I think taht it looks quite good, but it needs t o be reworked technically, to resemble most of the forums you can find in the web (not, becasue htose forums are perfect, but becsaue players are used to them, so it won't repel them).


Oh, onr more thing - You really want to have some auto rooms manager online BEFORE steam guys come. Really.

Offline missions is basically whole setup to be invented that allows:

- existing missions to be played "offline" - that means they need to be distributed with steam, yet it also must allow insta updates when user is online (both steam and non steam)

- support for campaign, including it's rules of progression, journal etc (again online-auto updatable for both steam and non steam)

- support for reference update, when we release new version of game or switch engine, existing missions have to be updated. It can also happen on client.

- keep support for reporting (high score) and multiplayer (with slots).

Now add to it menu,gui translations, ZKL translations, site translations (incl. wiki) and its done!

quote: - existing missions to be played "offline" - that means they need to be distributed with steam, yet it also must allow insta updates when user is online (both steam and non steam) - support for reference update, when we release new version of game or switch engine, existing missions have to be updated. It can also happen on client.

Rapid dependencies would solve this.
You don't even have to update them via rapid for Steam users, it's enough that you update the rapid repository index file via Steam so that missions would know that there's a new version of ZK that it could use.

To make an example:
Your initial release could include Spring 110, Zero-K v1.5.0.2, and missions: Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2.
You would also include a synchronized version of the rapid repository files (I assume you use something like this for ZKL too):
packages.springrts.com/versions.gz
zk.repo.springrts.com/versions.gz (here it would state that Zero-K v1.5.0.2 is the current zk:stable)
swiw.repo.springrts.com/versions.gz
evo.repo.springrts.com/versions.gz

In Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2, you would have a dependency in modinfo.lua that would state something like:
"rapid://zk:stable". When running those missions it would get resolved to Zero-K v1.5.0.2.

Update 1 happens.
You release it with Spring engine 111 and Zero-K v1.5.1.21. Tutorial 1 has been updated while Tutorial 2 hasn't. You include the updated rapid repository files as well as the new versions of the engine, game and the only updated mission. Both Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2 still have the same dependency "rapid://zk:stable" in their modinfo.lua, only now it will be resolved to "Zero-K v1.5.1.21".

The reason of doing it like this is that you don't have to modify all mission archives when ZK gets updated. This will work with both Steam and non-Steam updates and will allow you to execute missions offline. It also makes mission distribution between players easier as it's enough to just copy the sdzs (provided they also include the map).

I'd also want some feedback on this from KingRaptor seeing as he was the main person involved in making the ZK mission editor.

quote: - support for campaign, including it's rules of progression, journal etc (again online-auto updatable for both steam and non steam) - keep support for reporting (high score) and multiplayer (with slots).

This is something ZK-infra specific. Basically find a way for ZKL to store offline progress and scores and synchronize them with the online ones. I'm not interested in this right now.

Alright. I'll take it you're not interested then.

gajop huh? I just don't understand how its related to mission problem. What part of it is solved by rapid dependencies?

Pxtl I don't undertand. Mission does have it's own modinfo, thats part of the problem because it specifies dependency.
It would be best if it didn't need modinfo and dependency at all and dependency was supplied externally instead.