Zero-K on Itch.io

quote: What would be mandatory to list Zero-K on Itch.io: An Itch.io account Receiving Paypal or Stripe account (to collect money on Itch.io) A Project Page

Can we do this without the donations/money/paypal part? Any kind of publicity would be great, but as soon as money and a commercial reseller come into contact you're only making this needlessly hard to push through.

I see this as another encouragement to work on the trailer, but don't rely on anyone for this. We already have videos. Use what we have and if someone comes up with something better in the meantime we can replace it. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

Is there someone who'd step up to make the page?

DeinFreund, It can be done without the donations/money/paypal part. Licho already has that part setup already. I actually used it. Is there a reason to put the game up for free on Itch.io and not allow donations through Itch.io where impulse donors are?


The easiest way would use what we have now and update it later when we have a reason to. Just getting Zero-K listed would be a good reason to post everywhere that Zero-K is now listed on Itch.io.

Imo there are (at least) 3 choices for release date:
1) Before Steam, in order to increase the established userbase. Apparently that can help.
2) Coincide with Steam, in order to announce the (Steam) launch even better. Basically it would serve as another avenue to advertise it.
3) After Steam, in order to reappear in the news after the initial buzz has died out.

I'm not sure what's the best, but I think the existing userbase is "large enough", and that option 2) or 3) would be better.

I think you are wrong. It wasn't refused by Valve, it was greenlighted and it could've been released at any time. ZK devs smartly chose not to do it, until infra, lobby and singleplayer were done better.

"Steam version" is being updated pretty frequently, but it's only available to a select few that are testing/developing ZK and its related infra.

quote: Why wait for Zero-K to be good enough for Steam when it was good enough for Itch yesterday?

"Good enough for itch" is your opinion, not mine. I think it's better off waiting for more polish, but I also don't know how important itch.io is as a platform - maybe it doesn't matter much at all.

Assets aren't an issue, and the ones that are, are being replaced (e.g. current buildplates).
I was speaking in past tense, when lobby and infra was (imo) worse. Now that part is better, although there are a few other improvements still required.
SP is being worked on pretty heavily, see the thread about AI difficulties. There's also more work on missions.

Once those things are done it'll be release ready.

I don't know if it needs more players before the release. I don't think it does, or at least, I don't think that the itch.io campaign would bring considerably more (+20%), but there's no way to tell for sure.

An issue with Itch.io for testing is that it would not be a test of the steam package. But aside from that it is a good idea.

FWIW, gajop's expectations are unrealistic. We used to say the same shit back in 2008 and even earlier. Spring games will never be up to your "standards". We can get close. Chobby fills in a lot of holes, but us on uber can't even use it yet, and still, the best lobby for us is weblobby.

You guys need to temper your expectations. First off, the evo launch wouldn't have gone as badly, except steam decided to feature it on the front page. You had better pray to zeus and the universe that that doesn't happen to ZK. When people tlak about the evo steam launch, there is a lot that they don't know, which, from my perspective is really annoying. I hadn't planned to realease so early, but if you've ever spent time in steam's steamworks interface, you are aware of how primitive and user-unfriendly it is.

That said, it would NEVER have been the right time to release. If you keep waiting, ZK won't be released on steam for another 5 years or more. If you're trying to make sure that everything is perfect, take a word of advice and stop. Temper your expectations.

Additionally, the people that you get from steam will by and large not even know what rts is. They will think that it is like a moba, and will be utterly overwhelmed by the game. That isn't because ZK is doing something wrong, it just happens to be the wrong fit for that user. Evo has tons of people that come from steam and simply don't know what RTS is, when they find out, they simply aren't terribly interested (in the genre as a whole).

I agree with gajop that things should be as good as possible on release, but you should take that to mean that they should be good. Not perfect. Perfect will never happen.


Anyway, that wasn't even why I was posting. Apparently we all had the same idea at the same time, because I was in the process of putting evo on itch when gajop informed me of this thread. I've released it and can offer some insights if anyone cares. Nothing groundbreaking. Possibly mildly interesting, but if you have questions I'll try to answer them.

https://forboding-angel.itch.io/evolution-rts

It would also be a top #10 linux strategy game wink *wink*

well it's listed as window exclusively on itch.io
which may or may not make sense to me.

Congratulations [Evo]ForbodingAngel on the successful Itch.io release of Evolution RTS and making it to the top 10 of the Real time strategy category in a single day.

GoogleFrog, I can start working on Itch.io page. I can start it right here in this thread and or I can make a wiki page that would contain the the content for the Itch.io page that maybe we could just copy the html and css over to.