Battle for Wesnoth on Steam

[zookeeper]

The sequences of fade transitions (the campaign menu browsing, and 0:49-0:58) happen too fast. When one fade ends another immediately begins, so you never have time to actually see any of the images clearly, only a constantly moving blur. If you use a rapid sequence of fade transitions like that, each image needs a moment of solo time between the fades. I also don't really see why you'd want to use fades in the campaign menu section at all.

[vultraz]

zookeeper has a point. Perhaps no fade transition for those.

[beetlenaut]

This is very nicely done, and I appreciate how much work it takes. I do have two critiques though (sorry that they're kind-of long):

1) I feel like I have a choice of reading the text or watching the game sequences. It's not easy to do both. There should be a significant pause (three or four seconds) between the start of game a sequence and the text appearing. The current text is too long for this, but it could be a lot shorter. You are using lots of long words and adjectives, which would be great for a description on a web page, but is a lot to read on a video title card.

2) There are too many stills at the beginning. I get what you are trying to do here, but I don't think it's a good idea in this context. A person watching this trailer is searching for a new game, and probably watching lots of trailers. If we want them to watch the whole thing, we need to capture their attention right away. Starting with 17 seconds of our least-impressive artwork is not the best way to do this. The unit art is much better than the story art, so you should use some of that--and I would still suggest that the images go for a lot less time. You could still use story art as a background for the unit art though.

[HaydenRead]

When wesnoth goes on Steam, there will be a whole host of features that we can enjoy correct? It could give us auto-update, savefile cloud syncing across different platforms, etc?

There are a bunch of available features, but support for them would have to be coded into Wesnoth itself.

Savefile cloud syncing may also be possible without any changes to the code.
(It can be setup if the saves go to a sub directory of any of these locations

• App Install Directory
• Windows - My Documents
• Windows - AppData (Local, LocalLow, or Roaming)
• Windows - Saved Game folder
• Mac - Home directory
• Linux - Home directory

)

Achievements would require code changes to trigger the achievements.
Steam game matching for multiplayer would require code changes.

Greenlight requires 1 or more videos, 5 or more screenshots.

To get the application on steam requires:
1 or more videos
5 or more screenshots
1 Header image (460x215)
1 Capsule image (231x87)
1 Large Capsule image (467x181)
1 Main Capsule image (616x353)
1 Page Background (1438x810)

A game manual is also recommended but not required.

Capsule images listed above are images used in game lists etc within steam.

Trading Cards are not available for 'Free' games (unless they contain microtransactions), so there would be no need for trading cards, etc to be designed.

As noted in the first post, I have no problem with creating the Greenlight application, and putting the application on Steam (as I already have a Greenlight account that has been used for Simutrans which should be released on Steam in the next week or two), and have no problems with giving 2-3 of others from this forum access both to the admin side of the Greenlight page, and to the software side of the Steam Games portal to perform game updates etc, once the game is through Greenlight.

Also, with the posted Video, it mentions Windows, Mac, and Linux, and states available now.
In regards to Greenlight, it is not 'available now' on Steam, so possibly state where it is available now from.
While it is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, in regards to Steam it is a bit more work getting Mac on Steam, as a preloader needs to be coded that will install any dependencies (such as the SDL2.Framework), before running the game, so getting Windows and Linux on Steam should be easy, but Mac will require more work.

[vultraz]

Thank you for your info. A lot of what you outlined will be useful; however, we would rather keep management of our Greenlight entry "in-house", so to speak. We've had issues in the past with allowing third parties administrative control over such accounts. You're welcome to make contributions to mainline Wesnoth, but we are not looking for volunteers to assist with the Greenlight process at this time. Thanks anyway.

[Andrettin]

Achievements would require code changes to trigger the achievements.
Steam game matching for multiplayer would require code changes.

For legal reasons, unfortunately those are not possible. To implement those things it would be necessary to use Steam's proprietary libraries when building Wesnoth, which would cause a legal issue with the GPLv2. Exactly for that reason no GPLed game on Steam makes use of those features (except for Tales of Maj'Eyal, which I suspect is able to do so because the creator holds full copyright to its engine, so he is able to create a non-GPL version of it).

It is possible to implement the loading of Steam Workshop add-ons without using any of Steam's code, however. The uploading of Steam Workshop add-ons is trickier, though.

[Exkywor]

Hey, i'm a graphic designer and video producer and i wanna help with the trailer, i have a couple of ideas and sugestions i think can be useful, how can i help?

[vultraz]

You'll have to speak to ancestral. Why don't you send him a PM?

[Exkywor]

You'll have to speak to ancestral. Why don't you send him a PM?

KK, gonna check for him and do that

[nuorc]

New version is up! Critique and comment as you like.

In general, I like it very much. I believe you put quite some work into it and I don't know how many revisions we can ask from you.

I'm not too happy with the written text. I think it is very distracting from the visuals. And the font and the color: well, they're easily visible, but they don't really say 'Wesnoth' for me.

@Exkywor: Hi & welcome to the forum! As a video producer, would you happen to know someone who could speak the trailer?

[Exkywor]

Hi & welcome to the forum! As a video producer, would you happen to know someone who could speak the trailer?

Not really, i'm beginning to work as a video producer, so i happen to have the knowledge but not the contacts, but i don't think a narrator is necesary in this trailer anyway, in the area i can help is in the editing of the video.

[Iris]

@Exkywor: Hi & welcome to the forum! As a video producer, would you happen to know someone who could speak the trailer?

I’m not ancestral, but I really don’t think we need spoken narration in our trailer either, primarily because it’ll be very hard to not make it sound cheesy, regardless of the narrator’s voice acting skills.

[Exkywor]

I’m not ancestral, but I really don’t think we need spoken narration in our trailer either, primarily because it’ll be very hard to not make it sound cheesy, regardless of the narrator’s voice acting skills.

Yep, it's fine with just music and text

[ancestral]

Okay, “final” draft up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyk49e5_8VE

[Nick-C]

Okay, “final” draft up on Steam: https://youtu.be/KG25UUWJlHY

Love it! Looking forward to the greenlight! I am completely confident it won't be long before it is added; you guys have done an amazing job over the years. Looking forward to the coming months being Steam Wesnoth months.