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[leonelc29]

yesterday i was hoping that you haven't drop this project.

http://indiegames.com/2012/04/tiggit_the_open_source_steam_c.html

and now you can't.

[nico]

Just discovered Tiggit via Petri Purho's twitter account today, and it's just amazing.
Being able to easily install free indie games or even demo, have a link to the creator's webpage, etc... That's exactly what I was waiting for

Hope you'll be able to add Blocks That Matter demo (my game, just sent you a mail). And now I'll try to beat the first level of "The Goonies".

I got your mail, I'm just kinda swamped in new mail after that very same twitter post . To answer you both, there's no formal procedure yet, you can either just post it here or send me an email.

There IS one requirement though: You'll have to host the game/demo file yourself, and allow the client to hotlink it. As an open source project there's no way we can afford to host all the games ourselves. However if each developer hosts their own files, the cost per person is negligible.

Also you'll have to host it as a portable zip (a zip that can be extracted and run directly), as the launcher can't use .EXE installers.

To speed up the process even more, include the following so I can simply copy-paste it:

• a title
• a short description (2-5 sentences is usually enough)
• a homepage / buy page link (can be one or two links)
• the above mentioned zip link
• screenshot link. Shots are cached locally, but you should keep the link up since the launcher might use it as a backup. The screenshots are 300x260. Larger images will be auto-resized to fit.

[larsiusprime]

By portable zip, I take it you mean something that can be extracted directly and then run?

[nico]

By portable zip, I take it you mean something that can be extracted directly and then run?

Yes. I should probably clarify that.

[larsiusprime]

Gotcha! I was wondering why I never saw any installers open up or anything!

Well, that probably counts me out for now, unless I can figure out how to package an Adobe AIR app as a portable zip. I suppose it *could* work in theory for someone who already had AIR installed, but would break hard for everyone else.

Good luck with TIGGIT! I'll be using this from now on whenever I need my indie game fix

EDIT: I suppose I could just create a special non-AIR version of the demo as a standalone executable that's just zipped up... might be missing a few bells and whistles, but that's probably the ticket!

Was wondering - will you have a safeguard against link rot, if everything's externally hosted by the author? I'd want to keep links to my games up forever, but I can imagine links going down - would the program detect that and silently remove them from the list until it could find the files again? That could be an annoying user experience 10 years down the road if some of the older games stop working.

[nico]

Well, that probably counts me out for now, unless I can figure out how to package an Adobe AIR app as a portable zip. I suppose it *could* work in theory for someone who already had AIR installed, but would break hard for everyone else.

Well actually I have other AIR games I really want to add as well. As we add support for multiple platforms later on, I've thought about simply adding "air" (and "java", and maybe "amiga" and so on...) as game platforms, so that a game can specify its native platform as "air", rather than "windows", for example. Then we can just auto-fetch and run the appropriate installers / emulators / whatever, if it hasn't already been installed, and these games would run seamlessly on all platforms.

I guess the same would apply to DirectX and other dependencies. Hmm, this wouldn't be very hard to implement at all, come to think of it.

Was wondering - will you have a safeguard against link rot, if everything's externally hosted by the author?

This has actually happened once already. "Temporal" by Potato Factory went offline a while ago, seems the entire site is just gone. I keep a local copy of every game on the service tho, so now I'm hosting it off of my AWS account.

(edit: changed my last reply into something more specific)

[larsiusprime]

Ah, super cool on both counts! I'll keep in touch - if there's anything I can do as a developer to support this nifty little platform, let me know!

[pervycreeper]

An option to choose what drive on which to install the games, and the ability to uninstall the launcher would be important, in my mind, for a program whose only focus is software management.

[:^)]

dude ye need moar games.

[richardjames13]

So what happens if you abandon the project? Or even worse get run over by a bus?

[Klaim]

If this allow a torrent to be provided, then maybe it would help persisting the data even if it's not hosted on a server anymore.

[tzachs]

A great start! 

I would like to have more control of how the list is presented to me. If I played a game and decided that I never want to see it again, I'd like to be able to remove it completely from all lists. Also, I'd like to change some categories that I don't agree with (for example, out of 25 adventure games, I only thought that 2 were really an adventure games, and most of the others were platformers).

[nico]

An option to choose what drive on which to install the games, and the ability to uninstall the launcher would be important, in my mind, for a program whose only focus is software management.

I'm working on those for the next release. I posted a thread about the next couple of planned releases here on our own forum.

[nico]

dude ye need moar games.

I know . We've opened for game suggestions here if you have any. This is a temporary solution until we can put together a more direct game submission mechanism.

So what happens if you abandon the project? Or even worse get run over by a bus?

Right now, it'd probably die. The db and code are available to all, but it would take some serious initiative for someone else to continue the project. However, more developers are already showing interest in the project, so in 3-6 months that answer will hopefully be entirely different.

[larsiusprime]

Keep it up, man! This is a lovely little program and it really fills a unique niche that "just another indie game website" doesn't.

When I'm hankerin' for some indie games, I can just open that program and browse and get my fix, and it installs really quickly and nicely. This is already an excellent experience and I wish you the best with it!

[tequibo]

This looks very interesting.
I hope you will steal all best features from steam.
In my opinion for project like this to succeed content filtering is important as much as usability, good download speeds, etc.
And maybe it has potential to be a platform for developers too. Where they could keep players up to date with new or existing projects, update games, gather feedback. Anyway, I think this can be a Very Good Thing.
Good luck with this, and keep up the good work!

[nico]

Thanks! I agree that Tiggit should be a platform for developers, and I feel that is the direction we are (slowly) moving.

I hope you will steal all best features from steam.

I hope so too . I'd love to hear your opinion on that though: what ARE the best features of Steam we should steal?

[gecko]

what ARE the best features of Steam we should steal?

The automatic patch download (gamer side), and upload (developer side) must be in that list, IMO.

[nico]

The automatic patch download (gamer side), and upload (developer side) must be in that list, IMO.

I absolutely agree, in fact I'm about 70% done on an auto-update solution

Anything else? It would be especially interesting to hear what social features on Steam (chat, friend lists etc) you are using the most, since I haven't used those myself much. What can be stolen and what could even be improved?

[tequibo]

What I like in steam is auto-update, yes, ability to download my games at any time, browsing is alright too, seeing metacritic scores, sometime I check forums for solutions on problems/news/opinions if game is worth to buy.
Oh, and news about games are cool, too! Well about updates, mostly, but that feature, where steam displays posts from gaming blogs about item is kind of neat too.
 
So, if steal than it would have to be some kind of "favorite games" list, since all games are free. Maybe even improve on what steam have and make a library that you can sort as you like, steam library management is rubbish at the moment. And maybe display posts about those games from gaming blogs and whatnot.
And maybe some kind of "Featured Games" category would be great. "New and noteworthy" and whatnot. So, filtering system, as I said before. By editor and by community(which you already kind of have).


Oh, and it would be great, if I could hit "install" and continue browsing without program opening "installed games" tab.

Another great steam feature is workshop of course, but it's, of course, require large user base and game that have build in support for it.

Steam "friends" feature is great for multiplayer, and somewhat all right to see what your friends playing, buying, and such. But I can't see this as a priority feature for this project.

Oh, and steam cloud is great too, of course. Maybe it's even possible to implement without developer's modifications, if game stores save data in same folder when it's installed?