[Bf-committers] Steam-powered Blender

[Jan Albartus]

Hi Ton, Jan and everyone else,

On a more practical approach, my personal feeling is that it might be 
useful to think about putting the current Blender on steam and then 
provide any addons/plugins as separate DLC (Downloadable content). This 
way the official Blender doesn't need any Steam specific changes to it's 
release as well as separating any current and future addons needed 
specific for the game modding community.

I think this might be the best way to start the process on a 
Steam-powered Blender. If it's possible to handle io-specific tasks 
through the Python addons that is. I think I read somewhere that 
http-calls aren't implemented yet in the Blender-python api?

The actual (technical) specifics of the Blender and addon updates to 
Steam is something to be worked out, since the developers of the 
plug-ins/addons might be.

Having Blender available on Steam might expose the Steam-centric modding 
community to Blender and addon development easier, I think, than trying 
to reach out to all modders before Blender is on Steam. And getting the 
Steam forums connected to a release might also might help to get the 
ball rolling.

Please note that I'm not talking in the capacity of a Blender developer 
(I only made one simple addon many years ago) but as a Blender and Steam 
user that is very interested in seeing Blender made available on Steam. 
For modders and 'just' artists alike.

On a final note, I think the Steam-overlay (hot-keys) might conflict 
with Blender's hot-keys, so it might be to find a solution for that or 
just disable the overlay for the time being.

Thanks,
LOGAN


On 2013-08-27 10:21, Jan-Peter Ewert wrote:
> Hi Ton,
>
> Yes, I am willing to pick that up to the degree that I am able to, since I am not an engineer. Sorry for being silent for a while, preparing and doing GDC and Gamescom took up a lot of resources.
>
> As for requirements, my feeling is that the first step is to get a version of Blender out there that makes people on Steam aware what Blender can do for them at the moment. I was thinking of publishing the current version with io plugins for Source, Unreal and Unity.
>
> As for devs, I have already received some very encouraging feedback from people on this list that I have not yet found the time to get back to, but you are right that we should absolutely push to get people from Steam that are not yet Blender developers on board.
>
> Best, Jan
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bf-committers-bounces at blender.org [mailto:bf-committers-bounces at blender.org] On Behalf Of Ton Roosendaal
> Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2013 3:33 PM
> To: bf-blender developers
> Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Steam-powered Blender
>
> Hi,
>
> I think we have two issues to solve to make it more organized. Hopefully Jan-Peter from Valve is willing to pick that up?
>
> - Requirements
> Define a well written list of end-user expectations of what should needed, prioritized. Try to separate the requirements related to the valve platform and data I/O, from the ones related to Blender using in general.
>
> - Find the devs
> Advertise this well in Steam channels to insipre developers there to join efforts on it. Valve could play a role in it too... maybe giving out some rewards for it or so?
>
> I think this should be handled in the Steam community first. Issues like APIs, dependencies, license compliancy, technical designs to comply our releases, then can be handled here or one of other channels (IRC).
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Ton-
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
> Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands
>
>
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