Hello! I’ve been working on a project for a bit more than a year now, and I’m honestly almost finished with it.
I was hoping I could get some indications on how to handle having a game running with EasyRPG on steam, especially since I’m planning on selling it ($3)
All about the Steam backend is done, but since I’m not exactly a programmer I couldn’t figure out how to integrate steam API and steamshim. I’ll be honest, I’d really like to have achievements in my game haha
I think I’ve read I should credit easyrpg in a readme file or something?
Hi, first of all, thank you for using EasyRPG Player
Since there are actually a few question, I am trying to separate the following a bit and give a general overview. Detail questions can be talked about later. Nobody here is a lawyer, so we cannot really know about every aspect.
About selling , there should be no problem, the GPL allows it.
However, integrating steamshim or other things not in our source code will modify the game engine and count as “derivative work”, so you need to provide the modified source code then.
This changes a bit in the concept of dynamic linking, but we mostly use static linking: the included libraries and their licenses are important, since all together will have an impact on the “final product”.
May I ask, which platforms do you intend to support?
I assume Windows/Mac/Linux?
About achievements, how do you want to enable them? I have read that you could for example toggle a variable and push that to steamworks, but this will require additional coding.
About the credits, all we ask about is a backlink to our page and/or a mention in the readme (the GPL says you need to include the license as well, but we will not enforce this). Just an example:
This game uses a modified version of EasyRPG Player (under GPL3 license from https://easyrpg.org), my modified source code (as per GPL requirements) is under <github/own page>.
The full license can be found under https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html"
About the platforms, it’s windows/Linux, since I don’t know anything about mac and I can’t really test on it.
I was thinking about using variables and/or switches for the achievements, it seems to be the easiest way to go with it. I might ask around with my friends if I can figure it out with them, but I don’t necessarily want to spend days or weeks trying to understand it all.
Thanks for the credits example. I’ll make sure to include it.
I really like all the functions EasyRPG players can provide to me. I’m currently working on an English translation and I’m blown away by how easy it is to do. And there I was ready to make two different builds for French and English.
The initial setup of steamshim and Player’s dependency libraries might be a bit work, I would suggest keeping the dependencies minimal to make this a bit easier later.
For example if you only have mp3 music in your game, you can skip all additional audio libraries (ogg, opus, midi,…).
Same for custom font rendering and such.
It would also be possible to setup building on github actions to generate the executables, so you only need one development setup for Windows and not additionally for Linux or vice versa.
Once you have a development setup, enabling or disabling features, changing logos and icons and hardcoding special features will be easier.
Feel free to ask any questions, we are happy to help.
