Saint Edward Games

"Before one can playtest, one must have accessible builds" - Herodutus c. 484 – c. 425 BC Wow, what true words, Herodutus. Still apt after all these years. Jokes aside, I'm in the midst of a push towards playtesting, but in order for people to play the game... the game has to be up somewhere for them to play. On Itch, it's relatively easy enough; you just either chuck your game's exported package with the files onto Itch, or if you opt for a web version, it's a bit more involved, but still not too difficult, if that's the way you'd prefer to go about it. I'll get to trying to put builds here on Checkpoint Zero as well, just because I really like the vibes of this platform. As such, I know it won't be too much of an issue to get my playtest versions on Itch, (we'll see what quirks if any this platform has with uploading your games) but with Steam, I had never gone through the process before. Plus, I wanted to do my first outside-engine-context test on my Steam Deck because 1) I'd get to play my game on a Steam Deck! and 2) I wanted to see if my controller support settings were working on it too. You can see the Youtube short I made about it here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NXh4TnZ4OL0 Now, as much as I have a distaste for AI in video games, troubleshooting technical scenarios like this is what AI is for, and man, oh man, was I so glad I had GPT to work with to get this thing figured out. Exporting From Godot: First, I went through the exporting process with Godot. I was planning on just exporting the Windows version and trying it on the Steam Deck, but I don't know what came over me; I decided to also make my game available via Linux so that when I tested it on the Steam Deck, I could try to run it on there with a native Linux/SteamOS build. Due to my game having East Asian language localization support (Chinese/Japanesee/Korean), I also needed to include custom language packages in the export as well. ICU data is necessary for exporting with language support for East Asian languages. (Most likely any non-Latinate language support too Uploading to Steam Chances are a lot of indies are making smaller games under the 2 GB compression threshhold, and thus are probably using the web upload feature in the App Data Admin / SteamPipe section. One very important thing to note - when you are preparing to put all your export files into a .zip for this - be careful about the file/folder structure! Because when I had zipped the files, instead of shift + clicking to highlight all four files and then clicking them to put into .zip file, I instead created a new folder and then did the .zip compression to that folder. The issue is here is this: this added a new subfolder to steam's directory that it didn't anticipate. My giddy anticipation of playing my game on the SteamDeck the first time was met with crushing disappointment as the Steam Deck said that it couldn't find my game's executable (well technically the .x86_64 file because the build was Linux/SteamOS version). Steam's OS thought it should have found the executable in the ../.../.../You Call Yourself a Wizard?! folder, when instead it was lying around one folder deeper from my web upload mistake. This caused headaches and me going back and forth with GPT and reuploading different build attempts with the same error getting thrown in my face. I uploaded like 4 build attempts and in one of the pictures below you can sense the desparation growing with each build upload. Finally, after going into the desktop mode on my Steam Deck and looking at the Steam's common app folder in my file directory did I end up catching the problem which I mentioned above. After that, I deleted the depot (not really necessary as I later learned, but I wanted to make sure it did NOT have that extra folder lying around once I tried to reupload a build) and then reuploaded via the web uploader, made sure the new depot was attached to the correct app package and put on the build and then hot damn, bob's your uncle. It was a very confusing, annoying, but ultimately worthwhile process to be able to play my own game on real gaming hardware. Question to others who have published on Steam, did this process confuse you all the first go-around as well? Anyways, thanks for reading, if you haven't already, please follow YCYAW?! here on Itch and also on Steam. Please contact me if you are interested in playtesting this game, because I need to get people testing it in the coming weeks! Cheers, Saint Edward Games.