Best way to release program that edits teamcolors

Homeworld Remastered Collection Homeworld Mods and Modding
#1

So I’ve been working on a windows form application that let’s you choose the badge and colors of every team in the hw2rm campaign. I’m almost ready to release it but I’m not quite sure of the best way to release it. Can an exe program even be published in Steamworks?

Also, what is the best way to get the end user to see the effects in game. Is there still a -overridebig command they would need to put into steam launch options or a shortcut? The only files my program generates are teamcolor.lua files.

Any help would be appreciated.

#2

You could publish the programming inside a folder in a blank mod… You could make the “ships” folder and put it in there and tell people how to open it…

#3

That’s an interesting idea. Since you can only publish big files on the workshop, its not going to be very easy that way. You would have to make it a sort of external tool. Unless you could make your tool part of the in-game UI, I don’t think it can really be released as a mod as such…

#4

For the distribution side: I don’t believe there’s a way to have a workshop item auto-download an executable in a way that will generally be accessable. It would have to be packed inside a .big file, so users would need to extract it to get at it. You could have a minimal mod that has a link to the tool in the descrition, perhaps? The mod itself could add instrutions on proper use to the main menu, for instance.

For the implementation side: I think override big file works, but a safer way would be the -moddatapath method. Rather than messing with the user’s data directory, you’d make a directory next to it that would contain just the modified files, and I guess a desktop shortcut to launch it?

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