Steam Overlay on Windows?

[3030]

Hey @rogerwang, thanks for all your amazing work. Im noticing the Steam Overlay doesn't seem to work on my Construct 2 game when run from Steam (it's an actual Steam app, not just added in manually).

The weird thing is, it only seems to happen on Windows. Well I tested in OSX and it comes up fine using the keyboard shortcut, but in Windows (7) the keyboard shortcut doesnt work at all. I tried in another game that doesnt use node webkit and it seems to be fine. Is this something I should bring up with Construct 2, or is it something with Node Webkit?

Is there any more info I can provide that might help?

Thanks!
nate

[3030]

Hey @rogerwang Just curious if there is any info I can provide to this that will help determine if it's an issue with Node-Webkit or something else entirely.. thanks so much!

[rogerwang]

Is it possible to provide a case?

[3030]

Sorry, im so new to this.. do you mean like an example? I have no idea what im doing haha :) I can give you a steam key to check out? make sure there's a shortcut key to open dev tools or something? Is that what you mean though? So so sorry, i promise your patience is appreciated, ill get you anything you need.

[EddieLongStockings]

This is the response I got from Valve. It's not much but I felt I should provide what data I have:

"It looks like how they have things setup (maybe a giant canvas or webgl surface) does lead to consistent rendering, so that part actually may be working. Think the actual problem is that they are using the chrome multi-process model and the compositing and gpu rendering are each in a separate process from receiving input. So we inject the overlay hooks into all the processes, but we only find a 3d surface and try to run in the renderer or gpu process but some other process is doing input and we aren’t hooking it.

If they forced the single process model for their webkit/chrome stuff that might make things work without them having to heavily modify the chrome code. “

Anyway, it's not a dire issue. We can have Valve turn off the Steam overlay by default until Node Webkit is ready for Steam, or when Steam is ready for Webkit.

[McKack]

Success!
Tauri4n, that was actually very helpful, thanks!

Modifying the package.json to use the chromium argument "--in-process-gpu" I was able to make Steam Overlay respond to the hotkeys (open overlay, take screenshot, etc.)!
Here's a sample screenshot

[3030]

Works for me too - thanks so much!! Added the flag to the launch options in steamworks so i dont have to add the flag every time i export from Construct 2

[3030]

Just a heads up... @McKack and @Tauri4n (and @rogerwang) I had a customer from steam have problems with the game crashing at random times not long after the game was running. usually within 1-4 minutes of the gmae running. Once I removed the --in-process-gpu from the steam launch flags, it ran no problem with no crashes. So it is definitely related to this flag specifically.

Is there some way to 'cancel it out' at launch time by him adding a launch flag into the steam game properties? I can fix the crash bug for the customer but it means I need to do one of 2 things:

1. Not have a functioning Steam overlay for everyone else (when the game runs fine otherwise)
2. Ask everyone who wants to use the steam overlay to try adding that flag manually and cross their fingers...
3. Find some way to disable it in just his instance. For example, is there an override / opposite flag I can tell the user to add to his instance of the game so that it just breaks the steam overlay for him specifically and not everyone else?

Thanks so much! I hope that makes sense.

[rogerwang]

Is it feasible to provide two startup shortcuts(e.g. BAT file) and use different command line arguments?

[3030]

Not really, unfortunately, as Steam lets you define only one executable as 'the one'. so i could define the bat file with the "--in-process-gpu" flag as the default so that anyone who clicks on the game in steam runs that app, has the steam overlay, etc. But then I'd have a second bat file without the flag and it wouldnt actually work to run the app...

In addition to that, and I dont know if this is a bug with Nodewebkit or with the greenworks plugin but the steam overlay also doesnt work at all unless i rename my app to nw.exe and am using that nw.exe file as my launched file from steam, so even if the .BAT file thing worked in theory, it actually wouldnt work anyway by way of only being able to use nw.exe as my application exe file (is there any way to fix that?)

[EddieLongStockings]

Just my two cents: I'm not using Greenworks. I've focused more on the Steam Web Api.

[3030]

Thx @Tauri4n -- actually, im curious, do you have any issues with the Steam Web Overlay using the flag posted by @McKack ? Also, how do you turn off the overlay by default?

Forgot to tag @rogerwang in my last post, so ill do it here (sorry).

[EddieLongStockings]

I haven't heard anything bad since the tweak. Valve doesn't seem to like the idea of not supporting the Steam Overlay. I wasn't even able to get them to turn it off by default. And players don't like the process of turning it off on their end.

Having anything less than it working, is a bad judgement call from an business standpoint.

It may seem like a small issue from the outside, it really isn't.

I'm using Node Webkit v0.10.5