GeForce Now Idea

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ajack
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 11:39 am

GeForce Now Idea

Hello. I'm not sure how many people use NVidia's GeForce Now game streaming service but I'm sure I'm not the only one. (It really is a godsend for those of us without current GPUs.) While there are a few issues with House Party on GeForce Now they're more inconveniences rather than problems (needing to continuously reinstall, not being able to use game saves across multiple sessions, etc.) my personal top inconvenience is not being able to play custom stories... which brings a tiny little tear to the corner of my eye. (tiny little tear emoji). So with this in mind and knowing that I'm sure there are countless items with higher priority, I was curious about your opinion on and feasibility of an idea I had.

Please correctly me if I'm mistaken on any of this but from what I understand...
1) The game is able to automatically download content for the main stories when launched.
2) Additional custom stories can be installed manually by downloading and unzipping into a folder in My Documents.
3) Many of these custom stories are available publicly and follow a common path and name structure.
4) Players can chose from this combined list of stories simply because of their existence in the correct file structure. No further configuration is required to allow access to these stories.
5) The only thing preventing using these custom stories on GeForce Now is the inability for players to manually copy the custom story files to the server.

With this in mind... and knowing that this is a super simple suggestion that would of course need to be implemented properly and not in this rough and dirty way... but how about something as simple as:
A) Prompt player for: "Enter custom story #: ______"
B) The game downloads https://forum.eekllc.com/download/file.php?id=XXXXX into the appropriate My Documents folder.
C) That's it. The player can now play the chosen custom story without any significant risk or code impact. (Be it part of the game's launch screen or a separate utility I don't know.)

I know few things are as easy as they can appear and again I know this overly simplistic scenario would need to be done properly with more than just what I've described here but it's been running through my head for days and I had to bring it up.

Thoughts?

Thanks.
ttant
Posts: 987
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:49 pm

Re: GeForce Now Idea

In my pov, all your 5 points are correct. You 're just missing one point, which can bring lots of trouble: game version vs custom story version.
ie: you can't play a cs created before 0.9.6 with latest version (and same thing the other way, can play recent CS on old HP game engine)

About the CS installer, just look at https://forum.eekllc.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1015

One other cons against game streaming, is the bandwidth required to play. we don't all have huge bandwidth and even some countries has download limitation per month.

According to https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing ... uirements/ and https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers ... rce-now%3F
you will need a 20~50 mb/s internet connection. For that, i think, you'll need fiber or satellite connection.
For France, such connection costs around 40€ (if you don't apply the first year reduction).
GPU cost 200~300 (no need to buy a 1000€ gpu, let's be honest)

So in my pov, using such system seems cheaper than buying a gpu only for the first few months. Past 5 month (if we agree than platform cost or electricity consume by more powerful gpu are almost the same), buying a gpu would be cheaper.
Furthermore, if you change your GPU each year, you can sell your old one to buy the next one.

In short, for me and for now, it's yet too early (and probably yet too bugged) to be considerate.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: GeForce Now Idea

Interesting read, and we hadn't really planned for the game to be played on game streaming services. Your understanding of custom story installation is generally correct. Unless a story "overrides" the Original Story (which is normally housed in the local installation directory), said story just needs to be in %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Eek\House Party\Mods\Stories, and then needs to be in its own folder. That folder's name needs to match the name of the .story file for the Custom Story. That's it.

I can absolutely see how streaming the House Party application would cause issues in regards to custom stories. I'll create a ticket in our system dedicated to making the Custom Story "discovery" process a bit more robust for this purpose, and I'll bring it up to our owner.
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ajack
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 11:39 am

Re: GeForce Now Idea

First off, thanks for the quick replys.

And for what it's worth, I'm not surprised that streaming isn't on your main roadmap but let me tell you that it works really well, at least with NVidia's GeForce Now. It's currently still in beta, and because of that it's free... but it's been in beta for several years and has been extremely solid for the bulk of that. As for the bandwidth usage and cost, I can attest to the fact that you are correct. It is indeed an issue but for me it's one I'm willing to accept. I work remotely, which already requires that I have a solid internet connection with good bandwidth regardless. I also need to use a laptop for work and as I wouldn't consider myself a true gamer I can't justify a separate gaming rig. Using this streaming service I was able to get nice performance with decent graphics while still being able to stay under my bandwidth cap and since starting I've upgraded my internet connection for an additional $20/month I now have unlimited bandwidth. This allows me to play pretty much any current game at max settings, so for my situation this ends up being a perfect solution. But yes, agreed that it won't be for everyone.

Also, I'm grateful that I tried it because without it I wouldn't have gone looking through newer games with good graphics and found House Party. Even with a discrete graphics chip my many year old laptop can only handle minimum settings in a tiny little window... and even then the system will periodically get hot enough that the GPU will be disabled, leaving me with onboard intel graphics as things cool. Needless to say, without a game streaming service I wouldn't be enjoying your work. :)

And again, thanks.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: GeForce Now Idea

No problem, everything you brought up makes perfect sense. I can't commit to us perfecting a solution soon as we've got a lot of core content to get through, but we'll look into it the first chance we get!
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Chalupacabra
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed May 20, 2020 6:50 pm

GeForce Now?

I saw a post regarding GeForce Now, but it’s been dormant for 7 months and I didn’t want to resurrect it.

I put a request for this game in with GFN, but wondered, for those who have played it that way, are you still able to get it to work? How?

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Topic merged by ttant.
ajack
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 11:39 am

Re: GeForce Now Idea

Sorry, just saw this.

Nope, we're no longer able to play House Party on Geforce Now. I don't know exactly when it stopped working but it happened about the same time that Geforce Now left beta and when live. Until then even if a game wasn't "officially supported" most games could be played without a problem. It would require that the game to be installed each time you wanted to play it but other than this minor inconvenience (that took less than 10 seconds) everything worked just fine. I haven't been able to find any definitive answers as to why many games which used to work like this no longer do but based on a bit of research and more than a bit of trial and error it appears to be security/permissions related. My guess is that when the game tries to create the My Documents files/folders it voilates a GFN server policy and the install fails. Again, only an educated guess.

If it hadn't been for GFN I wouldn't have purchased House Party as my computer can barely handle running it at 720 with low settings... and even then it thermal throttles periodically. This has led to me not being able to enjoy any of the newer content that's come out... which is even more annoying as, like many people, I found House Party through Game Grumps and had been really looking forward to their update.

Alas, I will wait and hope that something changes.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: GeForce Now Idea

Hmm well that's pretty disappointing. We'll look into it further on our end as well. Thanks for the heads up!
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