Why not use STEAM NETWORK to improve connection?

BerserKK-

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If we publish the launcher on Steam, we will be able to use the Steam network to connect players.
And this will solve the connection problem.

But Brutus is against this idea:
@Brutus5000 said in Private coturn server for my games.:

And making ourselves dependent of Steam is also not an option (even all the legal issues aside).

We won't need coturn servers that cost money to rent

From the forum threads I learned that Nordic Games responds to messages and you have asked them many times about the source code.

Do you think we should write a letter to Nordic games asking for permission to publish the launcher?

I understand that it is not that easy. But why not try?

BerserKK-

You can test the Steam network right now!
You can launch the steam version of SupCom and select 'Matchmaking'
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This is exactly what I meant when I talked about 'steam network'.

This network can be integrated into faf launcher
It works very stable and is protected from DDoS.
This will give you the opportunity to play 8vs8 without disconnects and lags.

The faf team is currently working on a new ice adapter. Work in this direction has been going on for several years now....

@Brutus5000 Why do we choose such a difficult way if STEAM has a ready-made solution? With protection from ddos and free.

Brutus5000

Just because Steam matchmaking works in general, it doesn't mean we are capable of providing a bug-free implementation of it. It also does not guarantee it to be faster than any other implementation. I don't know how they did it with Steam, but I guess they had a team of experts working on it that do this kind of things everyday for many games that were put on Steam.
Using Steam networking is a massive vendor lockin. As soon as someone decides to remove us from Steam, we are dead.
Not everybody wants to use Steam for good reasons. Lots of our users have bought it via gog.com. Enforcing the steam/gog linking we already lost a bigger player portion back then. We are dedicated to open source for a reason, and the biggest reason is that anybody can move forward should this project ever been shut down for legal reasons. A simple DMCA takedown request by someone who claims to have copyright violated (which is basically impossible to prove wrong by us as there is no public archive of ownership for such things).
The licensing issue is real and has a large back history and it didn't work out than, there is very little chance anything has changed.

ZLO

"LOUD AI" project does work vya steam, right? i am not saying that we should divert all resources to developing this, or we should "move" to steam. but if somebody could make FAF playable vya steam that would not be bad. Worst part would be that it will be another community split as steam and FAF players will not be able to play with each other

Brutus5000

Everybody is free to build a working proof of concept and then we can discuss. Until then I will spend my time otherwise.

BerserKK-

@ZLO @Brutus5000 @Jip Epic Online Services - FREE alternative to Steam network
Allows you to establish a p2p connection between players for games and mods like FAF. We don't need to upload faf client to epic game store!

pros:

DDOS protection (Epic servers will be used)
No Epic account required
No need to install Epic Launcher
No copyright holder permission required
It even allows you to add third-party authorization (no Epic Games account required!!! You can connect via FAF account)

I am very surprised. This looks like charity from Epic XD

NOC-

Other than the fact you will have to share the entire user database likely with EPIC.
Therefore violating GDPR

maudlin27

If that was the only barrier then I’m guessing it could be resolved by having users consent to the data being shared with Epic

NOC-

Yeah but currently you have existing database who would be signing up to a whole new set of terms. You cant force them to do that

BerserKK-

@NOC said in Why not use STEAM NETWORK to improve connection?:

Other than the fact you will have to share the entire user database likely with EPIC.
Therefore violating GDPR

As I understand it, it is not necessary...

We can use your own OAuth 2.0 provider for player authentication in EOS, but only under certain conditions, using EOS Connect’s "Custom Identity Provider" feature.

from chatgpt) :

Example: GDPR-Safe Token Payload
A simple JWT token that Epic can use, but contains no PII:

{
"sub": "user-12345", // epic user ID, its not real faf user name
"iss": "https://your.auth.server",
"exp": 1720000000
}
That’s it. You can keep it clean and anonymous.

We will associate each user with an epic id by which epic servers will connect players. We will not transmit any other data.

In order to connect users, it is enough to have an epic user id assigned to each player in faf. The assignment will be performed on our servers and it is not necessary to provide any information about the users.

Brutus5000

So now every user also needs to create an epic account?

NOC-

And then there is the GDPR issue with Epic accounts

BerserKK-

@Brutus5000 Looks too good to be true. I was looking for a catch, but I didn't find one.
No epic account required...
https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/dev-portal/identity-provider-management
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Honestly, if I had to create an Epic Games account for this, I'd happily do it considering how many features they offer for FREE. An epic games account is created in a couple clicks.
https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/eos-overview

I will quickly describe all the features of EOS

Lobbies
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Connections
Stats
Leaderboards
Voice Chat
Reports
and more.....

NOC-

oh god one reason there alone not to. Voice comms
Im sorry I do not want to hear the 12 man dual gap russian voice coms

Nuggets

@NOC said in Why not use STEAM NETWORK to improve connection?:

oh god one reason there alone not to. Voice comms
Im sorry I do not want to hear the 12 man dual gap russian voice coms

I would

Ctrl-K

xddddddd

Surfer

@BerserKK-
Implementing EPIC/Steam networking is not a technical problem, its simply a lack of desire from the community.
I was working on the Steam adapter prototype, but it hit a dead-end.
Players don't wanna spend their time on testing. FAF-devs afraid of DCMA takedown and don't even considering to integrate your work.

This conversation is pointless until you have clear proof that there is no copyright violation or permission from the game's owners.

@ZLO

Worst part would be that it will be another community split as steam and FAF players

There will be no split, there is just not enough population xD
Making a backup client, just in case, is soo frustrating when you know no one will use it while FAF is operational.

Deribus

I think we're all generally agreed that sure @BerserKK if you build a working prototype then we'll take a look. But nobody else is interested in rewriting FAF on a completely different connection infrastructure.