Workshop mods for non-steam version

[Calris]

Can I please request that the devs flick whatever switch on steam needs flicking to enable people from outside steam to use something like http : // steamworkshop. download / to download workshop mods? I bought the game through GOG, and though I enjoy the game, I'm not rich enough to buy it again on steam just to access mods. Thanking you kindly.

[Hatsune_Neko]

that's not an official steam website. and can lead to possible viruses.
as part of that site is directed to a russian server.

if you want people to paste the mods else where you can ask them to and some may.
or you can mode the game yourself.

[Calris]

that's not an official steam website. and can lead to possible viruses.
as part of that site is directed to a russian server.

You are correct, it's not an official steam site. That is because steam is the problem here, needing a workaround for anyone who doesn't own a game on steam to use.

As for there being a russian server involved, really? Can't say I noticed. I have my browser locked down to avoid any such problems, but the only sites it's telling me it sees are that website itself and google analytics. However, there are numerous similar sites, as well as browser plugins, which all do similar things. They do work, when the workshop page for that game allows external sites to access the steam workshop api for the game.

if you want people to paste the mods else where you can ask them to and some may.

I was hoping to avoid:

1. creating an account on steam
2. trying to contact 20 million steam modders, many of whom would probably ignore me anyway

and I thought that:

1. It would be quicker and easier for lofi to flick the necessary setting in the workshop config area than make every modder have to upload somewhere else
2. help anyone who comes after me so that they don't have to go through the exact same hoops.

or you can mode the game yourself.

You're right, I could mod things myself. a) If I had the talent to do so, and b) if I wanted to reinvent every wheel that's ever been discovered for this game. It seems awfully silly to go through all the work of recreating every element of each of the mods I would like, when I probably wouldn't do anywhere near as good a job, and when the alternative solution, simply making the mods available, would take an infinitesimal fraction of the lifetime I would need to match the work of those modders.

Please. I'm not trying to have an argument here. This is a simple request, which should have a simple resolution. It's possible that the change to allow workshop access is not as easy as I suspect it to be, and if the devs give me that response, then I'll have to accept that. But until then, I feel that my request is far from onerous, and I don't see why anyone could object to it.

[Sol Lignum]

I don't know about other games, but with Kenshi, relocating the mod anywhere is as easy as copy-pasting the folder. I think your best bet would really be to contact mod devs and ask them to send you the files, people would hardly dick about it.

I liked the assumption about mere partial location on a russian server may be a potential sign of malware threat though 8)

[Calris]

I don't know about other games, but with Kenshi, relocating the mod anywhere is as easy as copy-pasting the folder. I think your best bet would really be to contact mod devs and ask them to send you the files, people would hardly dick about it.

I liked the assumption about mere partial location on a russian server may be a potential sign of malware threat though 8)

Thanks for the response, and I'm sure you're right about how easy it is to relocate the mods. Anecdotal evidence from other games is that steam doesn't mess with mod structure.

I have considered the issue, and again, individually asking mod authors to put their files elsewhere requires me to have a steam account, which I'd rather not create just for that purpose, the mod authors need to respond to me, which I have experience from other games to suggest that very few are likely to do so, and it requires those mod authors that do respond to do extra work that they probably don't want to do in making it available somewhere else.

Lofi opening up the workshop api seems to me to be a much simpler solution all round. It sucks, frankly, that this is a problem at all, and ideally all mod authors would have their mods available somewhere that anyone can access. However, I have to deal with the fact that steam workshop is popular, and that many mod authors probably don't want to use anything else. Opening up the workshop api is far from an ideal solution, even then - it's a kludgy workaround for a problem which shouldn't exist - but it seems to me that it's both the solution which requires the least effort on anyone's part, and the one which has the greatest chance of both working now and being a long term solution for people looking for other mods in the future (since I'm sure, that even if I contact every mod author on steam, AND they all happen to respond to me AND they actually go to the trouble to upload on nexus or somewhere, there will emerge new mods in the future, from new modders, who will continue doing things the way they are now and only use steam workshop.)

Oh, and OMG you're Russian! You must be an evil commie!

[Shidan]

As a modder who is commonly requested to upload stuff to the Nexus for non-steam users, I would definitely be in favour of it being possible to download workshop mods without Steam. The Nexus is annoying and a pain to use compared to the Workshop. However, I would be incredibly surprised if it's anywhere near as simple as "flipping a switch".

Those sites do not appear to disclose their methods for acquiring mods, and likely have a complicated set of requirements for which games they can and cannot pull mods from. You'd be asking the devs to likely spend quite a bit of time and resources into trying to figure the process and requirements out, which might even be against a contract with Steam. I highly doubt Steam would take kindly to a dev actively trying to allow non-steam access to the Workshop after all. You'd probably be better off asking the downloader websites to figure out out to pull the mods from more games.

And you two clearly have no sense of how many issues we've had here from Russian spam bots, scammers, and the like.
We have plenty of reason to be suspicious of any link to a Russian site or server unfortunately.

[someone]

Unfortunately there is no simple switch to allow outside access. If it was that easy I would certainly do it.
Those downloader websites use some kind of exploit to generate their links. I guess steam doesn't like that as a lot of them don't seem to work any more.

[Calris]

Unfortunately there is no simple switch to allow outside access. If it was that easy I would certainly do it.
Those downloader websites use some kind of exploit to generate their links. I guess steam doesn't like that as a lot of them don't seem to work any more.

Thanks, but as far as I'm aware, it isn't an exploit, and it hasn't been blocked by steam. There are games where you can download the mods from the workshop using those websites. Shadowrun Returns (http://store.steampowered.com/app/23465 ... n_Returns/) is one of them that I'm aware of, and I just went to check that it still does, and yes, it does. You can see it in action if you try to paste one of their workshop links (this is just the first on the list - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =177745832) into the website I posted (or pick another from a google search for steam workshop downloader, and run in sandboxie if you really don't trust it.)

Look, I'll try to communicate with the SR devs and see if they can tell me what needs to be done on your end.

[Sziklamester]

For me nothing problem. I can use steam too and use different places to mod my only problem is "still" cannot mod properly.