Affinity on Steam?

[lashman]

3 minutes ago, chakko007 said:

IMO, it wouldn't.

 

well i disagree ... that's all

[- S -]

On 1/25/2019 at 1:09 PM, lashman said:

…Windows Store also takes 30% afaik

I'm not sure whether they've implemented the changes yet, but Microsoft said they were changing the pricing to 5% when a customer uses a deep link to get to and purchase an application.  Or 15% when Microsoft delivers a customer through any other methods, such as via a Store collection or a Microsoft Store spotlight.

Link:
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-microsoft-store-revenue-share-is-coming/

 

[lashman]

3 minutes ago, - S - said:

I'm not sure whether they've implemented the changes yet, but Microsoft stated they were changing the pricing to 5% when a customer uses a deep link to get to and purchase an application.  Or 15% when Microsoft delivers a customer through any other methods, such as via a Store collection or a Microsoft Store spotlight.

Link:
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-microsoft-store-revenue-share-is-coming/

 

 

nope, that never happened ... well, not yet at least (even though they said it would happen in 2018)

[chakko007]

You'll also have to understand why Microsoft is doing that. The Windows store never took off, so, they're a bit desperate to get it to popularity now, and, high shares don't help there.

30% is the standard for app stores.

[myclay]

3 hours ago, lashman said:

also - on Steam developers have the ability to generate an unlimited amount of keys to sell outside of steam, and steam doesn't take any cut out of those keys - 100% of the money from those keys goes to the developer 

""your request(for generating keys) will be reviewed on a case by case basis""
"Your request may have been denied due to the amount of keys requested. "
but thank you for making me search about how Steam works with partners.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
 

[IanSG]

1 hour ago, chakko007 said:

The Windows store never took off

Is there any reason to think that Steam would do any better (for Serif)?  If I remember rightly, the people advocating that Affinity apps should be available via the MS Store were also using the one stop shop / simplified updates argument.  I genuinely don't know why those would be an issue unless people need to reinstall their OS frequently.

[Steps]

2 hours ago, IanSG said:

I genuinely don't know why those would be an issue unless people need to reinstall their OS frequently.

I don't exactly need to, but I want. Sometimes I feel that I've to much shit on it after trialing and testing several apps for example.

A fresh install takes less time than cleaning up and also gives a better overall feeling. 

I want my OS in a state where I can kick it at any time because it contains nothing I need. All user data are saved on sepearate disk and NAS anyway.

[R C-R]

22 minutes ago, Steps said:

A fresh install takes less time than cleaning up and also gives a better overall feeling. 

I want my OS in a state where I can kick it at any time because it contains nothing I need.

FWIW, reinstalling an Affinity app (like many others) does not by itself remove any per user preference or other application support files you create by using the app. This is why reinstalling an Affinity app won't fix any issues caused by any problems in those files, & why one of the standard diagnostic techniques for locating the source of problems with an app is to create a new user account & open the app while logging into that account.

So while it may make you feel better, it isn't necessarily deleting everything you might want or need to 'clean up.'

[Steps]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

FWIW, reinstalling an Affinity app (like many others) does not by itself remove any per user preference or other application support files you create by using the app. This is why reinstalling an Affinity app won't fix any issues caused by any problems in those files, & why one of the standard diagnostic techniques for locating the source of problems with an app is to create a new user account & open the app while logging into that account.

So while it may make you feel better, it isn't necessarily deleting everything you might want or need to 'clean up.'

It did not mean cleaning up because of problems. It's just a fresh install to get rid of old stuff like Windows update files, Registry entries by old software, logs in AppData...

As a installation gets older there is just enough stuff I like to wipe out at a certain point for having a clean and slick system.

The regular Windows 10 updates are a opportunity to freshly install Windows.

It takes about 15 minutes on my system and gives a clean system.

Nearly all my apps are portable - so Profiles included. And Steam is there for games.

I would like a Affinity Portable app where I can install it on a sperate disk with it's Profile directory included (like all portable apps).

It's nowhere necessary. It just gives the feeling of having a new PC if you think of that.

And it's not due to Windows. If I was a mac user I would do the same procedure. Not doing the upgrades and always perform a fresh install. Leaving no trace of old stuff. Feels better.

[R C-R]

34 minutes ago, Steps said:

Nearly all my apps are portable - so Profiles included.

I am not sure what in this context you mean by "portable" or "Profiles," but many if not most apps store per user application data separately for each user. So even if you have only one user account on your computer there is typically a considerable amount of app related data stored outside the app in various user domain directories.

So if you want a system that is guaranteed 100% "clean & fresh," the only way to do that is to erase the boot drive & reinstall everything from original sources (like downloads, optical installer disks, etc.), a procedure that typically takes many hours to complete.

[Steps]

@R C-R Take a look at this:

https://portableapps.com

Firefox Portable is a excellent example here. This is what I like and want for everything.

It's designed to work on a usb stick you carry with you but I use it on a seperate disk.

[R C-R]

29 minutes ago, Steps said:

@R C-R Take a look at this:

https://portableapps.com

Firefox Portable is a excellent example here. This is what I like and want for everything.

It's designed to work on a usb stick you carry with you but I use it on a seperate disk.

From what I understand about this, each portable app is a special repackaged version of a 'non-portable' app, & to remain portable it must be installed in a directory other than on the boot drive of the PC. So unless you have a very fast local drive attached to the PC over a very fast port (like eSATA or some such) it can never match the overall responsiveness of an app installed on the boot drive, at least for apps that do not keep every part of the app in memory simultaneously (which is true of most well designed apps that require a lot of storage space on a drive).

There also appear to be some user-unfriendly issues with apps not using the PortableApps.com Platform, like if an app crashes, that make this a less desirable & stable way to run many apps, including the Affinity ones.

So it doesn't seem like Serif would be very interested in this, whether via Steam or any other similar 'portable' distribution.

[Steps]

@R C-R Yes, this tool makes apps not originally designed for that portable.

But some other apps lile FreeFileSync, MailStore, Bitwarden and a bunch of others come in a install-less fashion where the setup process is basicly unzippig a archive.

These apps then write all data into a local directory called "Data" (or sometimes "Profile") instead of the user profile.

It's just like this.

I copied the Affinity folder to a fresh Windows vmware and it starts up. So it does not rely on Windows registry which is a good thing.

If they just would provide something like a startup parameter to write into a local folder inside the installation directory the job is done.

Apps normally write to the user directory as there a many cases that the directory rights at installation part are read only. For the reason to have control that no malware changes files (think of viruses) and to provide different users of the system their own profile files. You mentioned that before.

My second drive for that is indeed also a SSD just like the original drive. Same is true for the extra Steam drive. There is now downside regarding performance. It's just all about isolation.

And of course a user wanting to use a portable app has to guarantee write permissions.

The most common case for portable apps is having them on the Desktop where users have write permissions anyway. So they come handy if users are no admins also.

Google Chrome for example installs on Windows to AppData as portable app. So no user needs to ask a admin before installing. Google did that on purpose. Admins in enterprises of course hate that. Just to note that on a side note.

Steam games are portable because all game data are written also to a directory inside the Steam installation. The Windows Profile is untouched. (This is the regular case. Exceptions exist.)

So if it's not too hard Serif may think of letting users choose a Profile location via parameter or something the like. Dfinetly doable. Don't you think?

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Steps said:

Apps normally write to the user directory as there a many cases that the directory rights at installation part are read only.

No, they do that to support the multiple user account feature that is built into the Mac OS & Windows, which among other things keeps each user's data private & secure from tampering or damage by other user accounts, & keeps the app itself free of any user-specific issues. It is not just or even mostly about the rights to install or use an app.

As for using an external SSD, it is no faster than the interface that connects it to the computer, so unless you are using eSATA it is still going to be significantly slower than an internal SSD drive, even if you are connecting via a fast USB 3 connection. Besides, most users won't have all that, making it another reason Serif probably is not interested in making an easily portable version of the Affinity apps.

[Steps]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

As for using an external SSD, it is no faster than the interface that connects it to the computer, so unless you are using eSATA it is still going to be significantly slower than an internal SSD drive, even if you are connecting via a fast USB 3 connection. 

I don't know where you got that "external" from. I have multiple normal internal SSDs.

You focus too much to the portable usb stick use case. That's just one scenario.

I use the portable apps and Steam on seperate INTERNAL drives because with every fresh install I wipe out my main SSD.

I like not having to reinstall those apps. I would recommend everybody choosing portable apps over the others.

Most are pretty small in size and you can backup and restore the app with all user data as a single zip archive. I do this to my NAS automaticly.

Tommorow my PC does not start anymore? No problem...

It's a real benefit. Try it.

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Besides, most users won't have all that, making it another reason Serif probably is not interested in making an easily portable version of the Affinity apps.

I don't see why not. They can still tie my license key to the hardware it's activated on. Maybe they already do that.

I just want to have a option that it does not put data in my Windows profile and instead choose a location I select which can be a relative path. This would help a lot.

If they go onto Steam they would need that anyway. That's the benefit I see for a Steam version.

I love a lot about Photoshop Elements as it's great software but this license code entering at installation and signing in with an Adobe account after that or I else I can it use it only for 7 days even if I paid for it... this is the real bullshit going on there.

And PSE 12 seems to rely heavily on registry and other things as a copy of the app folder to a fresh system gives only a broken app.

Affinity seems to work without installation. So far so goof. But it writes into the user profile. That's not so nice.

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

No, they do that to support the multiple user account feature that is built into the Mac OS & Windows

Yes, that's the second reason.

The first I mentioned is also true and important. The programs runnung with non-admin rights. They can't alter anything there for security reasons. It's read only. Installs and updates requires admin rights. Otherwise viruses or users could all to easy modify the files.

In enterprises users are no admins on their machines. They can't change anything outside their profile / home dir. And that's good and necessary for controlled environments.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Steps said:

I don't know where you got that "external" from. I have multiple normal internal SSDs.

You focus too much to the portable usb stick use case. That's just one scenario.

While you may have multiple internal SSD's most users do not. To be 'portable' in the usual sense of the word, an app has to run from a portable source, whether that is a USB stick, locally attached iron or SSD drive, or whatever. To make a portable version of the Affinity apps Serif would need to support them all, not just the best case scenario.

5 hours ago, Steps said:

Most are pretty small in size and you can backup and restore the app with all user data as a single zip archive.

Designer is close to 1 GB & Photo is a bit larger than that. Publisher is still larger. User data is not stored in the application domain, so minimally you need to restore everything to its proper place. There are much better backup solutions that handle all of that automatically.

5 hours ago, Steps said:

They can still tie my license key to the hardware it's activated on. Maybe they already do that.

No, they don't do that.

5 hours ago, Steps said:

Affinity seems to work without installation. So far so goof. But it writes into the user profile. That's not so nice.

I have no idea what you mean about Affinity working without installation. And again, it writes to user space to support multiple user accounts, which has several benefits, even if you normally have just one user account on the computer & are not working in an enterprise environment. Serif is unlikely to change that.

[Steps]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

While you may have multiple internal SSD's most users do not.

In this case you can make different partitions on the same SSD. Long years I had a 50 GB system/boot partition and used the rest of the drive for a data partition. Works also pretty good.

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

I have no idea what you mean about Affinity working without installation.

On Windows Affinity is installed into C:/Program Files/Affinity with subdirs "Common", "Photo", "Publisher".

I zipped this folder and unzipped it on another PC with a fresh installation. It does start up.

Other programs complain about missing DLLs or registry Entries or are otherwise broken.

And some good designed programs like Affinity allow that.

So the only thing missing is an option to have a profile dir local to the installation.

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

 And again, it writes to user space to support multiple user accounts, which has several benefits, even if you normally have just one user account on the computer & are not working in an enterprise environment. Serif is unlikely to change that.

All apps do that  normally. Writing to user space is the standard for good reasons that already got mentioned a few times by now. They should not change that. This is a complete misunderstanding.

I suggest that they offer a way to have a portable version in addition.

Different apps solve that in different ways. Some provide a start argument like "-portable" to enable the behaviour and others provide beside the EXE installer just a zip file as alternative installation routine. The version installed by unzipping is portable then.

Take a look at the "more install options" on this page for example.

---

On a side note I have to admit that I can understand that as a mac user you have trouble to really get this. Macs do it better here because you have this DMG file and you install your app just by copy it into your Applications folder. This enables you to install all apps you need on a fresh system just by copy in all of them at once. Windows and Linux unfortunately do not work this way. But on linux you can use linked apps that solve this in a way you can do it similar. Same is true for windows portable apps. But yes, the native way to install something is best under MacOs. Best if you consider isolation and backup. I think Android got it's inspiration for the APK files there.

[R C-R]

24 minutes ago, Steps said:

In this case you can make different partitions on the same SSD.

Yes, people could do that but most won't, particularly if they have a relatively small SSD. Regardless, it does not meet the normal definition of portable, so you are talking about a special case beyond what most people asking for a Steam distribution version seem to want.

29 minutes ago, Steps said:

So the only thing missing is an option to have a profile dir local to the installation.

What specifically do you mean by "local to the installation"? How do you intend to keep the app & user spaces completely separate if you did that?

This has nothing to do with the differences between Mac & Windows installers. It is about creating a truly portable, self-contained app that can be run from any drive,  without writing anything to the boot drive that would make it less than 100% 'portable' if the drive was attached to a different computer, keep everything properly isolated, & facilitate simple straightforward backup solutions.

Can you not see why this unlikely to be something Serif would be interested in doing?

[Steps]

33 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Can you not see why this unlikely to be something Serif would be interested in doing?

Honestly, no.

Why do they want me to do the hassle with running a setup exe and backup the app data in my user space separately?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Steps said:

On Windows Affinity is installed into C:/Program Files/Affinity with subdirs "Common", "Photo", "Publisher".

I zipped this folder and unzipped it on another PC with a fresh installation. It does start up.

They could, at the user's option, be installed elsewhere (mine are on E:, for example), but that's an interesting experiment. I hope that on the other computer it asked for your license information again, since that's kept in the Windows Registry. I suppose that, in theory, you could use RegEdit to export Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Serif\Affinity\ and then reimport it on another machine. There are some other Serif-related keys in the Registry, mostly dealing with install/uninstall and with indicating which file types the Affinity applications can handle. You'd miss all of those, but perhaps they're not as critical.

By the way, you missed grabbing C:\ProgramData\Affinity and its subdirectories.

[R C-R]

14 minutes ago, Steps said:

Honestly, no.

Why do they want me to do the hassle with running a setup exe and backup the app data in my user space separetely?

I am not sure what you mean by "setup exe" here. Are you talking about installing the app or running it? As for backups, which "app data" do you mean? User space data or something the OS keeps track of when running apps?

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You'd miss all of those, but perhaps they're not as critical.

Sure, I suppose they are not critical if you don't expect the app to <ahem> actually be portable. 

[walt.farrell]

Just now, R C-R said:

Sure, I suppose they are not critical if you don't expect the app to <ahem> actually be portable. 

Well, a truly portable app doesn't put things into the Windows Registry, so the install/uninstall stuff wouldn't be critical. (Especially the uninstall stuff, as there won't be anything to uninstall.)

The filetype registrations are more of a usability thing, but would just mean that when you tried to open a .afphoto file the first time Windows would ask what application to use, and at that point if you choose Photo and choose to always use Photo then Windows will record that for you. So it's not a big deal, really.

[chakko007]

16 hours ago, Steps said:

@R C-R Take a look at this:

https://portableapps.com

Firefox Portable is a excellent example here. This is what I like and want for everything.

It's designed to work on a usb stick you carry with you but I use it on a seperate disk.

It may be what you want, but, i can see how portable applications are not very good for the majority of users, who don't even know their user preference, or files are in the Documents folder, or, in a folder like AppData/Roaming. Or, even, that Programs are by default installed in ProgramFiles, or ProgramFiles (x86). Or, that those folders need amin rights to write to, thus would be bad places to install portable applications, when you're logged into Windows as a normal user.

See where i'm going?

[Steps]

20 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure what you mean by "setup exe" here. Are you talking about installing the app or running it? As for backups, which "app data" do you mean? User space data or something the OS keeps track of when running apps?

Yes, you are not all to familar with Windows. I noticed that. That is why I tried to explain you the differences in the setup process between Windows and MacOS in a previous posting.

On MacOS the installation routine with just copy over a DMG file which is like a portable self-contained app already is the easiest model. For Windows you regulary get a setup tool that you need to execute and this will put the files for you all over the place. Some here, some there and sometimes even altering the whole OS by adding DLLs to system32.

The "app data" I meant in this case is what applications but into the user space.

In this case the folder is "C:\Users\Steps\AppData\Roaming\Affinity".

One of my problems is after trialing some apps and other usage of the PC this "AppData" thing is really messy. So I started using portable apps that give me the app itself plus it's app data in one place. I can backup and restore it together as a single zip.

And if I decide to wipe out my system there is no re-install process that takes several hours. You mentioned that before.

In my case I in the far far past I lost data due to failing hard drives or corrupted Windows installations and all sorts of that. I adapted my workflows in a way I'm completely independent of any machine or hard drive. It's all redundant and out-of-the-box deployment.

Well, not all things... Affinity needs a installation process. That's why I'm asking.