Hi again,

We would like to discuss pros and cons about changing the way scenarios are shared for multiplayer. Right now there seems to be a lot of different possibilites. So I'm going to talk through our understanding of how all of this works in the original game, versus how we would like it to work with the new Steam Workshop support.

Currently when you save a scenario, it presents you with a directory browser defaulting to the root directory and you can save it anywhere.

When you choose a scenario via dropdown to create a game with, the list is populated with everyting in the scenario and scenario/custom folders as well as everything in your users/username/documents/my games/Rise of Nations/scenarios directory. This directory is where all downloaded scenarios go.

When you join a game using a custom scenario, it check the same locations whether you already have that file. If you don't, it initiates a direct file transfer to the user documents folder.

We would like to get rid of file transfer completely. First of all, peer to peer transfer is surprisingly slow and even transferring 100KB files between computers under the same router took 15+ seconds. Downloading mods from the Steam Workshop is very quick (same speed as downloading games).

Under the new system, when you save a scenario, we would add a dropdown box that would contain:

• Save Normally
  
• Publish Publically
  
• Publish Privately
  
• Publish to Friends Only

It would automatically save it to a mod folder matching the scenario name you type and publish it immediately, and if you choose not to publish it, it'll just go to scenario/custom.

When you host a game using the custom scenario, it'll populate it only with the original shipped scenarios as well as any modded scenarios that you have published or subscribed to. In single player, you would be able to load custom scenarios that are not mods.

When you join a custom scenario game, instead of direct transfer you'll get the option to subscribe to the mod containing the scenario either permanently or temporarily. If you subscribe temporarily, it'll download for the purpose of that game and clean it up automatically afterwards.

Without this system in place, people would have to manually move files around and make the mods. We want to make it super easy to publish scenario based mods.

There are two main reasons we want to get rid of file transfer:

• We want to promote the use of mods as the best, easiest, and only way to share scenarios.
  
• Supporting mods and direct transfers complicates the user interface and all the testing possibilities. Having multiple ways to do the same thing can make things confusing.

Technically this system could apply to saves and replays as well, but we just want to focus on scenarios first.

So hopefully this is clear. Please let us know what you think and ask questions or point out flaws. Thanks!