Wanting the Steam version of Aquaria.

[Yahoozy]

I bought this (wonderful) game a year before it showed up on Steam, and I was wondering if it's at all possible to get the Steam version of the game. I game almost exclusively through Steam, and I'd like to have it in my library as a Steam game.

[False.Genesis]

And give up the benefits of the opensource version in the process?

If you've bought it with the HiB, you can still get back to their site now and grab your key. If not - i believe it's possible to link non-steam games into steam, did you try that?

[Yahoozy]

I bought it before it appeared on the bundle, and yes, I have it in my library as a non-Steam game. You make a good point about the non-steam version being open-source, however. I just wish I had the option to play it on Steam and get all those super cool achievements and whatnot.

[False.Genesis]

"whatnot" = nothing else.
Achievements were added to 1.1.3 for the HiB by Ryan C. Gordon, not as polished as steam, but still. It's the same ones and they do work (and can be viewed in the Help text on F1).

AFAIK there is no way to get the steam version for free after having it bought (unless it was the HiB) or some other action I'm not aware of.

(And if you ask me, getting the steam version at this point is totally useless. Period.)

[Daxar]

Well, Steam has its perks and drawbacks, FG. No need to diss it if you don't like it.  

Yahoozy: If it's achievements you're after, the non-Steam versions have those as well, the achievements just won't show up in Steam, just Aquaria itself, as False.Genesis said. You can download a new build with the achievements with the 1.1.3+ link in his signature.

[GMMan]

I personally dislike Steam. I don't see the point of having a multi-hundred MB behemoth in my memory just for achievements, chat, and preventing me from merely copy and pasting the game that I own on to portable storage and play wherever I want without the heft. Plus the OSS version has lots of code improvements.

For the record, it's probably possible to reverse the Steam API from some game made using Unity. I think it was Cogs, but in any case there is an interop library in the archive and using .NET Reflector on it produces a pretty good representation of the API. I wonder if Alec would send off an open source Steam version off to Valve. I bet Valve would be mad.

[False.Genesis]

FYI, i have the OpenSteamworks SDK and some other steam API headers on my disk, and thought about actually attempting that. I wouldn't even mind getting banned on steam, heh.

Here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22111385/crap/steam_api_headers.7z (can't remember where i found it)
And here: https://bitbucket.org/VoiDeD/open-steamworks (HG repo)

Maybe this is useful to someone. I don't have time to give it a shot, because if i'm working on Aquaria related stuff, it's either finishing up my mod or working on the mod downloader.

A cool thing that would work without actually open sourcing the steam related code would be to make a DLL/so/dylib that contains the necessary APIs and links them to either the steam code, or OSS replacement functions (StatsAndAchievements.cpp/h).
 I wouldn't mind doing the prerequisite work/code separation sometime, but the actual steam bindings would've to be done by someone else.

EDIT: Or simply use function pointers internally that get redirected to steam ones if a steam DLL + custom Aquaria->Steam API DLL is found and steam runs;  and uses the builtin OSS ones otherwise. Might even allow using steam *optionally* if it's there, and maintain portability otherwise. That'd be great. Anyone interested?