Publishing Content

Steam Workshop

Publishing Content Pack Locally

While working with the game in the Editor, your files are typically stored in your /my documents/ folder and are essentially just a set of text files. The Game engine won't see them as playable levels from the NEW GAME menu until they have been Published. From the Editor:

1. Click File -> Publish Content Pack Locally

The Editor will now place your Content Pack in proper folder so that the Game engine can see it. Now when you click New Game from the main menu, you'll see your story there. It's probably a good idea to play it from here to make sure that your New Character, Imported Character or Default Character experience is as you designed it.

Publish to Steam

Once you've published locally, you need to push the Content Pack up to Steam Workshop:

1. Switch to (or Launch) the game client
2. Click "Content" from the Main Menu.
3. Select your newly published content pack
4. Click "Publish"

If this is your first time publishing, Steam may require you to accept the latest version of the Steam Workshop Agreement.

1. Select "Browse More Content" from the Content Menu
2. This will open a Web browser and take you to Shadowrun Workshop Page for your version of the game
3. You may see a prompt at the top of the page: "Action Required"
4. Follow the link and accept Steam's policies

Steam Publish/Republish Trouble-Shooting

Many things can go wrong when you attempt to share your content pack, some of which can make future updates very difficult. Here are some tips to avoid the dreaded content pack re-publish bugs, and some ways to resolve them once they occur.

Before Publishing

• Make sure that you are signed into your Steam account. You can be set to appear offline, but your Steam client itself must be online. (Attempting to publish while offline can put your content pack into a weird state that requires more steps to correctly publish.)
• Try to make sure that you have as good of an Internet connection as possible. If your upload is interrupted/disconnected partway through, it can cause problems.

While Publishing

• The UI shown within the game is very limited and unhelpful: just a progress indicator, a timeout error, and a generic error. You can get more detailed information about what's happening by opening the debug console (Ctrl + F1 on PC or Option + F1 on OS X) and selecting the Normal Log. You might want to do this before you start to publish, but if you encounter an error, you can open it later and see what happened.
• The timeout error is set to appear after a fairly short time (perhaps 60 seconds). However, the mod itself will continue uploading even after the timeout error appears. Do not exit the game client. Instead, keep watching the Normal Log. This will report when the mod has successfully updated.
• If you see a red-text error message related to your content pack publishing, then that means that the publish/upload has failed, and you do not need to wait for it to complete.
• If you are republishing content, you might want to open your Steam Workshop page in a web browser and refresh either the main page or the Change Notes page. Once these show the new version, you can confidently know that the publish was successful.

(Re)Publish Errors

• If you are unable to publish your content pack for the first time, the problem might be the content pack name. Any name can be used while publishing and playing locally, but Steam has more restrictive names. Valid characters include unaccented Latin letters (A-Z), digits, spaces, underscores, and dashes. Try removing colons and accented characters from your content pack name and publishing again.
• As of late 2015, Steam now causes an error if you attempt to republish a content pack with the same preview.png as your previous version. You'll see this error if your log includes a yellow or red line that references preview.png. To get around this problem:
  • Open your content pack's story properties.
  • Click the button in the upper-right to change your preview image.
  • Select another image. This could be (e.g.) a copy of your original with 1 pixel colored differently.
  • Republish your content pack from within the editor.
  • Exit and restart the Shadowrun game client.
  • Republish. The content pack should successfully upload now.
• If you are attempting to update a content pack but the button says "Publish" rather than "Republish", then your content pack ID has been changed. This problem seemed to result from a combination of doing publishing-related work while offline from Steam and syncing the wrong cloud files when coming back online. Here are some steps to manually update your content pack ID and republish to overwrite the old version.
• Sometimes uploads fail for normal reasons, such as the network disconnecting. However, the game client may think that an upload is already occurring and subsequent attempts will automatically fail. Just try exiting and restarting the game client and then publishing again.

Subscribing to a Content Pack

Now tell your friends that your Story has been published! To access a Content Pack on Steam you need to visit Steam's Workshop page for your Shadowrun game of choice.

1. Go to Shadowrun Returns in the Steam Library
2. Click on the Community Hub button
3. Select Workshop
4. Find the Content Pack you want and click on it to get to its details page
5. Click the SUBSCRIBE button.

It may take a few minutes for your Content Pack to be synced to the game, but once it has:

1. Launch the Game
2. Go to NEW GAME and you'll see the Content Pack there
3. Select LAUNCH CAMPAIGN!

Non-Steam Sharing

Even if you don't use Steam, you can still share your Content Packs with both your non-Steam friends as well as those who use Steam Workshop. They're just going to need to do some manual steps to put the Content Pack in a place where the Game Engine will see it. Using "Publishing Content Pack To..." you can publish your content pack to a location of your choice and share the resulting .zip however you wish.

Publishing Content Pack To...

Even if you are not publishing through steam, it is recommended to run "Publish Content Pack Locally" as it is the easiest way for you to test your campaign before sharing it. From the Editor:

1. Select File -> "Publish Content Pack Locally"

Now when you click New Campaign from the main menu, you'll see your story there.

Once you're happy with how it all works, you'll want to get your hands on the one neat ZIP file of your Content Pack to share. From the Editor:

1. Select File -> "Publish Content Pack To..."

You'll will be prompted with a pop-up that lets you save the .ZIP file wherever you want on your hard drive

Sharing the Content Pack

The sky is the limit when it comes to sharing outside of the steam workshop. Here are a few ideas for getting that sweet UGC passed around:

• Nexus Mods
• Dropbox Link
• Email
• USB

Receiving a Content Pack

Once you have a ContentPack.zip file from another GM, you need to put it where the Game engine can find it. This will vary depending on your operating system:

Windows

Published Content Packs should be saved here:

C:\Users\*current user*\AppData\Local\Harebrained Schemes\*game client*\ContentPacks

It is recommended to create a shortcut to this folder if you are making your way through lots of UGC Note: \AppData\ is a hidden folder by default

OSX

Published Content Packs should be saved here:

Users/*current user*/Library/Application Support/Harebrained Schemes/Shadowrun Returns/Content Packs

Note: /Library/ is a hidden folder by default

Linux

Published Content Packs should be saved here:

/home/*current user*/Shadowrun Returns/Shadowrun_Data/StreamingAssets/ContentPacks

When you put the ContentPack.zip file in place, and launch the game, you should see the new story available under NEW GAME.