Hands on with steam [Archive]

jvd

15-Sep-2003, 00:03

Downloaded steam and set it up. It installed quickly. Transfered all my games to one folder which was nice. Then started to update them. I noticed that it never used more than 10% of my cpu and never used much ram (ram usage was around 210 megs with window using ram. I then installed half life with a fake key that would work with out steam. After a few mins steam told me i was using an invalid key and could not play till i provided it with a valid one.

So far I like steam. But it scares me that it can controll so much. What if valve doesn't like the newest cats and they don't want you to play with those drivers. I wonder if they can stop u like they did with me and the wrong key.

jvd

15-Sep-2003, 00:31

Dang wrong forum hah

Grall

15-Sep-2003, 00:32

Perhaps you meant to post this in the PC gaming forum? :) Edit: you managed to move the topic while I was typing this post, lol!

Anyway, control... It's their game man. If they decide to disallow a certain driver set I am sure it would be for a good reason. More than once we've seen manufacturers put out sets with built-in cheating in them for example.

*G*

jvd

15-Sep-2003, 00:37

BRiT

15-Sep-2003, 00:59

So far I'm having mixed experiences with Steam.

First up the one negative... The one evening when CounterStrike 1.6 was just released, I could not connect/login. Not sure if it was due to the excessive demand or if there was a bad hop somewhere along the way to their main authentication server.

Aside from that one glitch, it's worked perfectly. I had Steam final installed. I installed HL1 and HL:OpossingForces. Upon entering steam's game menu, it detected I had them installed. It asked if I wanted to convert them. I said yes. Some time later, it was fully converted. It also said I had the platinum edition installed and was entitled to lifetime updates of all games. Sweet. I now have all games installed and updated to the latest and greatest.

A minor gripe I have is there doesn't seem to be a way to change installation directories for Steam Apps.

Gubbi

15-Sep-2003, 11:55

I hate it.

Half the time it can't sign me in. Half the time I'm signed in I can't join the friends network. And that's when it starts up.

Which takes 3 minutes. I double click on the icon, - nothing happens - for 3 minutes :x I can see in the task manager that steam.exe is slowly chugging away RAM. Then there's a 80% chance it crashes. Either directly or with a MS VM (dot-net ?) assertion after which it exits.

Finally after a game of CS it restores the window some 30.000 pixels off screen, so I can only access the features through the tray icon.

It's WAY pre Beta. In fact I think it's the lousiest piece of software I have ever installed on my computer (and that says ALOT).

Cheers
Gubbi

mat

15-Sep-2003, 11:58

i'Ve installed steam yesterday just to find out why people are complaining about it.

And it was really slow. I can DL about 60KB/s and it was between 0 and 3 KB/s. Sometimes it just said Updating and didnt do anything, right now it told me it cant connect.
Well, since i stopped playing HL1 and its mods, i've uninstalled it already

LisaJoy

15-Sep-2003, 17:38

I hate it completely..
I am one who likes to download patches and such from Fileplanet, and they had better always give me the option(I like keeping them backed up on cd).

Steam is just an ok idea with bad exectution... its something that should be a nice option for people who want it, but not be forced upon those of us who do not.

Vince

16-Sep-2003, 01:44

I hate it completely..

Steam is just an ok idea with bad exectution...

My setiment echoes this completely. I uninstalled Steam when it was used with CS1.6 (I think that was it) because it was a buggy, slow, and just annoying bugger. Having liked the GUI and features before 1.6's release and Steam update.

The concept beyond Steam is something that I've commented on several times before as a great idea. It's a forward-looking platform to the time of pervasive computing and broadband distribution. Not to mention the benefits to a developer of eliminating the publisher. So, you're spot on IMHO.

PS. If Valve ever forced me to *not* use a given piece of software or hardware (in a non-cheating context), I'd never buy another product from them due to my personal rational. A Car dealer doesn't force somone to use a particular blend of gas (within physical tolerances - just as FPS sets tolerances).