SiN 2 using tweaked source engine and steam

I wanted to be sure

 

sounds great. As for steam... its been 2 years since i had any real error? And i see very little resource usage when i have it on? Then i have a MODERN computer, you know 3ghz cpu, 2 gigs of ram ect ect. Some people need to think in the 21st century. XPs and less that 2.4ghz is SO 1990s.

 

How about you bring my and the people's banks into this "21st Century"

 

To run Steam, you need a 3Ghz computer with 2 Gigs of ram?OMG, good coding valve, really state of the art

Seriously now, Sin was interesting, and I`m curious as to what they`ll do with the Source engine, though I loathe the multiple-episode uploaded at different times...

 

If the first episode doesn't sell well, what's the betting Ritual will cut their losses and not bother making the next episodes?

 

Offhand, Steam is pretty inconsequential. It loads in 6-8 seconds, takes up almost no CPU time when not being actively tinkered with (or when it's updating games, of course), and has less of a memory footprint than does the browser windows I usually have running in the background. (Gotta look up things in Google all the time, you know. )

And since it's really only open when I'm--shock of shocks--playing a game through it, it just adds that extra few seconds of loading time to let me manage all the games it includes outside of install disks, visiting a lot of websites, etc.

I'll take it.

If they can start adding in other features, and making the "friends list" most useful as well without adding bulk to it... I'll take that, too.

(For reference, my system is a Barton 2500, 768MB RAM, and a Radeon 9800. Good enough for me, but not anything to crow about.)

 

Not really, steam is currently taking 53 MB of memory and it's just sitting there. IE and Firefox don't usually take more then 25-40 MB.

And why is 6-8 seconds a good thing when a program as small and simple as it should start up instantly? Not to mention it takes the same amount of time to shut down and uses 100 percent cpu when doing so. There are alot of ways steam could be improved, which Valve sadly doesn't seem to be too concerned with.

 

Steam has to connect to the servers, log-in to your account, download information about the updates, check if your games are up to date, actually update the games, etc.

This is how much memory Steam takes up for me. The image has not been edited except for some personal information.

http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/7711/steam0pa.jpg

P.S. In that picture, I could not connect to the Friends network.

 

Does it really have to do such a thing? Whatever happened to user control? :?

 

Steam must connect. It must.





Or else it switches to a pseudo-Offline mode that probably only works half of the time unless you do some messing around with your internet conenction.

 

http://members.cox.net/bluegiant/steam.jpg

 

Both the memory screenshots don't include all the VM its taking up view->select columns and tick Virtual memory size.

 

Steam is taking up roughly 55MB physical and 50MB virtual memory here. I'd prefer if it were smaller, they should work on that. But it's not that much of an issue for me, as its definitely not something that I've got on autostart.

Just experienced the advantages of Steam again though. I just started it, left it on in the background for 10 Minutes, and now both HL2 and CS:S are up to date again. Much better than having to find working mirrors for the last HL patch and CS beta update and then installing both manually...

 

Shouldn't VM include physical memory i.e., RAM? As it's just a pool of all the available memory regardless of type?

To put Steams memory usage into context. On Ubuntu Linux, Firefox and Open office are both takeing up over a 100mb of RAM each (not including shared memory) and I only have one thing open in each.

TBH I wouldn't trust Windows task manager to give you accurate memory usage anyway. Also just because Steam may be using 50mb of memory it doesn't mean it needs that much memory to run, it may be that most of that 50mb is just cached data that can be swaped out or completely discarded.

Steam can probably run comfortably on a 6mb footprint, but if you have memory free then windows might use it to cache files Steam has accessed, not that I really know how Windows handles files.

 

Well not surprisingly, this thread has strayed far from the original topic of Sin 2; enough about Steam itself please folks - that particular topic has been discussed to death in the past - but do feel free to talk about it in the context of Sin 2.

 

Will we even see a boxed version of Sin2? Complete? or in episodes? They don't seem to have a publisher though.

 

I know we have been over that before.

Repeating something that is not true, over and over, does not make it true.

I bought my cousin HL2 and he was able to play offline within 2 weeks of launch. I lost internet access from ther 24th - 27th of December due to an ice storm and I had no problems playing HL2 in offline mode (no need to even block ports, I just selected "offline mode").

Valve was upfront about Steam before the launch and made it clear it was part of the application. And while Steam is not only aimed at preventing piracy (online distribution and universal updates being the most important features), I cannot/wont blame Valve for trying something different than CD encryption. Piracy is killing PC game developers. If requiring Internet access to install a game, and requiring that a game be tied to an account, makes a small detourant from piracy from Joe Q Public then I can put up with it.

Of course you disagree--which you are entitled to have--but if it really bothers you do not buy the game. I don't complain about MMO's and their outrageous monthly fees. I don't like it, so I don't by them. ANY of them.

And as much as people may hate it, it seems online authentication is here to stay. BF2 logs me in every time, even if I want to play SP :?

Here is the difference: BF2's login is slow, and it has caused me more problems than Steam every did (mileage will vary of course). Further, BF2 is not giving me free patch updates, maps, user created content, mods, etc... I get all that right through steam. I am loading a new CS:S map--no problem! No need to hunt it down! Steam auto downloads it so you can PLAY. This is why CS:S is HUGELY popular!!

BF2, on the other hand, has this login junk yet I STILL needed to MANUALLY get the new patch :?

After we see how EA, Ubi, VUG, Activision, and so forth make their own "Steam" knock offs I think it will become pretty clear that Steam is different, and better.

Especially for developers.

Guden, by all means continue hating Steam, but at least don't bash it for irrelevant issues like "needing to login to play offline" which are not true. There are plenty of issues with Steam (and any software out there) for someone to have a bad taste from using it, but repeating the same erronious information, as if it makes it true, undermines your arguement. You have enough good points on the subject that there is no need for the stealth jabs

 

Question: I haven't actually bought HL2 or any of their games... so I was wondering if I would even be able to install one of those games on an offline box without ever touching the internet.

I didn't spend enough time with the demo

 

No. That's Guden's point.

 

It might be doing something active you're not seeing. For me, Steam idles at 25MB and is frequently smaller. But yes, it can hit over 50MB for me as well.

It's not "a good thing," but it is "a normal thing." I'm getting more pissed off now by "unskippable screens" infecting my games with artificial advertisements and logo-splashing. For a demo...? Fine. For a retail game I pay for? CUT THAT SHIT OUT! DVD's are getting hit up with that, too. But as much as I dislike seeing such trends, I'm not going to cut my hand off and curse a company out and not play decidedly fun games because the developers and publishers are being buttheads. Nor do I stop watching movies or TV shows I like when they started infecting everything with station bugs and ad bars and shit like that. Lodge complaints? Sure. Give preference to other options, if available...? Sure. But few companies are on a plateau all by themselves, and I found most people who rail against a game/company/policy from "moral highground" only find it convenient when they dislike said game/company to begin with, and ignore the same trends elsewhere.

That being said, Steam certainly has room to improve, and it would indeed be nice to see more motion on Valve's part. But we only see improvement in a product when it is used and weighed in for what it is, not when it's attacked in knee-jerk fashion for assorted spurious reasons.

And yes, I've emailed Valve with suggestions and comments. And though I've hopped into Battlefield 2 with reckless abandon, I've also lodged a complaint about their unskippable logo screens which add... wait for it... 6-8 seconds to my loading time.

Steam does not must any of those points. As was brought up earlier (and you cover), you can play it offline (though it adds side inconveniences.) As was also already mentioned, you can tell it to not automatically update ANY of your games, and so you'd only pick up the games as you play them rather than Steam perhaps interrupting things to do it at an inconvenient time for you.

Some checks are, I'm sure, still run when you log in regardless, but I can't imagine that a quick news and Steam-specific update would be so annoying and cumbersome as to make one hate having the program around.

You have to have it authenticated on at least one occasion online to get at it without problems, but I believe you can FrankInstall it using another computer that has already installed Steam and registered HL2, then use a backup made from that install.

So it's annoying, but still... I know of few people who have a computer that can play HL2 that doesn't have the capacity to get online once just long enough to authenticate.

On that point, though--welcome to the future. Online access just gets more and more pervasive, and publishers will simply use that as an excuse to put in more protections on their games.




...on the size of Steam itself, I suppose "individual experiences may vary" but I'll list the common size I see Steam at: 24MB Memory, 18MB VM

...and as comparison, here is a single IE window, looking only at Google's homepage: 22MB Memory, 11MB VM

<shrugs>