"Preparing to play <insert mod name here>..."

[kill-9]

Has anyone been able to actually play through Steam?

 

[Scudded]

Yes. Don't try to run the game, just set it to update automatically and let Steam do it's patching in the background.

 

[kill-9]

As far as I know, I'm all patched up. The Monitor tells me that nothing has patched since last night. Yet when I try to launch a game or join a server, it just hangs on "Preparing to play...". ;(

 

[PrivatePanic]

Same here. Same behaviour. The little gimmick-games like chess and so on work, but Halflife and all MODs I have: no... :/

I hope it's really all because of the bandwidth and will work when the first rush is over... maybe middle of the week.

 

[Epsi]

I got the 380mb installer and now everything seems to work, played a few games of CS, TFC, NS on Steam.

 

[Ti133700N]

I played HL deathmatch 1 hour ago and it worked perfectly!

 

[not28]

Originally posted by PrivatePanic
Same here. Same behaviour. The little gimmick-games like chess and so on work, but Halflife and all MODs I have: no... :/

I hope it's really all because of the bandwidth and will work when the first rush is over... maybe middle of the week.

yup.

 

[SGT Tenor]

The little gimmick-games like chess and so on work

How in the heck do you get those? I didn;t have a problem playing the original half life in the beta. Now it just hangs at "preparing to play....." Kind of getting frustrated. And so if I start playing another game won't that crash the CPU. they can't play both games at the same time can they?

 

[PrivatePanic]

In your buddylist, right-click on one of your Friends' Nicknames and choose the games

 

[masterh]

The reason Steam says "Preparing to play" for so long is because it's still downloading the game. It just doesn't show the downloading process on the screen. Right click the game, click "properties", and try checking the cache status. You'll see that - while the game has allocated a huge amount of space on your hard drive already - the actual download status of the game is at a low percentage.
The reason why the 380MB installer works so well is that it already includes the 100% completed GCF files for Half-Life and Counterstrike. You can get the installer at FilePlanet. If you go to the popular BitTorrent websites, several are hosting the GCF files for the other games, as well as Half-Life and Counterstrike. I imagine that linking to these BitTorrent sites is prohibited due to the fact that they also host illegal content.

 

[SGT Tenor]

The reason Steam says "Preparing to play" for so long is because it's still downloading the game. It just doesn't show the downloading process on the screen. Right click the game, click "properties", and try checking the cache status. You'll see that - while the game has allocated a huge amount of space on your hard drive already - the actual download status of the game is at a low percentage.
The reason why the 380MB installer works so well is that it already includes the 100% completed GCF files for Half-Life and Counterstrike. You can get the installer at FilePlanet. If you go to the popular BitTorrent websites, several are hosting the GCF files for the other games, as well as Half-Life and Counterstrike. I imagine that linking to these BitTorrent sites is prohibited due to the fact that they also host illegal content.

That still doesn't work. I downloaded the 350mb installer and it still freezes when I check status. All I see is preparing to play and after an hour nothing is happening.

 

[kill-9]

...

 

[Guest]

the file that i download is called "steaminstall_cs" which is 379 MB (397,857,244 bytes). Is this the file u're talking about??
i always get the message "prepare to play <game name>...", the game never launch, it freeze when i set it to automatically update.

 

[Dr. Freeman]

u guys are all way too impatient..

seriously.. even if u have downloaded the installer from fileplanet, it does not guarantee anything.. Steam still needs to update in some cases.

also, the reason why the updating is taking so long is because there just isn't enough bandwidth and server capacity to update everyone's Steam..

check the Steam Status thread for the url to check the status of the servers.. last i checked, 5 of them were down.. that is not good news..

pple are gonna have to learn to be patient... if u won't be, its useless because complaining about Steam and whining on the forum will not get ur Steam updated..

take a break from the comp, go watch a movie, do some chores, let Steam do its thing.. gawd.

/me sighs

 

[Guest]

wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf

Half Life and Counter Strike are both working now!!!!!

 

[Guest]

i'm downloading dod now, but it's too slow man, i used to get at least 300kb/sec in the beta stage, but now i'm getting like 2kb/sec.
btw, can we use customized skins for cs and dod in steam?

 

[kill-9]

Well, after 3 installs, the final one being install_cs.exe, I am now playing various mods through Steam. It's a relief to know that something about my setup wasn't what was screwed up.