??This?? is steam?

[RoyalEF]

I just installed steam yesterday. I launched a few games today and was surprised to find that in order to play the games I already have downloaded it needed to spend about 10 minutes per games downloading.

Then it needed to download "STALKYARD"
WTF? I've played that a hundred times.

SO this was my learning experience.
While Steam recognizes that I own HalfLIfe and have CS & TFC it doesn't use my installs at all. My configurations are not here, my user name, all my downloads from the last few years. I have to download everything...including the orginal games all over again...only through steam.

This disturbs me. I checked and my steam folder now contains 1.55 GIGABYTES of data. This is the new location of my HL games. I now have two copies of the games...one well populated one somewhat useless since I need to download every map in existence from online servers.

Did they really think a mature online community would find this "good". To ignore my current configuration and files and make me wait to play a map I've been playing for 5 years.

I haven't even bothered seeing if it will let me add stuff manually or not.

In addition when I go to join a server it now hides what it is doing. It has a dumb-bar that slows fills left to right. It stops and I'm left sitting like an idiot wondering "wonder what it's doing now george" It got stuck and stops moving on the Valve server. I dunno why or on what. End result: I couldn't play my game. I tried another server...it refused me cause it couldn't validate my Steam ID. The third server let me in but first I had to download "stalkyard".

If i won't be able to play my paid-for game everytime Steam takes a powder--then Steam better be infalliable.

 

[righte0us]

that's .. pretty much what Steam is \:

 

[TAZ]

STEAM games are free.. they are basically for testing purposes and include no things such as user created maps, or mods. It's more or less to test the downloading system.. your original HL and CS will still work, but in order to play CS 1.6 you are stuck with the original maps until 1.6 goes public.

 

[RoyalEF]

This raises serious questions for me. I know if I bought HL2 through Steam Valve would get more money than through a standard distributor. However based upon this experience I would NEVER do that.

I looked though the game folders...there are no maps...no wads...no nothing. Everything is hidden in 400 Mb gcache files. Which means..as a mapper..I can't get to any of the game content like I could if I bought HL on CD. Based upon that alone...I would never buy HL2 through Steam.

 

[Solidarnosi]

Wonder if that means hackers can't cheat the game nearly as easily....

 

[kohoyin]

I still think steam is an unnessarily application. play games through gamespy and download updates through the dozens of avaliable websites.

No point in combining the two when it really doesn't make anything more convinent, considering it only works for Valve stuff.

 

[Wesisapie]

i spent hooooours downloading CS 1.6... then i didn't have half the gun models when i played.

nice one.

 

[RoyalEF]

Exactly...I downloaded tons of skins so when I go online everybody looks different in deathmatch. Yet when I played yesterday the map was filled with orange-suited Gordons. While newbies may enjoy that, many of us customize things. This blows all that customization away. If the only thing Steam will support is the base game config then that makes "portability" a non-feature. If I go to play HL on steam at work and all I get is a default config...well I might as well bring the CD to work and install it. An important part of HL's value was in the many customizations.

 

[82ross]

While Steam recognizes that I own HalfLIfe and have CS & TFC it doesn't use my installs at all. My configurations are not here, my user name, all my downloads from the last few years. I have to download everything...including the orginal games all over again...only through steam.

Why would steam recognise that you own hl and cs already? It is a completely seperate product.

And why would you play hl through steam if you had that already? Delete the steam hl and use the normal one, theres only really cs1.6 thats worth playing through steam.

Everything on steam is beta, it will change and custom skins will be available then.

People who dont own hl can play it through steam, at least they may be greatful for the free experience. For those of you that arent greatful. Dont use it. No one is forcing you to.

Read TAZ's post again then maybe you will catch on.

EDIT: You can play custom maps in CS1.6 at least, just add them the the maps folder.

 

[torso boy]

just copy the files into the steam directories...problem solved

 

[symptom]

Originally posted by kohoyin
I still think steam is an unnessarily application. play games through gamespy and download updates through the dozens of avaliable websites.

No point in combining the two when it really doesn't make anything more convinent, considering it only works for Valve stuff.

Yeah, this is what I've been saying all along. Steam takes simple tasks and over-complicates them. I've been trying to play HL, but it is so wrapped up with Steam that it's nearly unplayable. It has to download during every damn loading screen which takes up to 5 minutes sometimes. Aside from that, not a single character has spoken to me except for in the first hour of the game. I don't really know what's going on in the story...

There are other much simpler ways of getting games to automatically update themselves.

And I'm surprised that more people don't realize how illogical it is that Steam pre-downloads movies just so it'll seem like a fast download when it is "officially" released. The file is 100% ready to be released, we spend the bandwidth, we keep it on our hard drives, but we are waiting an extra day (or 2 or 3 or 4...) JUST so anyone who is dumb enough can be impressed when it seemingly downloads in a matter of seconds.

I know this is an early version of the program, but in my opinion the concept itself is almost completely redundant.

 

[FatCombine]

i spent hooooours downloading CS 1.6... then i didn't have half the gun models when i played.

What? I spent 20 minutes or less. What is your connection speed?