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STEAM announcements & updates 2012 Thread 4 - winter seal is coming

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Salsa

Member
You could try, as you mentioned just before, installing Steam itself to the SSD and seeing if the problem goes away. It's possible that, say, the cached files Steam uses (e.g. game icons) are on buggered sectors.

would it like, know where to pull the games from where I launch them though?
 

TheExodu5

Banned
Was tempted to buy Miner Wars 2081. But always-online DRM as an anti-piracy measure only? I'm not supporting that.

From the developer:
Hi ActiveCancer,

you will need to be connected to internet (our server) during whole gameplay. Miner War's client on your computer will not only check if it's connected, but it will let server do some calculations and logic. And here is the real copy protection. Because if the client just checks "Am I connected to MW server", then it will be easy for crackers to disable this validation. But if we have some code that isn't on the client, no one can crack it. Only if he know exactly what that server-side code does.

I think this is the only real copy protection. Of course, we lost some players who don't have internet or who want to play in a forest, but according to some stats, that's only 1-2% of possible players.

Bye,
Marek

Good thing you only alienated 1-2% of your forest dwelling player base.
 

HoosTrax

Member
Was tempted to buy Miner Wars 2081. But always-online DRM as an anti-piracy measure only? I'm not supporting that.

From the developer:


Good thing you only alienated 1-2% of your forest dwelling player base.
I'm going to be amused if RELOADED, SKIDROW, and company decide to take that as a challenge to crack their game. The developer seems confident that they can't do so like they did for Ubisoft's games.

(I'm not condoning piracy, just commenting on the futility of excessive DRM on top of DRM)
 

Blizzard

Banned
Was tempted to buy Miner Wars 2081. But always-online DRM as an anti-piracy measure only? I'm not supporting that.

Good thing you only alienated 1-2% of your forest dwelling player base.
Thanks for the heads up. I was just looking at Miner Wars but didn't see the fine print. I'll take that right off my wishlist.

Any impressions on Miasmata? Seems interesting.
I thought the same thing, and went ahead and bought it. If I get around to playing it I'll try to remember to post impressions here.
 
How long should it supposedly take to install The Witcher 2? Been sitting here on step 3 of 3 for 15-20 minutes or so. Thinking about cancel it and start over, but then again, maybe it's normal and I don't want to sit through this one more time.
 

TheExodu5

Banned
I'm going to be amused if RELOADED, SKIDROW, and company decide to take that as a challenge to crack their game. The developer seems confident that they can't do so like they did for Ubisoft's games.

They may have difficulty in doing so. As the developer mentioned, a lot of the logic is moved to the server (like Diablo 3). It just depends how hard it is to reverse engineer. In all likelyhood, there won't be enough interest in doing so.

That being said, while I don't condone that any developer use such heavy handed DRM, I certainly don't trust an indy developer to maintain the infrastructure needed.
 

Blizzard

Banned
I just had the opportunity to verify a couple of Steam things:

  1. As someone pointed out, it seems impossible to update two games at once now. This is especially funny since there is still a "RESUME ALL" button...but no, it seems like all games but one (though my sample was just two) will automatically resuspend once you try to start the downloads.
  2. As I have long tried to bring attention to, you can't opt out of any normal (non-beta) game updates on Steam. I had apparently set Cargo Commander as "Do not automatically update this game", and no, it didn't automatically download an update, just listed it as available...until I tried to play the game. At that point, it forced me to get the latest update before launching. It did seem to still keep the "Do not automatically update this game" setting, however. I wish Valve would some day add an option to play games without updating if you want.
 

Soi-Fong

Member
Was tempted to buy Miner Wars 2081. But always-online DRM as an anti-piracy measure only? I'm not supporting that.

From the developer:


Good thing you only alienated 1-2% of your forest dwelling player base.

Thanks for this man. This developer can rest in knowing they just lost a sale from me. Shame since it looked good too.
 

HoosTrax

Member
This does beg the question though -- was it ever disclosed that they were going to use that form of DRM during their Greenlight pitch? I wonder how it would have affected their votes tally if it was. Maybe this is information that should be required to be disclosed.
 

VALIS

Member
Why the shit do I have to click on an age verification check just to look at the store page for Tomb Raider 1? Come on. These age check things on Steam and seemingly every other commercial site are getting out of control. Well, now that they know I was born on Jan 1, 1900, I guess it's okay to look at polygon butt now...
 

Joe Molotov

Member
That being said, while I don't condone that any developer use such heavy handed DRM, I certainly don't trust an indy developer to maintain the infrastructure needed.

And even if it works 100% of the time, how long are they gonna maintain it? 6 months from now, these guys could disappear into the ether.
 

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
Why the shit do I have to click on an age verification check just to look at the store page for Tomb Raider 1? Come on. These age check things on Steam and seemingly every other commercial site are getting out of control. Well, now that they know I was born on Jan 1, 1900, I guess it's okay to look at polygon butt now...

I think I read once that they were required to be implemented that way.
 

jediyoshi

Member
Why the shit do I have to click on an age verification check just to look at the store page for Tomb Raider 1? Come on. These age check things on Steam and seemingly every other commercial site are getting out of control. Well, now that they know I was born on Jan 1, 1900, I guess it's okay to look at polygon butt now...

It's usually up to the mercy of the publishers who in turn are just trying to appease ratings boards that require it. Content distributors and services probably couldn't give two shits about how old you are and would rather you see a buy now button sooner rather than later.
 

HoosTrax

Member
I find it contradictory that they (Valve, that is) require an age gate, yet are perfectly ok with selling unrated games like LIMBO and Binding of Isaac.

Edit: I guess it's explained above
 

VALIS

Member
It's usually up to the mercy of the publishers who in turn are just trying to appease ratings boards that require it. Content distributors and services probably couldn't give two shits about how old you are and would rather you see a buy now button sooner rather than later.

I don't think they're required, though. If they are, what kind of safeguard is it to choose what year you were born from a drop down menu? It's not like these age checks are protecting content which is illegal for anyone of a certain age to view. It's just a tiny little candle publishers/retailers can hold in the wind in case the media one day has no other stories to run and decides to do a sex or violence in games thing, "b-b-but we have age verification checks!"

My rant is also partly due to wanting to check out a beer brewers page yesterday and having to enter my DOB... you know, because I might get intoxicated looking at photos of hops and bottling machinery.
 

jediyoshi

Member
I don't think they're required, though. If they are, what kind of safeguard is it to choose what year you were born from a drop down menu? It's not like these age checks are protecting content which is illegal for anyone of a certain age to view. It's just a tiny little candle publishers/retailers can hold in the wind in case the media one day has no other stories to run and decides to do a sex or violence in games thing, "b-b-but we have age verification checks!"

No one's arguing that they aren't dumb or regulated logically. Again, at the very least it's the most absurd thing to think digital distributors or game sites would prefer it to be the case that users enter their age before viewing content. Here's how Microsoft's advisory reads.

Trailers/videos may only be displayed if they are behind an age-gate that: (1) is age-neutral (i.e., requires the user to input their date of birth or select it from a drop-down bar); (2) employs reasonable technical measures to keep underage users from re-entering their age after initially being denied access; and (3) does not display any ESRB rating information on the video player or the age-gate itself. Failure to implement these requirements may jeopardize your ability to obtain material of this nature from us in the future.
 

VALIS

Member
No one's arguing that they aren't dumb or regulated logically. Again, at the very least it's the most absurd thing to think digital distributors or game sites would prefer it to be the case that users enter their age before viewing content. Here's how Microsoft's advisory reads.

My rant wasn't against Steam specifically, it's just the latest of these useless age checks to bug me, and it was especially annoying and amusing that it was an age check for Tomb Raider, of all things! Because she's got big boobs and short shorts, I guess? But as I said, now that they know I'm a WWI vet, I'm in the clear to peep some sweet polygon tits.

I know they all do it, I'm not pointing at any one in particular.
 

DTKT

Member
It seems like the store page got a little makeover today. The scrolling list of games at the top is different now.

Still wished they would go ahead for a full revamp of the entire client. More responsive, no hangs, smoother and a better UI.

It really needs a new coat of paint. Bandwith caps and more download flexibility would be awesome.
 
Still wished they would go ahead for a full revamp of the entire client. More responsive, no hangs, smoother and a better UI.

It really needs a new coat of paint. Bandwith caps and more download flexibility would be awesome.
no it doesnt,they already did a revamp its fine like it is,use skins if you want another UI.
 

jediyoshi

Member
Still wished they would go ahead for a full revamp of the entire client. More responsive, no hangs, smoother and a better UI.

It really needs a new coat of paint. Bandwith caps and more download flexibility would be awesome.

Yeah the client itself could use a cleanup, stability and otherwise. Ever since they added the sub menu for community it's looked like a mess. Client aside, the game overlay could use one too, origin's puts it to shame in responsiveness.
 

Exuro

Member
Still wished they would go ahead for a full revamp of the entire client. More responsive, no hangs, smoother and a better UI.

It really needs a new coat of paint. Bandwith caps and more download flexibility would be awesome.
Well the bandwidth caps and stuff are in the works. They just need to move everything over to the new system.

As far as the client goes it does need a bit of a revamp. I can't even stand the look of the main client. Been using the windows 8 look alike and its so much easier on the eyes. No more fake carbon.
 

NZNova

Member
What's the deal with LEGO Lord of the Rings? It is listed as now available on the front page, but there's no price there, and there's no buy button on the store page.
 

Blizzard

Banned
What's the deal with LEGO Lord of the Rings? It is listed as now available on the front page, but there's no price there, and there's no buy button on the store page.
It shows up for me as $30 USD, and I already bought it (in the U.S.).

First impressions of Miasmata: Potentially very glitchy. They built this engine themselves, and it seems to freeze forever if you alt-tab. Also, the second time I launched it, the dialog boxes had no text. Loading is very slow (not accessing the hard disk, so I assume it's doing something with the CPU) and has peculiar loading bar patterns, so be very patient.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Duuuude, Spec Ops: The Line is pretty amazing so far. Gotta love the music and the sound work.

The diegetic use of music is excellent, the score is very vibrant, but the track that plays over the ending credits is the best part.
Hendrix's 1983, totally awesome.
 

Blizzard

Banned
More Miasmata thoughts:

1. Graphics vary. Effects and atmospheric details tend to be nice, but individual textures or animations tend to look bad. I'm guessing the game was made by 2-3 people, so that's rather to be expected in a 3D game. The water looks ultra jaggy in certain spots, but really nice in others. Ponds sitting by themselves reflecting the sky and trees look nice.

2. Performance is rough early on, on my machine. I get 30-ish fps around the starting lab, with an e8400 and 5850, all settings max. The game doesn't have a vsync option so I'm using D3DOverrider.

3. Alt-tabbing, as mentioned, seems to make the game freeze forever. There are three save slots, but no obvious way to copy them. You can touch a
lantern
you find early on in the game to save.

4. Controls seem very janky. There is a combination of interesting first-person body awareness with strange jank. I'm reminded of DayZ and the ARMA II engine. The game seems to have sound effects and creative, interesting details for motions like sliding down small slopes, or slipping sideways if you turn suddenly. However, trying to figure out things like inventory or items is confusing to me. I picked up a knife, clicked a couple of times, and then it apparently went away forever. Oops, I hope I don't ever need that...

5. There are lots of little nice atmospheric touches, like the flowers, how you hold them in your hands, bright green grass, colorful little bugs, birds, butterflies, etc. flitting around, and sometimes skybeams. When I stopped playing it seemed like it was getting dark. I imagine the game would become terrifying shortly afterwards.

6. There is some sort of ingame help system. When I first wandered into some water,
I started making swimming motions, only to learn I apparently either can't swim or am too weak to swim. A help system thing told me about this when it happened. I started drowning, which apparently gave me a fever/made it worse.
The help system pops up when you get near things for the first time. Downside, if you happen to walk past something and miss the help popup prompt, I haven't found any way to bring it up again, so you just have to experiment on your own. Some things you find (notes) go into your journal, but there are specific things you might expect to be in your journal that aren't. For instance, you combine flowers to make medicine, and it saves a new journal entry describing the medicine...but doesn't actually make a note of WHICH flowers were used for the medicine (unless maybe it was on the individual flower page, I'll have to check that).

7. When you get sick, or I imagine injured, there are screen effects to indicate this, like blurring vision or dark, faded vision. I imagine this could get annoying and/or be effective. I died the first time it happened. Again, I'm reminded of DayZ.

From very early impressions, I would recommend it to someone who wanted a first-person exploration experience in which you pick flowers, hide from some hunting monster, and explore an unknown island which saw some sort of unfortunate event...if the person I was recommending it to can tolerate janky graphics (maybe Far Cry 1 level) and janky mechanics (maybe DayZ level). I'd say $5, maybe $10 is a fair price for experimentation, or full/current discount price if you really like the concept.

Here's a screenshot of early on.

miasmata2012-11-2900-p2ojr.jpg
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
The diegetic use of music is excellent, the score is very vibrant, but the track that plays over the ending credits is the best part.
Hendrix's 1983, totally awesome.

Shades of Alan Wake.
(Bowie's Space Oddity.)
 
Was tempted to buy Miner Wars 2081. But always-online DRM as an anti-piracy measure only? I'm not supporting that.

From the developer:


Good thing you only alienated 1-2% of your forest dwelling player base.

How developers can be this ignorant... off my wishlist you go, Miner Wars 2081.
 
Give away time.

Alien Breed 2
Alien Breed 3
Worms
Worms Blast
Worms Crazy Golf
Worms Pinball
Broken Sword: Director's Cut
Broken Sword 2
Broken Sword 3
 
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