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STEAM Announcements & Updates 2014 IV - For me it was Tuesday

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Ruruja

Member
How is InFlux? It's the Daily Royale and it looks pretty damn sweet to me. Would I like it if I love ball-rolling games like Marble Blast and Switchball? This looks like it has the crazier levels of Marble Blast with the prettier world design of Switchball so I don't even know why I'm asking instead of just buying.

First time I've seen it, reminds me of an up-to-date, fancier Kula World (Roll Away) - and that isn't a bad thing!
 

Knurek

Member
And if that's true, it would make a massive difference in download time for Titanfall, considering the uncompressed audio.

16-bit PCM Audio doesn't compress that well (look at FLAC/APE/whatever other lossless audio format).
If they'd stick with 8-bit samples, they could at least use delta encoding and then compress the files - this gave you additional 40% off final archive size IIRC. Guess they did not. :)
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Valve needs to steal license develop a similar compression scheme ASAP, because games of the same size seem to download noticeably faster for me through Origin than they do Steam.

Valve already has a similar technology.

Are you going by the install size shown by Steam, or by Origin?

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is a good example. When downloading the game on Steam it's a 9GB download, but decompresses into approximately 19GB on your hard drive. Steam will show you the progress of it downloading 9GB.

On Origin (if the game were available) it would show you the 19GB file, and the dialog leads you to believe that you're downloading all 19GB of data it at an incredibly fast rate. In reality, this rate is just the combination of it downloading the same 9GB worth of data, and the rate at which your hard drive is decrypting this data.
Origin is lying to you.

It would be interesting to test something like Dead Space, first downloading it on Steam (and timing it) and then downloading it on Origin and comparing the times. I would suspect the times would be VERY similar.
 

JustinBB7

Member
You guys remember that Arcade that lets you walk around in your own build room? Seems like it has a kickstarter now, and I found these screenshots:

9961ef85deb9227fc4f775d029289bea_large.jpg


72d82627f6716dd2c1626510eccd1dc7_large.jpg


Man, I played the Alpha/Beta prototype he has on his site, and it was super fun, but a bit clunky. But playing a fully done version with the rift must be so awesome. I kinda hope Valve makes something like this themselves for Steam once VR takes off.
 
Valve already has a similar technology.

Are you going by the install size shown by Steam, or by Origin?

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is a good example. When downloading the game on Steam it's a 9GB download, but decompresses into approximately 19GB on your hard drive. Steam will show you the progress of it downloading 9GB.

On Origin (if the game were available) it would show you the 19GB file, and the dialog leads you to believe that you're downloading all 19GB of data it at an incredibly fast rate. In reality, this rate is just the combination of it downloading the same 9GB worth of data, and the rate at which your hard drive is decrypting this data.
Origin is lying to you.

It would be interesting to test something like Dead Space, first downloading it on Steam (and timing it) and then downloading it on Origin and comparing the times. I would suspect the times would be VERY similar.

Since I have spare time and spare space and no bandwidth restrictions I'll test that out tomorrow. I have Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis 2, Medal of Honor and Battlefield 2 that are not downloaded and are both on my Origin/Steam account.

For science!
 

Arthea

Member
restarting steam did nothing, I can't make single purchase still. I can buy everywhere else just fine.
Should I contact Valve, or be thankful for this and stop buying?
decisions, decisions
 

Caerith

Member
It hasn't been a whole day and the prices on Magical Diary cards are plummeting to the bottom. Why does the Steam Community actively kill the trading card market?
Card prices do rebound from time to time. Cherry Tree was in a bundle but the cards are selling for $1 each when I sold mine a month later.

Do I really need a 500gb SSD or is it fine with a 256 one to start with?
Will use it as a C: (OS & programs) + maybe some selected games
I use a 128gb SSD and it's fine. I just use Steam Mover to put everything on my HDD unless I'm actively playing it.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Since I have spare time and spare space and no bandwidth restrictions I'll test that out tomorrow. I have Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis 2, Medal of Honor and Battlefield 2 that are not downloaded and are both on my Origin/Steam account.

Awesome. I'll be out of town tomorrow and not near a computer. If you try it out though I'd be very interested. If you can remember, shoot me a PM with the results.
 
restarting steam did nothing, I can't make single purchase still. I can buy everywhere else just fine.
Should I contact Valve, or be thankful for this and stop buying?
decisions, decisions

Contact Valve to remove the curse. You should never be thankful for not being able to purchase anything on Steam.

Awesome. I'll be out of town tomorrow and not near a computer. If you try it out though I'd be very interested. If you can remember, shoot me a PM with the results.

Sure. I'll also make a thread for it (if it's a good idea?). I have Verizon FIOs at 25Mb download and 5 Mb upload.
 

Tellaerin

Member
Valve already has a similar technology.

Are you going by the install size shown by Steam, or by Origin?

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is a good example. When downloading the game on Steam it's a 9GB download, but decompresses into approximately 19GB. Steam will show you the progress of it downloading 9GB.

On Origin (if the game were available) it would show you the 19GB file, and the dialog leads you to believe that you're downloading it at an incredibly fast rate. In reality, this rate is just the combination of it downloading the same 9GB worth of data, and the rate at which your hard drive is decrypting this data.
Origin is lying to you.

It would be interesting to test something like Dead Space, first downloading it on Steam (and timing it) and then downloading it on Origin and comparing the times.

I was judging based on my (admittedly non-scientific) experiences downloading the same games through both Origin and Steam. I remember downloading Mirror's Edge from both services back to back when I was struggling to get the game running (it kept crashing to desktop), and I recall the Origin d/l finishing up a good bit faster than the Steam one did. There were a couple of other cases where I downloaded from both, and Origin seemed to be quicker overall, but they weren't back-to-back like that was.

Actually timing it sounds like a worthwhile experiment. Could conclusively prove whether Origin's really faster, or if seeing numbers tick up more quickly gives people the illusion of greater speed even when the same amount of time's passing.

Since I have spare time and spare space and no bandwidth restrictions I'll test that out tomorrow. I have Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis 2, Medal of Honor and Battlefield 2 that are not downloaded and are both on my Origin/Steam account.

For science!

Awesome, man! Post your results up in here when you're done - I'm very interested in seeing what you find.
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
steam compression notwithstanding, game is fucking legit

00EE0F61C2233E0F7D2833B926C35918A5A0089E

5D61D8BACEA0AEB5C55BCCF6070CD5BEEC1B0901

1E6903ADC52F99D8F96E4DE01A16E16EAFC38ED7

89D24079184F1FD01F1489A9D46EFDA9EF97A92E

C581C9F87F7C6741E2B7DAAD80DE295CE7E375C0

34A186428D19D1A378F5E541804E8DCAC989A21A

2014945038012938CB68A1CD94A1581766F49F83


edit: oops, I thought Gaf automatically made a smaller picture when linking them, not full size ones? does it only rezise when you quote? >_>
 
steam compression notwithstanding, game is fucking legit

edit: oops, I thought Gaf automatically made a smaller picture when linking them, not full size ones? does it only rezise when you quote? >_>

Is that Mirror of Fate? I've been tempted to get it.

Also, if you quote your pics they'll shrink. Edit: nm, misread.
 
Even Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3?
I guess those fit under the umbrella of classic now, but I'm only referring to the games from 2000 and earlier. I think Thi3f is fine though, I thought it got a bad rap. Looking back on it and going by the reception of Thi4f from both old and new players it's evident it could've been much worse. Though I think the quality of a Thief title seems directly proportional to how well received its mobility tool is.

edit: oops, I thought Gaf automatically made a smaller picture when linking them, not full size ones? does it only rezise when you quote? >_>
It does resize them, it makes them fit within the max table length of the post instead of extending further, but quoting gives you a more reasonable resize.
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
Is that Mirror of Fate? I've been tempted to get it.

Also, if you quote your pics they'll shrink.

yup MoF HD. I always dismissed it on the 3ds because of the technical issues, but Im really liking it as a castlevania. Who knew... besides Vinny from Giantbomb. he knew :(
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Sure. I'll also make a thread for it (if it's a good idea?). I have Verizon FIOs at 25Mb download and 5 Mb upload.

Making a thread would be good. The more people you can get to replicate and verify your results, the more we'll know that either Steam really is slower than Origin or Origin is lying about their download speeds.
 

inm8num2

Member
Oh Steam gods, please introduce a better way of categorizing games.

Hell, how about an overhaul of how the library works? Maybe some kind of way to create sub-libraries?
 

Tellaerin

Member
Making a thread would be good. The more people you can get to replicate and verify your results, the more we'll know that either Steam really is slower than Origin or Origin is lying about their download speeds.

Let's face it, even if Origin clocks faster downloads, people are still going to say they're lying about the speed because of how they calculate it. Still, it'll be nice to have some solid numbers everyone can point to.
 

Turfster

Member
So Halo Spartan is 5.99€ on the win8 store (and my god, that thing is such a joke).
It'll be interesting to see if they pricematch the Steam version...

Also, there's currently a "deal" on Thi4f going around for 18€ on a French site claiming to be a squenix store with a different hosting registrar and server location.
No such deal anywhere else on squenix sites for Europe.

Edit: This is weird.
Looks like it's actually the legit squenix france site...
 

Dusk Golem

A 21st Century Rockefeller
Oh Steam gods, please introduce a better way of categorizing games.

Hell, how about an overhaul of how the library works? Maybe some kind of way to create sub-libraries?

Been a request of mine for a while. On Libraries and Store genres. What makes less sense to me is that several of these sub-genres and categorizing methods already exist on Steam Greenlight as genres and categories, but don't actually exist on the regular Steam store. For genres, on Greenlight they have Shooter, Platformer, Puzzle, Arcade, Music, and Horror as genres, and no idea why they won't include those on the Steam Store.
 

inm8num2

Member
Been a request of mine for a while. On Libraries and Store genres. What makes less sense to me is that several of these sub-genres already exist on Steam Greenlight as genres and categories, but don't actually exist on the regular Steam store. On Greenlight they have Shooter, Platformer, Puzzle, Arcade, Music, and Horror as genres, and no idea why they won't include those on the Steam Store.

For me it's just kind of tedious when you want to add a number of games to any particular category you've created. Right click, choose 'Set category', scroll to find the category, click the check box, click OK. Then the library view jumps to that subcategory since the game you selected has just been added. To add other games to that category, scroll down and repeat.

I'd love some kind of way to select multiple games at once and assign a category. No fuss, no muss.

Another nice thing would be to manually set a game as "played/finished", so that you can filter out those games when viewing your library and not compromise whatever categories you wanted them to be in.
 
Hm. Any thoughts on Lego Batman 1 and 2? I see that they're 75% off as part of the Batman weekend sale.

They are regarded to be some of the best lego games. Which is to say they are exactly the same as every other lego game.

If you like batman, you will have some fun.
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
is the season pass for Batman Origins worth it? does it have any proper single player stuff or is it just more challenge room bullshit and skins?
 

Sub Zero

his body's cold as ice, but he's got a heart of gold
is the season pass for Batman Origins worth it? does it have any proper single player stuff or is it just more challenge room bullshit and skins?

It has skins, some challenge maps with a supposed story (you play as Bruce Wayne when he was still training) and a yet unreleased story DLC about Mr.Freeze. I guess we'll have to wait for that to come out next month to reach a conclusion
 

def sim

Member
is the season pass for Batman Origins worth it? does it have any proper single player stuff or is it just more challenge room bullshit and skins?

It comes with the Cold, Cold Heart DLC coming next month which is story content featuring Freeze. Seems pretty great and, at $5, why not?
 

hitoshi

Member
Help me GAF. I want to change my Steam background, but no matter where I try (in the client or in Google Chrome), I always get the same nonworking window, without a scrolling wheel. I have 201 backgrounds in my inventory, so I'd have a lot of options, but I can only see these :(

KLjhxev.jpg


(Enhanced Steam plugin is installed)
 

Dusk Golem

A 21st Century Rockefeller
Oh also, with Anodyne on the new bundle, I'd recommend it. Some very quick thoughts, played it about a year ago.

header_292x136.jpg


Anodyne I would best describe as Legend of Zelda meets Yume Nikki. Specifically, the Zelda game it makes me think of the most is Link's Awakening. The game is about a boy named Young who seems to be in a weird sort of construct of loose dreams, or worlds, or something of the sort that have very different thematic difference. You explore an overworld, locate dungeons, get through said dungeons by collecting keys and solving puzzles and defeating enemies, ultimately defeating the boss of the dungeon. There's upgrades, but they work a bit different than Zelda games, as they mostly upgrade yourself or your weapon of choice (a broom) as opposed to giving you a lot of new gadgets.

The areas in the game are varied, with some being more typical fantasy fare, some being just outright strange and surreal, and others being kind of nightmarish and dark. Atmosphere is effected by some fantastic music, as well as a strange story that is deceptively simple at first, but very complex if you decide to analyze it. Regardless, the game is just ringing with both a action-adventure fantasy game setting, and fully embraces things like NPCs with weird dialogue, sidequest to gain more hearts, collectibles, and influences by old RPGs and Zelda games, but also has a surreal quality that compliments it all rather well. The game often feels a bit off and weird most of the time, and does a good job at occasionally dipping further into that pool of weirdness, but not going completely off the rails, which leads to a slightly unsettling feeling, but one that makes you curious to continue further. That and it gets fun seeing what sort of areas, situations, bosses, and the like the game will throw at you next.

I'd recommend it for those who enjoy 2D Action-Adventure games like Zelda, or who like odd, dream-like games like Yume Nikki or LSD: Dream Emulator. To note is that it's design could be viewed as being too-varied from location to location, so to some that may cause the game to feel a bit loose compared to something like, say, Zelda. It's also not quite as solid, but still in my opinion a good and different take on that sort of action-adventure game, though maybe appreciated more by one who enjoys something a tad surreal.
 

Miguel81

Member
So, I'm playing through Sleeping Dogs and just noticed that the DLC is on sale. Which ones are worth the $. I'm not looking for booster packs, but ones with missions and story.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Help me GAF. I want to change my Steam background, but no matter where I try (in the client or in Google Chrome), I always get the same nonworking window, without a scrolling wheel. I have 201 backgrounds in my inventory, so I'd have a lot of options, but I can only see these :(

(Enhanced Steam plugin is installed)

I've had a lot of people ask me about this error this morning. It's not due to Enhanced Steam, it's just a bug that Valve hasn't fixed yet.
 
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