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[Nzyme32]

Steam Client Beta Update - April 30
30 APRIL - JMCCASKEY
We've just published a new beta which includes the following changes.

General:

• Fixed several small memory leaks in the Steam client
• Fixed a rare crash on workshop image update inside the library details view
• DLC can now be disabled in the DLC properties page for a game

Windows:

• Fixed a case where Steam could be seen as a voice application on startup and Windows would lower sound of other applications

Steamworks:

• Fixed some AppVerifier errors/warnings caused by Steam that could make it hard for games to use AppVerifier to verify the rest of their code

Big Picture:

• Added new profile section to the main menu replace the old community section. This brings Big Picture more up-to-date in terms of design and features with desktop/web community and adds better activity feed and profile views.
• Improved movie playback support and support for animated gifs
• Adding of non-Steam games is now directly supported in Big Picture
• Non-Steam games now show icon art when available and when no custom art has been set in Big Picture
• Fixed a bug where screenshot/out-of-focus mode could kick in when Big Picture had focus if you transitioned into it while already running a game
• Fixed a bug where focus may end up in an unexpected place if the button currently in focus is deleted from the UI

In-Home Streaming:

• The In-Home Streaming feature is now available to everyone running the client beta
• Added an intro dialog the first time you start streaming a game
• Show a dialog if the game needs cloud sync resolution before starting
• Improved D3D asynchronous capture performance
• Improved OpenGL asynchronous capture performance
• Fixed slow system reporting for Fast and Balanced settings
• Fixed several causes of infinite latency when client is too slow
• Fixed client crash changing resolution with software decoding
• Increased precision for refresh rate and capture framerate
• Reduced latency when streaming at the client refresh rate

Steam Music Beta:

• Improved crawling speed
• Respect multiple albums in one directory and respecting disc number if available in tag data
• Better handling of faulty tag data
• Faster display of album and artist library views
• Music features now available while offline
• Duplicate artists bug fixed
• Better compatibility with MP3 files containing cover art of unusual or big sizes
• Database overhaul improves data quality; requires one-time automatic rebuild of beta testers’ libraries

 

[Dr Dogg]

BioShock 2

Spoiler

This game has no relevance to the plot of the series and is not canonical. It also isn't well written. Move along.

I can hear the rumblings of discontent already. Did you play Minerva's Den at all by chance?

 

[Grief.exe]

I'm very interested to see whether Watch Dogs will be fully Uplay, or just the rumored overlay.

 

[DocSeuss]

Stump, sorry, but I believe Bioshock 2 is the only good game in the series, in part because it's the best-written.

DocSeuss, I read that thread you made the other day. I hope your situation gets better soon. Accent's a really cool guy for setting up that fundraiser to help you out.

Accent is best. I'm super grateful. I've been given enough to help me survive a month + one or two bills after that.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I can hear the rumblings of discontent already. Did you play Minerva's Den at all by chance?

Yes, and it's more interesting than BioShock 2, but equally irrelevant in terms of the series' overall arc.

 

[Einbroch]

I'm very interested to see whether Watch Dogs will be fully Uplay, or just the rumored overlay.

I'm new to PC gaming, but wouldn't the matchmaking and online stuff be much easier with the full Uplay "experience"?

 

[Jiggaloboy]

Enhanced Steam 6.0.1 was just rejected by Mozilla. I'm tired of jumping through hoops for these people.

I'm going to stop publishing updates to Firefox for a while, and look into self-hosting the files myself. I know I won't get as much exposure as the Firefox Add On market thing provides, but they're dictating an incredible amount of work that is entirely unnecessary and (quite honestly) at this point seems personal.

Damn, from what you've said here and in past posts I wouldn't even bother with Firefox anymore if I were in your shoes. As a FF user I certainly appreciate that you're continuing to support it though.

 

[Nzyme32]

I'm new to PC gaming, but wouldn't the matchmaking and online stuff be much easier with the full Uplay "experience"?

The issue comes with the service they provide and the updates that they put out. Both have several cases of being absolutely horrible and making play difficult or impossible. By contrast, there isn't much of a reason to not use just steamworks. It is trusted and almost always works without fault.

 

[Caerith]

Whoever selected the set of screenshots shown on the Centration store page should get smacked upside the head.

Those achievements.

 

[Nabs]

:OOOOOOOO

yup

 

[Rhaknar]

Bioshock 2 is awesome if only for the

Spoiler

creepy ass part where you play in the POV of a little sister and you see the world how they see it, all teddy bears and candycanes

yup

what am I missing?

 

[styl3s]

Does any sit have Child of Light cheaper then $14.99 that redeems on Steam? It's not that i even have some big problem uplay i just only own like 3 games that use it and if it wasn't for them being in my Steam library i would forget that i even own them.

 

[Grief.exe]

I'm new to PC gaming, but wouldn't the matchmaking and online stuff be much easier with the full Uplay "experience"?

Online functionality is probably handled by a central server handshaking P2P connections, I'd imagine client is irrelevant.

By the way, the 'full Uplay experience' on PC involves convoluted patching systems, lost saves, and a poor DRM client.

 

[Mavromatis]

I can only assume that War of the Vikings tries to be Rune in Bitsquid aka War of the Roses engine, and that it'll fail like War of the Roses.
I love Paradox but they have to stick to their core talents, Grand Strategy Games, and push BardsTale for the release of Mount & Blade 2.

 

[Nzyme32]

yup

This is an excellent feature for the bandwidth impared. Eg - I can download the base Civ V game alone, then download the rest in the background and enable them later when they are done (i think)

 

[Mavromatis]

:OOOOOOOO

I guess this is the time that somebody lists which DLCs in Sleepy Dogs are cheats and which are actual content. Because that is the only reason I see for that feature.

 

[Nabs]

This is an excellent feature for the bandwidth impared. Eg - I can download the base Civ V game alone, then download the rest in the background and enable them later when they are done (i think)

It's also great for people who bought the complete Sleeping Dogs pack. They can now disable cheat packs before playing.

 

[Stallion Free]

Reading stumps bio breakdown made me pretty fucking thirsty to replay some of the games. Damn.

 

[Sub Zero]

DocSeuss, I read that thread you made the other day. I hope your situation gets better soon. Accent's a really cool guy for setting up that fundraiser to help you out.

Just read this. That was really nice of Accent and I wish you'll get better soon. Of course, I'll try to donate at least 10$ in the fundraiser (that's all a poor college student can afford). I've got a cousin who's been in the same position as you and I know how it feels.

DLC can now be disabled in the DLC properties page for a game

Cool, I can finally enjoy Sleepy Dawgies without messing with the game's files.

 

[mannerbot]

yup

Oh, that's convenient. I just put all of the preorder items in my item box.

 

[Chronoja]

yup

Aww yiss, it's about damn time this was a feature.

 

[Turfster]

Whoever selected the set of screenshots shown on the Centration store page should get smacked upside the head.

If you look at the current features list, this is all they have at the moment.
"Why the fuck would you make something public at this point in time" is what we should be asking.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Off the top of my head, Sleeping Dogs and Binding of Isaac benefit hugely from this. Sleeping Dogs because the all-DLC pack comes with cheat DLC that unbalances the game economy, and Binding of Isaac because the DLC makes the game harder.

On the other hand:
18:51 EviLore finally, those stupid dead space 2 dlcs
18:51 EviLore I never played the game because of that shit
18:51 stump EviLore: won't work
18:51 stump EviLore: because EA didn't do the cheats as DLC.
18:51 stump they just bundled it into the main game

Fucking EA. Fucking Origin. Fucking Dead Space 2.

 

[Nzyme32]

haha just when we all though it was a bit of a dry steam month. This update has done wonders for the music beta, and BPM is a bit different too

 

[BinaryPork2737]

If you look at the current features list, this is all they have at the moment.
"Why the fuck would you make something public at this point in time" is what we should be asking.

Interactive doors and consoles though.

This is the future of gaming.

 

[jshackles]

Damn, from what you've said here and in past posts I wouldn't even bother with Firefox anymore if I were in your shoes. As a FF user I certainly appreciate that you're continuing to support it though.

I want as many people as possible to be able to have access to Enhanced Steam and as many of it's features as their browser of choice can support.

From a technical standpoint, there are only a few features that Firefox cannot accomplish. However, from a political(?) standpoint, Mozilla has requested time and again that certain features be disabled "for security reasons".

This part really kind of sent me over the edge though: in my evaluation of 6.0

Please move your localization data to a non-executable format, such as .json files, which you can load and parse via XHR.

Which, yes, would probably speed up loading the localization data since Enhanced Steam supports about 18 different languages now. However, this would be a huge undertaking and vary wildly from how we process our localization data in every other version of Enhanced Steam. This means we would have to create a completely new build process from the data we have, and once it's in the "correct" format, would then need to modify about 1,000 lines of code in the base file to make it work.

So I didn't do it. And this time, the reason it's rejected (almost a month after I've submitted it):

In case I wasn't clear, moving your locale data to a non-executable format was a requirement, not a suggestion.

Even if I were to do this, we're talking about shaving milliseconds (maybe) from the execution. This is simply a case of "please do this Mozilla's way if you want to be included in Mozilla's add on pages". I could work on this for about 40-50 hours and complete it, and it would take them another 4-5 weeks after that to approve the update.

To make matters worse, I got over 100 emails yesterday from users who had Enhanced Steam stop working in Firefox after Firefox updated to version 29. This fix for this issue has been in Mozilla's hands for over a month and they're preventing it from rolling out to users because the code doesn't exactly conform to their standards.

At this point, self-hosting or dropping Firefox support are my only two options.

/rant

 

[Stallion Free]

Off the top of my head, Sleeping Dogs and Binding of Isaac benefit hugely from this. Sleeping Dogs because the all-DLC pack comes with cheat DLC that unbalances the game economy, and Binding of Isaac because the DLC makes the game harder.

On the other hand:
18:51 EviLore finally, those stupid dead space 2 dlcs
18:51 EviLore I never played the game because of that shit
18:51 stump EviLore: won't work
18:51 stump EviLore: because EA didn't do the cheats as DLC.
18:51 stump they just bundled it into the main game

Fucking EA. Fucking Origin. Fucking Dead Space 2.

The funniest thing is that that wasn't how the game was on release either. They guilt-patched them in shortly after when PC gamers bitched they were treated like second class citizens. And then they still never gave us the actual campaign dlc for the game.

 

[Dr Dogg]

Yes, and it's more interesting than BioShock 2, but equally irrelevant in terms of the series' overall arc.

Oh of course and your post did state it was an outline of the main Bioshock arc. Granted I do see it as a side story of a side story but do feel Minerva's Den was closer to System Shock, than any of the Bioshock games.

It's also great for people who bought the complete Sleeping Dogs pack. They can now disable cheat packs before playing.

Shit I can finally disable all that Tomb Raider guff I accidentally bought.

 

[Arthea]

STEAM | May 2014 - Modbotbrorivalry

 

[Nabs]

haha just when we all though it was a bit of a dry steam month. This update has done wonders for the music beta, and BPM is a bit different too

BPM is so slick.

 

[Syphon Filter]

BPM is so slick.

They should make the client look similar. It looks dated by now with no options.

 

[Stumpokapow]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=811030