Steam...

I haven't been playing Half-Life online since before the summer of '03. Do I need to get steam or can I still use WON? We moved to the middle of nowhere and we are going to get DSL. So I just wanted some info.

You should of added this to the steam thread, but nevermind. Steam sucks. So does One. So ask someone else. I know nothing.

You can still use WON because Stem at the moment isn't very reliable. Once Valve deems Steam as ready to take over the reign )i.e. they fix the multitude of bugs, make the install hassle-free, speed it up, sto it from using up so many resources etc.), WON will still be in-tact.

Kage_Prototype said:
You can still use WON because Stem at the moment isn't very reliable. Once Valve deems Steam as ready to take over the reign )i.e. they fix the multitude of bugs, make the install hassle-free, speed it up, sto it from using up so many resources etc.), WON will still be in-tact.

your a bit optamistic!

As soon as HL2 pops out of the box (if it ever does, cough), we will have to kiss WON bye-bye.

Why are you whining about kissing WON goodbye?

If you goto Valves site and take a look at what their trying to do with steam and some of the things coming out for it you wouldn't be whining.

Such as, they're getting rid of the idea that you have to be online all the time, they're working on a patch so that you have to log in to download the content (obviously) and then you can disconnect from steam and play it Single Player or on a LAN.

Also, HL2 is going to support its self, it doesn't need steam. First clue to this is that, they said it will run out of box and steam is not required. The second clue would be that Its going to run on Linux out of box, steam isn't supported on linux, not yet anyway.

This is what I would suggest, If you have a decent computer and your internet connection isn't very slow (faster then 56K) you should get steam. You can download just the installer which is like 500k and install only the mods you want to play, so you don't need their 'chached' versions or anything.

I've actually had better connections with steam . . . I've had less lag (mostly because everyone playing has broadband) and I've come to enjoy the interface much more then WONs (Mostly because my sound doesn't go away if Half-Life gets minimized).

But yes Steam does suck up some resources, saying its a hog is exaturating.

Right now My system is running steam heres the memory usage:

Steam 4,224 K

To keep this in a realm of comparison Mozilla is running at 24,000K and Internet Explorer is going at 24,304K

So it's not too bad, its about the same as AIM. Once you're playing a game it uses the same amount of recources as WON version would use.

The only thing that you can whine about regarding steam is if you want to develope maps. I found the easiest way is to create a mod folder under half-life, it will show up as a 3rd party mod. The only problem is, when you configure Hammer, you have to manually move the bsp and you can't have hammer moving it for you, because it just doesn't work.

If you want wad files goto nemesis tools theres a program called GCF Scape, its very good. It allows you to exctract anything you want from the GCF files, however you can't write anything so you can't make your own or anything like that.
Steam isn't as bad as everyone is saying, they're just biased, steam didn't work when I first put it on either, but that was when it first came out and it sucked ass when it came out, it's incredibly stable now. However I think Gabe trips his fat ass over the power cable every now and then lol.

Anyway, why don't you try both out? You already know what WON is like, try using steam.

Just keep in mind, if you want to play Sven Co-op 3.0 online you have to use steam, because of the half-life version.

I think you misunderstood me, Crono. I didn't use the expression "kiss something bye-bye" because I hate steam.

Far from it, I love the Steam system (friends list, automatic updates, ...), but it just took a bad start, and that's why so many users keep on using WON.

The best thing they could have done, was to release Steam with the same options as WON had. More players would be switching to Steam, they wouldn't have to release critical updates in the first (important) weeks, and everything would have gone better.

Other options could have been added later, as soon as those basic functions (playing games, converting HL-files) were known to work properly.

That's fine . . . I just know there are a lot of people bashing steam and I know they haven't tried it yet, because if they did, they wouldn't be bashing it. I know that the LAN update will make a lot of people change their minds though, I mean what's the real reason why people wont use steam? You have to be online to play a single player game.

I've never head someone say "kiss (instert noun) bye-bye" in a positive sense. It's always been a reminiscent phrase, oh well, it's not a big deal anyway.

No worries. I have been working with steam since the b?ta's. I really know what I'm talking about.

I thought Linux didn't support Direct-X? So HL2 couldn't run on Linux?

And I thought Half-Life 2 did require Steam -- it will simply come with Steam and a full installation of Half-Life 2 so you wouldn't have to go online and download it.

HL2 will require Steam for online gaming, but not for just the singleplayer version. (I think)

HL2 will be released in 3 versions:

• Light: HL2, Singleplayer, No gizmo's
• Medium: HL2, Single/MultiPlayer, A little bit of gizmo's
• Deluxe: HL2 + special content (read: A lot of gizmo's.)

It seems valve wrote the video interface two ways, which they always have.

You know when you select your video modes? And you can choose OpenGL or Direct3D (X)?

They did the same thing for HL2, just the engine its self has been written in a way that it can be read and understand by all OS platforms, if it can be read by Linux and Windows, it can be read by OSX as well, unless they did something funky and made it only Linux and Windows. Which wouldn't make sense, because OSX underneath it all is Unix, which is the basis for Linux.

The only thing is, the Direct3D option in HL can only be used in Windows. Other OSs use OpenGL.

I hope that explains it.

[Edit]Yeah, as far as Valve has implied, HL2 will not need anything extra to run out of box to play the singleplayer, just like every other computer game. It will probably come with a steam install and a cache for HL2, which means it will probably need to be installed differently or something. The point is you have to wait to see because no one really knows . . . not even Valve lol.[/Edit]

Steam IS the VGUI in Half-Life 2. I can't be taken out; it's part of the game. So the short answer is: Yes, you will need Steam for Half-Life 2.

But they didn't write HL2 in OpenGL, they wrote it using DX 9. :smile: And seeing Linux doesn't like Direct-X apps, I'm still not sure how it could possibly run on Linux without a DX Emulator.

Kage, you're not listening very well.

The DirectX and OpenGL part of a game is NOT a big one. It just tells the computer how to put what where. You can code BOTH. They did in the first HL as they are with the second. The only difference is that the rest of the engine for HL2 is written using standard C++ stuff so it works on many platforms.

And that is not from valve, that is the way you do that.

DirectX and OpenGL are just libraries written to interface with the video card, that is all. The hard coded stuff is what matters. In other words, you can't write anything in DirectX . . . you can only use its libraries (thats all directX and OpenGL are). They aren't languages.

No. Steam is garbage, and Valve is using it in all the wrong ways.

The perfect Steam would be an optional program for players who wanted to run on a more private, cheat proof network, at the cost of memory and functionality, a cost which too many people can't afford. Everyone else could run on a much more basic network.

Steam has a little potential to better the community, but I prefer functional simplicity over superadvanced complexity, even with all the negative baggage that comes with it. I want to be able to play a singleplayer game without having to connect to the internet. I want to have a game that has full support for modders and mappers. Steam at the moment cannot even touch the practicality of WON, and I'd rather sit down and join a server in thirty seconds then wait while the program redownloads the mod. Bugs will be ironed out, sure, but mandatory Steam is a bad, bad idea.

Cassius, the problems you listed are, in fact, temporary. Once these problems are gone, then it'll be mandatory, and people wont care because all the major problems and bugs and pet peeves will be gone. :smile:

Will Steam be running in the background along with Half-Life 2, then? I don't think my PC would be able to cope.. :razz:

Leperous said:
Will Steam be running in the background along with Half-Life 2, then? I don't think my PC would be able to cope.. :razz:

Whos will?