Snarkpit question of the day..

OK.. Question:

Is there a place/way to download these ghastly updates for steam/HL2 in perhaps a zip form?
I mean, I don't really wanna waste my 3 gigs/month on updates when I can acquire them with my laptop someplace else for free then installing them at home onto my home PC.

I really cannot recall if this issue has come up before since the last time I updated was over 3 years ago and had unlimited access.

Anywho's that's today's situation.

For the record, I already updated HL2 and can play the SP game, but it was over a gig by itself and that leaves me with just shy of 2 more gigs for any more updating.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Yes, you can through steam.

Take your laptop to the place with the internet. Install steam and log in. Fully download and install all games you want (they will automatically be the most up-to-date)

Now there's two options to get the games to another computer, one you can use the backup feature:
Then in the games list, right click on the ones you want to take over to another steam install and click BACKUP! It'll make a backup file of the game and even split it into CD or DVD size increments.

Second you can just copy the cache files (faster)
However, that's actually the long way, namely because it compresses the files. The easiest way is to just copy the GCF files in Steam/steamapps and Steam/steamapps/common.

Those are the actual game downloads. You might have to close and reopen steam a couple times on the machine you copied them to. If the games don't boot or have issues, do a verification on them (right click properties on a game) this will see if the cache file is complete and download anything that's missing, which is generally only a few KB. Don't copy over Steam/steamapps/[username] That's where the games unpack to and store your save files.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Cool, thanx Adam. I'll give'r a try.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Does anyone else find that if you enable the flag "do not keep this game automatically updated" it automatically updates anyway?

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Aaron's Stuff

aaron_da_killa said:
Does anyone else find that if you enable the flag "do not keep this game automatically updated" it automatically updates anyway?

Thats just the steam cloud "syncing" all your source/other steam cloud games. Its not actually updating the game itself.

aaron_da_killa said:
Does anyone else find that if you enable the flag "do not keep this game automatically updated" it automatically updates anyway?

Why the fuck would I do that?

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Crono said:
Why the fuck would I do that?

I dunno, but it seems to me that if the option is available, it has a purpose.

I've never noticed the option but I yesterday was my first update in over 3 years.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

The purpose is if you have a 56K connection and you can't login to the steam servers all the time. But Aaron has a constant broadband connection, so I don't know why he's bitching.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Crono said:
But Aaron has a constant broadband connection, so I don't know why he's bitching.

I am beginning to suspect that he has a strong affection for a certain Oregonian or he just likes doing things strange.

I think if memory serves me that he used to have 56k. Mayhap he has yet to create bad broadband habits. We'll see when he posts his first 800k screenshot.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Ah it's because I have metred internet usage unfortunately. My 56K internet connection habits have died long ago Orph.

"omegaslayer" said:

aaron_da_killa said:
Does anyone else find that if you enable the flag "do not keep this game automatically updated" it automatically updates anyway?

Thats just the steam cloud "syncing" all your source/other steam cloud games. Its not actually updating the game itself.

Ahhh ok I thought it might be that but I wasn't too sure. It's a bit of an inconvenience then if every time I launch a game I see an updating screen.

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Aaron's Stuff

aaron_da_killa said:
Ah it's because I have metred internet usage unfortunately. My 56K internet connection habits have died long ago Orph.

So... It must be an affection for a certain Oregonian then.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

OK, downloaded the sourcesdk.gcf last night (forking 1.8 gigs worth) and will swap it to my home PC when I get back home. I hope its just this easy. Thanx again Adam.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Next question: Windows 7 is extremely driver heavy. It seems to have drivers for part near everything. My question is this, since Win7 is newer than most motherboards these days would it be better to use the win7 drivers or should one go directly to the manufacturer still like the old days?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

What a bizarre question.

Always use manufacture drivers if you can. Microsoft's drivers are generics. There is a chance, though, that it'll download the manufacturer drivers from a repository (I know Vista is capable and shows them to you in automatic updates)

Use official drivers written for the device you're using over generic drivers written for the class of device, of course. This should be rather obvious.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Thought so, but I was raised to believe that the only stupid question is the one you fail to ask.

Thanx Adam

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The best things in life, aren't things.

He said it was Bizarre, not Stupid.

Orph can you go to McDonalds and use the free WiFi there and get passed your metered usage? I have never had to worry about Metered usage so I am not quite sure how it works.

If he were connecting to his WiMax account from the coffee shop (or wherever) it would, of course, count against his bandwidth.

I would assume he's using the freely offered WiFi many business give access to. Which has no connection to his internet accounts at all.

Metered usage works by giving you so much bandwidth per month. Depending on the ISP they either cut off the connection or drop it down to ridiculously slow speeds if you go beyond your limits. And, of course, it's possible that a place will just charge you double rate per kilobyte beyond your limit.

So, for instance, you could have a bandwidth limit of 3GB per month. That means that you cannot send or receive (combined total) more than 3,221,225,472 Bytes per month. This doesn't just mean files discretely downloaded. But any package information that travels through your account. So, pings, anything count against your meter.

The closest analog I can think of is cell phone minutes. You only have so many allocated each month (unless you're on an unlimited plan). Same idea, just different medium.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well that blows.. I am not sure why anyone would succumb to such a deal. But if thats what he has.. then thats what he has. I think I would get myself a few big Flash sticks and use the library or stick to a lan place to get online, would be less hassle and I would think cheaper too.

See I thought if you had a laptop and you got on-line at like McDonalds it was free. I have roadrunner at home but a built in wifi card in my laptop so when I go to McDonalds as an example or the PX on post who also has free WiFi I log online and use there connection to the net. So how would that count against his account with this metered deal? ( that is if I was in his shoes ) Unless he is using some sorta USB card to make his laptop have internet access.

Muhnay said:
Well that blows.. I am not sure why anyone would succumb to such a deal.

Think real hard. Think about how much I like it here. Now think about me being gone 3 and a half years.

Do you honestly think I'd stay gone that long if I had choices?
Yeah, there is free wifi out there. McDonalds have it nationwide, but how does that help me at home? Contrary to popular belief internet isn't every where unless you get something really expensive.

This thing I have now, its 3 gigs a month for 35.00. Seems outrageous yes BUT it is the only thing even remotely within my budget. If I had it to do all over again I'd prolly not have gotten even this because it measures both ways and just visiting Snarkpit once a day eats up a phenomenal amount. I could only visit here say 300 times a month and exceed my quota. Yes I know that even I don't visit here 300 times, but think, everywhere I visit online reduces that 300.

Anywho's Its not your problem, its mine. I got this thing to activate my games a home. If I only use it for that purpose than I am getting EXACTLY what I paid for.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Oh I am fully aware it is your problem, but I also had never seen a metered deal like yours before. I at one time paid AT&T 60 bucks a month for an unlimited air card, that plugged into my USB and allowed me access to the internet anyplace they have coverage.

But realized that so many business these days, even truck stop have free WiFi that works even in their parking lots so I gave that air card up, besides my new Android phone also me to use it as a WiFi access to the internet as well... so no need for the other thing.

Since I had never seen a problem like yours I was asking questions, and thankfully Crono answered them for me so I have a better understanding.

but hey if it works for you, then great.. I think it sucks and would look at other options if there were some, but if not I guess I would pretty much do the same thing just to get online every now and then.

Like I said, do you think I could stay gone so long if I had options?

As for truckstops. Yeah, some are free. Most know its a cash cow and are milking it. Ironically the ones that are free are seldom where I want to spend the night. Its either to early in the day to stop, or to far away to make it before I can safely get there. Eve Now, I am in Wamsutter Wyoming. There is net galore. None free so I am using my wifi.

Anywho's. shrugs

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Doesn't the wifi at macas have a 50mb limit per day per person? They do here at least.

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Aaron's Stuff

You're in Australia they limit everything.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Why is it that someone always says to the family member that just buried a loved one "wasn't that a beautiful funeral"

IMO that's got to be the most heartless comment anyone could possibly make. I want to strangle them and say "Someone had to die for you to even be here you heartless asshole"

another thing I have always wondered. Why is it that tornado survivors always ask.. But our houses were so close together, why did it only destroy mine".

I always wanted to ask them if they'd feel better about the situation if both houses were gone..

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The best things in life, aren't things.

"Orpheus" said:
Why is it that someone always says to the family member that just buried a loved one "wasn't that a beautiful funeral"

Hmm I don't see anything wrong with that.

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Aaron's Stuff

aaron_da_killa said:
Hmm I don't see anything wrong with that.

That's disturbing for me on so many levels. I've been to 4 funerals now and I never thought about how it looked or felt or was handled. I kept thinking about the person dead and all the things they couldn't do again.

Anywho's next question... I went to firefox to find an addon for my browser so it will retain the pics indefinitely. Problem is, I don't know what question to ask the search. They have a shitload of ways to save images but that's not what I need. I can save them just fine without an addon.

They have addons that block images, but that's no good either since I don't want to block them all.

Any suggestions?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Orpheus said:
Why is it that someone always says to the family member that just buried a loved one "wasn't that a beautiful funeral"

IMO that's got to be the most heartless comment anyone could possibly make. I want to strangle them and say "Someone had to die for you to even be here you heartless asshole"

another thing I have always wondered. Why is it that tornado survivors always ask.. But our houses were so close together, why did it only destroy mine".

I always wanted to ask them if they'd feel better about the situation if both houses were gone..

I almost laughed at this...

almost...

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Now remember kids. Asking questions is a good way to get censored by the government.

I think they're reflecting on the emotions and efforts made by the people for the passed away person. I don't really see how that's disturbing.

Orph, is it possible that your cache was full and that's why you lost the image?

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Aaron's Stuff

aaron_da_killa said:
Orph, is it possible that your cache was full and that's why you lost the image?

I am unsure but lemme ask you this.. If I uncheck "load images automatically" will it keep the old or leave a blank spot?

[edit] Oh man this is awful. I think I' rather put up with it the other way.
Anywho.. How do I check this cache thing?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Not really sure I've never used it before. Try it and see what results you get or ask Google.

Might also like this.

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Aaron's Stuff

Am I reading it wrong or does it not do what firefox already does when yo uncheck " load images automatically"

It seems like its doing the same thing.

BTW, I am not ignoring your comment about the funerals. I just cannot find an answer suitable. To me they're neither beautiful or ugly. They are a necessary part of saying goodbye. But I believe it is heartless to say one is beautiful.

[edit] This will have to wait, I really need to crash. I've been up since 1 this morning and am nodding off.

Thanx for the assist Aaron.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Orpheus said:
[edit] This will have to wait, I really need to crash. I've been up since 1 this morning and am nodding off.

Well I'm currently doing an all nighter :P

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Aaron's Stuff

aaron_da_killa said:
Well I'm currently doing an all nighter :P

Youth has its advantages I used to play Doom 2 coop for 3 days straight... Not anymore. 20 minutes tops then I puke.

Back to my dilemma. I just saw a 2 meg pic.. again. It loaded again. I forgot it was there but the point is it loaded again. It seems to me that if nothing new s there it should know.

Anywho I'll search more later I gotta get to Dallas before the storm hits.

If anyone could suggest some keywords to search. Image block isn't it btw.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Orpheus said:

aaron_da_killa said:
Well I'm currently doing an all nighter :P

Youth has its advantages I used to play Doom 2 coop for 3 days straight... Not anymore. 20 minutes tops then I puke.

When you were ... 30?

Orpheus said:
If anyone could suggest some keywords to search. Image block isn't it btw.

Uh ... get a better internet connection? You could try something like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6371/ which allows you to manage HOW the browser goes about caching stuff.

Be aware that I'm not personally the lord and master of the plug-in so don't whine to me if it's not what you want.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

You're posting weird again. Thanx bud.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Adam, I am still testing but it looks good. I went back into the Sim City thread. It loaded the pic. I closed and went back into the thread and the pic was already there. I think it was stored this time.

Whether it works or not, Thanx.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

I have been looking at my maps. Been over 3 years and I felt nostalgic tonight.
Question, does HL1 not play well in widescreen?
I mean, my maps look squatty. I built them at 1024x768 and I am now running 1440x900. I swear I kept ducking under doorways and wanting to hop up stairways.

Any insights?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Works fine at 1920x1080 for me.

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Aaron's Stuff

aaron_da_killa said:
Works fine at 1920x1080 for me.

Well sadly, HL1 won't even go that high.. It won't even go to my 1440x900. Check in your game settings.

Maybe that's why it looks funny. Its something like 1280x1024 or some shit. shrugs

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The best things in life, aren't things.

You can force it through start up options. (You should also make sure to check that it's listing the correct aspect ratio ... see, it only lists resolutions of the selected aspect ratio. 16:9, 16:10, 4:3, etc)

You can also force it to whatever resolution you want through the launch options

-w 1440 -h 990

for example.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Yea, without having to do anything outside of the game or in the console I mean, only in the options panel, I'm able to set widescreen to 1920x1200. And the game looks great!

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Perhaps its just the "not playing in a long time" syndrome. I swear the doors looked to low and the steps looked a foot tall. The game/maps were still playable they just looked all out of skew.

As far as clarity, it looked just as good as it always has. It was kinda nice to walk everywhere and no fluctuations in framerates.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

New question: I can find laptops with AMD video cards everywhere but I cannot seem to locate any with nVidia graphics.

[*]Are they rarer?
[*]Are they more expensive?
[*]Are they more/less reliable?

I don't doubt they are out there but I have not seen a single one in any of our computer stores around here. I admit I haven't looked real hard till this week, but I still didn't notice any at a casual glance.

Any insights?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

AMD bought ATi. the "AMD" graphics cards in a laptop with an AMD CPU are from their ATi devision.

In laptop land ... you pretty much can't find an AMD CPU nVidia GPU combo. Probably, about a year ago was when they were entirely phased out.

You're actually lucky you can still find AMD socket motherboards that use nvidia chipsets.

So, if you want nvidia in your laptop, (sadly) you gotta go Intel. But it's not so bad. If you look at some of the laptops like Acer or Asus, the prices are pretty decent.

On newegg, they have a Acer laptop 2 year warranty (most are only 1 year) had a Intel i5 processor, quad core, and a GeForce GTX 420, which is mobile for pretty good. It can run Crysis at 30fps at decent settings, for example. And it was about $700 last time I checked ... which is a great price for a laptop. (Mine was $1300 in 2007 :()

Also, even for laptops, you still want to buy online. It's still far cheaper. Stay away from Dell, Gateway, Compaq/HP, etc. Toshiba is ok sometimes, Acer builds some decent stuff, and Asus and MSI are pretty good. (Though, Acer, out of all of those has the best warranties)

Don't buy AlienWare. They've never been worth the price, of course, but they're just using standard Dell parts in them now and charging more.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well considering what I mainly use PC's for I prefer Intel. They're just faster at some things and I do those some things.

(Mainly isn't games BTW)

Yeah, I'd like to find me an I5 with a 420. That would be the best of both worlds methinks. Thanx Adam.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Orpheus said:
Well considering what I mainly use PC's for I prefer Intel. They're just faster at some things and I do those some things.

Like what? In terms of user noticeable performance differences, video compression might be the only place you'd legitimately notice something like this.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

My wifes new 3 gig 2.1 Athlon II rips/burns/copies DVD's slower than my old 1.7 intel dual core with 1 gig ram.

Other than that I cannot tell you time differences. All I know is my wifes PC is brand new and mine is nearly 4 years old.

I cannot tell you if all intel/amd processors work this way but these two definitely do.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Athlon IIs have a reduced instruction set and cache. It's akin to i3. Comparing it to an i7 just isn't fair. (And the Core 2 Duo chips are still faster than the i3s)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I said, all I can compare it to is my pc's, my experience with those two.

I figure since my comps main job is to rip and burn, why not get the machine that does it better.

Dude, I can only afford to do this every 3 or 4 years. My laptops aren't near as important to me as my desktop pc, which I get new about every other year.

So, if I'm gonna spend 700+ dollars on a laptop, AND there are laptops of both Intel and AMD in that price range, why not get the one that rips and burns fastest?

It would be silly to be an AMD fan and pick it when its slower at what you do most.

At this point, I am searching for one with a decent vid card. I hadn't realized until today that so damned few have nVidia.

Anywho's, we are mixing topics.

It seems that the stupid sites that sell Laptops do not care what kind of card is in them, cause you cannot refine the searches to "Video preference" just screen size, processor, and color but not video. Even at that newegg site you told me of. All I could find was an I3 processor with an nVidia card. No I5's.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Your lack of listening skills amazes me.
I didn't say hunt down an AMD laptop. You're just going on about generalities.

Maybe it was an i3. Oh well, it's still a good price. You're looking at the $700-$1200 price range anyway. The pairings will run down something like (CPU/GPU): i3/420M, i5/425M, i7/460M as you go up the price scale.

To be frank, unless you're getting a custom built, from the manufacturer, laptop you cannot select the specifics of what you want inside. And, generally, it's not worth it. While the laptop might be $700 on newegg, making a custom configuration one from the manufacturer will be full MSRP (i.e. $1200 range)

navigation lesson: newegg.com > PC/Laptops > Laptops/Notebooks > Advanced Search > GPU/VPU > GTX460M

Pretty good option: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220921
It's $1200, not $700 (different laptop entirely), but very good price. Has an i7 and a GTX460M (mobile version of GTX460, will NOT get the same performance as desktop version) Asus brand. (Neat, the first year of the 2 year warranty covers accidental damage)

You have to use advanced search and power options to narrow search results on newegg. Guided search only lists the most commonly selected options.

Also, the majority of laptops have nVidia graphics. This is how it breaks down: AMD Chip, AMD GPU. Intel Chip either intel integrated graphics OR an nVidia GPU. And more laptops have Intel chips than AMD.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.