Some things that Steam COULD bring to the table

[Cobra8472]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Yup, i know that you can turn off game updates and the client pauses downloads when you go full screen, but i still wouldn't like it being hit with a 300MB update between DF server sessions. Imagine the chaos when half the people auto-update, possibly even some servers, without the ability to roll back a patch: suddenly you can't join the server because you either disabled automatic updates and the server didn't, or vice versa, resulting in a different version being used.

Also, most flight sims usually feature large update packages over longer intervals and sometimes, due to the complexity of the product unwanted "features" can creep in.

Eventually everyone switches to the most recent version, but the way it was done in IL2 allowed everyone (from offliners to server admins) some time to actually test it and gradually make the switch to the new patch. For example, most DF servers don't upgrade to a new patch without the admins first announcing something on the respective forums, eg "the server will switch to 4.101 next monday at 16:00 GMT", which gives everyone ample time to prepare for the changes.

On the other hand Steam's system is fine if you have games with frequent but smaller patches.

In the end, this is what this whole steam debate is about. It's a good platform for certain kinds of games, but the lack of information makes many question if and how much it's properly geared towards the needs of a flight sim. I don't mind automatic updates just like i don't mind any other feature, as long as there is an option to turn it on/off.

Or, you know, we actually trust the developers for once that a patch is good?

Simply letting Steam patch your game is infinitely more useful than having to google for patches, getting the correct patch order, and finally installing the damn thing.
The patch actually being terrible and breaking the game is the fault of the developer, not the content distribution method.

..and there is no such game on Steam that requires 40-50mb patches between each round of gaming, or whatever some other poster was referring to.

Even the buggiest games do not get more than one patch per week, and that is for about a month after release, then it dies down.
Stop spewing redicilous accusations.

@Skoshi Tiger;
You simply aquire two seperate Steam accounts and buy it on both. Alternatively, you buy two copies on your main account, and then send one of them as a gift to the other account (Easy to do.)

[Bryan21cag]

Well i am not sure if this is the rite place for this post or not but i figured i would give it a go. I must say that at first i too was very put off at having to use steam to play a game that i have purchased. Although my anger has subsided after using it with no real issues yet, My biggest problem with this is not that steam does not work but that i have purchased a piece of software but still don't actually own the whole piece of software. What i mean by this is it still bothers me that the program is not installed on my computer and there seems to be no option to do this. I would much rather have the game that i paid for installed completely on my computer and be able to take my computer any where i go and be able to play the game i purchased without needing to connect to the internet to do so. Keep in mind I an not a huge multiplayer of games although i do dabble, but for me this is not why i buy the game. I have owned IL2 for 3 years now and play it constantly and have not once used the multiplayer. But that's just me i really enjoy the flight sim as a stand alone. I know these days it is not such a big deal as most of the places that one might travel on business or pleasure have internet access but it bothers me that only a piece of what i have purchased is actually in my possession. I guess i think of it like if i bought a car that i had always wanted and i was so excited to use it everyday and all day when ever i wanted to and when i got to the dealer i noticed a cord hanging out of the trunk that connected me to the dealer and they told me that even though i was purchasing the car for cash i could only use it while it was plugged into one of there dealers and that if i ever wanted to take it somewhere where the cord didn't reach one of there dealers it would not work i would feel just the same about it. i would still buy the car i think but would feel like i still didn't really own it and it wasn't really mine so why am i paying the same price as someone that can buy the exact same type of thing with no cord attached? i know bad analogy but i hope the principle makes sense lol. This said i recently bought dawn of war II from direct to drive and had to go through steam to install and use it. it has been working fine and i have been able to play my game every time that i have wanted to so far, but again it just gives me a funky feeling paying for something that i don't really own and when it comes rite down to it, even if it happens just once that i cant (internet problems, moving no service, bad hotel internet connection, or any other reason then i will probably be a bit angry about it again Hope no one takes this as a flame just my personal feeling on this subject.

[Extreme_One]

Originally Posted by Bryan21cag

...My biggest problem with this ... is it still bothers me that the program is not installed on my computer and there seems to be no option to do this....

Huh?

The game you purchased is on your computer. We're not yet gaming 'in the cloud'

Your game will be installed somewhere like (depending on your operating system)

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\

or


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common

Check it out and you'll find your game files are installed locally on your PC.

This will be the reason when you bought the game you had to spend some time downloading it before it was available to play.
If you try and play a game that you have purchased through Steam but you haven't yet downloaded fully you will get a "This game is currently unavailable" error message.

You might (depending on the game you purchased) find that some of your settings are stored on Steam servers so that if ever you were to reinstall Steam or perhaps you decide to install Steam on another PC (or MAC! Again, depending on the game) you can use the same game settings you used last time you played the game.

I hope that allays your fears.

BTW a little tip; if you press the Enter key occasionally it makes it far easier for us to read your posts.

[Les]

Originally Posted by Bryan21cag

...My biggest problem with this is not that steam does not work but that i have purchased a piece of software but still don't actually own the whole piece of software. What i mean by this is it still bothers me that the program is not installed on my computer and there seems to be no option to do this. I would much rather have the game that i paid for installed completely on my computer and be able to take my computer any where i go and be able to play the game i purchased without needing to connect to the internet to do so...

The game is installed on your computer, within a folder called 'common', which is itself within your Steam installation. I'm not sure what the default path is at the start, as I chose where Steam installed itself on my own computer, but on yours it's probably - Local Disk ( C: )/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/ il-2 Sturmovik 1946.

To play offline, start up Steam itself, instead of clicking the quick-launch icon for the game you want to play. Then when Steam starts up, left click on the button in the top left corner that says 'Steam'. A drop-down menu will appear and in it will be an option 'Go Offline'. Click it and a window will pop up asking you if you want to go offline, click yes and Steam will shut down and then restart in offline mode. You will be able to tell if it's in online or offline mode as it will say so at the bottom of the Steam application window when it restarts. When you press the button to start your game now, a Steam window will pop up reminding you you're in offline mode and ask if you want to continue that way. Clicking 'Start In Offline Mode', your game will start up and you will be able to play as normal, if playing as normal means not using any of the online Steam features.

That might all sound complicated, but it's not really, it just seems that way when trying to describe the process step by step. Yes it's extra buttons to push, but that's just the way it is. You don't get the nag screens if you leave Steam running in offline mode in the background.

Edit - I write too slow, what he said.

[MadBlaster]

Originally Posted by Les

The game is installed on your computer, within a folder called 'common', which is itself within your Steam installation. I'm not sure what the default path is at the start, as I chose where Steam installed itself on my own computer, but on yours it's probably - Local Disk ( C: )/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/ il-2 Sturmovik 1946.

To play offline, start up Steam itself, instead of clicking the quick-launch icon for the game you want to play. Then when Steam starts up, left click on the button in the top left corner that says 'Steam'. A drop-down menu will appear and in it will be an option 'Go Offline'. Click it and a window will pop up asking you if you want to go offline, click yes and Steam will shut down and then restart in offline mode. You will be able to tell if it's in online or offline mode as it will say so at the bottom of the Steam application window when it restarts. When you press the button to start your game now, a Steam window will pop up reminding you you're in offline mode and ask if you want to continue that way. Clicking 'Start In Offline Mode', your game will start up and you will be able to play as normal, if playing as normal means not using any of the online Steam features.

That might all sound complicated, but it's not really, it just seems that way when trying to describe the process step by step. Yes it's extra buttons to push, but that's just the way it is. You don't get the nag screens if you leave Steam running in offline mode in the background.

Edit - I write too slow, what he said.

Reading what you describe about how Steam works. Well it makes my blood boil. I don't know why. I guess it's my nature. Fq Steam. CoD is going to have to deliver in a big way for me to coexist with this piece of krap.

[Wolf_Rider]

Does Steam offer a custom install path?

[Kikuchiyo]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

Does Steam offer a custom install path?

It will install a game in a folder that is a sub folder of STEAM. You can install STEAM wherever you want though, and then you can move that folder around. Whether or not it works once in a non-steam folder seems to be dependent on the game. I assume this is more or less a developer choice.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Cobra8472

Or, you know, we actually trust the developers for once that a patch is good?

Simply letting Steam patch your game is infinitely more useful than having to google for patches, getting the correct patch order, and finally installing the damn thing.
The patch actually being terrible and breaking the game is the fault of the developer, not the content distribution method.

..and there is no such game on Steam that requires 40-50mb patches between each round of gaming, or whatever some other poster was referring to.

Even the buggiest games do not get more than one patch per week, and that is for about a month after release, then it dies down.
Stop spewing redicilous accusations.

@Skoshi Tiger;
You simply aquire two seperate Steam accounts and buy it on both. Alternatively, you buy two copies on your main account, and then send one of them as a gift to the other account (Easy to do.)

I'm not spewing anything, you make up accusations so you can have something to rattle yourself about. I said something which to my knowledge is accurate: you can't roll back a patch.

It's not steam's fault if the patch is bad, it's their fault completely if you can't do it manually to stop patching at a previous version. And since i don't want to make assumptions just so you can have something to complain about, i'm going to ask you, obviously a steam user, about it:

1) Let's say i want to rollback a patch, so i reinstall the game and start patching. Can i tell steam to stop at a certain patch/version or does it automatically apply the latest one?
2) If i have the patch package files already on my disk, can i point steam to them or will it ignore their existence and download the whole thing again?

Very valid questions imho and i expect an honest answer. Anyone?

[Kikuchiyo]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

I'm not spewing anything, you make up accusations so you can have something to rattle yourself about. I said something which to my knowledge is accurate: you can't roll back a patch.

It's not steam's fault if the patch is bad, it's their fault completely if you can't do it manually to stop patching at a previous version. And since i don't want to make assumptions just so you can have something to complain about, i'm going to ask you, obviously a steam user, about it:

1) Let's say i want to rollback a patch, so i reinstall the game and start patching. Can i tell steam to stop at a certain patch/version or does it automatically apply the latest one?
2) If i have the patch package files already on my disk, can i point steam to them or will it ignore their existence and download the whole thing again?

Very valid questions imho and i expect an honest answer. Anyone?

How many times across how many threads will you ask these questions?

I have explained that the only way to not eventually end up with the latest patches is to a) back up the game (just copy it to another location from the steam location), or b) go into offline mode and stay there.

It, as I have admitted, the biggest short fall of the STEAM platform, but all in all it generally makes for a smoother MP experience with games that use Steamworks as it ensures that everyone (even the server) is up to date.

[Les]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

1) Let's say i want to rollback a patch, so i reinstall the game and start patching. Can i tell steam to stop at a certain patch/version or does it automatically apply the latest one?
2) If i have the patch package files already on my disk, can i point steam to them or will it ignore their existence and download the whole thing again?

1. When you re-install it will patch you up to the latest version in one hit, so you won't be able to stop it at a certain patch version. It may be adding the patches one by one but you won't know where it's up to at any given point during the process and it won't let you interrupt the process anyway.

And when I say re-install, I mean one of three things - a) re-installing off a retail disk. b) re-installing a prior version of the game that you have previously copied elsewhere using Steams built-in back-up facility. c) re-installing by re-downloading the game directly from Steam. As a side point, Steam has an automated procedure for installing using a copy of the game you've saved using it's game back-up feature, you don't have to manually re-insert the files you've copied back into the Steam program's folder structure.

2. Yes, if you've backed up a previous version of the game (it's not a separate patch package as such but a complete version of the game), you can uninstall the current version and re-install the previous version, and no it won't get automatically updated if you don't want it to.

You make sure it doesn't get updated by selecting 'Do not automatically update' in one of the drop down menus in the 'Properties' section of your game. If you always run Steam in off-line mode, you don't have to (and can't) select 'Do not automatically update' as it's not going to do it anyway.