Anti-anti-steam Rant

[Geminosity]

I just noticed the new version of Rival Species came out (warhammer 40k mod) and having never played it before went to download it because it actually sounded kinda interesting (they have leaders and stuff and bikes =o ).
Anyways, as the download started I remembered why I hadn't played it previously... it hadn't been 'steamed'.  So I run into the forums to make sure and lo and behold, a steam thread.  In it the users rant about stuff mindlessly and the mod people, while not bad-mouthing steam, go on to mention they'll be sticking to WON until valve closes it.

I've not felt like giving a whole group of people like that a smack for some time.
The point of this post I guess is just to get my annoyance off my chest but I'm somewhat irritated that mod-makers still don't realise that WON is as good as dead... it no longer gets the latest HL updates which means they miss out on this boatload of stuff;

- Double the Entity Limit... that's right, steam HL allows for twice as many entities as WON HL, tell me what mapper wouldn't appreciate this? =P
- Detail Textures.
- MP3 Playback without FMOD (more handy than you'd think... it stops things like that fiasco with sven and NS mucking up each other's fmod files)
- Proper 32 bit colour.  I'm not sure on the specifics of this but supposedly WON HL can't do 32 bit colour, even though NS offered 32 bit colour it's supposed to be a bit of a hack rather than the real thing =o

Course, those are only the new things I know of... it wouldn't surprise me if there's tons more outside of having a tune for your startup menu =3
I just wish valve would kill WON so that the whiners either leave or shutup and, more importantly, the mods themselves have to catch up to the latest version of HL so they can witness and utilise it's many wonders XD

[Leaderz0rz]

agreed

[Venmoch]

Steam Rules.

WON Sucks.

[holy_devil]

steam may have its ups, and i agree it does, it did make and old game up to date and possibly bring new players in, but in the end all its really doing at the moment is taking an old engine and mods and screwing them up to a ridiculous level, so many bugs and hitbox lag got even worse =/ just play HW in tfc and you'll know what i mean.

[That Annoying Kid]

steam has it's ups and downs, and the longer it works the better and more improved it will get. The crashes will stop, the loading times will decrease, etc. WON also has many faults on the server side as I'm sure LB can agree. Stuff like the RCON bug is the one I specifically think of, but I know WON leaked like a seive.

steam will be good, the only hard part will be waiting for it to get good.  o_O


oh, and WON == much more 56.k "friendly" than steam.

[BobTheJanitor]

I appreciate the effort that Steam appears to be making. My main problem is that it still seems to just be the appearance of effort. The main thing they're pushing is their content management and delivery system. Which is understandable, they're in this to make money after all.

It's going to take them fixing a lot of the inherent steam bugs (hitboxes, hit detection, lag, broken friends list, "This game is not available at this time", "User not present on Client 57", console > quit > LOCKUP, etc, etc.) before I really start to feel like it's an ACTUAL effort towards doing something good for gamers and not just an effort towards having a content management system in place to maximize profits off of HL2.

[Geminosity]

while steam is still far from perfect I still think that mod-makers should be a little more informed in their choices... to be honest I still think WON should be dumped, it's been up for long enough =P
Admittedly though, it'd be nice if valve weren't spread across multiple projects from CS:Z, to HL2 to steam to trying to sell the source engine to other companies ^^;
They should really get steam 99% before going to town on the other stuff (though HL2 coming sooner rather than later wouldn't be entirely unwelcome =3 )

[Lightning Blue]

I will say it is far easier to set up and run a Steam HLDS server, when it works...  :p

[zerwalter]

The problem with steam is not the content its the delivery. Once that is all worked out then steam will be a reliable, bearable platform for Half-Life. However, the system is still relatively new and this type of thing has not been done before except by sony and Sony Station is not quite the same thing. Although I have experienced frequent (and often brand-new) problems with steam, I am trying to be as patient as possible for our friends at Valve.

[That Annoying Kid]

I will say it is far easier to set up and run a Steam HLDS server, when it works...  :p

yeah, we all remember the CS:CZ no hlds thread do we not?

When do you think valve will finally turn WON off

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[zerwalter]

When do you think valve will finally turn WON off

I am not sure but I will guess sometime either immediately before or after the Half-Life 2 release. That will meant that everyone will have to migrate to Steam regardless of if they like it or not. If everyone is using Steam then HL2 will be all the more accessable to them. Condition Zero is kind of a real test run for Steam's release system. Needless to say they have some bugs to work out but HL2 will probably be released by Steam as well as retail.

[Fewlio]

I like steam, but I hate valve for forcing it on everyone when it was so broken :|. I do admit that a lot of the bugs have been fixed, wait lemme fix that, a lot of visible bugs have been fixed, while new bugs come and go which happens with every program. But why did they have to go "OMG WORKS DL NOW OG OG OG WON DOWN SOON KTHX STEAM UR MODS K?". At least at the rate its going it should be working great when HL2 comes out(2010).

[Malevolent]

At first I hated Steam. Then I started liking it. It was working better than WON. My ping was even a little better than WON. Now it's starting to piss me off. It doesn't work correctly with NS; my video is jacked up only in-game (not on the loading screen with the marines) after the big update; my ping is definitely worse; and for some reason, it can't remember that I want hud_fastswitch 1 on, though this is probably due to having to close it in Task Manager. :angry:

Once some of these are fixed, I'll be more optimistic.

[Black Mage]

when done right:
a content delivery system like steam would be great, even genious.
automatic updates, no version errors, serverlists out of game, a buy it - load it - play it system, better client authentication (you can't change cdkeys like won) fully skinnable ui, option to pay&play, instant messanging system, im system available ingame, game management system, etc (oh, and they fixed that bloody sound bug)

when done wrong:
automatic updates but not enough bandwidth, no version errors if you can land a download slot (if you don't, you dont play at all), serverlists out of game (i'll admit, it works), a buy it - load it - play it system (that you can't turn off ... its more like load it, kill it, load it, kill it), better client authentication (you can't change cdkeys like won) (it works) fully skinnable ui (yeah, with a text editor), option to pay&play (or just sit there and eat up harddrive space), instant messanging system (broken), im system available ingame (broken worse), game management system (i wish it had an install manager)