You shouldn't need to download anything else via Steam - or at least not much - odds are (and this is only an educated guess) that it'll be a wee bit more like the way Empire: Total War works.amtct wrote:I don't think we need to download the steam version.IIRC there is an option to activate non steam games .
But if I have to download the game its bad news for me because I use wireless Orange internet which is 1€ /100Mb of trafic
You do the install off the disks as per usual (assuming you didn't buy the game through Steam in the first place) and then register the game with Steam. In many games this is simply entering the license key - however, since X3 used Tages instead of a license key to begin with, I'd guess the Steam activation would be part of the 2.6 patch.
Once your game is registered with Steam it means that the Steam platform will work as an update client and track any achievements.
You will probably not need to log into Steam to run X3 so you'll not need to be online (probably won't track your achievements if you're not though) - however, if you do need to boot Steam up you can always start it in "offline mode" so you'll not need to connect to the Internet to play a single-player offline game.
However, it's possible that once your game is registered with Steam you'll be able to download it onto any other computer with Steam installed and play it there (since Steam registers games to accounts rather than machines in effect).. useful if you're visiting your mum... and she happens to have a leet gaming PC that'll run X3 of course... mine does... and she plays X3
IIRC Valve are working on a "cloud" savegame utility for Steam as well which will allow you (as long as the game can utilise it) to store your savegames on the Steam servers. So if you ARE visiting your mum and playing X3 on her PC you _might_ even be able to pull down your savegames as well!
This is, of course, all entirely guess-work... but it's based on having used Steam since the word dot and knowing how other games interact with the platform (particularly Empire: Total War since that utilises the Steam platform for it's copy protection and, like X3, had no license key).
-- EDIT --
Actually, thinking about it, this could be a winner for Egosoft. Steam gives you a great distribution channel for small, optional, add-on packs... say ES created, oh I dunno, factory warehouse modules - something you could daisy-chain into a complex to increase the storage capacity so if you ever feel the need for 1000 PPCs in storage - you've got it. Chuck in a couple of extras and this could be a little downloadable extra for say €1.99 or something. Extra ships, tech, sectors and so on without the palaver of having to find U.S. distributors.
).
Unless you play X3 under WINE ... which would totally defeat the purpose of the dual boot.
![[ external image ]](http://www.xenotaph.net/sigznstuff/sig03.gif){kind=link}
![[ external image ]](http://hosted.rsyd.com/aro/x/xuptest.gif){kind=link}