Old Steam Poll posts split and 'archived'

[apricotslice]

Does your hate for Steam outweigh your love of a new X game?

I dont hate steam. (That implies an emotional decision.)

I just dont want it on my computer. (Intellectual decision.)

So the short answer is, YES.

Edit : There has as yet been no definite statement running the steam program is the only option. Until then, I live in hope. After that, if steam is the only option, then hope dies, and so will my participation here.

[Scoob]

Hi apricotslice,

Sorry, I missed where you mentioned you were using slightly older hardware. For XR is the only reason I'm considering Steam at this point though possibly I will use it for Skyrim first...not sure about that though.

For the record I'm doing my testing on the following:

Q6600 @ 2.4 - no OC anymore like when it was my gamer
8gb DDR2 - lots. Nice.
BFG 8800GT 512mb - old, but surprisingly good.
Windows 7 Ulitmate 64

Windows Firewall is ON, I also have the free edition of AVG as well as the non-resident Malwarebytes.

PC has "loads of crap" on it really, Office tools, dev stuff and now Steam too. It's basically my workhorse PC for day-to-day stuff. I also dabbled with online gaming recently in the for of Lego Universe (don't laugh) it managed that just fine. It also plays modded X3TC pretty well as I'll sometimes test mod builds on this machine.

Not sure how it will cope with XR, but I'd imagine it'd do ok. Afterall XR will take advantage of a multi-core CPU properly now, though my GPU may struggle a little and need settings lowered.

Steam does not, so far, appear to be at all instrusive or a resource hog. I've deliberately left it on both online and offline modes for several days, purely to see if it affects anything, and it hasn't that I can detect. I've had no weird issues since it was installed - other than my initial oddness with my demo download I documented of course.

Cheers,

Scoob.

[devilsad]

If you have a computer that's only a few years old, then framerate problems have exactly zero relation to backround processes and internet drivers and so on. The amount of CPU power required by new games far outweighs anything taken by steam or any other DRM system, and that's assuming the problems aren't because of a weak graphics card rather than being CPU bound

Since the alternative to it requiring Steam is that it requires TAGES or something else equally evil running in the background to ensure you're not a dirty pirate, you're really complaining about having the least awful alternative from a bunch of bad outcomes (much like the elections..)

Of course the best option would be to have a completely DRM-free exe, but I don't have an old brass lamp to rub and I wouldn't waste one of my 3 wishes if I did.

[apricotslice]

Scoob, its actually good to read your running commentary. At least we know its current.

I exclusively use Laptaps now. So even though I go for high end multimedia laptops, they are by definition, not the best hardware for X games which are cutting edge for hardware.

Current computer runs TC on medium settings very nicely. Previous computer ran TC on low settings only.

Based on previous expereince, I can expect this computer to run XR on minimum settings only. And very likely the older computer wont run it at all.

Back for the release of X3, I quite literally had a computer that no one in tech support said would run the game. It did, on minimum settings, with everything turned off including the kitchen sink. Slideshow for some close ups with big asteroids and capital ships, but otherwise functional. That was 3 computers ago and that one wouldnt even load TC.

Egosoft push the boundaries on hardware every time. So what runs TC well will struggle with XR.

Thats one reason why steam becomes critical. If you cant turn off the internet, its likely that the game will be unplayable until you can upgrade your computer. And for laptops, that means buying a new one.

[apricotslice]

If you have a computer that's only a few years old, then framerate problems have exactly zero relation to backround processes and internet drivers and so on.

Excuse my bluntness, but....

Rubbish.

Turning off the net is the first thing I do to correct framerate issues. And it does make a significant difference.

The firewall alone, doing its regular check for updates can impact the game from playable to slideshow for however long it takes to do what it needs to. If it actually decides to download an update, the game grinds to a halt until its finished.

If your running on high settings, then you wont notice it. If your forced to run on low settings, then the net becomes a critical factor in framerates.

[X2-Eliah]

If you are forced to turn off the net to get barely playable settings (which by the sound of things I wouldn't call playable, myself), then maybe that's a not-so subtle hint that the system is simply inadequate and you are trying to bite off more than you can chew? (And I'd say ripping out all your teeth and installing magnesium dentures is not a 'solution' - and neither is ripping half the entrails out of the software to get one bit running on sub-minimum settings)

[fairywhipper]

heres a question for prosteamers: every so often due to constraints i cant use my gaming rig and it could be over a year before i can. assuming i installed game through steam, activated, gone into offline mode, will it require me to connect to internet still?

1) can you confirm 96% signifance that it will not require reconnection?

2) Iin all likelyhood i might change the harddrive as well and maybe reinstall win at worstcase.

i change jobs everyso often in remote areas and i cant always bring my full rig with me, or have full fixed based internet connection, hence my tethered mobile phone.

[apricotslice]

If you are forced to turn off the net to get barely playable settings (which by the sound of things I wouldn't call playable, myself), then maybe that's a not-so subtle hint that the system is simply inadequate and you are trying to bite off more than you can chew? (And I'd say ripping out all your teeth and installing magnesium dentures is not a 'solution' - and neither is ripping half the entrails out of the software to get one bit running on sub-minimum settings)

When you cant afford a new computer when the new game comes out, you get it running any way you can.

If that means lobotomising the computer, then thats what you do.

[fairywhipper]

If you are forced to turn off the net to get barely playable settings (which by the sound of things I wouldn't call playable, myself), then maybe that's a not-so subtle hint that the system is simply inadequate and you are trying to bite off more than you can chew? (And I'd say ripping out all your teeth and installing magnesium dentures is not a 'solution' - and neither is ripping half the entrails out of the software to get one bit running on sub-minimum settings)

When you cant afford a new computer when the new game comes out, you get it running any way you can.

If that means lobotomising the computer, then thats what you do.

agreed.

[A5PECT]

1) can you confirm 96% signifance that it will not require reconnection?

Apparently it varies from person to person. You can do what Scoob did and download Steam for a test run using demos and free games. If it doesn't work out you can uninstall it.

2) Iin all likelyhood i might change the harddrive as well and maybe reinstall win at worstcase.

I'm not quite sure what your question is. If you transfer all of the files from the old drive to the new one then you shouldn't have a problem. If you only want to move the game, Steam can backup game files to a disc, then install the game to a new drive from that disc. It should include any patches applied before the backup, so you won't need to download them again.

If you don't move any files at all then you'll have to reinstall the game and get the patches from Steam again.

[fairywhipper]

so if itvaries from person to person we cannot confirm with all certainties that you will not have to reconnect to steam to reactivate after a long time off.

so what happens to your steam account would it be labeled dormant and terminated? i have had forum ids terminated for not going on them for over a year, and i have 1 account which i havent used in 5years still be active....

yes i played tc when it came out and just finished the hub this year because i managed to get time and ran seta, only 1game which taken me long time.

[devilsad]

Turning off the net is the first thing I do to correct framerate issues. And it does make a significant difference.

The firewall alone, doing its regular check for updates can impact the game from playable to slideshow for however long it takes to do what it needs to. If it actually decides to download an update, the game grinds to a halt until its finished.

If your running on high settings, then you wont notice it. If your forced to run on low settings, then the net becomes a critical factor in framerates.

If your firewall (or is it antivirus?) is slowing your computer down so much, you seriously need to change your software. There are lots of alternatives, usually the corporate 'brand name' ones are the most bloated and awful. You can also try changing the update schedule if that's possible, it shouldn't be updating itself or doing a scan when you want to play games.

[the-danzorz]

heres a question for prosteamers: every so often due to constraints i cant use my gaming rig and it could be over a year before i can. assuming i installed game through steam, activated, gone into offline mode, will it require me to connect to internet still?

1) can you confirm 96% signifance that it will not require reconnection?

2) Iin all likelyhood i might change the harddrive as well and maybe reinstall win at worstcase.

i change jobs everyso often in remote areas and i cant always bring my full rig with me, or have full fixed based internet connection, hence my tethered mobile phone.

I can 100% confirm you can just set it to offline mode, as long as its a singeplayer game (which this is) then you won't need the internet anymore. Even when updates come out, steam won't know their updates if its not connected online.

Steam is portable, you can take the whole of steam with you on the HD and run the games off that HD, meaning NO MORE installing games OR STEAM, you can simply take the games with you on that HD and play them on any PC you want. Just need to copy the whole steam folder across and then run the game you desire.

[Scoob]

Hi,

I agree that when you're trying to get every ounce of performance out of a low-end system there are things that can help. Obviously upgrading would work too, assuming you can afford to and you're (wife lol) allows you to...with a laptop really it's simply new laptop time, which is daft. I do have laptops for work as well as a personal one...no way they could game but they're never asked to. I choose to run a gaming PC which I upgrade periodically. My choice and preference - different to other peoples which is fine.

I usually have the NIC going to my router disabled on the gamer and the gamer hasn't been told how to use my proxy so it's effectively off the net. This in turn would mean the anti-virus stuff etc. could be disabled, if I thought I'd benefit from that. Though in my experience, and luckily, always having a fairly decent gamer these days, I've never had that make any noticable improvement.

On my Gateway PC abviously every security measure it turned on as it's basically always online - that's not going to change. Being a quad-core with lots of ram though it copes well.

For prior X-games I found that system ram made a huge difference. Before Egosoft made it standard, the difference between making the TC exe LAA and not was huge! Really, the difference between playable and not. This was at high graphical settings.

As a laptop gamer you will always be quite heavily compromised and likely have to use various tricks to ensure things run as well as they can. Especially so if you have particularly intrusive AV software - though you can doubtless set it to ignore certain folders.

Continuing to use TC as an example, it IS fairly resource-heavy but much of that is down to the core exe being single threaded. You can notice immediate benefits giving TC a second core as, with Windows 7's better scheduler at least, you'll see the spawned threads for graphics and sound etc. go to a separate core. This makes a HUGE difference! Really, try limiting affinity to one core and see your FPS and gameplay suffer.

Going forward, we all expect XR to be more demanding - and these games have generally been more in need of CPU than GPU - however, now it will be properly multi-threaded. If you're lucky enough to have a quad core CPU that may well be doubling the CPU power available in effect, assuming it load balances well. This reassures me that XR should play well on a quad core - note, I have a Q6600 which is about as old as quad cores get!

Graphically, well, XR is "only" DX9, but that doesn't mean it's an "easy" engine for a card to render. Laptops, even those touting "x2" or "SLI" GPU's have no where near the power of their desktop counterparts, so I think it's here a laptop owner is more likely to struggle. I'd hope that with optimisations inherant to the new engine XR would still be able to run on older systems / lower spec hardware, but we'll need to wait for the word on that. Some of the screens we've seen look potentially demanding to me.

May I ask Apricotslice, what the spec of your laptops are?

Btw: while typing this steam did an update...I didn't even notice until the little icon on the taskbar started flashing...I needed to restart steam, but it was totally unobstrusive excepting that one, simple action on my part. One point though, it DID simply download the update, it only warned me about needing to restart...saying that, I had deliberately left Steam in online mode to see what it got up to...

I don't think Steam will stop your approach as it can be run offline. Monitoring it now (it IS online) it seems to use a few resources. Remember, it did an update earlier but it's currently showing as using 153mb - actually quite a lot, but then it has the default "store" page open - with a peak of 230mb. Again, quite high, but I don't know how much of this is down to the fact I have more than ample RAM and it just did an update. CPU-wise, since I booted up four hours ago, it's used 1 minute and 16 seconds - including that update of course. Live CPU use is nothing for the most part, with the odd little blip to 1 or 2%. IO is reported as 250mb read - I cannot tell how much of that was just loading steam, and how much was internet traffic and the recent update.

Cheers,

Scoob.

[strude]

May I ask Apricotslice, what the spec of your laptops are?

Including the installed OS.

[Scoob]

Yep, OS quite important too

Btw: I'm just downloading the "Orcs Must Die" demo via steam as a test. This time it was quite clear what steam was doing...I got none of this "ready" crap when the thing was still downloading, which is good. Possibly the update just applied fixed some things.

Now it's clear that it's downloading still, it even said to go to "Downloads" which it didn't do previously and it's maxing my connection. However, surfing and posting doesn't seem unduly slow because of this...Looks like Steam doesn't consider its self the only priority which is good.

FYI: I'm on Oxford and connected to the London server...

Edit: Steam was, however, 200mb shy of the actual download size of this demo...

Scoob.

[strude]

Edit: Steam was, however, 200mb shy of the actual download size of this demo...

What do you mean?
Steam stopped downloading 200mb before the end (as in incomplete download)?
Steam reported the download 200mb larger than it actually turned out to be?
Steam reported the download 200mb smaller than it actually turned out to be?

[Le Baron]

The biggest problem for me with steam, is with the internet connection I have
- The download limit is 60 kbs
- The max download I have is 2 GB off time and 1 GB on time
If curious I have satellite broadband
I think that is the best internet I can get where I am in Australia
Also I think updating steam has an issue somewhere
So without a non-steam release I can’t play as simple as that

Again, you will NOT need to download huge amount of data IF you get the Boxed DVD version. All it takes is a few bytes for activating the game. Dont make this an issue, its not.

MFG

Ketraar

Updates?
Thought I have read they will be distributed via Steam only as well?

[Ketraar]

Updates?
Thought I have read they will be distributed via Steam only as well?

You got updates other than online? Guess that answers the question.

MFG

Ketraar

[Scoob]

What do you mean?
Steam stopped downloading 200mb before the end (as in incomplete download)?
Steam reported the download 200mb larger than it actually turned out to be?
Steam reported the download 200mb smaller than it actually turned out to be?

Sorry Strude, typed that before I had lunch...I'm a little more focused now lol.

What I meant is that when I first looked at the demo Steam said it was 990mb. When I started downloading it said "Downloaded: n mb / 1,160mb", so a near 200mb discrepancy. Not an issue for me, but maybe an issue for someone with download limits so I thought it relevant to post it.

Interestingly in the "Current Network Usage" section it the "Total Downloaded" figure is less than the current "n" figure of the download in progress...possibly there's a pure mb and an mb on disk discrepancy, but it seems far too high. OR, there is some sort of Steam overhead...I don't know.

I paused it for a bit, in part to see what would happen and in part cos I wanted to download another vid, but have just resumed now.

Scoob.