Steam (!) Why?

[Piron]

Plus non of our opinions (pro or against) do matter. Tripwire made a decission and we all have to deal with it, like it or not.

[CamperJoe]

Originally Posted by Piron

Plus non of our opinions (pro or against) do matter. Tripwire made a decission and we all have to deal with it, like it or not.

Agreed, just like it or leave, its not like Tripwire will close the deal for whining people.

[Hirmuinen]

I don't know why people say that Steam sucks.
It's like stereotype about older Steam. It HAD problems, but they are fixed now. I haven't encountered any kind of problems when Steam got updated to it's new form.
I'm more than happy to see they will use Steam. This little system is like piece of gem.

And didn't the dev team say that they have talked with Valve about the Steam not working on Linux?
So what if Valve actually does that in the future, as I see the Linux getting more popular, then it will surely be supported in near future.

[2ltben]

Originally Posted by Hirmuinen

I don't know why people say that Steam sucks.
It's like stereotype about older Steam. It HAD problems, but they are fixed now. I haven't encountered any kind of problems when Steam got updated to it's new form.
I'm more than happy to see they will use Steam. This little system is like piece of gem.

And didn't the dev team say that they have talked with Valve about the Steam not working on Linux?
So what if Valve actually does that in the future, as I see the Linux getting more popular, then it will surely be supported in near future.

I've found that a percentage of those who say Steam sucks haven't even used 2.0, let alone the new "Storefront" shell.

[BeerHunter]

I have Steam on my system and it gives me no problems whatsoever.
It's free and add-free to boot.

I also find it odd that so many would run out and blow $300-$500 on a new video card to play a game while spending $150 or so for an OS seems - well - almost sacreligious.

I know there are some who simply don't have the spare cash floating around but I wonder if they also have a copy of BF2 and it's recent "patch" err..add on ..err - whatever EA called it to entice you to drop another budle into their coffers.(oh and BTW - I don't).

[Case]

Jcoquillon, realize that as a linux gamer I don't feel like I'm in the persecuted minority as much as I feel like I'm doing what I've been told I need to do for ages: Companies repeatedly state that if there's a demand, they will produce the product. If us alt-OS users just rollover and install Windows then there will never be a demand for a native version of the software we want to run. Hence, when a title is released for Windows-only, and I want to run it, I ask for a linux version. In the past I've purchased software that runs on linux even if I don't want it, just so the companies see that there is some demand. I'm not just whining about it either, I'm testing other solutions and posting information/suggestions both in these forums and on IRC.

[JCoquillon]

I understand case, my comment was directed more at the comment about forcing people to pay $100 extra for a copy of windows just to buy the game, which is slightly far fetched a thing to blame on tripwire

[TheConquerorWorm]

Originally Posted by Valac

Everyone here using Steam says it is great, which I agree.

For those of you saying it sucks, you obviously have used a earlier version, or you have never used it and are going off of a buddies experience with an earlier version.

I personally think you should all try it, you can always uninstall it. Go DL Steam now, it is free, watch how long ti takes to start and see the resources it uses, you will change your opinion about it I am sure.

GO STEAM!!!

Valac:

I use Steam - in Windows. I don't mind the resources it uses or anything like that. Of course you will praise the delivery system your game is going to use, all business. If Valve makes a Linux version of Steam and you provide us with Linux binaries, it will all be cool.

As for Steam being all good and great. I disagree, and I used it last time yesterday. Because of some update they released on Steam, I - and many more was unable to play mods on Steam. It took them one week to fix that.

//TCW

[Hirmuinen]

Originally Posted by TheConquerorWorm

Valac:

I use Steam - in Windows. I don't mind the resources it uses or anything like that. Of course you will praise the delivery system your game is going to use, all business. If Valve makes a Linux version of Steam and you provide us with Linux binaries, it will all be cool.

As for Steam being all good and great. I disagree, and I used it last time yesterday. Because of some update they released on Steam, I - and many more was unable to play mods on Steam. It took them one week to fix that.

//TCW

It was long time ago. They released the Day Of Defeat: Source and they updated the HL2, so it could support the HDR in DoD.
It has nothing to do with Steam, but simply just for HL2. And for that, it won't affect in RO in any ways, because even if it's supported by Steam, the RO dev team makes the patches, not Valve.

[WickedPenguin]

People need to get over the Steam issue, because it's not as big a factor as other things.

I don't have a problem with Steam either. It runs perfectly on my system. And in any case, Steam is not the root of the problem. It's just a delivery means, and has been run on Linux using Wine. So, downloading RO to a Linux system is not an issue - according to testing.

However, that leaves two larger issues:
1) Will there be a Linux-compatible verson of RO? Without this, Linux guys are dead in the water.
2) What are legalities of Tripwire's contract with Valve? Does the contract state that the ONLY distrbution method permitted is Steam? If so, does this exclusivity statement prevent RO:O being released for other OS's, even though Valve doesn't have any software on those platforms?

Or is RO:O legally able to be distributed via other means?

[Hyperion2010]

Many, many people have gotten Steam to work on Linux...I dont know what the problem is...

[Jimmy]

A semi-Steam related question for Tripwire :

How big is the download going to be? Obviously the game isn't finished yet but a rough estimate? 1GB+ ?

[Case]

Originally Posted by JCoquillon

I understand case, my comment was directed more at the comment about forcing people to pay $100 extra for a copy of windows just to buy the game, which is slightly far fetched a thing to blame on tripwire

I'm not blaming Tripwire for Valve's decision to not provide alt-OS users with a client and I understand why Tripwire made the decision they did. I'm complaining about the people that think "just install Windows and everything's great" is a valid answer to the situation. Many of us have equally valid reasons why we won't or can't install it.

Originally Posted by Hyperion2010

Many, many people have gotten Steam to work on Linux...I dont know what the problem is...

Simply getting Steam to run doesn't solve the problem. You clearly don't know how wine works. I may be wrong, but I assume that the Steam client must start RO:O and periodically communicate with the Valve servers while RO:O is running. So somehow a windows application has to start a linux application and then that linux and windows application have to communicate. Steam does not know ANYTHING about linux as when it's running on a linux computer Steam thinks it's running on a windows machine. Therefore Steam doesn't know how to execute a linux program or communicate with it. Now we could also try running RO:O via wine too, but I think the performance is going to be abysmal. I posted here (http://www.redorchestragame.com/foru...3&postcount=13) about my experiences running the HL2 Demo via wine and Steam.

[Yoshiro]

In case you gellows haven't read this yet, it is a good read about Steam, and was created in response to this thread.

Steam as a DRM
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...hreadid=370904

[[TW]Wilsonam]

Originally Posted by Jimmy

A semi-Steam related question for Tripwire :

How big is the download going to be? Obviously the game isn't finished yet but a rough estimate? 1GB+ ?

Yes, looks likely to be over 1Gb

[Klompen]

Originally Posted by mi1stormilst

Buddy you have a rather entertaining imagination...

Will you please point out where in my post I said anything about NOT PAYING for Windows? Windows is Cheap less then $100.00! Just think if you would put down that blunt for 5 minutes and stop blowing all your cash on Vasoline you could afford it too. Now you wanna try having an intelligent conversation?

You tell me to have an intelligent conversation while throwing ad hominem attacks at me? Curious behavior....

Furthermore, you make the Vaseline comment as a derogatory, like I must be gay. I am not, but there is nothing wrong with being gay and using it as a derogatory is not acceptable.

Some people cannot afford to blow even less than 100 dollars on an OS. Furthermore, to even hope to get a copy of XP legally for under 100 dollars, you're going to get XP Home, which is a neutered, crappy OS that is not even worth stealing.

[Klompen]

Originally Posted by Valac

Everyone here using Steam says it is great, which I agree.

For those of you saying it sucks, you obviously have used a earlier version, or you have never used it and are going off of a buddies experience with an earlier version.

I personally think you should all try it, you can always uninstall it. Go DL Steam now, it is free, watch how long ti takes to start and see the resources it uses, you will change your opinion about it I am sure.

GO STEAM!!!

Valac, I did state earlier that I have the newest Steam on my computer right at this very minute. I do know what it looks like. I do know it's more stable. I never have argued in this thread that STABILITY is the problem with Steam. Steam functions nicely. It's the DRM and other things about Steam which I find so incredibly offensive, and it's the exclusion of a huge segment of the active RO community which I find troubling and inconsiderate.

[Jimmy]

Originally Posted by [RO]Wilsonam

Yes, looks likely to be over 1Gb

Cool, thanks. At last UT2004 won't have to take up a hefty 5GB or so to play Red Orchestra.

[Wolfsglen]

Some people cannot afford to blow even less than 100 dollars on an OS. Furthermore, to even hope to get a copy of XP legally for under 100 dollars

In that case (to play devils advocate) they probably couldnt afford the necessary hardware or a decent 'net connection that is needed to play a lot of modern games at anything approaching decent anyway...XP. for all its faults, is still cheaper than even a mediocre OEM 'puter these days.

There is a lot of mudslinging starting in this thread, i dont care who started it or not, but everyone quit it now.

[Fuhrer]

I personally despise Steam, but this is after a month of using the product. I liked it when I first bought and installed Half-Life II and had the auto-updater and such, but things aren't as they seem. For instance, when playing HL2, which is single-player, I noticed my machine sending tons of data out. After this repeated a few times, I got a socket-monitoring tool. It turns out Steam was sending all kinds of info on my system out to Valve or somebody. This includes a listing of my C:\Multimedia directory, where I rip my CDs and video to. What I have in my personal folders is NONE of Valve's business. They want to check HL2 to see that it is a legal copy then fine, but they have no business in "My Documents" or other folders around my drive where I continually caught Steam.

Next, you have to run Steam to run the game you want to play. It's not a matter of Steam checking you out before you play and then exiting, it runs constantly. If you kill Steam, your game dies also, so you MUST run it. If you use a firewall to block the out-going data, it shuts down your game. You pretty much have to let Steam run and do whatever it wants or you can't play.

Steam does use a ton of resources, even on a system with a gig of RAM. Sometimes it uses very little memory and others it hogs it. This is detrimental to gaming, obviously. No clue what it does that it needs up to 400mb of RAM, but I have screenshots of it spiking to almost 400mb and sitting there for a minute before releasing it.

While I game on Windows, I love Linux (native Linux, not X) and I enjoy hosting servers in the games that I play. With Steam, you cannot do this, and the players who DO use Linux as a regular platform are now out of luck. That stinks. I may not see Linux as a gaming platform, or Mac for that matter, but tons of players DO. Valve has not realized that yet and anybody using Steam is confined to Win32/Win64.

I also prefer to own my game. If I pay $40~$60 for a game, I want the CD/DVD. Sure, the box and manuals may be nice, but I don't NEED those. However, I do tend to play older games with friends regularly for fun. I play a LOT of Hexen deathmatch, for example. Now, if I pay for RO today, who's to say the media will be there in ten or twenty years when I want to play it again? Who's to say Steam won't evolve and the game becomes incompatible with the new Steam of that day? One of my favorite games (Lords of Magic) was crippled in this way. While WON was up, you could play with your friends all day long. However, there is no option to enter in an IP to connect to or to host without WON. WON is gone, so now the ONLY ways to play are via modem, or IPX on a LAN. Sierra won't release the sources either, so nobody can simply add the IP to IP option. Chances are, many of these early Steam games will wind up the same way.

I did not like the way that Valve took away my favorite games either. When TFC v1.0.1.6 changed to TF1.5 in v1.1.0.0, the game sucked aside from newer graphics. Now, you could run an old 1.0.1.6 server and play the game you loved with others who loved it. Same with older versions of CS. Now however, you MUST run Steam, and you MUST play whatever content is the latest. TFC was my favorite game for years, and now I can no longer play it.

Another big problem with Steam is how easy it is to gain access to somebody's machine. Steam is FULL of back-doors. If I wanted to get into somebody's home network, say Ramm's, and he ran a Steam server or played a game with Steam, then I could do so. Steam opens up a huge tunnel into his own network which is easily exploitable. I won't say how, so don't ask. Still, I could come in through his gaming machine and access another one on his network with ease. This has existed since Steam's initial launch, and even though it is known, Valve has yet to come up with a fix. Running Steam is a HUGE risk, even with a firewall!

I do however, agree with JC on a point. It is the team's decision on how they want to run their own game. Up to this point, I have had no problems with the way the game has evolved, even though I am not the biggest vehicular fan. I despise Steam with a passion though, and if I had the skill to do so, I'd personally try to take it down permanently. Still, I am a programmer also, and even though I totally disagree with what the team is doing and can easily see a good portion of the classic RO community being left behind, I support Ramm and his team to program in any way they want to.

*EDIT*

I forgot to mention that I'd easily pay $100 for a CD version if it didn't have Steam involved. I don't mean a boxed version, I mean a plain store-bought Memorex CD with nothing else. I am also quite sure that most of our other players, including Linux and Mac players, would be willing to pay a few bucks more for a cross-platform version as well. We all love the game and just want to play.