Explicit Instructions On How To Play Ns In Steam
s_viper3
Join Date: 2003-01-16 Member: 12363Members
Join Date: 2003-01-16 Member: 12363Members
<u><i><b>If your looking for the steam NS install instructions, scroll down to the "Windows Steam - How to get NS working" section below.</i></b></u>
Even more new additions: From another <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=18&t=47917' target='_blank'>thread</a> in here.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'><b><i>Fixing some common Visual Glitches in NS - by billcat</i></b></span>
1. Fix max ex_maxerrordistance errors and "reliable channel overflow" client crashes:
-create userconfig.cfg in half-life\ns and add alias "ex_maxerrordistance" ""
<make sure your \ns\config.cfg file contains exec userconfig.cfg>
2. -Fix cmdr menu font, console message RE missing fonts and make them less fuzzy:
<This improves the marine right click cmd menu some but not all the way,>
-backup and remove all files from half-life\ns\gfx\vgui\fonts
and
-backup and remove all ****_textscheme.txt from half-life\ns
note: there have since been reported several other ways to edit the _textscheme.txt files and change the res on fonts, this seems to work for some, but this method fixed the most for me.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'><b><i>Putting back in the NS splashscreen - by billcat</i></b></span>
If you're tired of seeing the HL gimp with the glasses as you're trying to load up a NS steam game wait no longer!
It's now possible to have the correct NS splash screen in steam. Kudos to the guys over at the IOS mod forums, using their file as a template I created a zip file that contains the files needed to have the NS splash work once again.
Unzip the resource.zip file in your existing ns directory. This should create a resource directory with the gamemenu.res and a background directory with the rest of the background files.
<a href='http://jobu.vandussen.com/~billcat/resource.zip' target='_blank'>NS Splash Screen</a>
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'><b><i>Definitively fixing Commander visual sprite bugs - by |DS|Depot</i></b></span>
This will fix all 18 sprite bugs relating to the comm. No more lagging and choppiness. Follow the instructions in the readme.txt in the zip.
<a href='http://www.ugleague.org/games/ns/files/ns_spr_fix.zip' target='_blank'>Comm HUD Sprite Fixes</a>
<b>New Addition (thanks to Revenge, who posted later in this thread):</b>
<b><u><span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>How to create a NS start shortcut (applies to HLSW, ASE too)</span></b></u>
In the old won based system you would create a shortcut along the lines of:
"C:\Sierra\Half-Life\hl.exe" -game ns -connect xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:27015 -password xxxxxxxx
Do do the same in steam, to make it work in steam, it would be:
"C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 70 -game ns -connect xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:27015 -password xxxxxxxx
As you can see the only difference is that instead of directly running hl.exe and applying the "ns" mod to the engine, you are running steam.exe, using the "half-life (app 70)" application and then applying the "ns" mod over the top of that.
Instead of ns being a layer that sits on top of the half-life base, we now have steam as the base, and then we layer half-life (or anything other first party game) on top of that, and then finally we layer any mods on the 3rd level, on top of everything else.
<b><u><span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>Windows Steam - How to get NS working</span></u></b>
Ok, this is going to be a echo of what is already known, but more explicit as people don't understand how steam ticks.
To get NS, or any mod for that matter not recognized on the steam "Games" menu, this is what you have to do.
1. get the steaminstall_cs.exe pack. It appears a couple glitches are fixed with the installer in this one.
2. Install it to any other drive other than your windows sys volume. I used "D:\Steam" myself.
3. When you login, nothing will happen. Wait a few minutes. If you know how to look at the running processes in windows (ctrl-alt-del in winxp), you will see a "Steam.exe" running. In a bit, the steam icon will appear in the system tray.
4. Right click on it, and go to "Games". You should now see a list of games, with all of them dimmed except CS and regular HL itself. Even though you "have" the games, they are not "initialized" yet. So..
5. Double-click on the Halflife one, and after a few moments of doing stuff, you'll now be into a newer looking version of the halflife regular main menu. Start a single player game, ride around happily on the tram for a minute and then hit escape to get to the main menu and quit out of halflife.
Now Halflife is "initialized", and now mods can be added onto it.
At this point, your Steam install dir should look something like this:
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\youremail@server.com\half-life
The e-mail portion is literally the email you used to create the steam account.
-- If you had gone and tried to play CS first, you would also see a "counter-strike" directory in here along with the half-life dir. Also a DOD dir. Always ignore these "extra" dirs when adding in your own custom mods. All custom mods go in the half-life folder.
6. Now copy your entire regular ns dir from your old Halflife right into
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\youremail@server.com\half-life\ns
This also goes for Vampire slayer, and any other mods. The only exceptions are that some mods use custom dll's for enhanced gameplay. NS uses one of these.
7. In your old halflife folder there will be a file named "fmod.dll". Copy this into
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\youremail@server.com\half-life
7.1. You may experience an overflow error, or an error relating to the command "ex_maxerrordistance." If you do, add the following line to "userconfig.cfg" in your NS directory (if it is not there, create it):
<b>alias "ex_maxerrordistance" ""</b>
<i>(Thanks to <a href='http://www.haxgames.com/steam.html' target='_blank'>Beast's NS-in-Steam guide</a> for this tip.)</i>
<span style='color:white'>-- added by coil, 25 Sept 2003.</span>
You now have all this is necessary to make steam let you play it. But one last step.
8. Exit steam completely, no tray icon or anything. Furthermore, check in the process listing to ensure that "Steam.exe" has really disappeared. Once it does, then fire up steam again, and if all went well, you should see this on the games menu:
<img src='http://nullfusion.com/steamns.JPG' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
Now to get a properly filtered listing of just NS servers to play on, double-click on the NS entry, and once in game click "find servers". Then a nice filtered listing shows up. Go join, and have fun.
You'll find it works almost flawlessly, just some graphical anomalies occur, and the graphics can become very ugly if you navigate the HL menu while it is playing in the background.
-- I know this is an echo, but it seems like too many people are still confused and afraid to leave the comfort of WON. The above works, I did it in both win98 and winxp (not that it matters).
Now for the portion I was interesed in. I play HL from Gentoo Linux (as of now) and Steam ofcourse scared me big. But I got it working. This next part is for the more experienced, as I will explain it in detailed terms (somewhat).
<b><u><span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>How to get Steam and Halflife working in Linux</span></u></b> - <i>Soon to be updated for winex</i>
Ok first off, it will require a full image. And I recommend you do it well. Here's step-by-step what I did:
1. This first part is not even in Linux. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> You will need to install a fresh copy of Windows 98 to a new FAT32 partition. Since it will be running in wine ("windows emulator" for linux), you cannot use Win2000, ME, XP, etc. If you have VMWare, I recommend caution, as you will need to **** around in Win98 abit before it will be usable by linux.
2. Once booted into Windows 98, update as much as possible, and do a FULL STEAM INSTALL (just the steaminstall_cs.exe) as if you were going to play in win98 on it. It doesn't matter where you install steam on the win98 install, as it'll be trashed anyways. This is just to get some important files spread around, and one other important thing.
3. Once you've got steam going in win98, (very important) go into the Settings and set your "favourite window" to "Steam menu". The wine inclined can see where this is going (tray icon related).
4. Now uninstall steam off in win98. (Or problems arise during the linux install)
5. Now in linux, its obvious what has to be done. Clone it over into /windows or somesuch. (mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/win1 -t fat32). You can run it off of the fat32 partition if you want to, by why? <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I created a 4gb reiserfs with -notail, and its much more speedy for me.
(The below is assuming you have run wine once on your user account. DO NOT DO IT AS ROOT. Sheesh)
6. Now open your wine config. (A short way to do this is "vi ~/.wine/config" from a terminal). This is the core config for wine, and all that is really important is that in the [C Drive] section that it points to your "/windows" or whatnot mount or copyover. The soundserver and such are a battle you might not have to fight if your lucky. I recommend you set "D drive" to point to another spot for the steam install. Or just install it into the windows folder, who cares.
Ohyeah, just to remove any annoying permission glitches just chmod 0777 the whole windows folder, unless you actually care if your mom accidently deletes it on you. 0666 might be fine too.
7. Now your set. Start over. run the install (wine steaminstall_cs.exe) and follow the leader. Depending on your wine version and how upgraded your win98 dll's are, you might get some wine crashes in relation to it not being able to find certain entry point in 98 dll's. For this, find the first section where you'll see lines like "shdocvu.dll = "native, etc" and switch the order of the items in the brackets. I think I had to do that for 1 dll.
8. Now it should all be good. Install, run, and if your using a good version of wine, no -opengl switches or whatnot will be required, it will just work.
9. Ohyeah, the first steps of the windows portion now comes into play, involving the /ns folder and such.
-- Once again I know this is kind of verbose, but I have already been pounded by a few friends as to how to get it working in linux, and this was the detail required. Its finicky though at the moment.
-- Viper
Even more new additions: From another <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=18&t=47917' target='_blank'>thread</a> in here.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'><b><i>Fixing some common Visual Glitches in NS - by billcat</i></b></span>
1. Fix max ex_maxerrordistance errors and "reliable channel overflow" client crashes:
-create userconfig.cfg in half-life\ns and add alias "ex_maxerrordistance" ""
<make sure your \ns\config.cfg file contains exec userconfig.cfg>
2. -Fix cmdr menu font, console message RE missing fonts and make them less fuzzy:
<This improves the marine right click cmd menu some but not all the way,>
-backup and remove all files from half-life\ns\gfx\vgui\fonts
and
-backup and remove all ****_textscheme.txt from half-life\ns
note: there have since been reported several other ways to edit the _textscheme.txt files and change the res on fonts, this seems to work for some, but this method fixed the most for me.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'><b><i>Putting back in the NS splashscreen - by billcat</i></b></span>
If you're tired of seeing the HL gimp with the glasses as you're trying to load up a NS steam game wait no longer!
It's now possible to have the correct NS splash screen in steam. Kudos to the guys over at the IOS mod forums, using their file as a template I created a zip file that contains the files needed to have the NS splash work once again.
Unzip the resource.zip file in your existing ns directory. This should create a resource directory with the gamemenu.res and a background directory with the rest of the background files.
<a href='http://jobu.vandussen.com/~billcat/resource.zip' target='_blank'>NS Splash Screen</a>
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'><b><i>Definitively fixing Commander visual sprite bugs - by |DS|Depot</i></b></span>
This will fix all 18 sprite bugs relating to the comm. No more lagging and choppiness. Follow the instructions in the readme.txt in the zip.
<a href='http://www.ugleague.org/games/ns/files/ns_spr_fix.zip' target='_blank'>Comm HUD Sprite Fixes</a>
<b>New Addition (thanks to Revenge, who posted later in this thread):</b>
<b><u><span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>How to create a NS start shortcut (applies to HLSW, ASE too)</span></b></u>
In the old won based system you would create a shortcut along the lines of:
"C:\Sierra\Half-Life\hl.exe" -game ns -connect xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:27015 -password xxxxxxxx
Do do the same in steam, to make it work in steam, it would be:
"C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 70 -game ns -connect xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:27015 -password xxxxxxxx
As you can see the only difference is that instead of directly running hl.exe and applying the "ns" mod to the engine, you are running steam.exe, using the "half-life (app 70)" application and then applying the "ns" mod over the top of that.
Instead of ns being a layer that sits on top of the half-life base, we now have steam as the base, and then we layer half-life (or anything other first party game) on top of that, and then finally we layer any mods on the 3rd level, on top of everything else.
<b><u><span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>Windows Steam - How to get NS working</span></u></b>
Ok, this is going to be a echo of what is already known, but more explicit as people don't understand how steam ticks.
To get NS, or any mod for that matter not recognized on the steam "Games" menu, this is what you have to do.
1. get the steaminstall_cs.exe pack. It appears a couple glitches are fixed with the installer in this one.
2. Install it to any other drive other than your windows sys volume. I used "D:\Steam" myself.
3. When you login, nothing will happen. Wait a few minutes. If you know how to look at the running processes in windows (ctrl-alt-del in winxp), you will see a "Steam.exe" running. In a bit, the steam icon will appear in the system tray.
4. Right click on it, and go to "Games". You should now see a list of games, with all of them dimmed except CS and regular HL itself. Even though you "have" the games, they are not "initialized" yet. So..
5. Double-click on the Halflife one, and after a few moments of doing stuff, you'll now be into a newer looking version of the halflife regular main menu. Start a single player game, ride around happily on the tram for a minute and then hit escape to get to the main menu and quit out of halflife.
Now Halflife is "initialized", and now mods can be added onto it.
At this point, your Steam install dir should look something like this:
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\youremail@server.com\half-life
The e-mail portion is literally the email you used to create the steam account.
-- If you had gone and tried to play CS first, you would also see a "counter-strike" directory in here along with the half-life dir. Also a DOD dir. Always ignore these "extra" dirs when adding in your own custom mods. All custom mods go in the half-life folder.
6. Now copy your entire regular ns dir from your old Halflife right into
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\youremail@server.com\half-life\ns
This also goes for Vampire slayer, and any other mods. The only exceptions are that some mods use custom dll's for enhanced gameplay. NS uses one of these.
7. In your old halflife folder there will be a file named "fmod.dll". Copy this into
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\youremail@server.com\half-life
7.1. You may experience an overflow error, or an error relating to the command "ex_maxerrordistance." If you do, add the following line to "userconfig.cfg" in your NS directory (if it is not there, create it):
<b>alias "ex_maxerrordistance" ""</b>
<i>(Thanks to <a href='http://www.haxgames.com/steam.html' target='_blank'>Beast's NS-in-Steam guide</a> for this tip.)</i>
<span style='color:white'>-- added by coil, 25 Sept 2003.</span>
You now have all this is necessary to make steam let you play it. But one last step.
8. Exit steam completely, no tray icon or anything. Furthermore, check in the process listing to ensure that "Steam.exe" has really disappeared. Once it does, then fire up steam again, and if all went well, you should see this on the games menu:
<img src='http://nullfusion.com/steamns.JPG' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
Now to get a properly filtered listing of just NS servers to play on, double-click on the NS entry, and once in game click "find servers". Then a nice filtered listing shows up. Go join, and have fun.
You'll find it works almost flawlessly, just some graphical anomalies occur, and the graphics can become very ugly if you navigate the HL menu while it is playing in the background.
-- I know this is an echo, but it seems like too many people are still confused and afraid to leave the comfort of WON. The above works, I did it in both win98 and winxp (not that it matters).
Now for the portion I was interesed in. I play HL from Gentoo Linux (as of now) and Steam ofcourse scared me big. But I got it working. This next part is for the more experienced, as I will explain it in detailed terms (somewhat).
<b><u><span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>How to get Steam and Halflife working in Linux</span></u></b> - <i>Soon to be updated for winex</i>
Ok first off, it will require a full image. And I recommend you do it well. Here's step-by-step what I did:
1. This first part is not even in Linux. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> You will need to install a fresh copy of Windows 98 to a new FAT32 partition. Since it will be running in wine ("windows emulator" for linux), you cannot use Win2000, ME, XP, etc. If you have VMWare, I recommend caution, as you will need to **** around in Win98 abit before it will be usable by linux.
2. Once booted into Windows 98, update as much as possible, and do a FULL STEAM INSTALL (just the steaminstall_cs.exe) as if you were going to play in win98 on it. It doesn't matter where you install steam on the win98 install, as it'll be trashed anyways. This is just to get some important files spread around, and one other important thing.
3. Once you've got steam going in win98, (very important) go into the Settings and set your "favourite window" to "Steam menu". The wine inclined can see where this is going (tray icon related).
4. Now uninstall steam off in win98. (Or problems arise during the linux install)
5. Now in linux, its obvious what has to be done. Clone it over into /windows or somesuch. (mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/win1 -t fat32). You can run it off of the fat32 partition if you want to, by why? <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I created a 4gb reiserfs with -notail, and its much more speedy for me.
(The below is assuming you have run wine once on your user account. DO NOT DO IT AS ROOT. Sheesh)
6. Now open your wine config. (A short way to do this is "vi ~/.wine/config" from a terminal). This is the core config for wine, and all that is really important is that in the [C Drive] section that it points to your "/windows" or whatnot mount or copyover. The soundserver and such are a battle you might not have to fight if your lucky. I recommend you set "D drive" to point to another spot for the steam install. Or just install it into the windows folder, who cares.
Ohyeah, just to remove any annoying permission glitches just chmod 0777 the whole windows folder, unless you actually care if your mom accidently deletes it on you. 0666 might be fine too.
7. Now your set. Start over. run the install (wine steaminstall_cs.exe) and follow the leader. Depending on your wine version and how upgraded your win98 dll's are, you might get some wine crashes in relation to it not being able to find certain entry point in 98 dll's. For this, find the first section where you'll see lines like "shdocvu.dll = "native, etc" and switch the order of the items in the brackets. I think I had to do that for 1 dll.
8. Now it should all be good. Install, run, and if your using a good version of wine, no -opengl switches or whatnot will be required, it will just work.
9. Ohyeah, the first steps of the windows portion now comes into play, involving the /ns folder and such.
-- Once again I know this is kind of verbose, but I have already been pounded by a few friends as to how to get it working in linux, and this was the detail required. Its finicky though at the moment.
-- Viper
Comments
Are the servers of both kinds compartible?
i crash when i try to play ns on won
and yes i have steam install and working great
There are only around 15 Steam NS servers last I looked.
Hmm worked anyway.
Are the servers of both kinds compartible? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ollj, installing steam with the precached halflife and cstrike will leave your original HL folder intact and usable. Note: All seeing eye may bugger up and go nuts. Reinstall it if it does.
And no, you cannot see Steamy server on WON, or WON servers through the steam.
And a quick question:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
2. Install it to any other drive other than your windows sys volume. I used "D:\Steam" myself.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Can i ask what the reasoning is behind this? Currently i only have 1 drive with a single 120GB partition, so i've already installed steam to my sys volume. I'd like to know what problems i might run into as a result.
<span style='color:red'>Yes.</span>
I see like 60 servers
5 if i check dont show servers password protected , and full and non players <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Thanks, I wasn't completely sure how to do it, and was utterly confused when nothing popped up (I put it in the same drive as the other mods <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->).
Also, sometimes steam NS just flat out freezes. Fun, fun. Too bad I didn't have hdd space to keep my WON copy. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Just figured I'd point these out for the people who're trying to get started on steam.
Anyway, back on topic. Just to add: if launching by the NS shortcut in thidr party gives as a filter "ns-game" instead of "ns" (joining an NS server will ask you to quit Half Life and restart in the correct game) then you'll have to edit your HL shortcut in My games. Check its properties, and add in "launch options" the command -game ns
Run Half-Life instead of NS whenever you want to play, and delete that command if you want to play normal HL.
I just had to add that, it seems I have been the only one with this problem, but worth sharing in case if..
I'll <span style='color:white'>***move***</span> and <span style='color:white'>***sticky***</span> it.
(probably for WON) in all steam ns server (after copy fmod.dll because at first Steam check my mods and install NS in Half-life steam directory (and Hl uplink and NSTR ^^)
So if your steam eject you, wait ... <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Right now its hanging on...
"Steam-working"
"Communicating with steam"
But i read somewhere that this pasrt takes a LONG time so i shouldnt close out of it.
EDIT: I got it to work, if you expereice the same prob i did then DONT CLOSE out of it. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Anyway, back on topic. Just to add: if launching by the NS shortcut in thidr party gives as a filter "ns-game" instead of "ns" (joining an NS server will ask you to quit Half Life and restart in the correct game) then you'll have to edit your HL shortcut in My games. Check its properties, and add in "launch options" the command -game ns
Run Half-Life instead of NS whenever you want to play, and delete that command if you want to play normal HL.
I just had to add that, it seems I have been the only one with this problem, but worth sharing in case if..<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hello there,
Yes, what you heard is true. I was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that is slowly disabling my motor functions, and along with it, my brain. I was originally given an estimate of a year before I wouldn't beable to use my hands, and not much longer until some major autonomic part of my body (heart, disgestive system, etc) would stop functioning and would kill me. Well, its been 6 months and Im already half deaf (even moreso), my vision on some days is great, other days its like foggy all day, and my typing speed has been cut in half. Not to mention a good amount of strange numbness in the hands and virtually every other part of my skin on my body. The numbness "moves", some days my back is completely feelingless, other days its just my feet, etc. very trippy.
As presumed I have completely pulled the plug on all of my Windows projects. As some of you may know, Im basically a walking X server, so the major frustrations of windows programming are a little more than I care to put up with with the time I have left. I find myself reverting more and more to visual basic to get things done, because of a lack of a half-decent development environment for C++ for windows with abstraction layers. The Cheat detection system im still working on, but that is now strictly being coded for FreeBSD (so Im not tempted to use any linux specific or whatnot functionalities to maintain posix compliance) but the halflife media manager and the NS Rcon administrator have fallen asleep. Kind of a shame, I had just finished recoding the Rcon administrator in low level Ansi C as well, so it uses less memory than notepad. Regardless, Im tired of putting up with it.
Anyways, I thank everyone who provided for the rcon project.
Now, back to business.
Just some information on Steam, and give a very professional outlook on what it does. Please note that Im not an amateur in this kind of software development.
What Steam will give you that regular halflife will not
1. Automated updating of mods.
2. Automated updating of itself and halflife.
3. A system where any joe-blow can login to steam, and right through the interface pay for halflife with his credit card, and instantly start downloading halflife and any of its mods, without even running to the store.
4. A system where many games, not just Halflife, can be used in this manner. Want to play Halflife 2? Then login to steam, tell it you want to play halflife 2, enter your credit card info and the download starts.
5. Provide a "backbone" for anticheat support in any Steam supported games.
6. Optimized and more operational-savvy halflife engine for halflife1
7. For supported halflife mods, the ability to get them with a double click rather than downloading and uncompressing, thus removing the confusion of installation and possible problems related to new mods.
8. In-game interoperability with the Steam functionality (Ability to bring up steam server browser and such ingame, without affecting background game)
9. TCP based connection to steam, so communication with friends ingame is linked through the steam DLL's.
So why does "steam suck" right now? Here are the problems with all of the above areas that they must address, plus a couple others.
<b>1. Automated updater</b> - This freezes, crashes and halts frequently for most people. This is what was causing 99% of the frustration for people, and why Steam went and released mass download packages with the mods.
<u>Why it fails -</u> It uses a single-threaded, single-server system. In a nutshell, it gets a server list from Steam as to where it can download the mod Steam cache file (*.gcf) and picks one and goes at it. Problem is, it not only tries to get it from one source, but Steam client has no concessions to handle the possibility of the download just freezing or timeing out.
<u>Why it fails part 2 -</u> People need "assurances". People need to see "234kb/6994kb downloaded - 5:25 Seconds remaining" and other things like "connected to Steam media source #1", and moreso people want to see "Pause", "Resume" and "Retry" or somesuch buttons that are available the whole time the download is happening. I think 50% of why so many people hate steam is not so much because of the unreliability of the Media servers, but because the interface isn't telling them why it's not working.
<u>What needs to be done - </u>Option A. Multithreaded, multisource cownloader. The eqvuivelent of what Getright does. This is ofcourse the most desirable, as each thread is working on a individual piece of the file from a different media source. This isn't hard to code, either. Option B- At least the ability to choose your media source server or somesuch. So people have some "Control" over the process.
2. The self-updating of Steam basically falls into the "why it fails" of part 1. Just a incomplete interface with non-existent functionality.
<b>3. This system is technically a smart idea.</b> Why? You create an account, successfully get HL2 or HL1 working on it, and your house catches fire. Your computer is destroyed, and so is your HL2 cd and cdkey. No worries! Just login to steam with the email addy you registered HL2 or whatnot with, and bang, it will start downloading HL2 all over again. No more remembering where that CDkey went to.
<u>Why it fails -</u> This is not a technical problem. It is a morale problem and a "old dog learning new tricks scenario". First off, due to the couple reasons listed in #1, alot of anger and distrust has befallen Steam, and now people are afraid to use this service in the fear something goes wrong. Afterall, can you blame them? Second off, most of today's gamers in halflife are veterans, and are used to messing with files, tweaking config files and throwing cd's in their drives and installing files with cdkeys. This new technology goes against everything every gamer has learned about how games are installed, played and used. Naturally many instantly oppose Steam due to the fact it resembles a microsoft .NET concept. Unfortunately right now it is functioning like one. But this will change.
What must be done - <i>A. Raise morale.</i> Add proper notification of what is happening to all interfaces, and release a very large document explicitly explaining how Steam works and the purpose of all the files and subfolders in the Steam directory. This will remove the fear people have of a "black box" doing everything for them.
<i>B. Technical Support</i> - Steam is a very dangerous idea because of the above. What is required is a openly visible technical support team - And one that responds to emails, and makes it apparent to the public that "We are destroying your Won servers, true, but we are replacing it with something much better, than with your feedback will truly become something better", instead of a "We are destroying your won servers, haha, now suffer for a year until we decide to fix half the problems Steam has". Unfortunately, they seem to be protraying the latter since it has come out.
4. I beleive that by the time HL2 really comes out and starts to be played, many of these problems will be worked out.
<b>5. Anti-cheat support </b> - Now this being my area of expertise, I can make some respected commentations.
<u>Why it fails -</u> They, like most companies, placed anti-cheat support on the back burner. Except with Valve, they realized this and did something about it. VAC. Only problem with VAC, is that it written on a faulty technical foundation, so any 12 year old in scandanavia can write a VAC-proof wallhack, that in the case a VAC patch comes out to block it, can be modified in minutes to get around new patches, almost indefinately.
What must be done - My wish: Replace VAC with cheating death. On a technical level it is so much more sound. But we know this ain't gonna happen.. So.. A. Hire true anti-cheat developers (like myself, hint hint). lol.. or B. Outsource it. Or better yet, outsource it to cheatingdeath <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
6. HL game engine - I have no gripes here, as it is 99% done, with only a few glitches remaining, primarily in relation to mods. They will have these worked out soon.
7. Halflife automod support - Excellent idea, but REQUIRES a "part 1" solution. Some form of multidownloader and user interaction.
8 and 9. This actually works (once your on the steam network). I like it myself.
Other than listed above, here's my major gripes about Steam in it's current state:
1. Steam interface - Why is it using a custom widget interface? Not only does this make Steam incredibly hard to maintain, but virtually eliminates the possiblity of porting it to other operating systems in the future. (I do like their scripting engine concept -- the entire steam interface isn't completely hardcoded - it is configured through massive scripts in the Steam dir)
2. Polling - I have decompiled and watched it myself: Steam client uses polling routines during critical sections to determine if things are done. For example, when you get the login window and click login, instantly your CPU usage skyrockets to 100%. At absolute worst, just make it poll on a system32 based timer via callback that triggers once every 100ms, vs. a while() loop (as that appears to be more or less what it's doing). Ofcourse the ideal solution would be proper utilization of the event-driven paradigm.
3. Auth servers - These respond on the flip of a coin for me. Very annoying. This should be #1 on their hitlist, as people think their steam account was deleted and spam the Steam forums about it.
4. The "delays" - After clicking "login" and it actually logs in, its like up to 5 minutes until the steam "Games" menu pops up. There has got to be something very architecturally wrong here. If they don't want to improve on it, at least put up some kind of window that says "loading steam" or some crap, just to assure people it isn't frozen or stuck in some infinite loop once again.
5. Memory usage - Watch its memory usage from the moment you launch it until the moment you've quit a game. If that doesn't anger you, then obviously Windows is the OS for you, please don't ever switch to Linux. (At one point, just on the Steam games menu open, it was using over 50mb of RAM. And i've confirmed that it is NOT a memory leak either, as it is properly unlinked on exit. )
Anyways, in finality: Steam is a good idea. ONCE ITS WORKING and bugfixed, and I say that loudly, you will find it to be a very good system to use. And you can GURANTEE that valve WILL fix all of the stupid little problems:: Why? Because halflife has gotten a CRAPLOAD of money to make the world's first "gaming platform", and you can be sure that they will not fail, because if they did.. well, they won't.
After all, They wrote Halflife1, which has turned out to be the best game of all time. Maybe they released Steam well before it should have been. But you can be assured that they WILL pull through and turn it into something the world could not have lived without. Too much money is riding on Steam. Just remember that when Halflife1 was written, that was before the birth of real computer games mass produced in software production offices. They had all the time they needed to make it happen. Nowdays, investors want things done overnight, and Steam being a risky venture requires rapid visual output. Give them time.
About WON: Don't fix it if it not broke? Fact is, the WON server idea is a flawed concept. They have known this for ages, and now they are trying to fix it. Have some faith in the people who managed the creation of the best game on earth (even if none of the original programmers exist anymore. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Note: I wrote this because it angers me when people say "Steam sucks", and not only know nothing of the bigger picture, but don't care either.
-- Viper
I *know* i wouldnt be anywhere near as frustrated if it just had a little % indicator or something, right now I have had half-life in my task bar for 8 hours, hoping its going to ping into action.
Ive had steam open for 48 hours straight with the monitoring window showing a trickle of updates all through those hours, one thing which is being ignored is modem users. How the hell can we b expected to wait this length of time to play the same old game, Valve lost alot of loyalty points :/
NP <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Once NS becomes a steam supported module, installing NS will simply becoming putting a naturalselection.gcf file in the SteamAPPS dir. Boy, won't it be hard then <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
You can see this as being the first real apparent benefit of steam. Just drop a .gcf file for a mod. And if anyone alters gcf's provided on mirrors, steam will know this and reject it.
here look at me steam games menu <a href='http://members.lycos.co.uk/drdoom2/menu.JPG' target='_blank'>http://members.lycos.co.uk/drdoom2/menu.JPG</a>
but... when it goes to the menu when i ope ns. i get this, it goes to the windows menu <a href='http://members.lycos.co.uk/drdoom2/untitled.JPG' target='_blank'>http://members.lycos.co.uk/drdoom2/untitled.JPG</a>
i reinstalled and it did the exact same thing
any help is apreciated
Mego
I have also copied the fmod.dll file into the steam\steamapps\email@here.com\half-life.
The mod shows up in my games list! WOOHOO!!!!
Here's the problem. I am unable to join ANY servers with nat select. Every single server times out and says the game is unavailable. Also the steam says "Preparing to play counter-strike" when I try a NS server. It's so screwy that in fact if I TRY to load natural selection through steam to set up a server or any game.. I get half-life. It even says "preparing to play half-life". Ideas?
*begin edit here*
The instructions have worked fine on 3 other pc's. Here's the issue... I NEVER got a conversion load on steam. When you install steam you go through the acount creation then get some kind of conversion format. I created my acount and steam just LOADED with everything in place. No conversion no nothing.
Yes. I have completely uninstalled Steam. I have totally removed all traces of steam from my registry. I used the full steam install file (734mb) for the next install. Every other game works EXCEPT the 3rd party non-steam supported mods. Mostly all I care about is nat select. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
fox@clansin.com
Also, sometimes steam NS just flat out freezes. Fun, fun. Too bad I didn't have hdd space to keep my WON copy. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Just figured I'd point these out for the people who're trying to get started on steam. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I get the radial menus problem too, dunno what to do about it, just have to hope that the NS team sort it out for me <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> The other bug about not being able to talk sometimes is not unique to NS because I've seen this in DoD too. It only lasted a short time though.
Drunkensailor, I'm not sure but I think that it just seems like its loading Half life. There is no special Steam Splash screen for NS (but go to the Customization forums and you can get one <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->) so it loads the default. Likewise, I think it just says its loading half life, because NS is not officially supported, so you are loading it through Half Life (thats why its in your hl folder and not one of its own)
Someone should start a project called "openSteamHalflife1" (which will use GTK++ so us linux people can run it too). Kind of like "Trillian", except for the steam network. I have done some research into the steam cache and it appears the steam network will fall under a licensing scheme similar to that of "icq" and such. Only hitch is that for it to remain legal it would not have the ability to create accounts, this would have to be pre-done by a windows run of it. The way I see it, there wouldn't be much of a problem morphing our current halflife directories into a form of steam.
Asides from the Steam cache, nothing has changed except for a pile of hooks into the new halflife engine to allow steam network interconnection. Fact is, the new halflife engine does not support extended libs or anything, so things like wickedgl (for the time being) don't want to work.
Here is a manifesto concept of how "My steam" (opensteam) would be like:
-- Simple version:
1. We would "alter" the wonauth .dll's to use the steam network, in short. Upon launching a multiplayer game, halflife would go to authenticate with WON, which it will try to do as normal, except the won dll's will actually be starting a steam connection, properly connect to steam via a config file containing user's email and pword login, and once auth'd halflife would continue none the wiser.
-- Support of SteamID's -- The quickest and cheapest hack would be a couple memory hooks to get past the initial server verification of the Steam ticket, and a couple more to convert all incoming steam ID's into a numerical "wonid compatible" equivelent.
-- Ofcourse ticket renewal and such wouldn't work, but that would happen everytime halflife is relaunched.
-- Complex method -- (tonnes of hl hooks)
1. It would be more or less a couple files dropped into your old and working WON-based halflife dir. Essentially a "opensteamthreader.dll" or somesuch. To get keep it "external" to halflife without actually modifying it, some form of halflife memory hooks (which would normally be used by "hacks" to provide aimbot functionality and such) would be utilized to "simulate" a form of steam functionality within old halflife. Ultimately we would replace a couple of the won-auth dll's with dll's that would hook into the opensteamthreader. Also, a e-mail dropped to cheatingdeath to ensure that it will ignore what the threader is doing (or some such so not to have it detected as a cheat)
2. There would be a .cfg file in the root of your halflife dir, called "steam.cfg" or somesuch. It would contain all the info needed for a user-free start of steam. It would have lines like "email=blob@mcdonalds.com" and "password=blobby" and such. Upon launching regular halflife and halflife trying to use won, the dll's and hooks come into action, get everything connected. In-game messages sent to the user would display in halflife via the hooks, and some functionality could be implemented to respond within halflife as well.
Cheapest way to do it:
Think this is impossible? Far from it. Oddly enough, the easiest way to pull this off without research would be to essentially hack apart a copy of the sources to OGC. This is because OGC not only has working halflife hooks, but has the ability to accept and send commands to the user in halflife. Essentially stripping down a copy of OGC (removing all the cheating functionality) and doing the above modifications would basically do it.
To solve the steamcache problem, a proper (and unfortunately illegal) .gcf extractor would have to be written. This has already been done (by myself). <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Someone will eventually do it, as regardless of how good steam may become, some people (including myself) don't particularly enjoy losing all their control to a 3rd party application.