noob Steam questions

Hephador · 03-14-2006, 05:17 PM

Alright, y'all have piqued my interest enough to buy RO. However I've never used Steam before. I have questions and am looking for help cuz their info page is crap. When you dl a game via Steam, do you have to run Steam in order to play it? If so, is Steam a resource hog and is it better for me to wait for the cd package to hit the shelves? If it makes a difference to the answer, I'm running an Athlon XP 2800+ with 1.5 gigs of ram. Or if there is a handy Steam primer out there, I'd appreciate it if someone could kindly point me in its direction.

**Pokerface** · 03-14-2006, 05:23 PM

If RO is indeed a fully-enabled Steam-title, then Steam will need to be running. It does not eat resources, unless it's updating a game (and then, it'll mostly just eat bandwidth, but what updates don't do that?).

Right this second, Task Manager says that Steam.exe is taking up 7,404K of memory. To compare, a small Notepad document I have open is running 4,024K. Hard-drive-wise, Steam itself takes up under a meg of space, IIRC (the games you DL with it will take considerably more, of course).

Mateo · 03-14-2006, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hephador

When you dl a game via Steam, do you have to run Steam in order to play it?

Generally, yes.

Quote:

If so, is Steam a resource hog and is it better for me to wait for the cd package to hit the shelves?

There is no benefit to having the CDs: steam's RAM usage runs <15mb on my system even with a game running.

Gixxer_USMC · 03-14-2006, 05:25 PM

I have a NOOB steam question as well ,.,...

I PRE-INSTALLED RO last night and it updated this moring to 100% READY but when I click on LAUNCH, nothing happens .... am I missing something ?

EDIT: When I hit LAUNCH I get a box that pops up saying " PREPARING TO LAUNCH " and then it disappears and nothing happens ....

**Strag** · 03-14-2006, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gixxer_USMC

I have a NOOB steam question as well ,.,...

I PRE-INSTALLED RO last night and it updated this moring to 100% READY but when I click on LAUNCH, nothing happens .... am I missing something ?

EDIT: When I hit LAUNCH I get a box that pops up saying " PREPARING TO LAUNCH " and then it disappears and nothing happens ....

Gixx, try this.

TychoCelchuuu · 03-14-2006, 05:44 PM

Also, closing Steam and then opening it again fixes 90% of all the problems I've ever had with it. No need to restart the computer.

Gixxer_USMC · 03-14-2006, 05:49 PM

I found it and Thank You Strag and Digital Assassin for the help .... here is the link you need to run to update your files ....

http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-...i=&p_topview=1

Now 25 minutes 'til game is ready to play ..

( twidling thumbs )

Marconi · 03-14-2006, 05:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hephador

Alright, y'all have piqued my interest enough to buy RO. However I've never used Steam before. I have questions and am looking for help cuz their info page is crap. When you dl a game via Steam, do you have to run Steam in order to play it? If so, is Steam a resource hog and is it better for me to wait for the cd package to hit the shelves? If it makes a difference to the answer, I'm running an Athlon XP 2800+ with 1.5 gigs of ram. Or if there is a handy Steam primer out there, I'd appreciate it if someone could kindly point me in its direction.

While Steam's launch was certainly very rocky, I think it's safe to say that by now it is a solid gaming delivery client. I've ordered both DoD:S and RO through it, and both transaction and delivery have been more than acceptable (YMMV if it's the game's launch day, of course). As mentioned, it runs between 8-15 MB of RAM, and will keep your purchased games up-to-date as well as inform you of new stuff that Valve is offering.

Note that it's not just Valve's games - Valve is just the distributor in this case. So one day we may be buying Unreal Tourney through it, who knows

Through Steam you can also download and backup the games you bought, although I don't know anyone who's reported verifiable success with this. If you move to a new machine though, the only thing you have to re-download is the Steam client (tiny) and put in your ID info. It will then download everything you bought to your new machine, which is nice. It will not keep your savegames, however, which is a bit annoying.

If you're worried about Steam needing a connection all the time, there is a toggle to put it in "Offline" mode, so you can play some games (like HL2, I think) without being connected. You can also turn it off if you're playing something else, of course. I tend to run it all the time myself.

Valve has also just released a "Friends" beta, which will be (I guess) some sort of gaming Instant Messenger (like XFire), and I guess they're still working on it.

Hephador · 03-14-2006, 06:07 PM

Thanks for all the help guys. Have begun the game dl...5% down and looking forward to the fun.

Xink · 03-17-2006, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hephador

Thanks for all the help guys. Have begun the game dl...5% down and looking forward to the fun.

gonna be great to have you playing with us! (not that ive even started playing with us yet :|)