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Valve Unveils Steam Cloud
Erik J tips us to news of Valve's announcement that their content distribution system, Steam, will receive an update "in the near future" called Steam Cloud. The new service will allow users to save games and configuration settings online. According to MaximumPC:
"This system will be completely transparent to the user. The files cache locally, and will upload when Steam detects an internet connection. There will be no restrictions on users - no save quotas or file management - the system will 'just work.' Any Steamwork game will be able to support these features, and it'll be free for customers and developers."
Finally, it's about time. I've loved the fact that I can access my Steam games anywhere (like from work ;), but hated that I couldn't continue my saved games...
I understand how for some users not having file management isn't something they'll notice or care about, but what about the multitudes of people that would enjoy having a choice? What if we just plain don't want something game related (save, setting, whatever) stored any more? I checked the article to see if there really weren't any options at all about your stored files, but unfortunately it gives about the same amount of information as is in the article summary.
This seems like a fairly big thing to leave out seeing as there seems to be a great deal of options and tools (import/export/backup, etc.) for controlling your data (games/saves/etc.) when it comes to the current Steam client.
Not to mention "any Steamwork game". What's that? Steampunk? :P
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"fuck the filter" I didn't read anything about any content filtering. If you think about it, each game will be saving files for itself, so there shouldn't be much filtering needed, unless you have a lot of player-generated content...
JUST LIKE NOW!
My sig can beat up your sig.
Is consistently late with consistently stellar products.
I know I'm a happy customer... eventually!
Steam is the first online content distribution system that's genuinely made it easier to buy a game rather than pirate it.
New games are purchased, downloaded, activated and constantly patched all automatically and in no time at all...it's step in the right direction in combating piracy; just make it easier to NOT pirate ffs rather than just stuffing games full of anti-piracy nastiness.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I really doubt such a system would stop players from loading saved games. While, yeah, obviously you would need an active internet connection to download the data from Steam, the article indicates that the data would still be stored player-side, so there's nothing preventing him or her from saving to/loading from their hard drive. Concerned players could even backup their saves, configs, etc. to a flash drive, if they were planning on playing their games on systems without a guaranteed connection to Valve's servers.
Sooo... You store your settings locally, they are uploaded silently, then you go to a friend's place, who has a computer with lower hardware specs, and... your save is unplayable, because it never makes it to the config screen?
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Yes! I'm really excited about this. I've been buying the games I can from Steam since the original release because I like the fact I don't have to keep track of CDs or DVDs when I reformat my PC (which tends to be every couple months). I've always wished there was a way that games could automatically store my progress online so I don't have to remember to back up my save games (or forget to as is usually the case). It sucks when I'm playing Bioshock and reformat only to realize that I forgot to save and lost all the time I already spent playing. It tends to kill games for me because I don't feel like playing through that part again. I never finished Quake IV, Prey, Bioshock, Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and a few other games because of this.
I was happy when I found out UT3 saved all my controls and single player stats between installs because it's always a hassle setting those up.
Now I can be as forgetful as I want and not have to worry!
Such a coincidence; This week I've been backing up most of my config-files for all of my Steam games (and sent them off to my email to be stored there), as I became quite fed up with having to re-bind my keys on each install (and since I'm preferring ESDF-config over WASD, it's quite some work to get everything bound for each game).
.cfg-files which are referred to from the default-config file: If this would only store the default-config file, it has no use for me.
So for me, this is one of the better improvements coming from Steam the last few months.
One thing I'm very curious about is how much of the config files are saved though: For example, my TeamFortress 2 configs are very much deviating from the default: I have seperate class-configs, voice-commands configs and some other
Also, it would be quite cool if the configs would be saved for the several mods for HL/HL2.
Judging by Valve's previous offerings, this is what we can expect from Cloud: * When trying to refresh your saves list, it will freeze and display zero results most of the time. * There will be a several day delay between when your saves are made, and when they are updated remotely. * It will be impossible to find the saves you are looking for via the search function. And, without a doubt, once this feature is added, it will result in months of inexplicable game crashes fixed only by a slow trickle of patches.
I wish it did a better job...
I just don't see any purpose in saving config files online. Even for backup purposes, a USB key is more than enough.
Portability. You really don't want to have to drag around a USB key everywhere you go on the off chance that you get to play a game of TF2 or what have you somewhere. Plus, in a place like a internet cafe or LAN center, will the establishment let you bring an outside storage device and put it on their hardware? I don't find that likely. And would you even want to? Too many cans of worms. This lets you keep your personalized settings pertinent anywhere you go. It's hardly necessary, but it's wonderfully convenient.
Although all three of them beat the freaking snot out of putting a CD in the drive.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
the point of this is so you can save a game and your settings at one computer and continue it at a different one exactly if you were on your main, man. read the article.
composition | performance | education | music
What would happen if I had a different set of HL2 saves on two different computers? Would it just merge the two seamlessly like cards in a deck, or would one take precedence?
Valve really loves statistics, and if you've ever listened to a commentary track they are very intent on players making it through their games. I wonder if they will be scanning these save game files to create statistics on how far players get in the games they play, or how long they spent in various areas, etc.
Even the save game habits of players would be interesting. I always create a new save game file for every save. I can't remember the last time this was actually helpful. In the past some games would actually make it impossible to continue if you forget to pick up a certain item. If you kept replacing your save game file you were forced to start from the beginning. In FPSs I'm always afraid that I'll start chewing through ammo and get stuck in an area with sparse ammo and be screwed. So I'll make saves with titles like "GoodAmmoGoodHealth5", and "nearlyDead7".
They already have a lot of this information anyway, like how long you play a game, and what achievements you've completed. I'd like to see some of their statistics if they do datamine the files.
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
Next time you format, partition your drive so that you keep your Documents structure on a separate partition to your OS. Map the My Documents shortcut to a directory on the separate partition.
Almost all recent games save their save information to a directory in the My Documents target (IIRC one of the criteria for Games for Windows is that game saves are redirected into My Documents -> My Games) so the saves go straight to the segregated partition.
On subsequent formats, simply nuke the OS partition, reinstall, and then point the My Documents shortcut to the Documents partition. Simple.
I was really starting to believe that my son and I where the only people left on earth that use that left hand layout. Way way back when binding your movement to home row was l33t, this was the way everyone I knew who played FPSs bound there keys for the LAN parties. Always kind of wondered where wasd came from, and how they strafe left and run at the same time.
Good to know there is someone else out there that is constantly remapping there keys to esdf.
Steam *would* be the kind of content distribution system you are talking about... if it wasn't so god awful. I don't think I've ever used steam or played a steam game for a significant period of time without something bugging out or crashing.
I've found it, and half life, to be incredibly buggy. If half life wasn't so fricking awesome, there's no way I'd put up with it.
If halflife 2 + episodes didn't allow quick saving at every point in the game, they would be unplayable, due to the random crashing.
Then you don't have to re-install.
10 Restore the drive image, update that which needs updating and add/remove that which in the months between restores you've added/removed yourself*, and create a new image.
20 do stuff for several months
30 goto 10
* that's the 'difficult' part.. keeping track of what you've added that you really like and want to have on the new image, what you no longer use and can be tossed from the image, etc. For example, I updated my WiFi drivers for this notebook recently. It doesn't pop up in any automatic update, a system scan will tell me that all the drivers are up-to-date as from the notebook manufacturer, etc. But all the same, I had been getting bluescreens thanks to the wifi driver - though I still don't know what changed (it was fine for years) that caused this behavior - and the update straight from the wifi chipset manufacturer readily solved them. So I have to jot that down somewhere for when I do an image restore ( "- update wifi drivers. Local file: 'd:\_drivers\wifi\' inet: 'http://etc.'" ) or I'll probably have bluescreens again and I'd have to go through the annoyances of figuring out why it crashed (windbg loading the dump file) all over again.
Really? Wow thanks for clearing that up. I was under the impression that typing "fuck the filter" 17 times after an all-caps diarrhea attack was a way to start a civilized conversation...but yeah, actually he was just trolling!
Thanks for clearing up the misunderstanding. My very serious post has benefited from your assistance.
Why not just build a giant supercomputer in Bellview Washington, give everyone a few input devices and a monitor and do away with the whole stupid concept of "personal computers". It would be plenty cheaper and totally end gaming piracy. And modding too probably. But who cares about the modders?
Naturally a few details would have to be worked out, a few technological problems solved, but that is exactly what they are doing right now.
a lameness filter on slashdot is like a shit filter on cowboy neal's ass after he bankrupts an all-you-can-eat burrito bar.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Is it just me or did anyone read 'vulva' in place of 'valve'? that would be one hot chick!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Great, so if I have a monster rig at home, then when I visit my parents, Counter-Strike: Source will attempt to run at 2560X1600 with 16xQ AA and all other settings maxed out on their little Dell with it's integrated video card and a 17" CRT....
Thank you for just getting us. Thank you for steam. Thank you for the bad-ass games. Thank you for understanding your demographic.
Thank you for supplying the demand. Thank you for adapting. Thank you for providing metrics. Thank you for convincing other publishers to use steam.
I really like this cloud system. It makes playing games on other computers accessible and easy. Go to a gaming cafe and continue your SP games at will.
All games should be released over steam.
We're avid steam users.
The system is near perfect. I think you should add a secondary logon system. IMHO, vac needs an appeals system.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
You're not supposed to play CSS while you visit your parents!
but the whole program is sluggish as HELL. It takes me 5x as long to launch any program from Steam as it (probably) would without. What I mean is when I launch any game or program it launches pretty quickly, but I end up waiting for nearly a minute anytime I want to play anything from Steam, even Audiosurf or Natural Selection, which are small games.
:-P
Not saying it a horrible idea. I love being able to buy games online in an easy store. But for the love of god, why can't you make the program a little less sluggish. Oh, and fix the problem with Realtek, I can't use my mic.
Perhaps they'll use common keyboard configs and hotkeys as a way to design the default (or multiple preset) configurations for future games. That would actually be a nice thing.
People have bitched about the info steam allows Valve to collect, but I've never really minded targeted advertising when it was done right. If a gaming company notices I like a particular variety of game and emails me that "hey, you might like this game too" it may actually be somewhat convenient (sometimes I'm out-of-touch with current offerings), and a whole lot better than the generic spams of stuff I'll never buy that usually bombard me.
Virtually any game made in the last 10 years will simply revert to the lowest resolution if switching to the "desired" one fails. In fact, both with DirectX and OpenGL, that's handled almost automatically (you request a certain mode - optionally leaving some fields blank - and the function returns the mode it was actually able to set). Besides, display options are usually not part of the savegames.
I'm sure there will be some issues with Cloud, but I suspect they won't be of the "bloody obvious" variety.
Well, the steam cloud storage is an API that the developers are going to have to interface with, so, if they're smart, they save machine specific settings on the machine, and use the steam cloud for player specific settings.
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Why would you bother to go upstairs to play CSS?
--You're BOTH right. It's a floor wax AND a desert topping!
As an Australian with our stupid internet account limitations, I'm curious what kind of bandwidth this uses.
:/
:/
Some accounts see as little as 6gb per month in peak times here (12:01am to 11:59pm) for example.
I would like to THINK the game is smart enough to use a local copy, until you're finished..
I would not like to have each save upload 1mb or 2mb (however big saves are) then download that much again per load - especially on a level chock full of quickloads
Could hamper performance and cause shaping to occur on the internet account once the limit is reached
Funny, I was just searching today for "steam sucks" because I wanted to see if my recent experiences with it were common.
I'm enough of a sheep to buy Painkiller after it was recommended in a Zero Punctuation review, but the downloading was far inferior to what I've experienced on less-than-legit channels. The Steam client is slow as hell on what I consider to be an older, but not terrible computer - 1.8ghz, 1.5GB ram, etc - it takes a couple minutes to open, and anything it needs to do (switch tabs, get properties on something) makes it think for at least another minute. The worst part? It's a big enough game and my connection is slow enough (peak at about 150KB/sec) that it took me several evenings to download. To my great surprise and frustration just starting up the Steam client doesn't cause active downloads to resume - that requires a manual request. I was in a hurry one evening and only waited long enough to start my pc and Steam, thinking that when I came back a few hours later the game would be done and I could play it for a bit - no. Steam hadn't downloaded anything even though it was sitting idle and working just fine.
When the game finally did get downloaded, I was annoyed to find that I need to have Steam run every time I launch it, and it sits in the background serving up ads to the client software unless I alt-tab out of the game to close it. Not a huge deal, but given that it takes a few minutes to start up and update Steam *every time* I want to play, it adds up. I don't have a lot of time to game, so having some of that eaten up waiting for a service I have no intent of using each time annoys the hell out of me.
I don't mind paying for games, but when pirating them would result in a superior experience and less hassle I'm not exactly encouraged.
Yeah, actually, I was referring to the "cannot load save games" bit that the OP made. I already know full well how this will work, man. Read the post.
My sig can beat up your sig.
There could be reasons out of Valve's control that your Steam experience sucks.
Do you run PeerGuardian? By default, it blocks "Limelight, LLC" servers, one of the companies Valve uses for their auth servers and content servers. If I have PG2 loaded when I start up Steam, it takes forever cause it has to find one of the very few auth/content servers that PG2 doesn't block.
The memory/bandwidth that Steam itself uses might be cut down if you use the minimal games list instead of leaving it on the big one. Kinda the same difference as using Winamp's new "Bento" skin vs putting it on Classic.
Automatic updates: do you have it set to manually download updates instead of grabbing them automatically? If so, that would certainly explain the behavior you've been seeing. On the other hand, I have noticed a few non-Valve games like Audiosurf that I need to double-click on in order to get them to download updates correctly. I think that might have been fixed in a recent update though. Try looking at your settings anyway.
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I've had nothing but trouble with Steam, both intellectually and practically, so I find it surprising that so much fan boy raving can be modded up here!
Steam is DRM.
It starts slow and it's ugly.
It sits in the system tray watching you.
I bought a used game on Ebay and can not play it. No warning. Nothing on the box to warn that you can't sell what you bought.
My attempt to cycle through customer service for a new key was not just pointless, it was obviously set up to be.
Not interested.
In what ways are Stardock and d2d better than steam? I've never tried either, but since you have experience with all three, maybe you could share the reasons for your preference?
everything in moderation
steam is buggy as shit, instead of coming out with new things why don't you fix the old ones? (sounds like our goverment)