[Steam] Thread XXXIII: The only winning move is not to play

[Silverraptor]

Clearly Steam is suffering a bout of Fanboyism.

Darn. You beat me to the punch.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Gah, the trailer for Xenonauts (which was just actually released, thought that would never happen!) has a typo in it. And it's going to bug me forever and ever.

[RedSand]

Does GitP have an official TF2 server, or one that people from around here just hang around lots? Preferably one near the U.S. west coast?

Also: NEW WEAPONS! CONGA LINES! BREAD!

[shadow_archmagi]

The sale is upon us

[Grif]

Does GitP have an official TF2 server, or one that people from around here just hang around lots? Preferably one near the U.S. west coast?

Also: NEW WEAPONS! CONGA LINES! BREAD!

Used to have one. Not anymore, I think.

Also, it has begun.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Steam is under heavy load right now, please try again later.

[IthilanorStPete]

There's not much I'm looking for this Summer; I've only got ~$8 in my Steam wallet, and I can't really justify adding more. Unless Transistor has a huge sale, only thing I might pick up is the latest DLC for Europa Universalis 4, or maybe Victoria 2 for more Paradox strategy funtimes.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Ugh, okay, so the two last games I downloaded (the Saint's Row IV Inauguration Station and Batman: Arkham Asylum) are both having massive delays between being launched and actually coming up. This has never happened before.

[Antonok]

Ugh, okay, so the two last games I downloaded (the Saint's Row IV Inauguration Station and Batman: Arkham Asylum) are both having massive delays between being launched and actually coming up. This has never happened before.

I have that with arkham asylum so it might not just be you.

[factotum]

Ugh, okay, so the two last games I downloaded (the Saint's Row IV Inauguration Station and Batman: Arkham Asylum) are both having massive delays between being launched and actually coming up. This has never happened before.

Are you sure that's not just lag on the Steam servers because of the sale?

[Hiro Protagonest]

Are you sure that's not just lag on the Steam servers because of the sale?

My other games work fine. After uninstalling them, I downloaded Mirror's Edge and that works.

My entire computer seems to be going slower though. It might just be internet, but I don't think so. Any videos I try to play in my internet browser are stuttery, but the audio doesn't lag so it's not a loading problem. Maybe I've reached the point in my hard drive capacity where it starts noticeably affecting performance...

[Antonok]

My other games work fine. After uninstalling them, I downloaded Mirror's Edge and that works.

My entire computer seems to be going slower though. It might just be internet, but I don't think so. Any videos I try to play in my internet browser are stuttery, but the audio doesn't lag so it's not a loading problem. Maybe I've reached the point in my hard drive capacity where it starts noticeably affecting performance...

How often do you clean out your comp? (browsing history, cookies, defrag, etc) Might just be cluttered up.

[Hiro Protagonest]

How often do you clean out your comp? (browsing history, cookies, defrag, etc) Might just be cluttered up.

Uh, never. How do you defrag?

[Qwertystop]

Uh, never. How do you defrag?

What's your OS? Windows 7, 8? Mac something-or-other (I don't use a Mac)?

[factotum]

Maybe I've reached the point in my hard drive capacity where it starts noticeably affecting performance...

What sort of hard drive do you have? If it's an SSD then yes, performance will suffer as it gets full, but you really don't want to defrag it--they don't like it. I doubt that hard drive being full would cause streaming Internet video to stutter, though, that sounds more like a CPU or Internet connection issue. (Note that the audio working doesn't really mean much, because the audio has a much smaller bandwidth requirement than the video does).

[Hiro Protagonest]

I have Win8.

Anyway, I uninstalled some games I'm not likely to play again (or in the first place). Playing a video, the quality was really choppy when I had Mirror's Edge up, but after I logged out and logged back in it seems to be working fine. So I might be fine as long as I'm not alt-tabbed out of an intensive game (I had to turn physx off in Mirror's Edge because whenever I got into a chase scene the gunfire caused the game to lag out like crazy, although it stayed that way after I died and went back to the start of the scene, but messing with all of the other options bar resolution didn't work and physx was the only thing that might have to do with specifically particle effects).

Edit: I started playing Mirror's Edge again, and the video's going fine... maybe it is my internet? But it only seems to change when I restart my computer/

[Squark]

So, I'm suffering from a bout of indecision with regards of what to play next, since while I've got an eclectic collection of games in my Steam Library from humble bundles I bought to get a single part of the bundle, I have no idea what to play from them (since horror-like games like Dead Space or F.E.A.R are not my cup of tea, and I'm medicore at best with platformers). Complicating matters somewhat is my laptop has only 64 MB of dedicated Video ram, so things like fully rendered cutscenes (Darksiders and Brutal Legend played fine, but their cutscenses were a choppy mess) or Newer releases (Skyrim, which I bought when I thought I was going to be able to put together a new gaming desktop).

With that in mind, I thought I'd see if any of you guys saw any games you think might be worth a playthrough in my list of games. For the record, anything above Mirror's Edge on that list has been played to completion, or at least my satisfaction, and if it a game is part of a series I've (Half-Life episodes, for instance), the odds are I've finished that too.

[Brother Oni]

I doubt that hard drive being full would cause streaming Internet video to stutter, though, that sounds more like a CPU or Internet connection issue. (Note that the audio working doesn't really mean much, because the audio has a much smaller bandwidth requirement than the video does).

Wouldn't a full hard drive mean less space to dynamic increase the swap file under heavy use, which would affect the read speed of large files (eg videos)?

[Antonok]

Wouldn't a full hard drive mean less space to dynamic increase the swap file under heavy use, which would affect the read speed of large files (eg videos)?

Essentially. It compresses everything down so it takes less time to read. Comps do indeed don't like it, but there is reasons to run it every couple years. A cluttered Registry can do the same thing, but thats something you only mess with if you know what you're doing, if with auto cleaners such as CCleaner.

[factotum]

Wouldn't a full hard drive mean less space to dynamic increase the swap file under heavy use, which would affect the read speed of large files (eg videos)?

It's been a very long time since Windows was stupid enough to swap everything out of memory to the swap file while playing a streaming video because all the disk access made the disk cache balloon in size. (Yes, this did use to happen--I remember playing a video on Win98 and having to wait for 30 seconds before the machine was usable again when the video finished). Nowadays there's no reason at all why a streaming video should require any swap file, unless your system is seriously short on memory to start with.

[Forbiddenwar]

Does anyone else feel the summer sale is kind of meh. A third of the games are a buggy unfinished mess, a third are bad ports or just bad games and the remaining third I already own.

But that might be just me.

[Rawhide]

Does anyone else feel the summer sale is kind of meh. A third of the games are a buggy unfinished mess, a third are bad ports or just bad games and the remaining third I already own.

But that might be just me.

I've purchased a grand total of zero games so far.

[Legoshrimp]

I've purchased a grand total of zero games so far.

Yeah, although it is only the second day of the sale still. The only game that I almost bought was papers please, but I had no intentions of playing it immediately so I will just wait/hope for a humble bundle.

I think in part it could just be last year you didn't own that 3rd so it was more interesting. Although I think there are more early access games.

[Driderman]

Does anyone else feel the summer sale is kind of meh. A third of the games are a buggy unfinished mess, a third are bad ports or just bad games and the remaining third I already own.

But that might be just me.

I grabbed Payday 2, some stuff for RPGMaker VX Ace (which is outrageously expensive at the best of times) and the expansion for Don't Starve (which I guess wasn't really part of the Summer Sale, just a regular sale that happened to coincide). So yeah, a bit meh so far but I can acknowledge that some people may want some of those games. I'm not exactly the typical gamer though, so not me.

[Brother Oni]

Yeah, although it is only the second day of the sale still. The only game that I almost bought was papers please, but I had no intentions of playing it immediately so I will just wait/hope for a humble bundle.

Papers Please is about to go on the Community Choice sale (in just under 10 minutes at time of this post) in case that tempts you.

I've succumbed to a couple of games (Startopia and Creeper World 3) because they were either very cheap or I wanted to support the developer, but mostly I've been getting Christmas presents for later on (I've still games from the Winter sale I haven't played yet).

[Legoshrimp]

Papers Please is about to go on the Community Choice sale (in just under 10 minutes at time of this post) in case that tempts you.

I've succumbed to a couple of games (Startopia and Creeper World 3) because they were either very cheap or I wanted to support the developer, but mostly I've been getting Christmas presents for later on (I've still games from the Winter sale I haven't played yet).

It was on flash sale yesterday as well.

[Brother Oni]

It was on flash sale yesterday as well.

Cursed flash sales, always happening when my weak, weak flesh needs to sleep.

[Cristo Meyers]

Cursed flash sales, always happening when my weak, weak flesh needs to sleep.

Wouldn't feel too bad, the flash sale price was only a penny under the community sale price.

[Yana]

Does anyone else in the Giantitp community play Payday 2? I'd like to see if I can run some heists with people who aren't so... noxious.

[Legoshrimp]

Does anyone else in the Giantitp community play Payday 2? I'd like to see if I can run some heists with people who aren't so... noxious.

I used to play a lot, but I haven't played recently so I could be up for running a few in a bit.
Steam id:legoshrimp