playing games on a PC, misc. chatter, Steam names, etc...

installing civ 4 is going to have to wait until i submit my thesis

hmm though, in my client Civ IV isn't showing up as available to d/l, so maybe it's forthcoming?

i suspect that there's still limitations on the current client, since TF2 is mysteriously missing from my games list (and all my other PC-only games and Valve games still show up)

my steam name is ezsnappin if anyone wants to be friends.

civ 4 is there in mine?

i'm mac btw

the ILG Steam group is here, btw...
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ILG

just joined.

I joined too

from the looks of it you can buy civ 4 + all expansions + colonization (which sadly sucks) for 39.99. I own 3 of the 4 on pc and am debating getting all 4 for mac.

they were on sale for $7.50 total a few weeks ago

(maybe it was $10.)

yeah $40 is bullshit. bump this thread if they go one sale between now and the end of time tho.

any other games besides portal/tf2 and civ4 worth getting?

I am this close to deleting my windows 7 partition

ha ha, nice try steam, trying to get me to buy bejeweled 2.

I never expected Civ 4 to be one of the Steam Play ones (because of the different publishers for the Mac version - long delayed, happens to so many AAA Windows ports), now am kicking myself a little for not nabbing that sale a few weeks ago.

Civ 4 appears in my library but I can't d/l it yet.

haha last night Torchlight dl crapped out after 10 minutes, hung for the next 40 at 68%; this morning the whole thing dl'ed in about a minute.

nhex - stop kicking yourself...

However, it turns out that this functionality, referred to as Steam Play, doesn't always extend to all of one's past Steam PC purchases--if you bought a game on Steam PC before it was eligible, you may have to buy again if you want it on Steam Mac.

Thus far, only two of the fifty-plus offerings--Civilization IV: The Complete Edition and Fairway Solitaire--require existing Steam PC owners to rebuy them on Steam Mac if they were bought before "being eligible for Steam Play support (May 12th, 2010)."

Reversed?
http://store.steampowered.com/news/3827/

hmm... in that case resume kicking (actually I don't like Civ, but I guess that's another story).

I'm now able to d/l Civ IV in Steam Mac---it's kinda huge so obv. I can't test it yet...pure excitement however

This week's Mac additions on Steam (on sale):

Killing Floor
Altitude (Free weekend)
Madballs in Babo: Invasion

Also:
Sam & Max Season 2
Windowsill
Hearts of Iron III
Chains
Caster
Simplz Zoo
Eschalon Book I

what's up w/all-stars throwing up duds this year, first tremé now alpha protocol :_(

I worked on this game (a fact of which I am not proud). I'm not here to defend it; I agree with all these reviews.

First, a comment for the guy at Cheesecake Factory - Most devs eat in the office most days, if they do go out they tend to grab something at the food court and head back. I know the execs take long lunches, but they often use them for informal meetings as well. Most of the programmers and designers very rarely ate outside the office during the time I was on this project.

There was a ton of work put into this game. The problem is that is was a ton of undirected work, or work on things that were just stupid. The Executive Producer for the game, Chris Parker (also an owner of the company), seemed to think he was the world's greatest designer ever, and created all these absolutely shitty systems and wouldn't listen to any of the real designers or devs about things that just didn't work. And you can't exactly argue with one of the owners of the company when he doesn't want to listen. He basically took over the game and dictated exactly how everything would work (or not work, as the case may be). The other producers realized this early on and just gave up, leaving Parker to micromanage all the designers and programmers directly.

Sega also was a factor, because they kept changing the design requirements (yes they had heavy influence there), which never gave the producers and designers time to actually decide on one set of features to make and polish. The blame is still mostly Obsidian's because the execution was absolutely terrible, and it was obvious 2 years ago that this game should have been scrapped. Instead, though, they focused on adding still more features and never fixed the ones they already had. That is a recipe for tons of bugs and no polish... as is obvious.

This game was just an absolute failure of production, and it's no wonder that so many of the developers left the company, even after the 40% staff layoffs. I am still happy about some of Obsidian's other current projects, New Vegas included, because they are going pretty well. Their big unannounced project is looking great and is already much better than AP ever was, and that may end up being the game that everyone was looking for with AP.

Sega should have canceled AP instead of Aliens...

I've just downloaded Steam on Windows, didn't seem to work on Mac OSX (running a dual boot on a MacBook Pro). I don't seem to have any time to play games (apart from procrastination browser games) these days, but in the event I do (and once HL2Ep3 comes out it's on) my Steam name is RTotaleXVIII

my steam name is im dying squirtle

Anyone interested in getting Monday Night Combat? As usual the TF2 tie-ins make it that much more enticing...

I'm on Steam now. same name as my email addr, in the ILG group.

this game looks like it owns an awful lot: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-05-26-frozen-synapse-review

How is it? Interested, but I'll likely wait until the summer sale.

definitely worth $10 if you can find someone to split it with and gift you the other copy. it's basically electric football but with shooting; I'm just playing the campaign mode now until I get the fundamentals down but it seems like something that will be a bunch of fun to play with other folks.

Yeah my pal and I bought it in the alpha or beta or whatever and it was pretty good, the addition of shit other than just an online play mode is greeaaaaatly appreciated tho

Convinced a friend to split it, will get around to it soon!

thank fuck Steam exists otherwise i'd have have to sit around watching a game install off a disc in 2 minutes

Anyone want some Steam coupons? I have two 50% off Valve, one 50% Codemasters, one 33% Bethesda (which will work for Skyrim), and 50% GTA: Vice City.

I'll take the Bethesda one. Steamtag is jay dee ess aye ell emm oh enn

Oh yeah, these coupons all expire on the 1st... I've got a bunch if anyone wants them:

50% off Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword
25% off Atari
50% off Nail'd
50% off Spacechem
50% off Shadowgrounds
And a crap load of x% off Valve products

https://www.facebook.com/OnLive?v=app_100442513383559

Valve developing a console? W.T.F.

According to sources, the company has been working on a hardware spec and associated software which would make up the backbone of a "Steam Box." The actual devices may be made by a variety of partners, and the software would be readily available to any company that wants to get in the game.

Apparently meetings were held during CES to demo a hand-built version of the device to potential partners. We're told that the basic specs of the Steam Box include a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GPU. The devices will be able to run any standard PC titles, and will also allow for rival gaming services (like EA's Origin) to be loaded up.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/2/2840932/exclusive-valve-steam-box-gaming-console

eh, i feel like this idea's been tried and announced so many times by so many different companies but nobody has really pulled it off (or even really proven it's a good concept, market-wise)

I sincerely hope they make a console. I'll never own a PC and Mac gaming is still a pretty sad (and expensive) place.

it's not nearly as bad as it used to be, with Steam and Mac App Store in the last year or so helping a lot. plus, many indies now seem to be figuring that's a good idea to build cross-platform, showing up on steam and indie bundles. that said, i did eventually cave and get an xbox last year

My steam games better transfer to that thing.

aaaaaaaargh pc gaming is starting to try my patience.

Why can't all games just recognise my fucking joysticks like they used to in the good old days. Can't get any of my joysticks to be recognised by any of my emulators. pc gaming sucks.

Because games now are set to only auto-recognize 360 controllers. There's at least two translator programs that will map any gamepad input, and I successfully used both on stuff like SR3 or Arkham

cheers, will hunt something down. Yeah everything seems to be looking for the analogue stick which my pads don't have and I don't want to use my xbox controller on old 8 bit games.

this does the trick for me:
http://code.google.com/p/x360ce/

superb. thanks

or maybe not. just don't understand how that works, doesn't want to save my settings either.

is there any other app i can try?