Steam v3.0

[CSN NewsBot]

Before the release of Rag Doll Kung Fu (slated for the 12th), Steam is set to receive a visual overhaul. Erik Johnson, in an e-mail to the hlcoders mailing list, had this to say about the upcoming overhaul.

We're getting ready to release a fairly significant overhaul of the look and feel of Steam, ahead of the release of Rag Doll Kung Fu. Part of this release is going to give individual games more space for people to see screenshots and information about individual games, including MODs.



Currently if you go to the Third Party Games area of the Steam store you'll see a listing of the most popular MODs currently being played, along with a text description and a couple of screenshots. You can also get to this web page directly by going here:



http://storefront.steampowered.com/3rdparty.php



What would be really helpful would be for any MOD that is currently listed on this page to put together some of this material and send it on to me. What we need is:



1. A short 50 words or less description of the game.

2. 5 screenshots in .jpg format to include. The width of the screenshots can be no greater that 1024px, but the aspect ratio is up to you.



Once you have these together, .zip up all of the materials and e-mail them to me and we'll make sure this gets into the update coming up.

As noted on The Steam Review, Valve also has plans to incorporate a distribution system into Steam that will make the downloading of free content possible. While still early in development, Valve hopes the possibility to distribute content freely through Steam will be of great benefit to the independent mod community.



There are also murmurings that an updated "Play Games" menu will include some of the ideas presented in Lunchtimemama's updated interface. I know a more customizable interface has been on my personal wishlist for Steam since its release, and I'm sure the same could be said for nearly every other Steam user out there. While the above changes aren't the only updates planned for v3.0, they will be the first components that are readily apparent to the end-user.

[Zips]

I, for one, welcome our new Steam design overlords.

[HowlinMadMurphy]

Farker, eh Zips? This sounds really great, I'm looking forward to it.

[AceR]

please dont valve. steam is fine.. the more you "fix it" the more updates your going to do to fix the previous update. it's a neverending cycle with valve. Fix/improve an update.. and 3 weeks later fix the bugs in the previous update!

[Zips]

It's a visual update, there's not going to be any major code changes outside of that.

[Snakebyte]

AceR wrote..

please dont valve. steam is fine.. the more you "fix it" the more updates your going to do to fix the previous update. it's a neverending cycle with valve. Fix/improve an update.. and 3 weeks later fix the bugs in the previous update!

You, sir, are extremely pessimistic. Not all of their updates cause more problems. And you certainly can't think Steam is perfect as it is, right?

[KaZ]

By visual does it mean how STEAM looks or updated graphics (like hdr on cs)? Just wondering.

[Zips]

KaZ wrote..

By visual does it mean how STEAM looks or updated graphics (like hdr on cs)? Just wondering.

No, just the "Play Games" menu, Third Party Games, and such will look different and be more useful to the player.

[masterren]

And Friends will still not work?

[Glock900mm]

HOPEFULLY IT GETS FIXED

[-:Nighthawk:-]

They already said they're going to make Friends work again. Eventually.



But yeah, after goofing around with the logic on that "Play games" menu demo... it looks to be a pretty cool setup. Now if they can just make the whole design a bit more customizeable, and allow skinners more options... it could become quite an attractive platform.

[wolf8218]

instead of fixing some obvious game issues they opt to fix steam which is fine as it is? :-/

[thepingofdeath]

the stuck-inside-teammate issue in day of defeat source. that's all i'm saying.

[Agent 00Shoe]

wolf8218 wrote..

instead of fixing some obvious game issues they opt to fix steam which is fine as it is? :-/

That's right, EVERY employee is putting every ounce of effort into this. Even the janitor. Truth is, they have every bug on Source fixed already but they decided to drop everything to work on Steam.



AND IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[|azure|]

I am so sick of steam... I would still much rather just buy my games at the store and then download patches and install when there are updates. What is so bad about that? Who the hell needs Steam?



I see NO advantage to it at all. Now they will probably bloat my HD with even more useless crap... Oh but I am sure it is all very crucial to my gaming experience, even though I can already chat to people on IRC and several server browsers are already available. Screw Steam...



Valve figures they can make more money from us, because the games stare us in the face and its much easier to get our money I suppose.