STEAM!

[mute688]

Quick question regarding 400 days.  I have a new computer and hence, no local save data.  Is this an issue at all?

It wont make much noticeable difference with no save, but I assume that if you carry the 400 days save over to season 2 when it is released it will use the default choices for season 1.

 

(The only difference the save seemed to make in my 2 play throughs were a few references to the previous characters and a corpse on the side of the road.)

Edited July 23, 2013 by mute688

[Deraldin]

32 new games with Steam trading cards today. Sadly I only have 2 of them so only a few new cards for me.

 

Full list of new additions:

BIT.TRIP RUNNER
Anna
Beat Hazard
Call of Juarez Gunslinger
Cherry Tree High Comedy Club
DLC Quest
Dark Fall: Lost Souls
Day of Defeat: Source
Defend Grid: The Awakening
Divinity: Dragon Commander
Ether Vapor Remaster
Eversion
Expeditions: Conquistador
FLY’N
Fortix
Fortix 2
King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North
Krater
Magical Diary
Mount & Blade
Noitu Love 2 Devolution
Nuclear Dawn
POSTAL 2 Complete
Retro/Grade
Retrovirus
Retro City Rampage
Rush Bros
Secret of the Magic Crystal
Skyward Collapse
Sol Survivor
Soldier Front 2
Space Pirates and Zombies

Edited July 23, 2013 by Deraldin

[alanschu]

I might do some surgery and get that data off my other HDD then!  Thanks.

[MacMichael]

My haul for this sale:

 

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Gunpoint

some Sleeping Dogs DLC

Dishonored DLCs

Deadlight

Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4

Hitman: Absolution

Poker Night 2

Borderlands 2 Season pass and some other DLCs

The Walking Dead: 400 Days

Bioshock Infinite

Starforge Alpha (gift from a friend)

 

Felt like I was buying nothing but DLC this sale.

[Galomtala]

For me:

 

Just Cause 2

Dirt 3

Borderlands 2 + Season pass

Arkham City

XCOM EU

Mark of the Ninja

 

As a gift:

 

Fallout NV Ultimate

BG EE

Worms Revolution

[Oerwinde]

My Blood Dragon doesn't work. It loads into the intro movie, and the tracking bar goes back and forth for about 7 minutes and I ctrl-alt-del my way out of the game.

[Fighter]

LOL. People actually pay money for trading cards? Sold a few of mine within a minute of putting them up.

[BruceVC]

I resisted the sales...most didn't have any cats, so it wasn't too difficult.

 

 "most didn't have cats "

[NOK222]

Quick question regarding 400 days.  I have a new computer and hence, no local save data.  Is this an issue at all?

If you want your choices to matter from season 1, you might wanna consider doing the whole thing again. 

[Keyrock]

I'm making some decent coin off the cards I got just from voting on sales and playing games I already owned.  I'll get a free game or two out of this eventually. 

 

Also, I see some people got Euro Truck Simulator 2.  I've always wondered about that game and have contemplated pulling the trigger on it in the past.  Feedback please. 

Edited July 23, 2013 by Keyrock

[Humanoid]

What's there to say? You drive a truck around Europe. The game has RPG elements in that you can level up both your driver and gear up your truck. Initially you're just a driver for hire, with no cash and no truck. You take jobs to deliver goods from city A to city B and get paid for it (and gain experience). You're docked cash for damaging the truck and/or cargo, and can be fined for various traffic violations, such as speeding, failure to use headlights at night, etc. When you level up, you can assign points in various categories such as long-distance driving, or valuable/hazardous goods shipping. Not long into the game, with the help of a bank loan, you can purchase your own truck, an entry level model of course, which you can upgrade for cash, or replace. A bit later on you can hire other drivers to drive your other trucks, and before you know it, you're the boss of Europe's biggest freight company.

 

As for realism: Graphically it's quite nice. There's not really all that much to show, granted, since the main view will be of endless expanses of tarmac, but I can't complain. Weather effects are well done, particularly like the rain (which will really make you turn on your wipers, which, yes, is an active feature). The trucks are realistically modelled inside and out, and officially licenced from all the major brands, except Mercedes Benz (who are rebranded as Majestic). The cars you encounter on the road, while not explicitly named, are recognisably real models such as the Mazda 3 and Ford Focus. You won't be able to explore the cities in any real way though, at best it feels like you're entering the outskirts of the major ones, and while you can see some famous landmarks, it's nothing like how cities are modelled in games like GTA - they're mostly represented as towns of maybe a dozen roads.

 

The world is, of course, significantly compressed, somewhere up to 10x time compression outside town, significantly less once you arrive. This feels about right: it places most drives, at least initially, at about the 30-60 minute mark (for say, London to Birmingham and London to Liverpool respectively). Once you progress to longer drives, other elements like sleep (stay awake too long and you'll black out and likely wake up in a ditch and/or with a tree in your windscreen) and refuelling. Road rules as far as I can tell are correct, though I've never driven in Europe (or anywhere really, never driven a car in my life) - in Britain you drive on the left side, as opposed to the rest of continental Europe, road signs show locally-correct symbols and units. There's even a feature where you can tune in to real-life Internet radio for whatever region you're driving in, which adds a nice sense of immersion even if you don't understand a word the DJs say.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

@Humanoid - Thanks for that.  It sounds like a pretty chill game, which is why I am interested in it.  Sometimes I just want to take a break from murder simulators or frantic break neck action and play something chill and laid back.  Do you have to compress time during trips?  Is that something you could turn off and actually have a 12 hour trip take 12 hours?  I'm not saying I necessarily would, I'm just curious if that's an option.

[mkreku]

Wow. Now I want Euro Truck Simulator 2 too.

[Humanoid]

@Humanoid - Thanks for that. It sounds like a pretty chill game, which is why I am interested in it. Sometimes I just want to take a break from murder simulators or frantic break neck action and play something chill and laid back. Do you have to compress time during trips? Is that something you could turn off and actually have a 12 hour trip take 12 hours? I'm not saying I necessarily would, I'm just curious if that's an option.

Haven't seen the option, no. But the time compression being directly proportional to the world compression, that's really not surprising. But once you have your own truck, you can go out and drive in your own free time without a delivery to make (and without a trailer if you like), which more or less fulfils that function: drive from Glasgow to Prague in one session if you like - it'll take a number of hours in-game - just remember to refuel and take the occasional nap.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Humanoid

[Humanoid]

I'll add a note that setting up a decent control scheme is pretty critical to enjoying the game. It's hard to get a feel for anything with the keyboard, obviously, and I'd suggest a gamepad with analogue sticks as a minimum. Ideally you'd split the steering axis from the brake/accelerate axis: pushing a stick/D-pad in the upper-right position for hours on end doesn't play well.

 

My personal setup for now is an XBox360 gamepad (I have a wheel, but it's a gameport model from the 90s which won't work under Win7). I use the left stick for steering, the right stick for free-look (critical when trying to pull out of a driveway), shoulder buttons for up/down shifting (I play in "real automatic" mode, so it's just reverse/neutral/drive), and the analogue shoulder triggers for brake/accelerate. Various other buttons for left/right indicators, wipers, headlights, and horn. There's a cruise control feature but I choose not to use it for now.

 

The god-king controller for the game would naturally be the Logitech G27, which is specifically supported, and is required for the ultra-hardcore true H-shifter manual driving.

[Keyrock]

Good to hear a 360 pad works well, that's what I envisioned myself using (I don't have a wheel/pedal setup) with the standard left thumbstick to steer, triggers to accelerate and brake setup.  Can you setup to right thumbstick as a freelook, so that you can look out the driver/passenger windows?

Edited July 23, 2013 by Keyrock

[Humanoid]

Yep, that's the recommended setup. It works pretty naturally, I use freelook pretty liberally while driving, and while it's, as stated, just about essential at intersections, it becomes pretty natural in a more general sence in time and you end up looking left while turning left, etc.

 

There are additional camera modes, such as the usual chase cam and overhead cams, which makes parking significantly easier - but I choose to use the first-person camera exclusively. You can look directly behind with freelook only outside the driver side window (as if you're really just sticking your head out the window), otherwise you'll only be looking around the cabin - no looking out the passenger-side.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

Woot!  I've sold enough cards that I can completely cover the price of Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams while it's 80% off.  Free platforming goodness?  Yes, please.

[HoonDing]

I played Giana Sisters on Amiga.

[Keyrock]

I never got to play the original.  Supposedly it was a pretty good game, aside from being a blatant Super Mario Bros. ripoff.  I'm going to scoop up this...  sequel?  reimagining?  reboot?  Anyway, I'm happy 2D platformers are making a bit of a comeback.  The genre seemed completely dead and buried about a decade ago.  Also, it doesn't hurt to get it free. 

[Katphood]

Been lookin' for a chance to grab Afteerfall: Insanity  http://www.bundlestars.com/all-bundles/superfly-indie-bundle/#title149tab

 

Thanks for the heads up Tagz!

[babaganoosh13]

Did you know that if you uninstall Steam, it will also uninstall all of your games, mods, backups and saves that aren't in your "My Documents" folder? And it doesn't even warn you, or ask you if you want to keep them? It just deletes them... all.

 

All because I wanted to see if uninstalling and re-installing Steam would give me more than 2 weeks of Offline time.

 

All of my Fallout NV and 3 stuff... gone. I was almost finished Rain Slick 4. Not no more. I haven't hooked my computer up to the net since downloading that one. No chance of a cloud save there.

 

How the hell don't they ask if you want to keep your apps?

 

Valve was kinda close to Microsoft to me in the stupid category. Now they're getting it on in a dirty alley on the wrong side of the tracks.

[babaganoosh13]

This time I guess I'll try installing them in a folder outside of Program files/Steam. See if it tracks them down, and kills them if I uninstall then.

Edited July 26, 2013 by babaganoosh13

[Guest Slinky]

Steam games kinda need steam to work, so that shouldn't be surprising.

 

Still sucks though.

[babaganoosh13]

Yeah, but most programs ask if you want to keep things like that. You can't just blink and get them back, you've got to re-download, or re-install them from the disc. They should know to keep them there if you ever decide to re-install it.

 

 

Actually, I'm too dumbfounded to be mad. My mind is blown by the stupidity of it.

 

EDIT: It's taking forever to figure out if I have the disk space requirements. If I didn't before, I do now. Perhaps the installer is also dumbfounded by how stupid the un-installer was.

Edited July 26, 2013 by babaganoosh13