Why, Steam, Why?

[QuadFish]

As much as I regret how much I whined about Steam in that other thread a while back, I still don't really understand how deleting 7GB of Portal 2 data after it crashes while downloading the finally 70MB of the update is a logical solution.

[http://imgur.com/uXIDp]

Who knows? Maybe my computer is just angry and broken. Did anyone else get this problem?

 

[Aidinthel]

No, it downloaded just fine for me. And I was on the university wireless network so it wasn't exactly blazing fast.

 

[Sangnz]

Karma dude... karma

 

[Worgen]

Thats one of the strange things about steam, sometimes it will seem to want to redl the game after you have played it, usually its with indie games but sometimes it just does it, I have no clue as to why.

 

[QuadFish]

Karma dude... karma

Was it the fat joke I made about about Gabe all those years ago? I swear I didn't know!

 

[Sangnz]

Was it the fat joke I made about about Gabe all those years ago? I swear I didn't know!

No but that does mean you are one of the reasons for the delay in HL2: EP3 taking so damn long.

 

[Low Key]

Was it the fat joke I made about about Gabe all those years ago? I swear I didn't know!

No but that does mean you are one of the reasons for the delay in HL2: EP3 taking so damn long.

I thought it was because they needed to widen the doorways at Valve to accommodate Gabe, but after they finished, they needed to widen them again so he hasn't been to the office in a while. Hmmm...

 

[QuadFish]

Was it the fat joke I made about about Gabe all those years ago? I swear I didn't know!

No but that does mean you are one of the reasons for the delay in HL2: EP3 taking so damn long.

This is a discussion for another thread, but I'm pretty sure it's because they've never published a game with a 3 in the title, so they're delaying it out of pre-publication fear. It's their first time and they're gonna do it right, god dammit! I never really thought the 'Valve Can't Count to 3' axiom really captures that. It's more out of fear than retardation that it's taking so long if you ask me.

 

[SomeLameStuff]

As much as I regret how much I whined about Steam in that other thread a while back, I still don't really understand how deleting 7GB of Portal 2 data after it crashes while downloading the finally 70MB of the update is a logical solution.

*snip*

Who knows? Maybe my computer is just angry and broken. Did anyone else get this problem?

Steam does that sometimes for some reason, not sure why. But you think that's bad? Steam is currently redownloading Shogun 2 for me, which comes up to about 21 GB.

 

[oplinger]

NCF files. One of them was corrupted, or all of them, which makes steam believe you have none of the data you need. So it redownloads everything.

Ta da.

 

[QuadFish]

NCF files. One of them was corrupted, or all of them, which makes steam believe you have none of the data you need. So it redownloads everything.

Ta da.

I should probably stop posting on my own thread, but I just wanted to say thanks for that. I didn't know that, so I guess I'll have to do what I did with CoD4 and keep a permanent backup of the folder somewhere on my drive all the time. I wasn't actually expecting a useful answer to be honest. No offence intended towards fellow Escapists.

Still, it would have been more helpful if I had known that about 3 days ago...

 

[Shadowhawk77]

basically what happens when a update is done is that it has to convert old information into a zip file and then apply the new information, if theres a zipping or unzipping issue then the entire file will be unuseable if the updater crashes making the entire file corrupted and forcing a resinstall.
Steam also has this thing where it has to keep its file in a certain place in a certain order(from my uderstanding) and if one of these is messed up then it needs to trash and reinstall
i actually didnt have my steam account for the longest time because when they changed servers my updater glitched and changed the updaters IP address that it gets its information from and it was constantly stuck on the updater looking for incoming packets because it was recieving a packet saying that it was clear to continue

 

[thelastmccabe]

This makes steam sound like a huge pain. I'm glad I only have Portal.

 

[Vault101]

yeah my portal 2 data has had a weird habit of disapearing

 

[oplinger]

basically what happens when a update is done is that it has to convert old information into a zip file and then apply the new information, if theres a zipping or unzipping issue then the entire file will be unuseable if the updater crashes making the entire file corrupted and forcing a resinstall.
Steam also has this thing where it has to keep its file in a certain place in a certain order(from my uderstanding) and if one of these is messed up then it needs to trash and reinstall
i actually didnt have my steam account for the longest time because when they changed servers my updater glitched and changed the updaters IP address that it gets its information from and it was constantly stuck on the updater looking for incoming packets because it was recieving a packet saying that it was clear to continue

Used to be older source games on steam were 1 giant file, a GCF file, like TF2 and such. However newer games are an NCF file and the actual game files are under "common" (GCF=Game Cache File, NCF= Non-Cache File) GCF files are like zip files of all the game information. NCF files are just references to the actual game files.

So way back when you'd be right, it takes all the info and makes it a big zip file. However now, no. It updates the actual game files like any other patch for any other game. If the NCF files get corrupted during the update though, it'll be just like losing a GCF file.

So to anyone going to make a backup, ..you can just back up the NCF files. Then if there's a problem you can just paste them back in, and verify the game cache.

 

[Jazoni89]

Wow, you have a low connection.

I get 2/MB speeds from steam. I can download a whole game in half an hour.

 

[Something Amyss]

Steam constantly redownloads stuff for me. It's annoying.

If only they had customer service, I might have got an answer in the last two years.

 

[NinjaDuckie]

Every time I downloaded something yesterday, Steam crashed about half-way through, and then refused to actually play the game. I think it's a core file in my install being broken; I'll try reinstalling it and get back to you :|