Wow Steam may very well be the dumbest application related to pc gaming ever....

[shadow skill]

I just got my copy of the Orange Box about an hour ago and began installing everything save TF2. (I don't care about multiplayer.) That is when I noticed something was wrong, I did not see the usual install location prompt. I think "No worries Steam is probably just uncompressing the game data before the actual install. I'll see the prompt soon." How wrong was I, as the install crept forward it dawned on me that I had not missed a prompt, nor was there going to be any prompt! I thought "Maybe there is something I am missing here in Steam's options." Again I was very wrong after searching around on Google I found others that had simillar issues and found that all games install underneath the Steam root directory. The big question is WHY?

Did they forget that people in real life have more than one hard drive, not to mention multiple partitions, their own prefered directory naming conventions? What makes it so hard for steam to store info related to the location of the game data in a flat file somewhere in the steam directory, or better yet use the registry or environment variables? I had to uninstall steam from my C partition where I like to keep all programs that are not games and reinstall it into my gaming partition..... My first real experience with Steam has shown me that this program is a steaming pile of horse shit. I know where I want my game data to be installed damn it, give me back my PC!

Ps. If there is a way to get things to behave like how I want without having to install steam to the partition where I want my games to go I am all ears.

 

[SatansBestBuddy]

It's not that big a deal; like you said, install in the game partition and then forget it even exsists.

I never use Steam at all, expect for when I actually play my games that require it to be used, and I don't think it's really nessacary to have it installed somewhere other than where the games you need it for are.

 

[LordOmnit]

Wait, wait, wait... What was your problem with it? Was it the install location thing you mentioned once before you went on a huge rant about... something... or about Steam installing?

 

[Geoffrey42]

I'd be curious to know, aside from some severe form of OCD, or just being ornery, why it is so important that your not-game "applications" be on a different partition from your "game" applications? Some performance boost I'm not aware of?

Also, I hate the Windows registry, and that you prefer it to the entirely self-contained Steam game files, boggles my mind.

While I somewhat comprehend your frustration at a lack of control, as SatansBestBuddy points out, the solution would be fairly easy, if you just got over your hissy fit first.

 

[shadow skill]

Here is the problem I have, the install doesn't tell you that the games end up where they do. I had to find that out on my own, then go back and reinstall the application itself. The second problem is that I like to keep my work stuff seperated from my entertainmnet items. On my desktop for example I have three internal drives, so I typically install my games to a drive other than the one that contains my operating systems and other work. I do this because the games tend to be very large and I find that it gets in the way of other things that don't have anything to do with games if I keep them on the same drive/partion. (Multiple versions of Visual Studio, and SQL server and other work related programs will eat space quickly) It also becomes a pain in the ass when one starts talking about back ups since drive images will end up getting huge because of game data if they are intermingled with the main stuff.

By moving game data to slave drives I can keep my backups very small because other than the save games and possibly the configuration files everything else can go to hell if there is a problem. Hell I recently had my laptop hard drive spew out impending doom warnings so I had to run out and buy another drive and clone it before it decided to die on me.

While the registry implementation that Microsoft uses sucks ass the concept itself is actually quite sound. I personally would prefer that environment variables were used more often though in this case either metod would have been effective. The use of the registry and/or environment variables allows for flexibility on the part of the programs and for the end user who really is not going to be concerned with registry GUIDS. (Yes they suck because when you do need to find something you prety much cant.)

If an application used the registry or environment variables (correctly I could quickly change the install location for the application and point it to the relevant files in seconds. If I am really lucky and the programmer was smart I can change my whole partitioning scheme and still have said application function flawlessly without even having to go through another installation process.

 

[DannyboyO1]

Also, if you're like me, and you've installed a second hard drive mostly for large installs like games, but you had steam on your primary first... tough?

 

[PurpleRain]

I never would have that problem on a console. Not trying to sound like a fuck-wit console fanboy that everyone has come to hate, but I can't understand why PC users think they're the greatest cause they can fork out enouth $$$ for a super-over-the-top PC and then complain about problems like this and still think they're superiour to consoletards. (not pointing my fingure at anyone in general, just saying is all)

 

[shadow skill]

I never would have that problem on a console. Not trying to sound like a fuck-wit console fanboy that everyone has come to hate, but I can't understand why PC users think they're the greatest cause they can fork out enouth $$$ for a super-over-the-top PC and then complain about problems like this and still think they're superiour to consoletards. (not pointing my fingure at anyone in general, just saying is all)

I agree with you man, I am not even all that big into pc games I have three pc games really. This whole situation just pissed me off because I had to sit down and make sure I wasn't just being a moron and missing a prompt or a checkbox somewhere. I wouldn't have been as mad if the install had just said in big text that all games would install under steam's root directory since it is counter intuitive after more than a decade of there being a prompt during the install process. I clearly missed this during the initial install process. It would have been nice to be able to just move the game data through steam's interface or set a default directory and reinstall through steam. I mean there wasn't really a way I could find to fix my own cock up through the program short of uninstall reinstall, reinstall....

 

[Geoffrey42]

It would seem, from what you describe, like it wouldn't hurt anything at all to put Steam in the game partition. I can commiserate with you that Steam did not notify you beforehand of the impact of your install location, but I don't know that it really earned this thread for that oversight.

@DannyboyO1: I sincerely hope that for performance-sake, you aren't putting your game installs on a separate, larger, slower drive. During gameplay, it would be best if the game data was on your fastest drive, not your storage/auxiliary drive.

@PurpleRain: Blame it on the general spoiling PC users receive from flexibility and control over every setting, that when some software like Steam decides that it only wants to do things one way, hissy fits get thrown. When one gets accustomed to silk sheets, cotton sheets are really harsh.

 

[shadow skill]

It would seem, from what you describe, like it wouldn't hurt anything at all to put Steam in the game partition. I can commiserate with you that Steam did not notify you beforehand of the impact of your install location, but I don't know that it really earned this thread for that oversight.

@DannyboyO1: I sincerely hope that for performance-sake, you aren't putting your game installs on a separate, larger, slower drive. During gameplay, it would be best if the game data was on your fastest drive, not your storage/auxiliary drive.

@PurpleRain: Blame it on the general spoiling PC users receive from flexibility and control over every setting, that when some software like Steam decides that it only wants to do things one way, hissy fits get thrown. When one gets accustomed to silk sheets, cotton sheets are really harsh.

You know they do make high capacity HDDs that spin at 7200rpm....

It doesn't hurt to have your Documents and Settings folder on the same drive/partition as your operating system....Until the OS goes south for one reason or another. (Changing this is a bit of a ***** in windows since you pretty much need to change every registry reference to the folder since the keys inside the registry often contain hard coded path data rather than making use of the appdata environment variable which would take four or five seconds to change....I think the last time I did the change on a fresh install it took maybe an hour to finish all of the keys.)Then when your OS dies on you, you may very well be fucked. (I speak from experience man it's not fun to realize that you cant get into your machine through any sane means to copy data [using CLI to copy alot of stuff just isnt fun.] to a safe place before you prepare the all powerfull format cannon.)

 

[DannyboyO1]

I get the same speed on both drives, actually. I just like to know where to find the files when I have to make choices about whether I'm leaving a season of a TV show on a drive, or if it's time to remove guild wars with expansions to make room for Bioshock.

 

[Geoffrey42]

You know they do make high capacity HDDs that spin at 7200rpm....

It took me some effort, but I managed to find something that somewhat supports my point. Yes, I AM aware that they make high capacity HDDs that spin at 7200rpm.... but I'm not entirely sure why you assume that means that a 1TB drive at 7200rpm will perform as well as a 100GB drive at 7200rpm. Note the contents of the [a href=http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/suite_v4.php?typeID=10&testbedID=4&osID=6&raidconfigID=1&numDrives=1&devID_0=304&devID_1=314&devID_2=295&devCnt=3]link[/a]. Hopefully the contents hold through the linking. The gist is that when I finally managed to find a set of drives in the same series, with pretty much the same everything except capacity, the smaller drive (despite the same rpm) has faster Random Seek Times, and faster Minimum and Maximum transfer rates. RPM may be king in differentiating a 15k drive from a 7200 drive, but within the 7200 kingdom, all is not made equal.

In the spirit of full disclosure though, in that link, you might also see that in the Gaming test suite they used, the larger of the 3 drives had higher IO/sec than the smaller drives. My intuition says transfer rate would be more important in games, but the experts seem to indicate otherwise. I would also note that the smaller drives scored better in Multi-User applications. I would be curious to know if a multi-core/thread processor accesses a hard drive more like a single user, or like a multi-user scenario. EDIT: To proffer an answer to my question after thinking some more, since most multi-core processors these days all share L3 cache, they probably are indistinguishable from a single-core processor to the rest of the memory heirarchy (RAM, HDD, etc). So, probably more like a single-user scenario. /EDIT

Per Documents and Settings, I despise the XP setup for storing them, especially in terms of my computer having some 6 odd different user folders, despite it only ever having been a single user machine. Add to that the somewhat arbitrary method used by some programs to decide WHICH of those folders they will use for my documents and/or settings, and it makes a really nice clusterf***. A standard Windows setting for placing them on a different physical drive or partition would've been nice. To reiterate, I agree that having control over where programs put things is a good thing, and desirable for a variety of reasons, but Steam is not the worst offender I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with, and in fact, poses very little issue to the scheme that you're trying to maintain. If you want to get unnecessary items off your backed-up drives, then it would make sense, possibly, to move the Steam install out of there as well, as its not exactly mission-critical stuff.

As far as egregious install package settings, have you never had an installer that had C:\... hardcoded for its install path?

 

[Budgy]

I think you are getting at something much larger; namely, steam, acts in a way akin to it's valve-counterpart's "combine." It stands as a central for all games alike the citadel, scraping it's way slowly through the city until it has control over the entire pc gaming industry. after enough time, it will be the sole provider of video game ingenuity. They will have enough resources and manpower to produce the top games at the fastest rate. they will become a monopoly in the industry, as the combine hopes to have complete contol of earth and its inhabitants.

The reason your post interested me enough to respond is because in addressing their control over the installation of their game, shows their true motives of gaining control. they want everything under one folder, named steam. Games with installation options have been produced from the very beginning of pc gaming. Ironically, half-life was one of those first games to have the option of directory installation.

Through the steam platform's "portal" they will have every pc game available. the term "pc games" will change into "steam games." As valve points out, the only way to stop the ever-growing is with something that has ever more ingenuity and strength;

A Gordon Freeman.

 

[shadow skill]

As far as egregious install package settings, have you never had an installer that had C:\... hardcoded for its install path?

I have that is why I said pc gaming in the title rather than in computinng in general. The saddest thing about that C:\ bs is that there would be no problem if the programmer just deleted the first two characters and left the \ since the OS understands that to refer to the root drive which could be given almost any letter. But That problem is becoming less and less frequent in part thanks to Vista I suspect since they have started to guide the system setup into something that approaches a proper setup.

Standardizing environment variables is probably the simplest solution in the long run since users have direct control over their values. Once programmers stop bothering to hard code stuff much of the problem disappears and we get to stop headdesking when things go wrong.

Budgy:You made me laugh, thanks.

As much as I hate steam its certainly not all bad it did give me a way to avoid having an assload of icons on my screen which is nice. I think a program like steam would be a great way to provide pc gamers with custom audio tracks without it being such a dirty hack, not to mention a unified control settings mechanism so you don't have to keep changing it to the settings you like for every single game. Save for some very minor adjustments based on the game mechanics available to you.

 

[Anniko]

Just wait until Steam decides you no longer own the games for one reason or another (See the people buying a completely legitimate version of The Orange Box from another country for less and then being locked out of their purchase and subsequently being unable to buy those games on their account.)

It seems that they put all their head coders on the games and then put the interns on making the Steam service and giving them a book of "C For Dummies".

As much as I hate steam its certainly not all bad it did give me a way to avoid having an assload of icons on my screen which is nice. I think a program like steam would be a great way to provide pc gamers with custom audio tracks without it being such a dirty hack, not to mention a unified control settings mechanism so you don't have to keep changing it to the settings you like for every single game. Save for some very minor adjustments based on the game mechanics available to you.

I use BBLean, basically Black Box interface for windows, I've got all the games I play in a seperate menu so it's really easy to just start em up with that rather than having bundles of icons. I also no longer have/need desktop icons.

 

[neems]

I don't know if it helps any, but I believe you can simply move your entire steam folder, games and all, and it will continue to function perfectly (you'll have to redo any shortcuts of course). Steam will also work across operating systems eg if you install it in xp it will work in a vista install on the same machine.

I've had steam since before I had broadband, which must be going on some years by now, and yes it has it's issues but it really does grow on you.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

I've never really considered it a problem but then I've been on Steam from the very beginning. Considering many of the games share files I've never thought that plopped them all together was much of a problem and in fact a bit of a space saver. Instead of having four copies of the same base files they all pull from the same ones in a single location.

Ultimately, however, your OCD failed you because I can't think of a single reason why Steam shouldn't be on a gaming partition as it is a gaming program.

 

[Geoffrey42]

I use BBLean, basically Black Box interface for windows, I've got all the games I play in a seperate menu so it's really easy to just start em up with that rather than having bundles of icons. I also no longer have/need desktop icons.

I also run BBLean on my personal computers, and I love it. I used to meticulously clean my desktop of any and all icons, but now that I don't have a desktop anymore, I don't worry about it! I see them every once in a while when I'm navigating the Desktop through Explorer, but it's really nice.

Are you still running the standard Explorer for File Browsing, or have you replaced that as well?

 

[Anniko]

I also run BBLean on my personal computers, and I love it. I used to meticulously clean my desktop of any and all icons, but now that I don't have a desktop anymore, I don't worry about it! I see them every once in a while when I'm navigating the Desktop through Explorer, but it's really nice.

Are you still running the standard Explorer for File Browsing, or have you replaced that as well?

Yeah, still running standard explorer, didnt really think to replace it though. Any suggestions?

 

[Virgil]

Did they forget that people in real life have more than one hard drive, not to mention multiple partitions, their own preferred directory naming conventions?

No, they didn't forget - they just don't care. The amount of time they'd have to spend building the functionality, interfaces, and testing user-defined installation locations, not to mention the inevitable support calls, is simply not worth the trouble these days. I think you'd find that very few people actually change, or even care, where their programs are stored.

One of the biggest benefits of Steam is removing all these decisions from the user and providing a 'one-click install' process, including the download. It's a remarkable step in making PC gaming more friendly to normal computer users, and by far the best system for handling digital distribution currently deployed.