Surely Steam isn't this lame?

[nath]

Feel free to move this to the correct forum if anyone takes a huge amount of offense.

I've just installed steam for the first time while pondering buying one of the HL packs. I've also installed Half-Life (1) and I'm trying to get steam to acknowledge its existence.. I've registered the cd key with steam so it knows I own a decent copy but it refuses to let me point it to the already installed version so that I can download the updates instead of the full ruddy game!

Also, when it wants to install stuff, it refuses to allow me to choose where - just says "4087mbs free", which happens to be how much space I've got on my C drive, which is where I installed Steam. Is the software really so crap that I have to uninstall it and reinstall it on D where I have 70gbs?


A rather furstrated nath.

 

[Will]

Yes nath, it really is that lame.

 

[Ch3tan]

No, you can reinstall it on D, copy across the directories from C and tell it to re-download your games. It will detect what games you already have cached and only download any updates etc.

 

[nath]

Right, so if it's installed on D then it'll detect D:\Half-Life?

 

[Ch3tan]

When you first install Steam and add games it will look for already installed games. It will convert them over to Steam, but it may need to download a lot or patches. If you already have some HL data or other games within your current Steam directory, just copy these over to your D:\ install of Steam.

Now you will still have to get anything you didnt get last time, but everything you have already downloaded will still be there.

 

[nath]

I didn't download anything though - I just installed from the CD, but it seems to refuse to acknowledge the existence of that.

 

[throdgrain]

Nath its really easy mate. People just seem to stop when steam is involved, and immediately scream "bloody steam", even when its fairly easy.
Go to browse games, and click on "register a game I already own". Follow it from there.
Thats what I did with cs:z.
If it dont work feel free to gis a shout in #xatrix though m8.

 

[nath]

Managed to get it sorted, had to install steam on D drive which strikes me as a little lame, but never mind.

Started playing CS (original) it's pretty good now

 

[Tom]

Get HL2:silver and be prepared to be blown away by cs:s

 

[nath]

I don't like the idea of having to redownload Half-Life 2 every time I format/uninstall it. I'd rather wait for the collectors edition release (whenever that may be) and buy that.

 

[babs]

Just burn the cache files to cd and copy them back to steam folder whenever you reformat

 

[nath]

That really works as easy as all that?

 

[SawTooTH]

how often do you reformat? You shouldnt have to do it that often if you have XP.

 

[Ch3tan]

That really works as easy as all that?

Like I've been saying!!

 

[MrHorus]

Yes, it really does work as easy as that.

Steam comes from Valve, not Microsoft.

Although when you think in terms on release dates and delays...

 

[]SK[]

All you need are the cache files(.gcf). I reinstalled last weekend.