Post your Steam questions here!

[Vuk]

I see tons of Steam threads popping up, so I thought that it would be good to have one thread in which to post all of them, that way our Steam experts would know just where to go to answer them. I, admittedly, and no Steam expert, I just thought it would be helpful to have one thread to post everything in, that way you can be assured that you will get the quickest answer possible, because this thread will be where all the helpful people with any clue about Steam will be.

[A Very Super Market]

Hmm... can this be stickied? I don't want to see another flood of Steam questions when the full game goes up.

[quadalpha]

Okay, I'll start. How do you go about disabling Steam on the demo? People say that improves performance. I tried running the app from it's own executable, but Steam pops up regardless.

[Wartz]

Okay, I'll start. How do you go about disabling Steam on the demo? People say that improves performance. I tried running the app from it's own executable, but Steam pops up regardless.

Shutting down steam does not improve performance. It is a 9mb (in ram) exe that does nothing except show you when your friends are playing (and you can turn that off too) while you are playing ETW.

Also, ETW cannot be run except from steam.

[pevergreen]

Steam will need to be on, but it does not have to be in "Online Mode"

[Sir Beane]

I'll sticky this in an attempt to curb the inevitable hailstorm of questions once the game goes live . Good idea Vuk .

[Polemists]

How do I turn off that really annoying pop up that pops up during intro cinemaitic about steam community group?

[pevergreen]

You can disable steam in game, but I can not find a way to simply turn off the "welcome" note.

[Ituralde]

Yeah, I got a Steam question regarding localization. I just read recently that when you purchase games online on Steam the downloadable version will only be in the language of the country you live in. I.E. if you live in Germany you will automatically download the German version, since it analyzes your IP adress. Now, since I move around in an english community and always feel that some things get lost through translation, I want my game to be english, hence I buy it overseas.

Now the question is what happens to my English game once it comes into contact with Steam. I'm guessing the first activation will be alright, but what about patches? I understood that Steam updated automatically. Will I only recieve the German patches then? Does anybody have any experiences with these kinds of things?

Cheers!

Ituralde

[Theory]

Set the game's language through games list > ETW > Properties > Language. Steam will take care of the rest.

Incidentally, Steam will give German users low-violence versions of most games even when there's no legal requirement to do so. There's no way around it short of manual patches.

[Relic]

Finally my Expertise have some use on the forum! :D
Add me on Steam: RelicKylias if you need quick help, just post here or even PM me.
I'm glad to help with everything and anything!

[Fisherking]

My steam question is regarding mods.

How are these going to work when steam monitors everything?

Does it mean the mods must go through steam as well?

I see a mods section on there…

[pevergreen]

Mods are done by the game file. All the steam launcher does is run the .exe

for the demo, just go to your steam folder, all steam games are in there

steam/steamapps/common/empire total war demo

The games are in the steamapps folder, just like a normal game.

[irishron2004]

For what problems I see players are having getting Medieval2 and Kingdoms mods to work on Steam, I don't believe Empires will be getting my money anytime too soon. Steam, being a third party, and can't figure out how to put a mod in its proper folder without frustrating its customers, will not be getting my money too soon. It gives them too much control over my game that I would pay my hard earned money for. BE a conspiracy theory, I don't trust them.

Question: any way to play this game legally without Steam loaded on my computer?

[A Very Super Market]

No.

[Belgolas]

For what problems I see players are having getting Medieval2 and Kingdoms mods to work on Steam, I don't believe Empires will be getting my money anytime too soon. Steam, being a third party, and can't figure out how to put a mod in its proper folder without frustrating its customers, will not be getting my money too soon. It gives them too much control over my game that I would pay my hard earned money for. BE a conspiracy theory, I don't trust them.

Question: any way to play this game legally without Steam loaded on my computer?

What are you talking about. Mods work fine for me for M2TW and RTW on steam.

Anyways since every single legal copy of ETW will be using steam mods should have no problem of working. I hope ETW does the same way to mod like HL2 does where it creates a separate .exe to launch each mod. If they are done like HL2 it will be far easier and mods will be able to auto patch the mod through steam. HL2 is pretty amazing for mods and there are far more mods for HL2 then Total War and they don't have any problems.

[irishron2004]

The real question in my mind is why would Sega /CA deal with a third party anyway? The power they are giveng to Steam is still too much for me.

Maybe it's just time to shut up and stick to Rome and M2. Simpler that way for me.

[A Very Super Market]

What exactly is this power that steam has over your games?

[pevergreen]

None really...is the multiplayer server and it acts as a verification to make sure its you. The game you buy is tied to your account.

[Polemists]

So for those of you who only follow this game Dawn of War 2 (A steam game) is having a litany of patch problems and just problems in general. I don't know if this has to do with steam or the game, but more then likely it's a mixture of the both.

For those who have slow loading times some soultions are posted in tw forum center and I dare not go over every single one for lack of time.

Yet one fundemental problem with steam seems to be that steam packs all the files and takes a long time to unpack them (leading to longer load times then normal games, even in offline mode).

Some people found this to be a soultion, some did not,

has anyone on this forum tried yet to unpack the files themselves as explained here?

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=228075

I'm all for trying things but I'm not that tech savy. Rumor is this will half your load times.

[pevergreen]

It does generally decrease loading times, but it may not. DoW 2 and its problems are specific to it. It uses games for windows live (same thing xbox uses) for multiplayer so its very slow. And the dev team are not patching well. I did the beta...

[gellis23]

Hi peeps long time lurker (Shogun) first time poster.

Does anyone know how to get around this rubbish? I have two machines, my lappy (which I am on) and my off-line, no AV, no firewall, games machine.

Are CA seriously telling me that if I pay £35 they expect me to go on line to register? Even the MS nazis don't insist on that.

I can do it but it will be so inconvenient it is unreal.

Regards

[quadalpha]

Hi peeps long time lurker (Shogun) first time poster.

Does anyone know how to get around this rubbish? I have two machines, my lappy (which I am on) and my off-line, no AV, no firewall, games machine.

Are CA seriously telling me that if I pay £35 they expect me to go on line to register? Even the MS nazis don't insist on that.

I can do it but it will be so inconvenient it is unreal.

Regards

Yes.

[Patricius]

I can't even get Steam to work at all. Ideas?

[A Very Super Market]

No, you can't get around using steam without breaking the law. To Gellis

Whats wrong with your steam?

[gellis23]

Like I said. I have two machines.

My lappy is like a fortress, it's got the lot because it is an internet facing machine.

My games machine is totally unprotected. I want greasy speed off it, no problems, no crashes.

I will have to install AV and a firewall, I will have to install a piece of software I neither want nor need (eg Steam). I will register and then take my machine off line (remove AV and FW). I will get nagged by Steam every 5 minutes about updates.

The TW campaign on line will not be very big. I think this is a bad move. It is hacking of fans.

My lappy will just about play the demo, I will have to think about the full game.

Regards

[A Very Super Market]

Steam won't nag you if there are no updates, but if don't want it to update at all, just set it to offline mode first. Then you can get rid of AV and FW, and just play as usual.

[pevergreen]

What you can do is install etw on the laptop, then copy the steam folder over.

Put steam in offline mode and bam!

It won't patch, but you can simply patch on the laptop then re copy over. It is legal, and it should work, no probs.

[quadalpha]

I'm having a problem where my password gets me into the Steam application but not the Steam webpage. Anyone else run into this?

[Babblearossa]

Trying to try the demo, I got steam installer

SteamInstall.msi

click that go through dialogue boxes and installs something then get to box

"Steam has been successfully installed. Click the Finish button to exit this installation."
"Steam will now continue installation."

click Finish and get small popup window

Error
Steam.exe (main exception): Unable to load library Steam.dll

the only option given is the [ OK ] button, and it exits.
I've tried it thrice with one reboot and still it's stuck.

-----------

Any help? This is the first time I've ever tried steam, I don't usually have any trouble installing
things, and haven't run into anyhing this unhelpful in a long long time. They do get bonus points
for the unclarity of telling me it's both finished installation and will continue to install, maybe that's
a clue as to what went wrong?