Steam Menz: Is the Half Life 2 pre-load going for you yet?

[warcrow]

Gabe said (alot of things ) tha the HL2 pre-load is suppose to start tonight. I'm not a steam user, so I cannot verify this. Anyone?

What about the CS:Source pre-load?

 

[gururu]

what is a preload? does that mean they get the whole game or just an unuseable part of it?

 

[warcrow]

The preload will load up parts of the game that are not going to change (textures, models) early so that on release day, they can already have 1/2 of the game. download 2-3GB can suck, especially when 100,000 people are doing it. This is what they've done with the Couterstrike: Source beta that out right now.

 

[rainypickles]

Originally posted by: warcrow
The preload will load up parts of the game that are not going to change (textures, models) early so that on release day, they can already have 1/2 of the game. download 2-3GB can suck, especially when 100,000 people are doing it. This is what they've done with the Couterstrike: Source beta that out right now.

i dont use steam and all i've ever heard of it is that it is a steaming pile. so question: why would you need to pre-load hl2? would the textures/models/etc come on the cd? why dl it at all?

i dont understand the concept. that and i hate hl and cs.

 

[gururu]

Originally posted by: rainypickles

Originally posted by: warcrow
The preload will load up parts of the game that are not going to change (textures, models) early so that on release day, they can already have 1/2 of the game. download 2-3GB can suck, especially when 100,000 people are doing it. This is what they've done with the Couterstrike: Source beta that out right now.

i dont use steam and all i've ever heard of it is that it is a steaming pile. so question: why would you need to pre-load hl2? would the textures/models/etc come on the cd? why dl it at all?

i dont understand the concept. that and i hate hl and cs.

downloading is environmentally safe and it saves companies a ton in production expenditures. besides, you don't need a cd to play ~))~

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: rainypickles

Originally posted by: warcrow
The preload will load up parts of the game that are not going to change (textures, models) early so that on release day, they can already have 1/2 of the game. download 2-3GB can suck, especially when 100,000 people are doing it. This is what they've done with the Couterstrike: Source beta that out right now.

i dont use steam and all i've ever heard of it is that it is a steaming pile. so question: why would you need to pre-load hl2? would the textures/models/etc come on the cd? why dl it at all?

i dont understand the concept. that and i hate hl and cs.

What is steam? (bottom of page)

Pre-load ad from Valve

Again, like I explained before. Pre-loading cuts down on the time and resources needed to download the game on release. If you DL the game, you don't need to purchase the CD. Make sense?

 

[rainypickles]

Originally posted by: warcrow
Again, like I explained before. Pre-loading cuts down on the time and resources needed to download the game on release. If you DL the game, you don't need to purchase the CD. Make sense?

the first part didnt make sense because i didnt know you could play without buying the cd. i thought you HAD to go buy the hl2 cd to play anyway; so why dl it when it'll be on your cd?

so for hl2, you pay valve (or whoever) directly and just dl the game? doesn't this make it a PITA to do reinstalls? or does steam do away with reinstalls?

the steam page wasnt that informative.

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: rainypickles

Originally posted by: warcrow
Again, like I explained before. Pre-loading cuts down on the time and resources needed to download the game on release. If you DL the game, you don't need to purchase the CD. Make sense?

the first part didnt make sense because i didnt know you could play without buying the cd. i thought you HAD to go buy the hl2 cd to play anyway; so why dl it when it'll be on your cd?

so for hl2, you pay valve (or whoever) directly and just dl the game? doesn't this make it a PITA to do reinstalls? or does steam do away with reinstalls?

the steam page wasnt that informative.

I dont use steam, but from what I can tell, if you reformat, get a new system, ect, you can just DL it again. Personally, I preffer having a hardcopy, but thats just me. But props to Valve for attempting to cut out the publisher completely

 

[CrystalBay]

Does it cost less to DL than to buy retail ?

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: CrystalBay
Does it cost less to DL than to buy retail ?

I dont know.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: warcrow

Originally posted by: CrystalBay
Does it cost less to DL than to buy retail ?

I dont know.

I definitely should, some of the money they save should be passed on to their customers.
I don't think I'll ever touch Steam again, so I'm probably going to just buy the box anyway.

That is if I can get over my rage against Valve for cursing us with Steam

 

[Slogun]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: warcrow

Originally posted by: CrystalBay
Does it cost less to DL than to buy retail ?

I dont know.

I definitely should, some of the money they save should be passed on to their customers.
I don't think I'll ever touch Steam again, so I'm probably going to just buy the box anyway.

That is if I can get over my rage against Valve for cursing us with Steam

I pretty much feel the same way about steam. You're going to need to use it again though if you ever want to play HL2 multiplayer as it will undoubtedly be the only way to do so.

 

[Sunner]

I know, that's actually a good reason to hope HalfLife2 will suck.
If it's multiplayer is great, I might have to endure the horror that is Steam once again

 

[skace]

The preload files are stored in your Steam directory. So hypothetically, you could just backup that directory full of images incase you ever needed to reformat. So no, it is not painstaking to buy it through Steam. And no, Steam is not a steaming pile despite what you may have heard. It started out pretty slowly due to a lot of issues but it is now running nicely. I'd still like to see them speed up the front-end application, but I'm sure they'll work that out in due time. CS:S was preloaded for me, but I didn't check for any HL2 files yet.