Posts Tagged ‘Steam’

Throughout my ten plus years as a server moderator and multiplayer gamer, I’ve had the (dis)pleasure of meeting many other players. Likewise, I’ve seen a multitude of names, some being good, some not so hot. Being new to the internet culture, I started off with the typical initials and numbers for lack of anything better.

Over time, a profile name goes from being some letters and numbers to a true online identity with your personal reputation and ego attached. Your name is often the only thing other people will have to associate you with and first impressions on the internet work the same as in real life.

Suggestions when creating your permanent persona »

Valve has been busy working on many updates for Steam recently. Read the online gaming sites and you will find about a new one every month. Here are some that we have heard about so far:

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Some people find the sound that Steam plays when you receive an IM from a friend annoying. For other people, it’s just too loud. Here’s a quick “How to” on changing the wav file:

1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to “C:\Program Files\Steam\friends”
2. For backup purposes, rename the file “message.wav” to another name, something like “message_old.wav”, for instance.
3. Copy the wav file that you want to use into the directory. If you don’t have one already, you can use this.
4. Rename the new file to “message.wav”.
5. Right-click on “message.wav” and select “Properties”.
6. In the new window, select “Read-only” at the bottom and click”OK”.

It’s as easy as that.

We recently started playing Day of Defeat: Source. It’s an enjoyable game with one major problem: at the end of every round, a sound clip plays representing the winning team. This sound is blaringly loud. This is not a problem, you think to yourself, I’ll just go turn down the music. So you go into your options and turn down the music.  Next round ends and the music seems just as loud. You turn it all the way down and still the music deafens.

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Giant robots, hobos, and mimes, Oh my. Penny Arcade fans may recognize these three bad evilnesses from the well-known webcomic, but to any other crowd these words should never be brought together without some kind of jam-retardant… bee suit. Yeah.

I first heard about this game from the PA website, being a reader and all, and was moderately interested in how the two authors could move their medium into a game format. Being skeptical about these Developer Nubs though, I didn’t really give it a second thought. The game was eventually completed and made available on XBOX Live and as a downloadable in Steam.

On a whim I purchased the game, being burnt out on all the failures of (MMO)RPGs being offered recently. Players are able to create their own personalized avatar and fight alongside Tycho and Gabe through comic-style panels of Penny Arcade art. Speech bubbles are employed to deliver the dry humored Big Words that readers have become accustomed to from the strip. It was quite apparent that the game is a port from console but a simple user interface and controls makes it a non-issue. More »

I was looking at the Team Fortress 2 Achievement page and noticed something I thought was little weird. More people have gotten the “Milestone 2″ achievement (24 Medic Achievements) than the “With Friends Like these…” achievement (Play on a team of 8 made up of only players from your friends list.) with 4.4% and 4.3%, respectively. These just barely knocked out “Chief of Staff” (Accumulate 1 million heal points) at 4.0%. The least achieved one, excluding “Milestone 3″, is the “Family Practice” achievement (ÜberCharge ten of your Steam Community Friends). Sad lot, we gamers, eh?

Any avid Team Fortress 2 player has seen the intro video enough that it’s permanently burned into their memory.  Thankfully, it’s easy to remove.  This also gets rid of the repeating minimize/maximize issue that occurs for some users.

From the “My Games” tab, right click on ”Team Fortress 2″ and select “Properties”.  Click on the “Set launch options …” button.  In the field, enter “-novid” without the quotation marks.  Click “Ok” and you’re done.