The All New Gabriel Newell's Digital Wonder Emporium, aka, The Steam Update Thread

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Looks like Steam has released a new Client today for open beta.

More than a new UI, it's a complete retooling of the functions they believe will better "enrich" our gaming experience.

I'll be first to admit it DOES look better. And the fact they've abandoned IE for a WebKit browser has tears running down my face.

Anyone with an installed client can do so now. Or so it says every other line.

I'm still at the office so I'll have to wait a couple of hours more before I can give it a try, but feel free to post your impressions to make me turn green with envy!!

--------EDIT---------

Been away from the computer all day and just saw the other post that started as a bug report.

Feel free to close either thread.

Ooooooooh, fancy. AND they dropped IE? Awesome, I'll have to try this out.

Well, I checked it out, but the fonts are all screwy for me. Lots of clipping. I'm not in love with the old UI or anything, but I'm not sure the new one is all that much of an improvement.... it's shinier, but it's got a crapload of irrelevant detail I'm not interested in, and actually launching the game requires hitting a smaller target than it did with the original UI.

Above all other things, Steam is a launcher for games, and that function needs to be absolutely central to the layout and function of the program. I'm worried they're letting THEIR laser focus on Steam as a platform interfere with OUR focus on the actual games.

I switched back after about three minutes.

I'm liking a lot of this so far, at first glance.
Being able to get a quick description and what friends own it on scroll over, so much more convenient. Searching through the store seems much easier and smoother as well.

I just switched to it. It's pretty slick. I like the way all the info about a game is displayed when you click on it, including the much needed "friends who have this game" section.

Malor wrote:

actually launching the game requires hitting a smaller target than it did with the original UI.

In the library>grid view, you can double-click the image anywhere, you don't need to hit play.

In the library>magnifying glass view, you double-click the game name in the list on the left, or you hit the play button on the right.

In the library>list view, you double click anywhere in the highlighted line.

All of those give a larger click-to-launch area than the old Steam UI.

In general, I'm liking this. Easier to navigate and gives more information.

Seeing things like trailers and gameplay videos is much better now too it seems. Reminds me sort of of Direct2Drive.

Also, FINALLY, a separate download tab!

I like the new UI a lot but I want the minimalist games display back. That was by far my most commonly used view in the old UI and I loved it because I could just launch anything Steam from there instead of needing to create icons for them. Other than that, I'm really liking it and they're actively soliciting feedback in their forums so I made my request there. It's about time this got a visual makeover.

Yeah, the games tab is a little over the top and just annoying to look at.
The web browser in the overlay doesn't seem different at all either.

Now I have to learn where everything is again...

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:

Ooooooooh, fancy. AND they dropped IE? Awesome, I'll have to try this out.

Sold, and in.

edit: damn, the new Games library is sweet.

I like it a lot but there's one thing that bugs me. I can't have my installed games on top and not installed on the bottom.

The new client didn't work for me initially, but they now released another update, which fixed the problem. Still getting used to where and how the content is being managed now, but am liking the design so far overall.

mrwynd wrote:

I like it a lot but there's one thing that bugs me. I can't have my installed games on top and not installed on the bottom.

Well, you can't have the games that are not installed on the bottom - but the sort option 'installed' will list all the game you have on your machine. EDIT: See post above.

mrwynd wrote:

I like it a lot but there's one thing that bugs me. I can't have my installed games on top and not installed on the bottom.

True, you can't, but you can filter the list to show Installed only, which I prefer over showing them all.

What I'd like even better is if they had quicklinks up top to Installed, Not Installed, Favorites, and All. Like when you click on the big "Library" link you get 4 sub-categories, I'd like them to do the same under the "Games" sub-cat, add another set of links as a sub-cat below that one.

The fact that games sort by name instead of by "status" (pushing all non-Steam game shortcuts to the bottom) is a big fat "win".

Or, more precisely, "how it should have been in the first place". (Yes, you could click to sort by name, but next time you fired up the client, it was back to pushing shortcuts to the bottom)

Also, user-definable categories for your library is cool.

Yeah, I'm liking the games tab a bit more now that I've played with it a bit.

The little View...area on the right lets you switch to a List, which you can then sort.

Does this remind anyone of the Zune 4.0 software? In a good way?

Does steam now track time played for non-Steam games?

The new transparent notification popups look pretty bad. The font is badly aliased and hard to read.

Also, they changed the damn game invite sound!

Change bad, old people fear change!

It started re downloading games I already had working, skipping this one for now.

I'm a little weirded out by it, but I think once I get used to where things are I'll like it better. It's definitely prettier.

I'll let them work the kinks out first. But it sounds cool.

It has a clock when you hit shift tab in a game. I'm never switching back.

Huh. I switched to the beta, and now I have to re-download CoH:OP? Weird.

EDIT - Apparently there are a quite a few games that suddenly need re-downloading. I'm going back and let this "beta" bake for a while longer.

EDIT 2 - and, going back, I see the games are still FUBAR'd. Excellent. Serves me right I guess.

Looks pretty. Also I now know that I've put as many hours into L4D2 as I have the original. A combined 240 hours spent with you knuckleheads...

Here's something cool - if you go to the details for a game like L4D2, it will show you a list of all your friends who have played in the last 2 weeks, and then below that, your friends who have played it ever (Ie, your friends who own it). This should seriously help cut down on spam invites to people who don't play the game anymore or at all.

The list view of the library (games) tab is quite interesting. I like how you can turn off each column, so those that don't want to see the game icons, metascore, developer, last played info, etc. can just turn it off. This will most definitely be my default view for Steam.

*Legion* wrote:

Also, user-definable categories for your library is cool.

That's all I needed to hear. Upgrading now!

I switched to the beta UI and now can't log in at all. F*ckers.

I like the new in-game overlay, it's a nice improvement.

Just had time to glance wuickly at this before work and did a happy dance at the loss of IE! Looking forward to messing with the library organisation features when I get home now. Being anble to custom sort and categorise things is soemthing they should have realised would appeal to amny gamers a long time ago.

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