Originally Posted by Flowette I HAVE A DEAL I HAVE A DEAL STOP PRESS I ACTUALLY HAVE A DEAL. FTL: Faster Than Light is 40% off ($5.99) at FTLgame.com and GoG.com. If you buy direct from the site you get a Steam code for it. I've posted my thoughts on FTL before but I like it for the exact reasons some people hate it. One of my favourite games this year.

A deal?! You can't post deals in this forum! I'm PMing a mod.


In other news, I have some lame giveaways today. . .


http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/m...-warzone-earth

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/RWsuV/bittrip-runner

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/emn2m/greed-corp

Too lazy to make the graphical links but these games shouldn't be a mystery to anyone.

Originally Posted by Flowette I HAVE A DEAL I HAVE A DEAL STOP PRESS I ACTUALLY HAVE A DEAL. FTL: Faster Than Light is 40% off ($5.99) at FTLgame.com and GoG.com. If you buy direct from the site you get a Steam code for it. I've posted my thoughts on FTL before but I like it for the exact reasons some people hate it. One of my favourite games this year.

Thanks! I've been waiting for a deal on FTL and I'm happy to buy it direct from the developer now even if it does get a bit cheaper in a future sale.

Originally Posted by radioactivez0r Re: D3, you can't really discount user reviews because they mention the always-on. Like it or not (and I certainly didn't), it's part of the game and is basically cited as a feature. Sure, it got review bombed by halfwits, but it's a legitimate aspect of the experience to consider.

It's the review bombarding and its effect on the score I have a problem with.

I agree that it's a part of the game and therefore worth discussing in reviews however I feel the score is artificially brought down much lower than it should be because people nerd raging over the always online portion are 100x more likely to post a review about it than someone who had no problems with it. Also 0 stars is too extreme.

A good bit of those people posting those scathing reviews didn't even play the game the just used it as a platform to vent their frustration and protest that sort of drm that they are ideologically opposed to.

Now I realize the always online requirement actually caused some people to have issues playing the game and that's different but as soon as that requirement was announced people were RAGING about it in multiple places on the net before the game even came out. I'm sure they couldn't wait to go post angry reviews.

Originally Posted by Flowette Today is Help A CAG Day - Hard Drive Special! I'm a hardware noob. I need a new HD, my existing one is 500gb and full with music and Steam. It's the only HD I have. I need another, obviously. I'd like the flexibility of installing games and just leaving them there for future use, at present I'm taking the Mooby approach of deleting stuff I won't play for a while. Not ideal. So, in short, what's all this colour nonsense all about (green/blue/black)? Are there any brands to aim for or avoid? Any key factors to consider? Budget is around £60.

This is what I bought for my new build: WD Blue 1TB.

It arrives today, so I can't give any thoughts yet, but the reviews I read were solid. Of course I'm probably an idiot and "doing it wrong" in some people's eyes.

Originally Posted by Flowette Today is Help A CAG Day - Hard Drive Special! I'm a hardware noob. I need a new HD, my existing one is 500gb and full with music and Steam. It's the only HD I have. I need another, obviously. I'd like the flexibility of installing games and just leaving them there for future use, at present I'm taking the Mooby approach of deleting stuff I won't play for a while. Not ideal. So, in short, what's all this colour nonsense all about (green/blue/black)? Are there any brands to aim for or avoid? Any key factors to consider? Budget is around £60.

Avoid the WD Green -- It's an HDD with special power settings (that you can disable, I guess), and all other kkinds of wonkery to make it "green" (as in, eco-friendly green). the one I had failed -just- outside the warranty.

I hear the Blues and teh Blacks are good. The Blacks are high-performance drives, iirc -- you probably don't really need that for gaming. The blues are basic, normal HDDs if I remember right. I don't know if the performance between the blues and blacks are worth anything.

Originally Posted by plutoknight Avoid the WD Green -- It's an HDD with special power settings (that you can disable, I guess), and all other kkinds of wonkery to make it "green" (as in, eco-friendly green). the one I had failed -just- outside the warranty. I hear the Blues and teh Blacks are good. The Blacks are high-performance drives, iirc -- you probably don't really need that for gaming. The blues are basic, normal HDDs if I remember right. I don't know if the performance between the blues and blacks are worth anything.

Thanks V muchly! I was considering Green but didn't really know why other than it "looked better". I know I know, marketing to the uninformed etc.

Originally Posted by Flowette So, in short, what's all this colour nonsense all about (green/blue/black)? Are there any brands to aim for or avoid? Any key factors to consider? Budget is around £60.

WD Green = energy savings (econo drive)
WD Blue = fairly standard drive
WD Black = the "performance model"
WD REx = enterprise drive (24/7 usage)

I doubt you'd see a noticeable/perceivable difference between blue and black (I've had all three). It's nothing like SSD/HDD proportions, no where close. I used to prefer Hitachi drives, but they were recently acquired by WD, so I'm uncertain about any new tech. WD standard drives are currently not on my good list; due to personal experiences (and neither is Seagate). I am however using their RE drives with great success (RE3 1TB for games only). I've probably had 30 or so HDD failures of various sorts and manufacturers over the years, yet 0 (zero) REx failures, so take that for whatever it means.

The green drives essentially power down and stop spinning to save power when not in use. Then, when needed, spin back up. This causes more wear and tear than the standard drive, which causes a higher failure rate.

Originally Posted by aronater Speaking of hard drive space, I've got a question. I would like to uninstall some of the steam games I've completed, however if I decide I want to reinstall them I don't want to have to start over from the beginning. Is there any way to delete/uninstall a game from steam (by using the "delete local content" option), yet keep all the save and profile data so that if I reinstall the game I can pick up where I left off?

Most games store the save state in your Documents folder for instance Legend of Grimrock stores it in Documents/Almost Human/Legend of Grimrock/. As far as I know it should leave those save states after you delete local content. Other save states get stored in the games steam directory, not to sure about those. If I was removing a game I really cared about the save state for I'd find it and back it up to another source just to be safe anyway. If you can't find a specific save state a quick google search will usually do the job.

Originally Posted by hollowfreak Most games store the save state in your Documents folder for instance Legend of Grimrock stores it in Documents/Almost Human/Legend of Grimrock/. As far as I know it should leave those save states after you delete local content. Other save states get stored in the games steam directory, not to sure about those. If I was removing a game I really cared about the save state for I'd find it and back it up to another source just to be safe anyway. If you can't find a specific save state a quick google search will usually do the job.

Hmm... wouldn't it be great if Valve added a feature to Steam, giving the option to uninstall a game, yet keep the save data, no matter the storage location . Anyways thanks for the info. Looks like I'll have to back up my saves just to make sure I don't lose them.

Originally Posted by aronater Hmm... wouldn't it be great if Valve added a feature to Steam, giving the option to uninstall a game, yet keep the save data, no matter the storage location . Anyways thanks for the info. Looks like I'll have to back up my saves just to make sure I don't lose them.

Silly question- doesn't Steam Cloud support this kind of save game functionality?

It does, though not all games are supported.

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Ah, had no clue about the Green drives. I got a Caviar Green 2TB drive recently. Couldn't beat the price and the reviews were really good for it. Here's hoping it holds up though if it dies I only really keep Steam games on it so no real panic there other than having to replace it.

Really you should hunt down the save files for any game you want to uninstall. There is a good variability in save file locations. Ubi has the most daft naming/location. Sleeping Dogs saves in the steamapps/common/sleeping\ dogs/data folder.

Should he worry about any additional step to revoke SecuROM activations?

Originally Posted by Motoki It's the review bombarding and its effect on the score I have a problem with. I agree that it's a part of the game and therefore worth discussing in reviews however I feel the score is artificially brought down much lower than it should be because people nerd raging over the always online portion are 100x more likely to post a review about it than someone who had no problems with it. Also 0 stars is too extreme. A good bit of those people posting those scathing reviews didn't even play the game the just used it as a platform to vent their frustration and protest that sort of drm that they are ideologically opposed to. Now I realize the always online requirement actually caused some people to have issues playing the game and that's different but as soon as that requirement was announced people were RAGING about it in multiple places on the net before the game even came out. I'm sure they couldn't wait to go post angry reviews.

And the number of people that said "Now I can't play Diablo on an airplane!" was ing staggering.

The epitome of a first world problem.

Dedicated players would only book flights with wifi available.

Dedicated players fly during scheduled server maintenance.

Really dedicated players play Torchlight 2.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed on the boards yet, but I just noticed that, when I bought the Dreamcast Pack from Amazon ($4.99, Steam Keys, includes Jet Set Radio), Steam gave me the option of where (Hard Drive, Installation folder) to install the game.

This is fantastic, since restrictions to one hard drive can get cumbersome after a few years of CAGly activity.

Originally Posted by EliotAndrews I'm not sure if this has been discussed on the boards yet, but I just noticed that, when I bought the Dreamcast Pack from Amazon ($4.99, Steam Keys, includes Jet Set Radio), Steam gave me the option of where (Hard Drive, Installation folder) to install the game. This is fantastic, since restrictions to one hard drive can get cumbersome after a few years of CAGly activity.

Yep, was part of the most recent update.

Originally Posted by Steam - Games managed by the new content system can select alternate installation locations other than the Steam folder (Windows)

Originally Posted by asheskitty Dedicated players fly during scheduled server maintenance. Really dedicated players play Torchlight 2.

I prefer diablo over torchlight.