Steam

[Violentvixen]

Also it says yours isn't shared, though that may be because we're not friends on Steam?

Oh yeah, it defaulted to Friends Only and I didn't bother to change it. Public now. Send me a friend request though!

 

[Kazin]

Oh yeah, it defaulted to Friends Only and I didn't bother to change it. Public now. Send me a friend request though!

Sent! My user icon is the same on Steam as it is here so you know it's me haha

 

[Falselogic]

Here's my Steam Replay

Steam says it was a lot but it doesn't feel like a lot and my completed games this year is certainly low...

 

[Adrenaline]

The Steam Replay is pretty worthless to me because I played a ton of games after whatever arbitrary mid-December cutoff date they used for data collection. This doesn't represent me!

 

[Troa11]

Mine is also hugely skewed because I spent like a month testing games to see if they ran on my handheld hardware so I did not actually play HUNDREDS of new games this year.

 

[Yimothy]

Steam seems to have decided my controller is a Nintendo controller all of a sudden. A and B are switched, as are X and Y. Toggling the “use Nintendo layout” option doesn’t fix it. It was working yesterday. Going in and manually reassigning the buttons seems to have worked, I look forward to it breaking again soon.

Edit: Broken again! No matter how many times I go into the controller config and define the Y button, when I start Elden Ring it doesn’t work, and when I quit out it’s undefined again in the config menu.

 

[Troa11]

Is it a regular XInput controller? If so you could just disable steam input for that title and let the game read it as a normal xbox controller. I do that for a lot of steam games.

 

[smacketh]

Steam seems to have decided my controller is a Nintendo controller all of a sudden. A and B are switched, as are X and Y. Toggling the “use Nintendo layout” option doesn’t fix it. It was working yesterday. Going in and manually reassigning the buttons seems to have worked, I look forward to it breaking again soon.

Edit: Broken again! No matter how many times I go into the controller config and define the Y button, when I start Elden Ring it doesn’t work, and when I quit out it’s undefined again in the config menu.

That happened to me for a while on an Xbox controller....and it seemed to be fine when I connected it with a wire instead of using Bluetooth. I think I had to uninstall all the controller drivers and tell Steam not to use the default Steam controller compatibility but it was a mess. I'm on a new PC now and haven't had it happen again, but hopefully you're able to get it resolved.

 

[Yimothy]

I’m using an 8bitdo SN30 pro+ in I think D-input mode. I was previously using it in X-input mode but that abruptly stopped working completely a while ago (windows said a driver problem) so I switched to D. Now it seems every time I start steam it loses the layout definition I put in last time, so it’s stuck with A B and X defined how I want them and Y not defined at all. I then have to go into the define layout dialogue and define it, then go back in to check if the new definition has held or if it’s gone back to Y undefined, which seems to be 50-50. Once I’ve futzed around a bit, then I can start playing.

 

[Becksworth]

Radio the Universe has a Next Fest demo. That's been in development since the Kickstarter boom days.

 

[Becksworth]

Aside from Radio the Universe, I've also checked out:

Grim Guardians feels like it's trying to be a little bit classicvania and a little bit meteoidvania by having what appear to be braching paths in the stages you can travel back to in order to explore for items later. Seem solid enough from the demo, but I'll wait for reviews of the full game.

Afterimage looks pretty, but gameplay seems like just another mid indie metroidvania.

"Becksworth, if you're tired of indie metroidvanias, stop playing them!" Listen imaginary strawman person, if the problem was me, why am I enjoying the Gestalt: Steam & Cinders demo so far. Gameplay is tight, and the retro sprite based graphics look sharp while being a lot easier to read visually than the graphics-gasm a lot of post Ori metroidvanias are heading toward.

 

[Torzelbaum]

If we're talking about indie metroidvanias then one I stumbled upon recently is Angel’s Gear. (Unfortunately for me it's also a Souls-like.) It's sci-fi and horror themed with the enemies being grotesque biomechanical* monstrosities.

*More or less.

 

[Yimothy]

I’m still having controller trouble, though at least now I have a fairly reliable workaround: I open steam, go to settings, controllers, select my controller and choose to define the layout. Y will be undefined, so I click it and press Y on my controller. Then I hit save, choose not to upload my layout, and steam tells me it’s using a controller layout from my username. Then I click on my controller again and go into the define layout bit. Once again, Y is undefined. I define it as before, hit save and choose not to upload as before, it tells me it’s using a controller layout from me again. Once again I click on my controller and choose to define the layout, and this time Y is defined correctly, so I cancel out of there and OK out of the menu and it works. Why do I have to do the same thing twice? Dunno. Why won’t it save that setting for next time? Dunno.

I think what happened originally is I thought the layout definition interface would ask me for each button in turn, so after pressing X I expected it to want me to press Y (and the menu highlight moves from X to Y after you define X), but actually you have to click each button separately, so when I pressed Y (or maybe accidentally hit X a second time) it took that as an instruction to save the layout, and for some reason it won’t let me save over it with one that works. Possibly I’ve somehow uploaded my bad config and it keeps re-downloading it. I can’t figure out how to find a list of configs I’ve uploaded and delete them, though. I’ve tried choosing to upload the working config, but it doesn’t fix it.

Extra frustrating is that every time I search for info on configuring controllers in steam I mostly get results about the Steam Controller.

 

[Dark Medusa]

Radio the Universe has a Next Fest demo. That's been in development since the Kickstarter boom days.

Oh shoot! I backed that game and had been checking in from time to time. They've had playable demos for certain tier backers for a while now, so I don't know what this is in comparison, but it's nice to see that they've finally released something to the public. Might even check it out.

 

[Yimothy]

I think I’ve fixed my controller problem: I closed steam and opened up config.vdf in notepad, found the controller definitions there, found the one where one of the buttons was undefined (X, not Y - I guess steam uses xbox layout instead of ninty), manually typed in “b4” there, then opened steam and the buttons were correctly defined. Hopefully they’ll still be that way next time.

 

[Exposition Owl]

Just played a charming (though short) demo for the upcoming Mika and the Witch's Mountain. After almost four decades of every game under the sun being inspired by Castle in the Sky, it's cool to play something that takes so many cues from Kiki's Delivery Service.

 

[Violentvixen]

Just played a charming (though short) demo for the upcoming Mika and the Witch's Mountain. After almost four decades of every game under the sun being inspired by Castle in the Sky, it's cool to play something that takes so many cues from Kiki's Delivery Service.

Oh nice, I will give this a try for sure! The trailer makes me a little concerned that the world is really big but empty, but a demo is the best way to figure that out for sure.

Radio the Universe has a Next Fest demo.

Also downloading this, thanks to all of you for bringing it up!

 

[Violentvixen]

Oh nice, I will give this a try for sure! The trailer makes me a little concerned that the world is really big but empty, but a demo is the best way to figure that out for sure.

This was cute, but there's no way to adjust the video settings and stuff was definitely cropped out of my screen. I could see the edges of a text box with the raven guy on it but have no idea what they said. I assume the final version will have that so I put it on my wish list to keep in mind.

 

[FelixSH]

Aw, that game looks super cute, and like a very relaxing experience (assuming that the controls work well). I like it, when you can fly in games. Will keep looking out for this.

 

[Violentvixen]

There's a class action lawsuit about Steam having a monopoly. Dunno/doubt if they'll win but info is here if you want to learn more and the signup link is here.

 

[Mogri]

I'm not sure they have a leg to stand on. Steam has plenty of competitors. Outperforming them doesn't make it a monopoly.

 

[Positronic Brain]

They'd probably have had a better case before Epic launched their own store. They *are* a practical monopoly, I think, but not sure what the lawsuit is going after. Lowering Valve's commision won't make prices drop, they don't make difficult for you to go around them to buy DLC or games from other vendors, you cannot slice Valve in smaller companies since they don't make games anynore (unless you separate the collectible and social features out of the distribution engine but, c¡mon, really?) and they don't bother curating or securing exclusives so...

 

[JBear]

Steam Support :: Windows 7 and Windows 8 Support

help.steampowered.com

Steam won't run on Windows 7 or 8 as of January. Guess I'm buying a new PC a little sooner than I'd planned.

 

[Mogri]

That's pretty quick given that 8 EOL'd just this year. I'm guessing this is an IE situation, where they've been sick of supporting multiple OS versions for some time.

 

[Adrenaline]

Windows 7 has more current users than Windows 8, so that probably explains it.

 

[Violentvixen]

Steam Puzzle Fest starts today and goes through May 1st. My laptop flipped out while trying to load all the games but here are a few I saw that are worth noting:

There's a free demo of Calico, which isn't a board game I could really get into but neat to try it for free.
If you haven't played Papers, Please yet you really should.
Hidden Folks is a hidden picture game with goofy sounds, I like it very much
Sagrada doesn't seem to be on sale, but it's a good version of the board game
Shapez my spouse got this when it was free on Epic recently and really likes it

 

[JBear]

(Steam has helpfully provided a big scary warning message in the UI)

 

[Mogri]

43

 

[MCBanjoMike]

It's probably all just trading cards, not worth the time it takes to open the inventory brower and clear out the notifications IMO.

 

[JBear]

^