ZEQ2 Lite

Sunday, October 10, 2010

I tried to download Earth Special Forces, (downloaded Half-Life) and everything else to it, and tried to launch it, but it says "Problem: Can't find steam.exe to launch.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

First of all, did you install steam?

Sunday, October 10, 2010

no but I am now

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Destroyer24 wrote : no but I am now

*rolling on floor laughing my butt off*

Sunday, October 10, 2010

its kind of strange that the Earth Special Forces team is telling that only a legal half-life will work to play online buts this isn't true you can play online on lan and even on the hlvs server and more its just strange nothing more

Monday, October 11, 2010

Look at it like this. If we openly start supporting non STEAM games, valve and our host will have our heads.

Since we do have at least 1 valve member constantly on the forum and the host while not posting at all checks it to.

Monday, October 11, 2010

steam is not needed trust me , I ply it with out steam , online or not

Monday, October 11, 2010

najeeb wrote : steam is not needed trust me , I ply it with out steam , online or not

tunngle and garena even now support Earth Special Forces to play online

Monday, October 11, 2010

Look at it like this. If we openly start supporting non STEAM games, valve and our host will have our heads.

See, this kind of does baffle me as well. I actually BOUGHT Half-Life (and Half-Life 2) on their release dates respectively over the last decade and a half. During this time, steam did not exist and both could be freely updated and played online as standalone, portable applications -- much like any modern and practical software. This meant that the matchmaking service, mod deployment scheme, and other third-party layers were at my OWN discretion without being forced upon me.

This is how software design SHOULD be and primarily why I see a lot of developers opposed to Steam (although this minority is shifting somewhat due to lack of optioning and need for fiscal gain through exposure).

Don't get me wrong. Steam isn't a bad piece of software, but it's very much non-portable and does congest your registry and system files with unneeded application dependencies. It's simply a front-end launcher that uses resources rather than letting your game/product have a unique independent binary as ALL software in the last 30+ years has been expected to operate.

A launcher isn't bad in itself, but when you FORCE it on the user without clear/clean direct application access and while also simultaneously shutting down third-party matchmaking (and other) options due to "required steam layers", you are certainly barking up the wrong tree.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Well the reason for STEAM is that the Half-Life SDK we are using is from the latest half life version. And tahts only available on STEAM. If you actually own the game, you can get it integrated into STEAM in 2 minutes.

Its just the pirated versions of the game, that make people mad ^^;

Monday, October 11, 2010

Well the reason for STEAM is that the Half Life SDK we are using is from the latest half life version. And tahts only available on STEAM. If you actually own the game, you can get it integrated into STEAM in 2 minutes.

Its just the pirated versions of the game, that make people mad ^^;

Maybe so, but my debate/issues were not with legality of the software as much as force of using an inflexible, cumbersome, proprietary, and downright unnecessary layer.

There is absolutely NO sound reason to put in steam validation techniques in the game code itself when there still is a number of legal Half-Life owners that find major issues with Steam's business model and deployment paradigm -- thus choosing to use their game in other (perfectly legal) ways.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Zeth wrote :

Well the reason for STEAM is that the Half Life SDK we are using is from the latest half life version. And tahts only available on STEAM. If you actually own the game, you can get it integrated into STEAM in 2 minutes.

Its just the pirated versions of the game, that make people mad ^^;

Maybe so, but my debate/issues were not with legality of the software as much as force of using an inflexible, cumbersome, proprietary, and downright unnecessary layer.

There is absolutely NO sound reason to put in steam validation techniques in the game code itself when there still is a number of legal Half-Life owners that find major issues with Steam's business model and deployment paradigm -- thus choosing to use their game in other (perfectly legal) ways.

We have no built in steam validation techniques. the only STEAM validation is on the forum and that was built in by our host due to a surge in non steam help threads. If you think that was unfair, you should take it up with skizer, since he as the host built the entire thing in. Though it does help with the fact that Earth Special Forces has quite a few discomforting bugs and crashes if you are not using the latest Half-Life version which is only available on STEAM.

Earth Special Forces was made for that Half-Life version and the only way to acquire it is either a STEAM hack or STEAM itself. And a STEAM hack is still STEAM, only with no connection to the master servers, so why bother with that if you have a legit version anyhow. that's the number 1 reason why we never gave out support unless STEAM was proven. It was mostly about the Half-Life version check.

I myself agree with some stuff that you mentioned, but I still find STEAMs buisness model a lot fairer and better for the end user than the stuff that Ubisoft is throwing into their titles, where you authenticate every time you start the game forcing you to be connected to the net if you even want to play. STEAM at least has an offline mode.

Monday, October 11, 2010

We have no built in steam validation techniques. the only STEAM validation is on the forum and that was built in by our host due to a surge in non steam help threads. If you think that was unfair, you should take it up with skizer, since he as the host built the entire thing in. Though it does help with the fact that Earth Special Forces has quite a few discomforting bugs and crashes if you are not using the latest Half Life version which is only available on STEAM.

Sorry for the confusion. No, I wasn't referring to the forum validation bit. I remembered back when helping Naruto: Naiteki Kensei a bit that they had validation schemas in place that made sure you were on Steam to play the game. Granted, yes, this was mainly for internal use to insure that a leaked build couldn't be played, but if I recall properly there was a discussion of implementing such a system later for a more final release (although I don't know if it ever actually was).

I'd remembered that Earth Special Forces and Naruto: Naiteki Kensei are basically sister projects borrowing from one another a bit, so basically I was just throwing out my debate pre-emptively should such an idea have been discussed or considered.

Again I apologize if it seemed like implications were being made.

Earth Special Forces was made for that Half Life version and the only way to acquire it is either a STEAM hack or STEAM itself. And a STEAM hack is still STEAM, only with no connection to the master servers, so why bother with that if you have a legit version anyhow. that's the number 1 reason why we never gave out support unless STEAM was proven. It was mostly about the Half Life version check.

That's perfectly reasonable.

I myself agree with some stuff that you mentioned, but I still find STEAMs buisness model a lot fairer and better for the end user than the stuff that Ubisoft is throwing into their titles, where you authenticate every time you start the game forcing you to be connected to the net if you even want to play. STEAM at least has an offline mode.

Compared to Starforce and other similar technologies, of course it's leagues beyond in terms of usability. However compared to older generation software (some of which had no cd-keys, checks, or other requirements to just launch and go), it's still heavily limiting.

I'd say I'm leaning towards the independent developer scene as far as handling of plundering booty goes. More or less? Don't bother wasting your resources that actually end up cutting back your own profitability and limiting exposure in the end.

I don't really think we should open up that can of discussion here (at least not without a new thread), but suffice to say there's a lot of great reading material out there on various indie blogs and information outlets covering the statistical and logistical breakdowns of such matters to support such the notion in an unbiased manner.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Then to wrap it up with an answer in a nutshell.

We are not planing of putting any such system into the game. We are however planing on adding a system that will give STEAM players certain benefits. Though I can't really go into detail on that yet. But I'm not really into all that bureaucracy stuff, so I wouldn't be able to discuss much about it with you. All I know is that at the moment the best indie software out there is the UDK.

As for the thread. The reason the game is asking for steam.exe is because the installer assumes you have STEAM installed and thus makes the shortcut following that assumption. All you have to do is make your own shortcut the old fashion way and the error should stick around.