Steam sharing beta. Exactly what it says on the tin - by Phatose
Renzatic on 28/9/2013 at 06:01
Now that's promising. If you can play Super Meat Boy with it without missing a beat, then just about any 2D game will be no problem for it.
I wish he got some hands-on time with an FPS or a mouse heavy strategy game, though. I want to know how it works for those.
As for Mantle, it has the potential to be excellent, but it'll be a couple years at least before it starts making headway into the PC scene. For that to happen, it has to support every single newer card out on the market. If it supports some, but not others, you'll only see the occasional game that'll take advantage of it, and then only as a bonus feature. Think PhysX, and you're about halfway there.
jay pettitt on 28/9/2013 at 12:18
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
As awesome as the idea of SteamOS and Steam machines are, I find it really hard to imagine them being competitive with the XBone/PS4 even with superior hardware because of the operating system overhead and inefficiency of OpenGL. If something like Mantle would allow SteamOS games to directly access the graphics hardware that would be a huge win for PC gaming, imho.
I'm not exactly sure what a Steam Machine is, because they're not even a definitive thing. But one of the things a Steam Machine might do is be an underpowered thin client that accesses the ooomph from a fully grown PC from elsewhere in your home. So you can get your PC games (and netflix movies and music and whatever) in the living room, bedroom, den, home office etc etc without needing multiple big desktop PCs in every room - you basically just need the same living room/bedroom telly that you've probably already got.
I think we're a little way off having fully fledged Steam machines running games natively (if AAA gaming is your thing) because the library of AAA titles is going to take a while to build up ~ but as far as I can tell Valve are saying that SteamOS is going to be very streamlined compared to a unified do everything OS like Windows. In lots of ways I think Valve's announcements were aimed at exciting hardware and software developers as much as announcing a new thing to consumers. Basically it's Valve saying that they're throwing their weight behind it, which takes a lot of the risk and scary away for other developers.
EvaUnit02 on 28/9/2013 at 14:14
Quote Posted by Pyrian
A touchpad doesn't really stand up to a mouse, sadly. Hopefully better than a thumbstick? Or else what's the point? The ridged circle thing is so foreign to me, I can't come to any conclusion as to how well it'll play.
Read the article that Sneaksie linked with developer impressions:- These aren't comparable to the shitty trackpads that you get in your average laptop.
To state the obvious, it's totally wild card at this point. The greater public outside the industry haven't any experience with it and what's more it's a work in progress. We don't know how well it will actually stack up to mouse precision and movement speed.
Phatose on 28/9/2013 at 17:26
I'm pretty sure on the simple basis of it's size versus the contact area of a thumb, we can work out it's not going to be anywhere near a mouse in terms of precision.
Fafhrd on 28/9/2013 at 21:46
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
As awesome as the idea of SteamOS and Steam machines are, I find it really hard to imagine them being competitive with the XBone/PS4 even with superior hardware because of the operating system overhead and inefficiency of OpenGL.
Whut? XBone's OS overhead is already confirmed to be three of the eight gigs of RAM in the system. And it's using DirectX. PS4's OS overhead is comparable, and it's an OpenGL driven system.
Pyrian on 30/9/2013 at 05:20
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
Assume the triggers and shoulder buttons are mapped to the regular trigger and shoulder buttons, and map X and Y to the paddles and A and B to the A and B face buttons.
Assume, instead, that the face buttons map to the extra buttons on the bottom. I mean, you
could map them to inconvenient buttons, I suppose, but why would you?
Fafhrd on 30/9/2013 at 06:07
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Assume, instead, that the face buttons map to the extra buttons on the bottom.
What are you talking about? The three face buttons along the bottom edge of the controller? Those would be even harder to press simultaneously with the any other face buttons. If you're talking about the paddles, THAT'S THE BUTTON MAPPING THAT I ALREADY DESCRIBED. Unless you also want to map the trigger and shoulder buttons as face buttons and the face buttons as trigger and shoulder, which would be even stupider and harder to use for the Arkham games.
The Steam controller has the same number of buttons as an Xbox 360 controller, counting the four directions on the d-pad as buttons and not counting the central Xbox button.
Renzatic on 3/10/2013 at 02:20
Ooh. The Black Mesa logo and a mysterious 3 over to the right?
Why, I do believe we'll be playing Left 4 Dead 3: Black Mesa Massacre soon!
Fafhrd on 3/10/2013 at 03:04
This is the second time their JIRA server has 'accidentally' become public. They're playing with us somehow.
