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TWRoO on 24 July 2010
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shio said:
TWRoO said:

Yesterday I opened Steam for the first time in about a month as I wasnted to screenshot Portal for VGC Most Wanted. I had to wait 10 minutes for Steam to update, then a further 10 minutes for Portal to update. Had I not been online it might have done it without needing to update, but who is likely to be offline nowadays unless there was a power cut or something.

Now this does highlight an advantage of PC gaming in that I was able to get my own screenshot easily without extra kit, however it took long enough, print screen it seems just records black if you use it for a full screen application, and exiting it crashed the game (running it with Photoshop open at the same time meant an atrocious framerate while playing too) I managed to get it though by restarting and playing the game in a window. Including the playing time to get to the bit I wanted (boss fight with GlaDOS) it took me almost 50 minutes to get a screenshot.

I've been offline for an entire week now, and playing King's Bounty.

Anyway, the problems you had with crashing happens when you're using a resource-heavy program like Photoshop while playing a PC game, especially if you PC isn't good. Why didn't you just use Paint?

I've been playing King's Bounty and had Firefox opened all week, and King's Bounty never crashed on me. The problem you had was because your PC wasn't powerful enough.

As for the updates, they're amazing. Steam keeps improving with those updates, and games too. Why wouldn't you want updates? Especially since it only took you 20 minutes to download a month's worth of updates :

Offline an entire week? is this on a second PC or something?.... I mean surely sometime in the space of a week you needed to use your browser at least. I will admit I sometimes turn wireless off on my laptop if I am on battery doing some work downstairs just to save power, but you actually disconnected your intenet connection (at least with the PC you play the game on) for a week?

As for using paint.... I was already creating within what was actually GIMP not photoshop (I tend to call them both photoshop as the only reason I have GIMP now is because I am not certain how to transfer Photoshop over to my new laptop from my old, now I could find out but as it is about 15 year old PS 5.0 it hardly seems worth it) had I known it was going to crash sure I would have saved, closed and opened Word (I only use really paint for pixel images)

Oh, you had firefox open all week... I assume by offline then you mean Steam was running offline. I will probably change that myself, though I do find it odd you were doing the same as you strike me as the type that leaves their PC on 24h so updates don't matter to you as they happen overnight etc. (I wouldn't mind that convenience but not at the expense of power use)

Yeah, 20 minutes to download a months worth of updates... that to me sounds like a lot given that nothing noticable changed. And it's a bit different to the Wii for which I don't think I have had much more than 20 minutes of updates in total over 3.5 years. More than that though they don't just pop up when you turn on and force the update.

That last bit also goes to dahuman who mentioned PS3 and 360 have similar updates.... you know what, that's part of the reason I am not interested in them. gaming and PC integration will one day be a good thing I believe... that being when I have the money to have things like this turned on all the time so I don't have to wait for updates, and the money to have good PC hardware that can stream a signal to a TV so I don't have to game at a desk. (and naturally the money to buy hardware that can run more strenuos games than Portal)