Some help with Steam please

Games
1

I’ve posted about fighting to get a working Dawn of War 2 key and I’ve finally got one.

This is my first Steam install so please bare/bear with me.

My next problem is that I’ve installed the game from DVD and told the game that I do not want to automatically install updates. After launching it’s now telling me that it wants to download something for 5 1/2 hours but it’s not telling me exactly how much it wants to download. I’m heavily capped so this is a bit of an issue. I’d also like to get into it quickly and mess around for 20 minutes or so before I go to bed since we’re moving house tomorrow and I need some sleep. Please help. How do I make this happen?

2

Offline mode doesn’t work?

3

It’s telling me it’s not ready for Offline mode.

4

Yeah, try putting Steam in the offline mode. Click on File --> Offline mode. See if that lets you launch the game without updating it. If that doesn’t work, you could always try unplugging your networking cable or something like that.

5

You can only go into offline mode when the game is already fully up to date. The “Do not automatically update this game” option is quite a bit more literal than you might have assumed. True the updates are not automatic, but if an update is available you must apply it or it won’t let you launch the game.

At least thats how it has always worked for me.

6

I don’t think that will work.

This is one of the detriments of Steam, actually. Steam wants your game to be fully patched.

7

This makes me a sad panda.

Does anyone know just how large an initial update of Dawn Of War 2 is at the moment?

8

You could try estimating based off the bandwidth monitor, if you let it get to something like 5%. It’ll only be a rough estimate, but it’s better than nothing.

9

I don’t know how much it helps, but my fully-updated copy of DoW2 is 4.11 GB.

10

Thanks, it actually does. A full install is about 3.7gig so a 400mb download isn’t too bad.

I guess I’ll wait until after the move to give it a try.

11

Relic is notorious for being giant idiots when it comes to patching. Don’t be surprised if the download is actually much much larger.

12

Yes, beware a 4.11GB patch to get to the most current version. I haven’t looked, but they were notorious for this with Company of Heroes.

13

Yeah…

(remembers how Company of Heroes downloaded 8 gigabytes because of 20MB patch…)

14

You know, one alternative if you have the opportunity, is to log into Steam on another computer at a public wi-fi hotspot or somesuch. Download and fully-update the game from there, then just copy the files back to your home machine after it’s done.

15

I dunno, public wifi spots aren’t terribly fast a lot of the time, and he may not want to sit at a cafe for 6 hours.

16

I’m inclined to say DoW2 hasn’t done the CoH-style “redownload almost the entire game for a small patch” thing but I can’t say for certain.

Could someone make a backup of their updated copy and send it via disc if it came to that? If Brendan has his unique key, it should theoretically work.

17

Thanks for the offer but it shouldn’t come to that. I’ve followed Fugitive’s advice and it looks like it is about a 700mb download which is doable but will take forever.

Thanks folks.

Also, if anyone knows anyone who works on the Steam client can you just ask them to add a download size indicator? Telling people the size of your download is is just the polite thing to do.

18

Yeah I’m not sure why they don’t have that for patches, since they do have it for game installs.

19

I’ve found that if you double click a game as if to try and play it while it is updating it wil give you more information about the download.