-----

[Team Gav]

 -----

[witch]

AM is not designed for STEAM users, if it works at all just be thankful.

[Madame Mim]

Thank you! Do you have any other advice on how I should just be?

Quiet?

Elsewhere?

[kissing_toast]

Quiet?

Elsewhere?

LOL

[Sita]

Kafka penned the fabulous suggestion: "You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

AM is not designed for STEAM users, if it works at all just be thankful.

Thank you! Do you have any other advice on how I should just be?

[J. M. Pescado]

I honestly cannot think of any logical reason why AwesomeMod would affect how the game starts, as the generation of windows and whatnot occurs at a far lower level than game scripting and should not be affected by how and where you launch the game. As far as I know, there's no particularly direct method that the scriptcore has of altering the game's windowing settings, and certainly nothing I have atetmpted to go anywhere near.

That said, Steam is evil and who knows what the fuck it does? Why would you use it to play game that is not a Steam game?

[Anach]

Is is normal for Sims 3 to start minimized when using Awesome Mod?

Steam runs the launcher (Sims3LauncherW.exe) visible, but when I start the game from there (TS3W.exe) or directly via that .exe it's minimized. As soon as I remove the AM package - or if I set the game to windowed from full screen - it reverts back to the standard behavior of starting full screen.

Obviously this isn't the end of the world. The game is still one swish and click away. It is a hiccup for my xbox-controller steam-powered living-room entertainment-box setup though. How can I get Sims 3 with AM to launch from Steam without mouse or keys?

I use Awesome with the Steam version, because fuck installing 21 disks (ISOs) and patches or downloading 21 separate setups with Origin when things go south. I launch via TS3W.exe to avoid the horrible launcher, but both methods work fine. I do change the GameVersion on the AwesomeMod scripts, just to avoid the annoying nag warning about incompatible version, but otherwise Awesome works perfectly fine, as other than the directory layout and the internal versioning, the Steam version is identical, even in windowed mode and doesn't minimize my Window at all.

PS. Steam was definitely a crap platform 10 years ago and I hated it, but in recent years has done more to revive PC gaming than any other publisher, developer or platform combined, including bringing back many revamped old favourites I thought I'd never play again. I haven't used a disk in years, as the convenience is fantastic and the cheap prices has mostly eliminated my need for piracy and the bad cracks, bad stability and performance that come with them. Looking forward to Homeworld Remastered.

[Anach]

I'd just put it down to gremlins. One of those things that appears to only affect you, but probably no one else, likely due to some random combination of things that you'll probably never reproduce and only track down accidentally one day.

[J. M. Pescado]

PS. Steam was definitely a crap platform 10 years ago and I hated it, but in recent years has done more to revive PC gaming than any other publisher, developer or platform combined, including bringing back many revamped old favourites I thought I'd never play again. I haven't used a disk in years, as the convenience is fantastic and the cheap prices has mostly eliminated my need for piracy and the bad cracks, bad stability and performance that come with them. Looking forward to Homeworld Remastered.

Except for the part about being spyware, so now you have to pirate just to avoid being spied on. It is linked to systems that snoop through your system memory, ostensibly looking for "cheats", but of course, if it's snooping through your memory, it will find EVERYTHING. It knows every program you run and exactly how long you've been running that. It whitewashes this by appealing your your vanity and sums it up as hours-you-played-a-game. But do not be fooled: This is SPYWARE, of the most insidious kind. Oh, and all the stuff you "bought"? They can take it away from you any time they please for any reason they please. If it's down to Steam and Pirate Cat, go with Pirate Cat. Pirate Cat will never take away your games, doesn't spy on you, and won't pay for his downloads.

[Anach]

Except for the part about being spyware, so now you have to pirate just to avoid being spied on. It is linked to systems that snoop through your system memory, ostensibly looking for "cheats", but of course, if it's snooping through your memory, it will find EVERYTHING. It knows every program you run and exactly how long you've been running that. It whitewashes this by appealing your your vanity and sums it up as hours-you-played-a-game. But do not be fooled: This is SPYWARE, of the most insidious kind. Oh, and all the stuff you "bought"? They can take it away from you any time they please for any reason they please. If it's down to Steam and Pirate Cat, go with Pirate Cat. Pirate Cat will never take away your games, doesn't spy on you, and won't pay for his downloads.

I think you'd have a hard time not being spied on these days. Our phones do it, our TVs do it, our web browsers do it, web sites do it and our operating systems do it. Looking for cheats though, I'm assuming you mean VAT; not all games on Steam use it, and there are some games that can bypass Steam by launching directly from their normal launchers.

The problem with pirating, in most cases (Sims 3 excluded), is you end up with a barely functioning game with terrible performance and more bugs than the official, plus lack of proper update support. As most the pirated installers say, "If you like it, buy it", so this is mostly what I do. However, I'll still pirate it first to try it. Buying Sims 3 was mostly about saving my sanity, as when it sometimes threw an error during patching, I'd have to reinstall it to fix it. 21 disks later, plus patches that apply during install, it was pulling my hair out, but with the steam version I just hit play. Disks and ISOs are just so slow and annoying, to me it's like using a floppy drive.

As for Steam controlling if we can play the games we buy, or the possibility of taking our stuff away, well isn't that what you do yourself to a degree, by having a timebomb set into Awesomemod? You might say that it's to ensure people update, but there are always arguments for why people apply DRM and all of them suck. Even so, if for some reason Steam went belly up and the games didn't work without it, and the developers didn't patch them to work like they have with the recent vanishing of GFWL, then I'd simply resort to cracking them.

[witch]

I think you'd have a hard time not being spied on these days. Our phones do it, our TVs do it, our web browsers do it, web sites do it and our operating systems do it.

Always wondered why people would bother paying for internets on a 3" x 4" screen, never done it myself, I can sort of understand internet on tablets. My TV is merely a screen for my multimedia machine which runs on my home LAN. Yes, we ARE being spied upon in all sorts of ways, I acknowledge, but I figure I just disappear in the data mass unless I make myself noticed.

Buying Sims 3 was mostly about saving my sanity, as when it sometimes threw an error during patching, I'd have to reinstall it to fix it.

I've reinstalled about twice during the lifetime of the game.

As for Steam controlling if we can play the games we buy, or the possibility of taking our stuff away, well isn't that what you do yourself to a degree, by having a timebomb set into Awesomemod?

fyi this has now been removed since there will be no more TS3 releases.

So far I've managed to avoid both Steam and Origin and I consider this quite an achievement in the current gaming scenario. Level up.

[Anach]

I forgot to mention, that even cracked games these days still try to phone home, as they don't remove those checks from them unless they mess with the protection.

My point though witch, is that there isn't much point avoiding them these days, as you're just shooting yourself in the foot, as even the pirated games require you to block them in your firewall. If you choose to avoid specific online stores for whatever reason, you are limiting your choices of games available to you, as well as having to suffer dodgy cracks that hinder performance. However, if you only play a few select titles, then it's not going to affect you much. In the last 10 years, I've probably got around 700 games on Steam, either through direct purchase, freebies, humble bundles, or retail games I've activated there out of preference; I also recently threw away my warez DVD collection of approximately 1000 disks. So I have a good amount of experience in both areas.

Steam also allows me to stream a game to a lesser laptop from my main PC and allows me to share all my library with my daughter and partner on the home network, outside of that, my friends can watch me play a game, which is handy if they want to see what it's like without leaving their house, and it allows me to instantly join my friends in multiplayer. So you can see, I've become a bit of a Steam fanboy. I still wont purchase an EA title though unless it's something that can only be played online, like Battlefield (mostly due to the crazy prices and inability to purchase elsewhere). Sims 3 was last offline game purchased, and that was for pure convenience.

My daughter recently reinstalled Sims 3 due to her HDD drying, and after installing 20+ disks, one of them didn't install correctly, resulting in issues with some of the content. So that required reinstalling that particular EP. I had to listen to her sighs the whole way through. If that was Steam, she would simply hit download, and it would all be done in one go. I used to keep my ISO version installed because during updates I'd continue playing the older version while I updated my mods on the new version, but to do that I had to keep a backup of the registry entries for whenever I would reinstall or upgrade my OS, as the game wouldn't run without those reg entries; where as the Steam version just recreates them upon launch.

[witch]

You seem to have a talent for making things difficult for yourself. I'm currently playing 5 games and all of them downloaded and worked out of the box, so to speak. I've been playing this way for nearly a decade and have not had any major problems I could not solve.

[Anach]

You seem to have a talent for making things difficult for yourself. I'm currently playing 5 games and all of them downloaded and worked out of the box, so to speak. I've been playing this way for nearly a decade and have not had any major problems I could not solve.

Quite the opposite. I was tired of making things hard on myself. Having to install ISOs, manual patching, waiting for a release group to finally release the latest patch or expansion for a game I was enjoying, worrying about propers for dodgy cracks or broken content (Like initially base Sims 3 wasn't final and wouldnt patch correctly or Homeworld Remastered this week with it's non-final version and broken content) then having cut down content due to it not being legit. Then there's the problems of mods and modding. Some games require workarounds for mods (Sims 3 again, for some reason on some PCs it wont recognise mods in the mods folder and requires framework installation, which is a hassle, as then you have some content in documents and some in programs) or certain modding tools for some games. I remember cracked Skyrim having a lot of problems with mods and tools, but can't recall exactly what.

Unless you compare the pirated version with the cracked version, you often wont realise just what you're missing out on, in terms of functionality, user-friendliness and performance. I've lost count of the amount of times I've read posts from people reporting bugs that are only in the cracked titles, pr being unable to get mods or tools to work, essentially giving themselves away as pirates. Thankfully Sims 3 doesn't require a cracked exe to function, so that saves a lot of hassle right off the bat, but does require decrapifying sims3packs to get the content functioning, then you have to worry about doing that with mods that patch store content (FYI, there was no way I was buying all that over-priced Store content). Overall, pirating is the big hassle in comparison, so whenever I can afford it, I prefer to purchase, and the cheapest and easiest place for that is usually Steam.

As for Origin vs Steam. Whenever I bought EA stuff on Steam, I also got an Origin version along with it, but if you purchase the Origin version, you didn't get a Steam version, so I got to try both systems. Origin still requires me to install each and every Sims 3 EP/SP separately, where as Steam its just an all-at-once install, including patches. Origin is also somewhat featureless in comparison, especially for community friendliness.

[J. M. Pescado]

As for Steam controlling if we can play the games we buy, or the possibility of taking our stuff away, well isn't that what you do yourself to a degree, by having a timebomb set into Awesomemod? You might say that it's to ensure people update, but there are always arguments for why people apply DRM and all of them suck. Even so, if for some reason Steam went belly up and the games didn't work without it, and the developers didn't patch them to work like they have with the recent vanishing of GFWL, then I'd simply resort to cracking them.

No, we never actually take anything away. Your AwesomeMod doesn't self-destruct, you just have to tamper with sharp edges. Also, that feature is no longer used because I no longer have to deal with out-of-date versions, and hasn't been in use for some time. That's pretty much the reason why the sharp-edges file existed, because I knew it would be annoying as fuck if such a thing were actually hard-coded and you NEEDED to use it for some reason. But seriously, that file has sharp edges, do not touch the edges of that file.