I knew I shouldn't have bothered. Everything that could have gone wrong last weekend went wrong (PC wise that is). My domain disappeared, I managed to screw up the DirectX rendering code for Repton.NET (just how do you screw up something as simple as that?) and then to top it all off, I installed Steam.
Whoo boy, now that was a mistake.
I fully appreciate the reasoning behind Steam, and applaud Valve for attempting to introduce an integrated patching system and so on and so on.
What I don't appreciate is an application that is clearly in the early stages of Beta development being foisted on us as though it's a completed 1.0 product. Like hell it is.
First off, I downloaded the ~600k installer and ran it. All good so far, it created a new account for me, found the existing installations of Half-Life, Counter Strike, Opposing Forces, Deathmatch Classic and Ricochet and asked me if I wanted to migrate these applications over to Steam. Well, not wanting to waste over 1Gb on repeated stuff, I said yes. It told me it was converting files, and that this "might take a few minutes". So I waited.
I got bored waiting, and put the new bunk bed together with the help of my brother in law in India's room. Oh, and nipped out for half an hour to get some replacement bolts ('cos half of them were missing).
Still waiting.
So, I went out to do a gig with the Shirley Temple Pilots in Bournemouth. Great gig, bar a slightly foreshortened version of "Sad But True" (nice one Steve!), get home at 1:00 AM (slightly pissed) and quickly look in on Steam. Still processing.
In the morning I decided that enough was enough and killed the process. I re-ran the installer, but now I'm not even being given the option to migrate all the existing files over to Steam, I'm gonna have to download each package. Bollocks. Off to FilePlanet to download the full HL+CS Steam installer. Completely remove the existing Steam install, and install using the new version. Great.
So finally, I've got Steam installed with the complete Half Life and Counter Strike files. So I went to play Half Life and.... wait for 30 minutes for even more patches to be installed. Aaaargh!
Hopefully Valve will listen to those of us who are having issues with Steam - it's too slow for a start; it has a habit of just stalling without letting you know what on earth it's doing. And please, if you're going to produce a skinned application, can you at least make sure the underlying application works first!