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Steam's Big Picture Mode beta starts Monday Sep 10th [out now]

Well steam updated and it broke it. x:

The install repair isn't working and the uninstall thing says it'll delete all content so I feel screwed. >:
 
Just loaded it up then, and I'm super impressed. Just a couple of things, how do I load straight into BPM? How can 'minimise' steam and do other PC stuff whilst still in BPM?
 
Sutton Dagger said:
Just loaded it up then, and I'm super impressed. Just a couple of things, how do I load straight into BPM? How can 'minimise' steam and do other PC stuff whilst still in BPM?
Click to expand...

Append -bigpicture to the steam shortcut target. BPM is just a fullscreen windowed application, so you can alt tab to other stuff painlessly. Otherwise you exit out of it through the exit option on the top right of the main screen (only closes BPM, steam itself still runs).
 
had to opt out of the client beta because Steam kept going into big picture mode and wouldn't let me out. I'd hit "exit" but it would just relaunch BPM again.
 
Wow, Big Picture Mode is lot's of fun to actually use, as well as looking good.

The browser is fun to use, the interface really friendly, and just to top it off, the Xbox Guide button launches the overlay when you're in game, heh. This is basically the "Steam console" mode and it's awesome. Of course, unlike another unnamed console, this supports 1080p!

A few bugs need to be ironed out, still need the option to see group chat members, and I couldn't click a link in chat, but aside from that, I'm happy.
 
A shame that I still need to have a mouse and keyboard on hand in BPM, since I can't use just my controller to either close the CD key window or start a game that uses uPlay.
 
Finally gave it a test run -

It's sluggish on my ol' C2D/8600/4GBram Macbook - with the opening vid basically skips itself.

But, from what I was able to really play around with; this is intuitive as hell. The UP=back pane idea, the RT=persistent browser, both genius.

Can't wait to see what this matures into.
 
Necromanti said:
A shame that I still need to have a mouse and keyboard on hand in BPM, since I can't use my controller to either close the CD key window or when I want to play a game that uses uPlay.
Click to expand...

I'm going to give it a couple of weeks for Ubi to sort that out. If they haven't then I'm going to delete every single offending game.
 
This is impressive as hell, beautiful and very slick. Now the ball is in the OEMs' court, I expect to see all sorts of Big Picture PCs in time for the holidays.
 
Definitely needs just a setting somewhere for which display you want it to BPM onto. It's annoying having to set my TV to Primary from within Windows each time I want to play Steam on it. (I can't see the TV screen from my PC desk)
 
I have to imagine they're going to overhaul the community section at some point. Kinda seems redundant/wasteful to only be listing friends when there's an entire persistent button on the screen already dedicated for it.

I'd like to see a repurposed version of your own profile page or the game hubs section. Hopefully not just the browser directed to those web pages though.

Hokhoku said:
I always played steam games on my TV

What is this about exactly?
Click to expand...

An interface navigable with a gamepad.
 
jediyoshi said:
I have to imagine they're going to overhaul the community section at some point. Kinda seems redundant/wasteful to only be listing friends when there's an entire persistent button on the screen already dedicated for it.

I'd like to see a repurposed version of your own profile page or the game hubs section. Hopefully not just the browser directed to those web pages though.



An interface navigable with a gamepad.
Click to expand...

Oh I just saw the video!
Like the xmb
Sweeet ;)
 
Hopefully this is something easy I'm just not thinking of because I'm tired, but how do you get it to go to the correct display? It just keeps opening up on my monitor instead of my TV even if I drag steam over there...
 
I got an itch to build a new pc after trying this.

Works really well, but I haven't managed to NOT crash the browser when I play a Youtube video. As soon as I hit zoom, the screen freezes and all I can do is switch back to Steam.
 
Does XBMC have controller support. If so would it be possible for you to put a XBMC.exe in Steam and a Steam.exe in XBMC so that you could switch between the 2 without having to navigate the windows UI.

Be fantastic for a comfy couch steambox/HTPC setup.
 
Jasconius said:
Hopefully this is something easy I'm just not thinking of because I'm tired, but how do you get it to go to the correct display? It just keeps opening up on my monitor instead of my TV even if I drag steam over there...
Click to expand...

Exactly. It's annoying. You have to set your TV as the Primary display in your graphics card settings, which then works but has all sorts of other annoyances.
 
StalkerUKCG said:
Does XBMC have controller support. If so would it be possible for you to put a XBMC.exe in Steam and a Steam.exe in XBMC so that you could switch between the 2 without having to navigate the windows UI.

Be fantastic for a comfy couch steambox/HTPC setup.
Click to expand...

Yup it does
 
Jzero said:
You have to remember it's in beta. Hopefully they will fix this though.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, of course. I just assumed this would be, like, a priority thing. Kind of the whole real point of the software. Anyway, hopefully it's either on the cards or they've read it and taken it on board. I don't claim to know anything about programming, but I wouldn't imagine it's hard to make a drop down with displays on. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it is!
 
Jzero said:
You have to remember it's in beta. Hopefully they will fix this though.
Click to expand...

I don't see how they could fix that. The Steam interface could be fixed, but you would have to go into every game and tell it to go onto the second monitor and 95% of games don't even have that option. I guess they could try and create a system for switching monitors using some Windows API. The same one that some cards use I would assume.
 
Has anyone familiar with Xpadder been able to find a way to have the Steam controller settings come into effect when using the Steam overlay? Right now when I play a game using the Xpadder controller profiles and bring up the SteamUI those controller mappings are still in effect. The Steam UI doesn't seem to be the Steam "program" according to Windows. Instead it's considered the game i'm playing so Xpadder won't switch to a default profile.
 
Cartman86 said:
Has anyone familiar with Xpadder been able to find a way to have the Steam controller settings come into effect when using the Steam overlay? Right now when I play a game using the Xpadder controller profiles and bring up the SteamUI those controller mappings are still in effect. The Steam UI doesn't seem to be the Steam "program" according to Windows. Instead it's considered the game i'm playing so Xpadder won't switch to a default profile.
Click to expand...

I'm think it could work by tweaking "set launch options" in Steam. I'll look into it.
 
This is a great step. Now if there was an option to always run Steam on Secondary Monitor and force all Steam games to start in Secondary Monitor.

Until then. Do anyone know a way to have a keyboard shortcut to switch which screen is secondary?
 
Paertan said:
This is a great step. Now if there was an option to always run Steam on Secondary Monitor and force all Steam games to start in Secondary Monitor.

Until then. Do anyone know a way to have a keyboard shortcut to switch which screen is secondary?
Click to expand...

Ultramon would be on Windows your answer for this :)
 
GTA IV is another game that has a pop up before it starts. Is there anyway to get the Social Club pop up to stop or to sign me in automatically?
 
This is a really cool effort, but at the end of the day, it's a shell that supports the xbox360 controller very nicely, yet a ton of Steam games don't.

A Steambox with this UI would be great, IF the games would also support the controller OR we'd see some form of peripheral emulation. Right now, it's a really pretty controller-based shell for games that were mostly made for keyboard/mouse interfaces.
 
thomasmahler said:
This is a really cool effort, but at the end of the day, it's a shell that supports the xbox360 controller very nicely, yet a ton of Steam games don't.

A Steambox with this UI would be great, IF the games would also support the controller OR we'd see some form of peripheral emulation. Right now, it's a really pretty controller-based shell for games that were mostly made for keyboard/mouse interfaces.
Click to expand...

Yea, Steam games need to support controllers more. All games with controller support should have a huge logo slapped on them
 
Where does Steam take feedback on this? I want to read up on the reports that have come in already and if they've said anything about it.

I want to use it so bad, but no custom icons in the library is a deal breaker.

out0v0rder said:
steam big picture comes out and i find like 5 pages of discussing who invented the on screen keyboard what the heck
Click to expand...
To be fair, that was before it was out and we had to busy ourselves with something. :p
 
Haunted said:
Where does Steam take feedback on this? I want to read up on the reports that have come in already and if they've said anything about it.

I want to use it so bad, but no custom icons in the library is a deal breaker.


To be fair, that was before it was out and we had to busy ourselves with something. :p
Click to expand...

Custom icons work for me, also join the steam group for reporting things. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BigPicture

This was the update:

9/10/2012:
- Fixed displaying discounted prices for packages in the store
- Fixed various store navigation issues
- Fixed a common crash on launching Big Picture of D2D/D3D surface creation fails, and added more informative errors
- Fixed friends name color bleeding into chat text
- Added a warning when trying to launch Big Picture while running Steam in Windows compatibility mode
Click to expand...
 
thomasmahler said:
This is a really cool effort, but at the end of the day, it's a shell that supports the xbox360 controller very nicely, yet a ton of Steam games don't.

A Steambox with this UI would be great, IF the games would also support the controller OR we'd see some form of peripheral emulation. Right now, it's a really pretty controller-based shell for games that were mostly made for keyboard/mouse interfaces.
Click to expand...

It's not like this won't have an affect on more developers to want to support controllers in the future. Outside of maybe WMC and XBMC, there isn't exactly a lot of options for people who want ten foot pc gaming. If every content distributor always kept the same attitude, then it definitely wouldn't change. Either way, you're underselling the relevant ratio of games with controller support. Currently pretty much every top seller in the top 10 supports controllers.
 
Hmm looks good, but would be better if you could change the display in Library. Mine is "Recent Games", not all of which are installed, would be nice if I could change it to "Installed".
 
Haunted said:
Thanks for the link. Do your custom icons work in the all games and installed views, or only in recently played? I just checked and they didn't work in the first two.
Click to expand...

I have like 10 custom icons and I just noticed 3 aren't working, Mass Effect 3/Warcraft 3 and Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne don't work, but Counter-Strike Source Beta/TF2 Beta/Dota 2 Test/Crysis 2 work.

...all the ones with a 3 in them don't work but with a 2 in them they do....


VALLLVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
 
JustinBB7 said:
I have like 10 custom icons and I just noticed 3 aren't working, Mass Effect 3/Warcraft 3 and Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne don't work, but Counter-Strike Source Beta/TF2 Beta/Dota 2 Test/Crysis 2 work.

...all the ones with a 3 in them don't work but with a 2 in them they do....


VALLLVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Click to expand...
Custom icons for Steam games work, but not the ones for non-Steam shortcuts, I think. There's a couple reports in the bug report and general discussion sections already, so I think they're aware.


I thought the browser was a total piece of shit until I came upon this tip:
Control Panel > Internet Options > Connections Tab > LAN Settings > Uncheck Automatically Detect Settings

Windows, for compatibility reasons, has Automatically Detect Proxy settings enabled. It unfortunately adds a significant lag to loading web pages in Steam as well as other internet dependent applications. Nearly no one needs this compatibility feature anymore, worst case if something goes wrong simply re-check the box.
Click to expand...
Can't believe how much faster it is now. Also speeds up regular Steam pages, as it's basically running an integrated browser.
 
Haunted said:
Custom icons for Steam games work, but not the ones for non-Steam shortcuts, I think. There's a couple reports in the bug report and general discussion sections already, so I think they're aware.


I thought the browser was a total piece of shit until I came upon this tip:
Can't believe how much faster it is now. Also speeds up regular Steam pages, as it's basically running an integrated browser.
Click to expand...

Wow that really helps in the normal client, big picture mode ran really smooth/fast for me. But now the normal client runs better.
 
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