Valve has now released the latest big update to the Steam client, which brings with it various UI updates and the new in-game Steam Overlay. This is the update they announced back in April, with it being promoted from Beta to Stable.
While there's plenty of tweaks, Valve said the biggest changes aren't actually user-visible because they've changed "how we share code across the Steam Desktop Client, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck" resulting in "quicker implementation and iteration of new features" and now much code is shared between them.
Some of what's new includes:
- Various tweaks to the Steam App UI.
- Richer notifications.
- A whole new in-game overlay that lets you make notes, and pin windows on top of games.
- Hardware acceleration for Linux and macOS.
Here's an example of the new in-game overlay:
Really great update actually, the new overlay is many times more useful than the one before. The notes system is a good idea, and having it sync to your Steam account so you have it anywhere is really quite useful.
Check out Valve's overview video:
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Direct Link
Direct Link
Full Steam desktop app changes can be seen in their blog post.
Over on the Steam Deck, we finally have a fresh Stable Steam Client update as well, bundling together a whole lot of the tweaks and changes Valve has been putting out in Beta. Naturally, a lot of this is the same as what's found on desktop, since they are sharing code now but there's various specific Steam Deck tweaks like fixing the notorious issue of the Steam Deck claiming it cannot reach Steam servers when resuming from sleep. Most of it is bug fixing but there's also these additions and changes:
- Added support for notification types shown in the Desktop Client and Mobile app: Wishlist, Trade Offer, Steam Turn, Help Request, Major Sale, and Comment.
- Added a bell icon to the header when there are new notifications, and a green indicator to new notifications in the notifications list.
- Apply text filtering preferences in Guides in the Overlay.
- Expand the hitbox of buttons in the footer to make them easier to click.
- Improved performance of dual trackpad typing in the Virtual Keyboard.
- Any button press will now cancel the Wake custom startup movie.
- Changed game invitations to show the launch option dialog instead of using the first option in the list. If the user has selected an option and asked to remember it, that option will be used instead of showing the dialog.
- Added support for Mouse4 (Back) as B button in the interface.
- Search will now return tags in addition to games. You can search for categories like "Free to Play" or individual tags like "survival" or "zombies".
- Enabled additional toast notifications that were previously only visible in Desktop mode.
- Restored display of Special Offers in the What's New section of the home screen.
The full details of the Steam Deck update are here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Whatever update just came out has killed desktop mode for me. Attempting to access it just reboots my Deck immediately and now it is on verifying installation and has been for ages. Am on stable branch, had an update show up and complete, and was working fine before that.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: elmapulas an artist i dont like it for the same reason im not a big fan of mods... it destroy the artistic vision.
Very odd point of view, for a variety of reasons.
1. It assumes that the modders don't have such a thing like artistic vision.
2. It assumes that the developers artistic vision is in some way superior to that of a modder.
3. It assumes that there aren't games out there with odd artistic visions, which don't suit the wishes/needs of potential gamers.
Many Mods add flavour, depth or whole new perspectives to games. I really can't see how that diminishes the intentions of the developer. In that logic adaptations of music shouldn't be a thing. Besides that, there are also a whole bunch of Mods out there that clear out the bugs of half-assed or underfunded developed games.
Last edited by Deleted_User on 16 June 2023 at 7:55 am UTC
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Quoting: AsciiWolfLooks and works great! The only two small things I've noticed so far are:
1. It is not possible to launch selected games in small mode by pressing Enter key.
2. Opening the Steam overlay in CS:GO causes the game to hang and/or crash.
Damn you are right, the Enter key launch is gone!
And, indeed, the CS:GO overlay causes the game to crash…
Last edited by Bogomips on 16 June 2023 at 8:12 am UTC
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Quoting: Deleted_UserQuoting: elmapulas an artist i dont like it for the same reason im not a big fan of mods... it destroy the artistic vision.
Very odd point of view, for a variety of reasons.
1. It assumes that the modders don't have such a thing like artistic vision.
2. It assumes that the developers artistic vision is in some way superior to that of a modder.
3. It assumes that there aren't games out there with odd artistic visions, which don't suit the wishes/needs of potential gamers.
Many Mods add flavour, depth or whole new perspectives to games. I really can't see how that diminishes the intentions of the developer. In that logic adaptations of music shouldn't be a thing. Besides that, there are also a whole bunch of Mods out there that clear out the bugs of half-assed or underfunded developed games.
1)i dont mean they dont have one, i mean they have their OWN artistic vision that differ from the autor of the game.
2 and 3)its not about wich one is superior or inferior, if i dont like one particular game i can just play other games.
this mindset of "i improved your art" is dumb, most of the time, different people like different things, some people prefer realism others fantasy, some people prefer the Akira Toriyama art styles, others prefer the style from Clamp, Studio Ghibli and so on.
people who are iliterate to art might think those horrible "unreal engine ocarian of time remake" looks great, they look horrible in my opinion, or those texture packs, most of the time they claim they improved the graphics, but they just make it look worse, maybe they improved one asset but then everything else didnt match it as an result, maybe they improved a lot but now each asset has their own style, instead of following an consistent art direction.
its quite hard for someone to "nail it" even on official remakes/reboots/remasters.
if you dont like something that is fine, but saying you are better sound arrogant at best.
that reminds me the time when americans changed a lot of stuff in animes like the sound track claiming they were improving it and adapting to their audience, most of the time they destroyed and the audience hated when they figured out how they were scammed and preffer the original version.
now, ofcourse there are exceptions, i dont like the original higurashi game art, it was made by someone who didnt knew how to draw and that was obvious from looking at it, the remake was much better, and im not saying "you should NEVER mod something even for comedy purposes, i just dont like how art is viewed and treated nowadays.
https://xkcd.com/299/
art belong to the artist, if it belong to the public then its just fanservice, if it belong to the investors its just a product.
imagine being an artist and not being able to draw what you want, to write what you want, because its not profitable?
no one liked Dragon Ball Art style before they watched it, people watched it and started liking the style as an result.
if we follow the trends instead of trying to create something then everything will look the same.
now, dont get me wrong, im not against derivative content (eg: fangames, fanarts, even the erotic variants ) even on different art styles.
i just think that if you going to play something, at least give the original some chance to shiny before you tweak it with mods.
take a look at this article for example:
https://www.polygon.com/2015/5/13/8595963/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art
as for fixing bugs , that is fine but we shouldnt encourage developers to rely on their fans to fix their mess.
as for this overlay, its different because the goal is not waiting for the player to finish an game THEN leting it use an overlay to improve the experience, quite the opposite.
Last edited by elmapul on 16 June 2023 at 8:30 am UTC
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Quoting: apocalyptechBah.
I know a lot of folks really like the new update, but for me it was the final straw which made me abandon the beta branch and try to avoid it for awhile. I know they've said they put a lot of work into making it fast/smooth/whatever, but it just *feels* dog-slow to me. Visible little flickers when a menu activates. Little rendering delays when a window closes so there's a black area visible on the main window until the client catches up. It's just so infuriating.
This!
Quoting: apocalyptechI hate how every app nowadays is just some Electron-or-whatever webapp, and optimizing that kind of thing properly is nearly impossible. I really miss native widgets.
This, too!
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I really like the notes and browser in-game, it just came in very handy trying to work out how to do something while playing. Much better than quitting, looking it up, restarting etc.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: fabertaweI really like the notes and browser in-game, it just came in very handy trying to work out how to do something while playing. Much better than quitting, looking it up, restarting etc.For a lot of games, wouldn't alt-tab work for that?
1 Likes, Who?
Philadelphus Jun 17, 2023
I've stayed off the beta branch, so this is my first chance to see the new changes. In general: I like it, especially the new overlay stuff like being able to pin a window with achievements you want to keep in mind as you play. Haven't found any major show-stoppers yet.
It's sort-of fixed a bug I had with Cinammon on Debian, where if I had Steam running when I put my computer to sleep, upon re-awakening the Steam window would look like MissingNo channeling Picasso, which I could only fix by fully quitting Steam and restarting it. It's still not perfect upon reawakening now, but I can just close the window with the 'X' button and re-open it from the task bar icon to fix it, which is a lot quicker.
It's sort-of fixed a bug I had with Cinammon on Debian, where if I had Steam running when I put my computer to sleep, upon re-awakening the Steam window would look like MissingNo channeling Picasso, which I could only fix by fully quitting Steam and restarting it. It's still not perfect upon reawakening now, but I can just close the window with the 'X' button and re-open it from the task bar icon to fix it, which is a lot quicker.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: fabertaweI really like the notes and browser in-game, it just came in very handy trying to work out how to do something while playing. Much better than quitting, looking it up, restarting etc.For a lot of games, wouldn't alt-tab work for that?
Yes, for some. But not the one I'm currently playing
2 Likes, Who?
Well I'm giving this 2 thumbs down. I have to restart Steam everyday now since the content part of steam gets stuck on whatever was in it on sleep. And performance is terrible, the new achievement popup windows is incredibly laggy it seems it pegs one of my cpu cores at 100% just for a scrolling list of 75 items!
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