NEW! qUiCkSiLvEr's SteamRate !!! - HL2DMU Forum Archive

[EYE] Valar

2008-10-03 03:52:18

http://qsextreme.com/SteamRate/ this tool either eliminates or decreases Steam related crashes in game.

been using it for some time now. not crashed once while it's on. give it a try and comment.
qUiCkSiLvEr's Website: http://qsextreme.com/

Keeper

2008-10-03 05:04:43

Get it now...word is it that he's going away from the Source world soon.

keefy

2008-10-03 16:17:55

I dont understand what this does.

[EYE] Valar

2008-10-03 17:25:57

from the page...

Summary:
Steam is a content delivery and management tool from Valve Software. Steam has a rate throttle (Steam Rate) that needs to be set to your typical internet download speed setting.

Steam based games also have a rate setting that is not the same as the Steam Rate (but similar in intent).

Unfortunately, it turns out that changing your rate in the game will also cause the Steam Rate setting to be changed which can cause a variety of symptoms.

Each game has it's own rate setting and Steam has it's own, but for some bizarre reason Valve chose to programmatically link the game rate back to the Steam rate, so if you set your in-game "rate" to some high number, say 20000 or 30000 (30000 is equivalent to 10MBit download rates) then this also will change the Steam download rate to the same number.

You can see the Steam Rate settings in the Steam settings:
steam > settings > downloads > speed of your internet

The game rate behaves very differently from the Steam Rate, I find I need 20000 or 30000 in source games to minimize choke but then my Steam Server Browser gets all messed up and I do see some "extreme" symptoms (the reason I started working on this little application).

Servers can also slow-hack your rate settings and cause this.

This is mostly a problem when you have a slower DSL or cable connection, 512 or 768, but getting it set to 10Mbit is likely to mess up almost anyone somewhat unless you have a fiber optic connection.

The Rate change doesn't actually affect Steam right away, Steam becomes affected the next time it restarts.

keefy

2008-10-03 19:40:06

Tjhanks but I already read that when I clicked the link.

Walking Target

2008-10-03 19:56:27

Apparently the setting in steam where you select your connection (dialup, cable, dsl etc) is different from "rate" in your console. Unfortunately changing "rate" in console can set your connection setting. This little app keeps the connection setting steady, even when your console rate is changed.

[EYE] Valar

2008-10-03 22:35:17

keefy wrote:Tjhanks but I already read that when I clicked the link.

yea. god only knows why Valve chose to give Steam (the app) a different rate settings than the actually game it playing (DM). but there you go.
good thing is with this little app i can reduce to almost none existant DM crashes.

btw sry if quoting the page was obvious. i though you haven't read it. most ppl don't . .

badinfluence

2008-10-03 23:02:12

I don't think I've had a crash since I upgraded.

Tw1tch

2008-11-28 08:04:36

This thing works. Far less crashes.

If Quicksilver is leaving the Source world for good don't forget to make a backup copy.

Deathwish

2008-11-28 13:28:29

omfg thankyou so much for posting this, i got both these things,

1. very slow server listings in the server browser
2. fewer then expected servers showing up in the steam browser

plus steam causes my net to spike which is bad when I play on servers in the US, which I think this is also related to as I set my rate to 20000.

Deathwish

2008-11-28 13:46:51

[EYE] Valar wrote: yea. god only knows why Valve chose to give Steam (the app) a different rate settings than the actually game it playing (DM). but there you go.
good thing is with this little app i can reduce to almost none existant DM crashes.

btw sry if quoting the page was obvious. i though you haven't read it. most ppl don't . .

You're actually incorrect, this program locks your steam rate, so you can change your ingame rate without it changing the steam rate, the whole problem was that the ingame rate were linked with the steam rate, so now you can change the steam connection setting(the download setting), then this program will lock it there, then you can change your ingame rate and it wont change your steam rate. You can test this by changing your steam rate in the download setting to your closest connection, when i change it to 756k, and i go ingame i see my rate has been changed to 9999, when i change my rate back to 20000 and i go to the steam download setting, the setting has magically changed to 2M/LAN, which is way higher than my connection.

[EYE] Valar

2008-11-28 17:40:12

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Shinigami

2008-11-28 21:47:59

urgh.. I scared cuz I'm on vista

[EYE] Valar

2008-11-28 22:00:36

Vista has been a failur since day one and is going to be discontinued and out of updates by June 09 per MS.
get ready and once MS announces it get an XP copy in exchange for your vista from them.

L2k

2008-11-29 00:08:37

[EYE] Valar wrote:Vista has been a failur since day one and is going to be discontinued and out of updates by June 09 per MS.
get ready and once MS announces it get an XP copy in exchange for your vista from them.

LMAO..are you serious?? I hadn't heard this yet and it's funny if that is true as MS is still advertising the hell out of vista here on TV. I wonder if they will give a update to XP to allow DX 10 at that time

[EYE] Valar

2008-11-29 03:57:52

ATP it’s labeled a "rumor". though quite consistent

Shinigami

2008-11-29 04:22:45

Vista just recently purged all my files, it said it had some corrupted files should we get rid of them i'm like yeah ok.. not like it would do anything else tho.. well 90% of my stuff went to vista heaven, programs, music, photos.. everything but maybe 2 programs.. all i can say is I did it for Halo [got a free copy with my vista copy] grrr..

[EYE] Valar

2008-11-29 08:53:58

sounds right

Deathwish

2008-11-29 12:01:54

get vista ultimate x64 im happy with it its way better than xp pro x86, i dont get any crashes in DM its more stable than XP pro x86, vista x86 is the fail one.

Cynips

2008-11-29 17:13:59

If this solves my "Lost connection to VAC servers" or "Client timed out" etc. I for one will be overjoyed

I'll report on it once I've played enough to make some kind of judgement. I really shouldn't have a problem with rate since I'm on a 30/30Mb connection, but I'm still getting those weird connection losses.

Shinigami

2008-11-29 20:58:40

yeah well I am gonna wait... on vista.. have no moneyz anywayz but I just hate microsoft

keefy

2008-11-30 02:02:52

L2k wrote:
[EYE] Valar wrote:Vista has been a failur since day one and is going to be discontinued and out of updates by June 09 per MS.
get ready and once MS announces it get an XP copy in exchange for your vista from them.
LMAO..are you serious?? I hadn't heard this yet and it's funny if that is true as MS is still advertising the hell out of vista here on TV. I wonder if they will give a update to XP to allow DX 10 at that time

MS won't update XP to DX10 not becasue XP is dead and vista is awsome but because why would anyone upgrade to vista if XP does what vista does?
Only games I have that are DX 10 are Bioshock and UT3 UT3 is a massive flop and bioshock is horrible on PC due to mouse aceleration that cannot be removed.

Cynips

2008-12-02 00:39:18

This doesn't seem to make a difference for me. I'm still getting both crashes and lost connections...

Jelly Fox

2008-12-02 02:18:28

using it for the last day or so, haven't crashed yet and my game feels smoother...mmm, dunno if they're related but i'll keep on using it anyway

[KBH]Tazzer

2008-12-02 02:22:40

how exactly do i use this?

[EYE] Valar

2008-12-02 15:17:33

[KBH]Tazzer wrote:how exactly do i use this?

grab the exe from the zip and put it somewhere on your pc
make a shortcut to the desktop
run it
lock it
set it to 9999
reboot steam
launch dm
kill ppl

also...few other things useful for steam issues:

this is for your launch options:
-novid -nocrashdialog -heapsize 786432
(got it from neolink ages ago)
the next two (each by itself) should be run while steam is on:
steam://support/?Issues=*
steam://support/?Issues=Background*

val

Cynips

2008-12-02 15:22:51

[EYE] Valar wrote:
[KBH]Tazzer wrote:how exactly do i use this?
set it to 9999

Why 9999?

the next two (each by itself) should be run while steam is on:
steam://support/?Issues=*
steam://support/?Issues=Background*

What do these do?

[EYE] Valar

2008-12-02 15:42:21

9999 is the default in steamrate and essencially sets steam (not the game) to look for less bandwidth. always good. in any case you should start from there and move up if need be...

steam://support/?Issues=*
is an internal check steam runs for steam related elements to be up to date / conflicts / problems..

steam://support/?Issues=Background*
is a check steam runs for background conflicts you may have with steam (which cause crashes / errors)

SND

2008-12-02 16:26:11

I thought the whole point of this was to match up steam rate with the rate you use for in game such as 25000 the standard in game rate for this game. So simply would you just put down that instaed of 9999 because we actually trying the change the default rate from the standard rate.

[EYE] Valar

2008-12-02 16:51:30

steam and the games you run through steam don't use or need to use the same rate.
the only times when you will want to have steam using your full available rate is when you're downloading anything. else, use a lower rate.

Jelly Fox

2008-12-02 16:52:54

[EYE] Valar wrote:also...few other things useful for steam issues:

this is for your launch options:
-novid -nocrashdialog -heapsize 786432
(got it from neolink ages ago)

val

The heap size can be half of your overall RAM size, so that figure will differ per user, I have 2GB so therefore I have my -heapsize 1024000

also add -console

[KBH]Tazzer

2008-12-02 18:12:47

THANK YOU

keefy

2008-12-02 19:36:07

What does changing heapsize Actually do? I use default 256MB.

Jelly Fox

2008-12-02 20:10:57

tweakguides.com wrote:-heapsize [Kilobytes]: This command tells the Source Engine to allocate more RAM to the system heap, where it can be accessed by the game to improve performance by caching more game information in RAM and hence reducing loading pauses. The default heapsize varies, but can be 256MB or less. If you have 2GB of RAM you may wish to increase this to 512MB (a heapsize of 524288). You can use higher values if you wish, but I don't recommend exceeding half your physical RAM (e.g. for 2GB RAM, don't set heapsize higher than 1024000). You can't force the game to load completely into RAM, that's not what this command does.

badinfluence

2008-12-03 02:15:20

I have 3.5gb of RAM so I set mine for 1536000. Is this correct?

Jelly Fox

2008-12-03 02:41:41

1835008KB is half of 3.5GB

so you can set your heapsize to 1835008 max

badinfluence

2008-12-03 02:51:42

Thank you. I'll just leave it on what it is though. I'm lazy.

Mastering3d

2009-05-22 19:41:20

Hi there i see this is old topic but i was looking at ,It dont get you van ban will it as its running in the back ground ? .

[EYE] Valar

2009-05-22 20:49:48

no idea what "van ban" means but this should be launched. set. and then launch Steam. if Steam was already up. close and reopen.

L2k

2009-05-22 22:39:11

no it won't get you van banned, you can still drive your van.

oh it won't get you VAC banned either

[EYE] Valar

2009-05-22 23:29:01

hahhaa. no this is no cheat, Mastering3d.
it's a small app that sets Steam's rate different than your Games'. so your games don't crash as a result of a conflict between the two. this is a known steam crash bug. that's all.