Steam has an offline mode that needs no internet. Yyou can use this by activating steam with the internet disconnected.

It will complain the internet is off and ask for a reconnect or go offline. Choose offline.

I swear some time ago I was able to bypass steam and go straight to the games .exe but I have not been able to do that since.

ok thanks, im still not able to get online tho in CSS and Dod:S..... (and Half Life: Lost Coast is only one level.... wtf? lol)

I haven't a clue how to get into Offline mode at all.

It was explained in detail above.

i think it has to do with my dads router..... maybe it needs to be configured so i can play these games online =/ ? idk, but i can try a few things...

Oh, thanks.

Uh, James. Before you mess with the router:

Make sure steam is aware of your connection type. I once made the mistake of telling steam I had a 56k modem when really I had ADSL, I ended up wasting 30 seconds of my life everytime I entered a server because this limited my download speeds. This could be screwing you up too.

There are some antivirus, firewall programs that hate steam. Ensure steam is on your firewalls list of trusted programs. (usualy your programs are trusted automatically but for some, this does not happen).

Turn of any protection software you dont need (except the firewall)

Check your filters, are there no servers? or Just several being filtered out?

You just want to be absolutely sure its the router and not something else before you do anything with it.

P.S any updates should have been installed the moment steam comes online. It is impossible to have an outdated version of anything.

yea i have the net connection set right in steam i think and the updates automatically downloaded im pretty sure. i saw the servers but when i tried to join one it would always say "tried 4 times, couldnt connect". i

btw why do most game companies think of only graphics and not sound or game play and story ss2 had great sound and story and it was made years ago while mindles shotters today reliy on graphict to inpress you when they

have crapy sound and stuff btw the only games i saw 3d shadow efects where doom 3 theif 3 and cronicals of riddic thats prety much it

Doom 3 had good gameplay and sound also Rise of legends is a good game. So there still might be a few companies out there delivering great gameplay and visuals

Just throwin this out there Chronicles of Riddick I consider one of the best games of my generation its beautiful and has great gamplay.

Doom 3's sound effect have quite a bit of room for improvement though.

Well yea but back in 2004 they scared the shizit out of me, hearing a growl and knowing that somethings around the corner and trying to think how your going to react.

Yeah but I was talking about audio quality. Let's take the menu music for example, the rock part sounds absolutely terrible. The guitar sounds so washed out that you can barely hear a rythm. Quake 3 Arena end cutscene is an example of fantastically made rock. Each sound is razor sharp, plus the music is catchy.

The enemies sounded ok, though I'd have wanted scarier & louder growls.

Now that you mentioned it the sound quality was kinda low but still an excellent game. Ive never heard the Quake 3 ending so I couldn't disagree or agree with you

Believe me trunk, game developers do think and try about those all those things

They focus on graphics because that is what sucks in the customers and gets people attention, make no doubt that they understand the elements of gameplay and balance too. They know that keeps people playing.

Graphics is just the easy part. Balance, story, gameplay and sound are harder.

With sound, they have to pay voice actors and record actual events while the sound quality varies greatly on the equipment they can afford.

With balance they want to make as many good ideas work as possible but it takes years of testing to make sure none has a huge advantage over the other. The balance threads in this forum indicate just how tough of a job it is. Time can be limiting when getting this right.

With story they have to write the whole chain of events before anything else, im talking like a whole book before the game gets made. And the game must conform to that book. How that happens without cutting into any fun/action requires careful attention to plot. They also must beware of putting too much time into plot and not enough into development.

Its just not that simple.