Quick, General TF2 Question

[.sf|BehavyuR]

So I'll be paying for my new laptop in about half an hour, and will need to put Steam and TF2 onto it. Now, are ALL my in-game stats stored by a server outside of my current PC, or are there some that I will need to purposefully make copies of to port over? Also, no, I'm not talking about hlstatsx - I know that's a server-based storage thing.

Oh, and does anyone think it would cause any problem for me to install my Orange Box a second time on this laptop? I'll be buying my brother (you know him as Zucchini in-game) another copy for this PC so that his Steam account can finally have a TF2 tied to it. Sound kosher?

I'm just paranoid, I probably already know the answers to these questions...

[Brandname]

1) Yeah, all of your Valve stats are stored on their servers. They will follow you around wherever you log in.

2) I'm not sure I understand what you want to do. You installed in once, uninstalled it, and want to install it again? Or did you mean something else?

[.sf|BehavyuR]

Basically yeah. Since the game's serial code locks itself to a Steam Account and not a computer, I have to take the game with me to my laptop and buy him a new one, yes? So, it has been installed/played on the current PC, will now be uninstalled from there, and reinstalled on my new laptop; a new copy will be purchased and tied to my brother's Steam Account (Zucchini). Will that cause any problems for me? (I don't care about him, he'll have a new copy to play with, regardless.)

[eclyps]

When you make the switch to your new laptop, just download steam and log in with your usual information. You can actually just download all the games tied to the account on that laptop without having to uninstall anything. You definitely don't have to uninstall it from a different machine. However, it's advised to not allow others to use your steam account to play games (it's also against the EULA). So make sure your brother has his own account and his own copy of TF2 tied to that account. If he purchases TF2, he can pretty much just jump on your old PC and start playing without the need to install everything again :)

[.sf|BehavyuR]

Cool. Thanks for the info, guys - I'm off to buy him a copy of TF2 so I can play on my laptop without worrying he'll inadvertently try to hijack my account without knowing it. See you in game again soon!

[JMaster299]

I recently just moved STEAM off my OS drive on to my second HD since it has a lot more space and my STEAM folder takes up over 60GB of space. All I did was move the main folder from one drive to the other and had to relog into STEAM and was good to go. It saved the time of having to redownload all my games again and it saved any custom files I had like sprays and maps. You can simply network the two computers together and transfer the files. Should help save you some time.

[AzzSazzin<TWM>]

My son and I both play TF2 on different accounts on the same computer at home. You dont need to uninstall anything, just log out of steam and have him log in as a different user. As long as he has activated his copy of TF2 on his account or has the code he should be ready to roll.

[Resonant Freek]

Along that line, is it possible for me to install steam on a second computer in my house and as long as I log off of steam on one and log on the other then I can play from either computer? (not talking about both at the same time, just when my kids are playing PlayhouseDisney.com on one I can actually get something 'productive' done on the other)

[.sf|BehavyuR]

I don't think I have to worry about this whole thing anymore...

My new laptop? Yeah, just discovered the death sentence hidden within: a Mobile Intel GMA x3100. I can't even get more than 8-12fps on the absolute lowest settings right now. I am royally pissed. Anyone have any tricks up his or her sleeve for making this thing usable?! :(

[JMaster299]

I don't think I have to worry about this whole thing anymore...

My new laptop? Yeah, just discovered the death sentence hidden within: a Mobile Intel GMA x3100. I can't even get more than 8-12fps on the absolute lowest settings right now. I am royally pissed. Anyone have any tricks up his or her sleeve for making this thing usable?! :(

What are it's specs? You may be able to add a graphics card to it and that would make a big difference.

[.sf|BehavyuR]

I'm going down to my computer dealer tomorrow to talk about that, actually. The specs aren't that bad at all, aside from that Intel built-in piece of shit; it's got a 2.0gHz Celeron m550 combined with 2.0Gb of DDR RAM, so the only thing incapable of handling TF2 is the graphics accelerator. I really hope I can get a new card built into it, 'cause if I can't, August will be my last month of playing this awesome game with you guys, which is a huge let-down for me.

[yum yums]

I'm going down to my computer dealer tomorrow to talk about that, actually. The specs aren't that bad at all, aside from that Intel built-in piece of shit; it's got a 2.0gHz Celeron m550 combined with 2.0gHz of DDR RAM, so the only thing incapable of handling TF2 is the graphics accelerator. I really hope I can get a new card built into it, 'cause if I can't, August will be my last month of playing this awesome game with you guys, which is a huge let-down for me.

Sorry, but we have 2.4GHz Celeron D's running some of our older, surplused computers here at my university, and they're slow running Office 2007. Your laptop just doesn't sound like it can cut it no matter what.

[.sf|BehavyuR]

If I can play it with little to no trouble on this desktop, which comes in at 2.12gHz and 1 gig of DDR RAM (e.g. half the RAM the laptop has), I think this laptop can handle it. It just needs a smack in the video processor, hopefully. The rest of the actual game loads faster, plays in widescreen, and looks delightful - until I actually get in-game, which then loses FPS like a stuck pig loses blood.

[Frodo De Mar]

I really hope I can get a new card built into it, 'cause if I can't, August will be my last month of playing this awesome game with you guys, which is a huge let-down for me.
dang that sucks, hope it will work out for you

[Brandname]

If I can play it with little to no trouble on this desktop, which comes in at 2.12gHz and 1 gig of DDR RAM (e.g. half the RAM the laptop has), I think this laptop can handle it. It just needs a smack in the video processor, hopefully. The rest of the actual game loads faster, plays in widescreen, and looks delightful - until I actually get in-game, which then loses FPS like a stuck pig loses blood.

Just another thing to be aware of: Celeron processors have limitations other than clock speed which exist to reduce the cost of the processors. I can't remember what they all are (smaller cache?), but they will generally have poorer performance than, say, a Pentium of equal clock speed.

I'm not familiar with Celeron processors at all, so I'm not sure how they will handle the game, and surely the video card is your biggest culprit (I'm almost surprised you were able to do that well with the built-in graphics chipset). But just be aware, if you aren't already, that clock speed doesn't tell the whole story in terms of processor performance.

[.sf|BehavyuR]

Well, computer guy says either I get a worse laptop with a dedicated video card, investigate this "external video card" thing he heard about recently, or stop playing. I won't be downgrading my new toy just to play TF2, so it's time to start looking into the "external video card" solution; I have no clue about what this is, but I'll look into it.

If not, then I guess my TF2 career has met its end as of August 31st. :( Thanks for all the input guys; Brandname, I was surprised I got as much out of it as I did as well, especially on widescreen 16:10. We'll see what I can do!

[stewbee]

Along that line, is it possible for me to install steam on a second computer in my house and as long as I log off of steam on one and log on the other then I can play from either computer? (not talking about both at the same time, just when my kids are playing PlayhouseDisney.com on one I can actually get something 'productive' done on the other)

I believe that is quite possible. I recently bought a new desktop and re-installed steam and TF2 on it. It would appear that they don't mind as long as you, the user, are only logged in on a single computer at a time. I think that if I were to hook up my old computer, I would still be able to play TF2 on that machine.

[PandaBear Assassin]

I don't think I have to worry about this whole thing anymore...

My new laptop? Yeah, just discovered the death sentence hidden within: a Mobile Intel GMA x3100. I can't even get more than 8-12fps on the absolute lowest settings right now. I am royally pissed. Anyone have any tricks up his or her sleeve for making this thing usable?! :(

Check out this thread:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=623213

It's epic amongst intel integrated graphics users trying to play TF2. Before I built my pc, I played on my lappy with an Intel GMA 950 which is much worse than the integ GPU you have. There are alot of custom configs to help with performance.

[Alvari]

As long as you use the same account as the last install both will carry over.

[.sf|BehavyuR]

Jebus, thanks Panda! That is one long-ass thread. I'm on the desktop right now, so I'll have to crank up the laptop tomorrow after work to re-install Steam and TF2 to see if any of those solutions work for my 965-series GMA, which admittedly should be slightly more advanced than those mentioned in that thread.

[PandaBear Assassin]

No problem!! Yea urs is def more advanced than the one in my lappy so those configs you should help your GPU out more than they did mine.