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Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 21:01
by Benvolio
I've never used Steam and I don't really know how it works, but i gather that it is some sort of a subscription service for PC games. If one bought Keen on it, would one receive an intact copy to one's on disk, in an original 1990/1991 form that could be modded? Or does it somehow have to be played only by logging into Steam?

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 22:39
by troublesomekeen
You have to download Steam, buy a game in order to release all restrictions on your account, be logged into a constantly updating and restarting Steam client to play any games you bought through Steam, and it's all downloads. No physical copies are sold.

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 23:42
by Benvolio
Hmmmm well I wonder does that mean that people who haven't bought Keen2/3/5 previously (e.g. from 3D Realms or Apogee) won't ever be able to legally play Keen mods as long as the Steam model prevails?

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 5:01
by Keening_Product
It does download the game files to your disk though, doesn't it TSK? Or have they been sucked into some wrapper binary which cannot be broken apart easily?

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 5:25
by troublesomekeen
Keening_Product wrote:It does download the game files to your disk though, doesn't it TSK? Or have they been sucked into some wrapper binary which cannot be broken apart easily?
That's a good question. It would be kind of absurd to have no access to your games without running Steam -- like if all your games were on the Steam Cloud? I'll have a look.

Okay, I found it.
Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common and there you should see all the folders containing your games. If you have the Commander Keen pack thing, just run the batch files for whichever episode you want to play. It uses DosBox fullscreen.

So yes. You can games you bought on Steam without running Steam. The only benefit to running Steam while playing is the Overlay (screenshots, voice chat, type chat, video, group chat) and Steam Achievements, since it records your progress.

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 9:12
by Lunick
Any DOSBox games on Steam have no DRM included with them (Doom's first release did but id quickly went back on that decision) so after you have bought and downloaded through Steam then I guess you are free to do what you want with them. The Commander Keen pack only has Steam Cloud as a feature for it to backup your save data, there are no Steam Achievements for it. If you want to use the Steam Overlay then you need to fiddle with the DOSBox config.

You can put Steam into offline mode for up to 30 days too if you don't want to be online using it although it won't record gameplay time (or Steam Achievements for other games) in this way.

I'll also point out that Steam itself isn't a DRM but Steamworks is which can be incorporated into a game's .exe file to make it only run when Steam is running and the account is authorised to play that game.

Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 2:51
by Levellass
troublesomekeen wrote:Okay, I found it.
Google has some wonderful short answers to questions now doesn't it? Very efficient.

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2016 23:52
by SupFanat
I made a Facebook page about it. At the moment it has only 12 likes. Hope you'll enjoy it and give more likes. :)
https://www.facebook.com/Make-all-Comma ... 3/?fref=ts