Steam (and Half-Life 2, I guess) question

[EngineNo9]

How the hell do I know when Steam is updating or has already updated my games?  I tried looking through all of their options but absolutely can not find anything that lets me know if it's downloading anything or how to do it manually.  I'm not really fond of neither being in control of my updating programs nor being informed about what it is doing.

[Chesspieceface]

Right-click on the steam icon in the tasktray and choose 'monitor'.

[Turtle]

Right-click on the game's name and choose Properties.

You can also use the Steam monitor, right click on the taskbar tray icon and choose Monitor.

It'll give you a breakdown of how much bandwidth it's using and what it's downloading.

[Clanwolfer]

Just for a quick glance, if the Steam tray icon is the whole wrench, it's updating.  If it's a zoomed-in normal-looking, it's not.

[Jeff]

Also, you can right click HL2 in the Play Games list, choose properties, and choose to update manually, as opposed to auto-updates.

[EngineNo9]

Also, you can right click HL2 in the Play Games list, choose properties, and choose to update manually, as opposed to auto-updates.

I don't actually have that option.  In the game properties it just has buttons for "Launch Options", "Delete Local Game Contnet" and "Backup Files".  There is also a drop box that lets me choose to auto-update or not, but nothing about manually updating.

And the Monitor just shows that Half-Life 2 game is completely downloaded, it doesn't mention anything about patches or updates.  Since I don't run Steam unless I'm playing HL2 and I haven't played that in days there should be no way my system has already downloaded the updates released this week.  Hell, it doesn't even show the date that the downloads started or completed or anything.  

Stupid fucking Steam.

[MonkeyFinger]

So then, the next time you start Steam it will download any patches released for any Steam games you own since the last time you had it running. And it'll be obvious it's going on.  :wink:

[EngineNo9]

So then, the next time you start Steam it will download any patches released for any Steam games you own since the last time you had it running. And it'll be obvious it's going on.  :wink:

No it won't, because I have started Steam up a couple times this week to see if it would download the updates and it hasn't done anything.

[MonkeyFinger]

Ok... all that means is you've already got them, or it happened during that long lull while it was 'connecting'.

Check the Steam News page:

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Source SDK, and Source Engine updates are available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted.

A Source Engine update is available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted.

A Half-Life 2 update has been released via Steam. Please restart Steam to apply the update.

Maybe not all that obvious all the time, but as you can see it only happens when you restart Steam.

[whiteboyskim]

Also, you can right click HL2 in the Play Games list, choose properties, and choose to update manually, as opposed to auto-updates.

Hey Jeff, when I go into that the Automatic Update is greyed out and I can't set it to manually update. Any thoughts on this?