Pinball FX2 @ Humble Bundle

[Generic Eric]

https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

Who is a fan of the Pinball FX2 series?

[BadMouth]

I've only messed around with the free tables on Steam for a few games, but they did make me want to build a v-pin.
I'll definitely be getting this. 
Thanks!

[edekoning]

I always thought the tables, at least on XBLA, were a bit to expensive for me. But I will definitely be getting this!

[Well Fed Games]

Great deal, I jumped on it.

[Howard_Casto]

Dumb question... can you pay for HIB stuff with amazon gift cards?  I'm trying to get rid of those things. 

[BadMouth]

Dumb question... can you pay for HIB stuff with amazon gift cards?  I'm trying to get rid of those things. 

It has amazon payments as an option.
I paid via that once, but can't remember if it allowed me to choose payment methods or just went on my default one-click card.

[Howard_Casto]

Interesting.

Let me ask you this.... are these those annoying steam games where steam has to be running in the background to play, or are they stand alone?  I'll eventually want to put this on my main cab, so that matters to me. 

[Generic Eric]

They are steam games yes.  Can't whether or not you can play offline.  Here is the link to the base game.  You might just test and download. http://store.steampowered.com/app/226980/

[Howard_Casto]

Well even the cracked version on the net requires steam, so my guess would be no. 

*sigh*  People wonder why I fought steam, windows games, anything that's  not a physical copy, ect.. tooth and nail.  This is what it's coming to... we can't play a game we own on our own damn hardware because of some stupid marketplace client. 

I know some games let you use steam in offline mode, but imho that doesn't matter.  Steam takes up a suprising amount of resources and doesn't close automatically with the games (at least not usually) so it foo-bars up any mame-cab install. 

[Well Fed Games]

Yeah, the Humble Bundle stuff usually has DRM free versions, but I guess the Humble Weekly Sale doesn't. I am comfortable with Steam, but would have loved if they had offered an alternative (as I could see playing these on a cab).

[Howard_Casto]

Well what makes me mad is I'm perfectly willing to buy physical copies.  The reason I stopped, like a lot of people, isn't because I lost interest, but because they literally stopped selling pc games in stores.  Go to the pc section sometime in your local big-box store.  Aside from WOW expansions it's a ghost town over there.   

[ahofle]

Thanks for the heads up.

[Bill_S]

If anyone figures out a way for me to play these tables in the windows 8 version of the games, lmk. I went for it since it was an affordable way to get all these tables, but would love to play them on my win8 tablet as well.

[Fursphere]

Well even the cracked version on the net requires steam, so my guess would be no. 

*sigh*  People wonder why I fought steam, windows games, anything that's  not a physical copy, ect.. tooth and nail.  This is what it's coming to... we can't play a game we own on our own damn hardware because of some stupid marketplace client. 

I know some games let you use steam in offline mode, but imho that doesn't matter.  Steam takes up a suprising amount of resources and doesn't close automatically with the games (at least not usually) so it foo-bars up any mame-cab install.

Unless your computer is ancient, this isn't an issue. 

I have many physical copies of games that require 1) Games for Windows Live AND 2) The physical disc to be in the drive.   AND 3) I have to manually find the patches and manually patch the stupid games.  Screw every bit of that.

And I had Steam in offline mode on my cabinet for like 6 months without issue. 

[Howard_Casto]

Sure it's an issue.  Just for example, when I exit out of TOTD:OK an ad pops up from the steam engine.  I don't want that crap on my arcade cab.  Even if I didn't mind it wouldn't matter because that game requires an online connection. 

So long as it's a physical disc, the game can be cracked to omit needing the disc.  With steam the games can be cracked for sure, but generally the "crack" is running a fake version of steam, which will give you the exact same issues depending upon the game. 

[BadMouth]

Sure it's an issue.  Just for example, when I exit out of TOTD:OK an ad pops up from the steam engine.  I don't want that crap on my arcade cab.  Even if I didn't mind it wouldn't matter because that game requires an online connection. 

So long as it's a physical disc, the game can be cracked to omit needing the disc.  With steam the games can be cracked for sure, but generally the "crack" is running a fake version of steam, which will give you the exact same issues depending upon the game.

Under Steam>Settings>Interface, uncheck "notify me about....."

That said, I still haven't worked out all the issues to seamlessly incorporate it into a front-end.
It was working well when automatically signing in, except for when there was an update or I had signed in on another computer.
Using the command lines to automatically log in resulted in it taking focus away from my front-end.
In offline mode, I get a popup when the game is launched asking if I'm sure that I want to launch it in offline mode.
I'll crack it eventually, probably with autohotkey, but it is far from front-end friendly.
For now, I've just resolved to signing into steam before launching the front-end if I intend to play any steam games.