Dealing with Steam and Tridef Ignition 2.4.6

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iondrive
Sharp Eyed Eagle!
Posts: 367
Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2009 8:13 pm

Dealing with Steam and Tridef Ignition 2.4.6

Post by iondrive »

Hi all,

Tridef has a little problem with Steam games but it can work, it's just a little tricky. What you have to do is logout and exit Steam, then use the Steam's game icon in the Tridef Ignition window. Here's the easy way to get that icon in there. Just use the Window's Start menu and right-click on the Steam game you want and select copy. Then paste it onto the desktop and drag a copy into the Tridef window. You may want to delete the desktop icon after that.

online or offline?
When you start the game from the Tridef window, you should probably choose "go online" but if you want to play a game offline, then change to offline mode, exit Steam and use the Tridef window game-icon again choosing offline mode this time. It should work although it's not working for me right now since there's something wrong with my setup/software. It may have something to do with a recent Steam update. It used to work before that.

The quirks:
Once you've got a Steam game running with Tridef functioning, you can actually exit that game and, since Steam is still running under Tridef, start another Steam game without using the Tridef window and you'll still have the Tridef 3d running with the new game. The problem is that the new game will be using the original game's profile. It would be good if you could change game-profiles in-game but currently there's no way to do that although I've suggested that Tridef add that feature. Of course an automatic switch would be even better. Anyway, if you stick with the previous game's profile and change something, it will probably be saved and then the original game will have different settings next time you start it. So the right way to play different Steam games with a different profile per game is to exit Steam each time and start the new Steam game via the Tridef window. It's awkward but that's the way it is for now. Hopefully Tridef will make things better with some future upgrade. I believe that they are working on this.

Note that all your Steam games in the Tridef window will be using the Steam Icon. It's just another quirk of the way things work under Tridef.

The Steam in-game overlay and voice-chat:
Another problem with Steam games and Tridef drivers is that the Steam shift-tab overlay doesn't work so if you want to talk to someone online in-game you have to setup voice-chat beforehand. Start the game with the Tridef window, login, exit game, start Steam voice-chat and start the same Steam game without using the Tridef window icon. Yikes, hopefully they will fix that soon too. If you Alt-tab out to the desktop to interact with Steam, the game will probably crash when you try to alt-tab back in.

An alternative:
You could try setting up an icon in the Tridef window that uses the Steam game's exe file from the game directory but you should still exit Steam before trying that icon. Sometimes it works that way so consider this as a secondary choice if the other way doesn't work.

Bottom line: it can be OK for single-player gaming, but online multiplayer gaming still needs improvement.

Windows LIVE and others:
I'm not sure I we should include data about other online systems here or each in their own thread. Probably one per thread is best. I or someone else will have to post info about such systems eventually.

--- iondrive ---

PS: if you use both iZ3D and Tridef and your Steam games are not working with Tridef, make sure the iZ3D driver is disabled. It's an easy thing to overlook because the iZ3D driver can still be set to "enable by hotkey" even after you exit it so that it no longer appears in your taskbar program tray. So it can still cause you problems even when you don't see that little icon. Just make sure it's set to disabled. I wonder if this has fooled some people into thinking that certain Steam games don't work with Tridef when they actually do.
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cybereality
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Joined: Sat Apr 12, 2008 8:18 pm

Re: Dealing with Steam and Tridef Ignition 2.4.6

Post by cybereality »

Yeah, I found out about that little "quirk" with TriDef's driver. It basically links all Steam games to the "Steam.exe" so you must exit Steam every time you want to do something different (like switch games or drivers, etc.). Annoying, but at least its not a mystery.
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