Enforce "Stop" button on steam library.

[Aurelia]

The fact that this button exists give you the impression that when you actually need to use it, it will serve a purpose, but this is not the case. While I appreciate it being there in theory, the real problem is that the times it would most likely be used are when a game crashes and something twists in such a way that steam fails to recognize that a game is no longer running. This prevents you from launching the game, until you shut down and restart steam. In such cases, one would desire a way to tell steam "hey, the game is no longer running, kill it please", which this button seems to imply, but unfortunately the button is non-responsive when this occurs.

I don't know if there are technical limitations that prevent this, but I would much desire a method to tell steam that a game is no longer running and for it to listen, or to kill any phantom processes still running related to the game in question.

[dumpst3rm4n]

Well but ussually steam makes the program close late because it has probably need to save some progress before completely exiting.
All you need to do is probably wait.

[Start_Running]

Stop is meant to perform a normal Close() on the application's process. Anithing that would prevent Close() from working will prevent STop from working. As for Killing the process. Yeah. many apps as a ruule avoid that, and leave that to the OS. And trust me that's for the better.

[Aurelia]

Originally posted by SovietComradeGopnik:

Well but ussually steam makes the program close late because it has probably need to save some progress before completely exiting.
All you need to do is probably wait.

There is no amount of waiting that will result in the game ceasing to be "ingame".

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Stop is meant to perform a normal Close() on the application's process. Anithing that would prevent Close() from working will prevent STop from working. As for Killing the process. Yeah. many apps as a ruule avoid that, and leave that to the OS. And trust me that's for the better.

The problem here is that the game is clearly not running accordance to the OS, as no processes appear in the manager, nor does the game continue to "exist" once you exit steam. This tells me that it is something within the steam client itself that is failing to recognize the game is no longer running.

[Start_Running]

Oh!
THAT problem. Yeah that's a bit of a glitch in the client. CLear your caches Temporary FIles,, Download Cache, etc, and restart. That shouuld fix it.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

I've run into at least two games where the game can close but Steam still thinks the game is running.

In at least one of those cases, this bug was easily reproducible.

A way on the Steam side to get around this problem would be nice.

[Rokonuxa]

There could also be some kinda bar for some things. For example, it is a well known problem that RPG maker stuff takes ages to close properly, because it uploads whatever changes you made. As in, the whole game you worked on.

This means, it is entirely possible to accidentally close it and be required to wait 20 minutes for the game to be "closed" in a way that allows you to re-launch it. Some indication of this could be nice.

On the topic of indication, can we all agree that error messages need to tell you the error or not tell you that anything happened at all? I am sick of the "oopsie whoopsie we did a +++++ wucko" (you can guess what word the + are) messages that everything seems to have.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Rokonuxa:

There could also be some kinda bar for some things. For example, it is a well known problem that RPG maker stuff takes ages to close properly, because it uploads whatever changes you made. As in, the whole game you worked on.

This means, it is entirely possible to accidentally close it and be required to wait 20 minutes for the game to be "closed" in a way that allows you to re-launch it. Some indication of this could be nice.

Problem is. STeam has no way ofknowing these things since this is only internal to the app. Really all Steam can see is when the process starts, when it closes and any information that's passed to the API by the process.

This sort of thing would not only equire steam to tweak the API for that level of granuarity, but devs would have to tweak their games to pass out that new data.

On the topic of indication, can we all agree that error messages need to tell you the error or not tell you that anything happened at all? I am sick of the "oopsie whoopsie we did a +++++ wucko" (you can guess what word the + are) messages that everything seems to have.

Error messages only really exist for circumstances the programmer could forsee.

[Rokonuxa]

Would still be nice to have the option of seeing the log instead of having to travel to the 3 holy sites of maybeitisinthisfolder, install location, documents and the accursed appdata.

[Crashed]

Perhaps the Stop button could wait a moment then offer a force quit? Force quit is available in the Steam Overlay, however it's useless if the game is frozen.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Perhaps the Stop button could wait a moment then offer a force quit? Force quit is available in the Steam Overlay, however it's useless if the game is frozen.

So basically it wouldn't work.
Quit/Exit are not the same as Killing the process. Killing the proocess is what's needed when the app stops responding,, or fails to close/exit properly. WH40K DOW is one of those games for me that triggers that issue with predictable regularity.

There are also rare cases where the app and process cllose but Steam for some reason doesn't register it. Another variant is where steam registers it...until you happen to restart steam.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by Crashed:

Perhaps the Stop button could wait a moment then offer a force quit? Force quit is available in the Steam Overlay, however it's useless if the game is frozen.

So basically it wouldn't work.
Quit/Exit are not the same as Killing the process. Killing the proocess is what's needed when the app stops responding,, or fails to close/exit properly. WH40K DOW is one of those games for me that triggers that issue with predictable regularity.

There are also rare cases where the app and process cllose but Steam for some reason doesn't register it. Another variant is where steam registers it...until you happen to restart steam.

Which is why if the Stop command doesn't see the process stop in a reasonable amount of time it should offer force quit to terminate it.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Originally posted by Start_Running:

So basically it wouldn't work.
Quit/Exit are not the same as Killing the process. Killing the proocess is what's needed when the app stops responding,, or fails to close/exit properly. WH40K DOW is one of those games for me that triggers that issue with predictable regularity.

There are also rare cases where the app and process cllose but Steam for some reason doesn't register it. Another variant is where steam registers it...until you happen to restart steam.

Which is why if the Stop command doesn't see the process stop in a reasonable amount of time it should offer force quit to terminate it.

That's actually something the OS is in charge of. COnsider. that what is a 'reasonable' amount of time is circumstantial.

Do you really want to lose save progress because Valve thought the app was taking a little too long to write out save data?


Of course this brings uis back to the issue. Apps general do not have the right to issue kill commands on non-dependent processes. So once the close/exit command fails which it already has to lead to the enternal Stop...then that's basically it.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by Crashed:

Which is why if the Stop command doesn't see the process stop in a reasonable amount of time it should offer force quit to terminate it.

That's actually something the OS is in charge of. COnsider. that what is a 'reasonable' amount of time is circumstantial.

FWIW Windows is apparently already capable of this.

Some apps do hang when starting. Then when they become responsive again Windows also detects when they're responsive again.

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Do you really want to lose save progress because Valve thought the app was taking a little too long to write out save data?

The stop button isn't to be applied automatically by Steam, but it's to offer an option to the user to force quit it.

So what you said is a problem isn't a problem unless the user misuses it.

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Of course this brings uis back to the issue. Apps general do not have the right to issue kill commands on non-dependent processes.

Incidentally, if the game depends on Steam to be launched at all...

[Start_Running]

Depends on != Dependant
Force Quit != Kill Process

Its important not to confuse or assume the context of these words in this specific application.

[BMBL #GLF]

Restarting steam doesn't even work. I have to delete the appcache folder everytime this happens and then restart steam. And I have to do it constantly because my PC does this ♥♥♥♥♥ when I turn on old games.