Stream a game on client that is already started on host

[Gimpylung]

Best way to explain this is via an example.

I play Planetside 2, when I have my serious face on I'll be playing on my main rig directly, that machine is upstairs in my cozy den/office room.

I play extended sessions, I take a break and head downstairs for a coffee/food/cig.

It would be nice if I could stream an EXISTING session to my laptop downstairs and keep an eye on things so to speak, maybe do some casual support play, throw out some meds and ammo and keep in touch with my outfit mates.

Then kill the stream and head back upstairs and don my serious face again and pwn aggressively.

YOU CAN DO THAT, I hear you cry.

Well not really, if the game is already running upstairs it won't allow me to stream as the PS2 launcher is initiated by the streaming client and then informs me that the game is already running and won't launch.

I could log out upstairs, head downstairs and play fine but I'd prefer to avoid that as it'll spawn me away from the action again, I'll need to rejoin my squad and get promoted back to leader again, and then all that rigmarole again when I log out of client and head upstairs to log in all over again, find squad etc...

I could launch the game from client from the get go and then play upstairs mainly with the client already streaming for when I head downstairs for more casual play, however this means I'll permanently be locked to 30FPS upstairs as this is all my weedy cleint downstairs can manage.

So ideally, it would be nice for Home Streaming to check if the game I wish to stream is already running and bypass the launchers etc and just stream the existing session, that way my fps won't be limited on my main rig when I head back upstairs, and I won't have to log in all over again etc.

This would require that I can discconnect from a stream without killing the game session also.

[teh g]

We basically posted the same idea at the same time! Yours is way more detailed, but I totally agree this would be awesome.

[Gimpylung]

Cheers.

It would be great in most MMO's and a host of multiplayer games where it's nice to keep an eye on developing situations or be involved casually and be able to seamlessly transfer back into 'hardcore' involvement on the more gaming dedicated machine without logging out of the game world.

[Mister Raptor]

This already works. :)

Starting a stream for an already running game is pretty seamless. Try it, you might be surprised.

Quitting the client Steam session is a bit of a pain, but doable. You have to navigate to the Steam client (make sure you're looking at the client side instance, not the Steam client running on the host), then quit Steam. The game should continue to run on the host.

[Gimpylung]

It must be game dependent or an issue with games that have launchers or something because in the case of Planetside 2 I had no success. It certainly isn't seamless in this case, if its running on the host already the client will just start the SOE launcher which informs me that the game is already running and prevents me from gaining access. I'll see if I can trick it by creating a dummy shortcut for use on the client directly to the Planetside2.exe as opposed to the launcher tomorrow.

I'll try a few other games tomorrow too, late here now.

[Baron von Whimsy]

Originally posted by Gimpylung:

It must be game dependent or an issue with games that have launchers or something because in the case of Planetside 2 I had no success. It certainly isn't seamless in this case, if its running on the host already the client will just start the SOE launcher which informs me that the game is already running and prevents me from gaining access. I'll see if I can trick it by creating a dummy shortcut for use on the client directly to the Planetside2.exe as opposed to the launcher tomorrow.

I'll try a few other games tomorrow too, late here now.

I've been doing this with Civ V, my one (well, TWO, if you include the inability to play with a locked machine) complaint is that I can't end the session.

Or, if you can, I can't work out a way to do so, without killing the streaming client process or Steam itself.


Back on your game though, just use process explorer to get the command line arguments (if there are any) for launching the client directly, and set Steam up with them.
That way, it SHOULD just stream the current session.

Probably.

[Gimpylung]

I'll give it a go.