PCG Article Steam may get a system to let players take 'game notes'

[Zed Clampet]

As well as notifications like the mobile app.

Such a pain to alt/tab to Notepad or Excel. This is going to be a great feature for me. What would be really cool would be if you could add screenshots to the notes.

 

[Frag Maniac]

As well as notifications like the mobile app.

Such a pain to alt/tab to Notepad or Excel. This is going to be a great feature for me. What would be really cool would be if you could add screenshots to the notes.

That's a pretty cool idea, but I just hope adding it to the overlay is well tested for optimization, because the Steam overlay itself is known to cause problems with some games.

 

[Zed Clampet]

That's a pretty cool idea, but I just hope adding it to the overlay is well tested for optimization, because the Steam overlay itself is known to cause problems with some games.

That's weird. I've played hundreds of games and never had an issue with the overlay.

 

[mainer]

Such a pain to alt/tab to Notepad or Excel. This is going to be a great feature for me. What would be really cool would be if you could add screenshots to the notes.

I'd love to see something like that, especially if you could add a screenshot or even a thumbnail. I'm assuming you would be able to view and/or edit those notes outside of the game itself. Hopefully there would be individual notepads or notebooks for each individual game, that you could look through at any time.

I think that would be especially useful for games you take a break from after having played for days or weeks, then go back to after several months. Having some notes and a few screenshots of where you left the game and what you were doing would be a big help, for me at least.

Being old-school, I always keep a notebook & a tab of graph paper by my keyboard to take notes of work out puzzle solutions for some games. I don't need them for every game, but sometimes they're really handy for older games.

That's a pretty cool idea, but I just hope adding it to the overlay is well tested for optimization, because the Steam overlay itself is known to cause problems with some games.

That's weird. I've played hundreds of games and never had an issue with the overlay.

Of all the games I've played on Steam, I've only had an issue with the overlay once, and that's in my current game of Witcher 3 Next-Gen. I turned off the overlay and got a dramatic boost in FPS with less stuttering. In fairness, the game is a resource hog and still has some optimization issues to be worked out, so it could have just been a coincidence that turning off the overlay helped.

 

[Brian Boru]

I've played hundreds of games and never had an issue with the overlay

Guess that you have a decent PC? I could be misremembering, but I suspect most of the complaints about overlay issues I've seen are related to low-spec PCs which can just about run the game—so any extras like Overlay, Discord etc could be enough to tip the balance sometimes.

add a screenshot or even a thumbnail. I'm assuming you would be able to view and/or edit those notes outside of the game itself. Hopefully there would be individual notepads or notebooks for each individual game, that you could look through at any time.

I've used OneNote for that for years. Examples:

This is 3 screenshots of ON put together sideways. Partial menus from Strategy and Shooters sections, plus a page from Locations sub-page of Far Cry 6 page of Shooters section—incl screenie.

This of course suits me best, as I like to have info visible on a second monitor, and I frequently AltTab in and out of whatever games are currently in play.

I have a scrap page for holding temp stuff for a current quest—what you see above are notes I want to have available when I come to replay the game next year.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Guess that you have a decent PC? I could be misremembering, but I suspect most of the complaints about overlay issues I've seen are related to low-spec PCs which can just about run the game—so any extras like Overlay, Discord etc could be enough to tip the balance sometimes.


I've used OneNote for that for years. Examples:

This is 3 screenshots of ON put together sideways. Partial menus from Strategy and Shooters sections, plus a page from Locations sub-page of Far Cry 6 page of Shooters section—incl screenie.

This of course suits me best, as I like to have info visible on a second monitor, and I frequently AltTab in and out of whatever games are currently in play.

I have a scrap page for holding temp stuff for a current quest—what you see above are notes I want to have available when I come to replay the game next year.

Obviously I don't have a real answer, but I have my doubts about people's claims on what is slowing their games down. People complain about every. single. thing. slowing their games down. Of course, if you have a potato, I suppose anything is possible, but you should be prepared for problems if that's your setup.

 

[SirDJCat]

I‘d love if they added something directly into the overlay. Especially since any time I alt-tab out of CS:GO my framerate drops to about 5 for a minute or so.

 

[Brian Boru]

any time I alt-tab out of CS:GO my framerate drops to about 5 for a minute or so

Do you have less than ideal RAM or VRAM? Sounds like Windows reorganizing priorities via swap file or reloading VRAM.

Post here suggests typing…
engine_no_focus_sleep 0
…in the Developer console.

You could also try changing your windowed setup, cycle between:
Fullscreen;
Windowed;
Windowed fullscreen.

 

[SirDJCat]

Do you have less than ideal RAM or VRAM? Sounds like Windows reorganizing priorities via swap file or reloading VRAM.

Post here suggests typing…
engine_no_focus_sleep 0
…in the Developer console.

You could also try changing your windowed setup, cycle between:
Fullscreen;
Windowed;
Windowed fullscreen.

I’ve got 32gb of ram and 8gb of vram which should be enough

Thanks for the tip, I’ll try that out 🙂

Could be my window setup too, I have it on full screen but I can try changing it.

 

[mainer]

I've used OneNote for that for years. Examples:

This is 3 screenshots of ON put together sideways. Partial menus from Strategy and Shooters sections, plus a page from Locations sub-page of Far Cry 6 page of Shooters section—incl screenie.

This of course suits me best, as I like to have info visible on a second monitor, and I frequently AltTab in and out of whatever games are currently in play.

That's really nice, and I love how you've organized things, as I'm really into details in most of the game I play. I still prefer my old-school method, so no Alt-Tabbing for me.

 

[Brian Boru]

my old-school method

Hey, that's so unfair—your handwriting is actually legible!

no Alt-Tabbing for me

No page-turning for me 😀

 

[Zloth]

X4:Foundations could use that big time. I've been writing down various station requirements a LOT.

Though, actually, @Brian Boru's idea would work better for me. WindowsKey-Shift-S to bring up the snip tool, snip the area that shows what stuff I need to ship to a station builder to get a station built, then paste it into WordPad and either alt-tab or control-win-left/right to switch between the game and the info.

 

[Brian Boru]

WindowsKey-Shift-S to bring up the snip tool

I just map it to the PrintScr key, which I have no other use for—like the neighboring Break key mapped to paste as text only, make use of 'dead' keys.

 

[Zloth]

Nah, print screen is handy for quickly getting the image of a window. I never remember the keys you have to press, though, so I use shift-control-alt-print screen to do it.

Break isn't so useful now, but it's also the pause key. That's a HUGE key in X series! You press pause, the game stops, and you can set up all sorts of trades, buy ships, give orders, and so much more! It may be the only game series I know that uses it, though.

 

[Hveðrungr]

This thread is over a year old and the feature has already been added.