It has been one year since the last time I updated this blog. However that does not mean I forgot about this project even though I stopped answering every single mail. I will keep it short for now but I promisse the next version of the SteamCalculator will support DLCs and wishlists. And it will detect MW3 ;)
Happy New Year
2012-01-03Testing App Engine
2011-01-06The last weeks I spend some time playing around with Google’s App Engine. It started out that well, that I started porting stuff from the SteamCalculator. It was surprising easy. Well first, I had to get used to Googles Big Table, because in the past I mainly used SQL-like enviorments, but after a while you get the hang of it.
Why App Engine? What is App Engine? Let me quote Google:
Google App Engine enables you to build and host web apps on the same systems that power Google applications. App Engine offers fast development and deployment; simple administration, with no need to worry about hardware, patches or backups; and effortless scalability.
Having a highly scalable system is something SteamCalculator might need in the future. I’ll keep you informend.
SteamCalculator-Scripts released
2010-07-08As I am too busy to keep SteamCalculator free from bugs and always up to date, I created an account on github and released the part, which pares Valve’s Steam store, under General Public License v3, so people can join the project and contribute by forking the SteamCalculator-Scripts. Now don’t get too excited now, as these scripts only contain a couple of lines of bad written Perl code and not the entire SteamCalculator. I am still new to Perl and do not have a lot of time right now, that’s why the code looks kind of ugly. I will fix that in the future. However the script does it’s job.
The current version is 0.3.2 and is also used by the SteamCalculator.
If you’re planing to use the SteamCalculator-Scripts for your project, let me know so I can add a link to your website.
Stay tuned
2010-06-28It’s been quiet over here, but I just want to inform you that I am currently woking on an update fixing those bugs.
Update: Half-Life Lost Coast bug is fixed.
Thanks to all for reporting!
SteamPrices.com
2010-03-11Today, I would like to present to you a new website: SteamPrices.com
This website was created by nova form tfportal.de using the same Perl scripts, as the SteamCalculator does.
SteamPrices.com compares games and packages prices on the Steam store with other currencies.
For example: Browsing the Steam store as an US citizen you can buy Need for Speed Undercover for $9.99 USD. Browsing it as an European citizen (click) it’s price suddenly jumps to 19.99 € (~ $27.30 USD) for the same game. That is about ~ 175% more an European has to pay than an American. OK, I know, we are missing taxes here, which are added to the European prices already. But still, if we take a closer look and subtract 19% (German VAT), we sill need to pay ~ 16.80 € ($22.90 USD), which is ~ 129% more for the same product. Some people call that a “rip off”.
Pointing this out, it is not surprisingly, that nova’s announcement, to his new website, got deleted on the Steam forums, after a few minutes. It is kind of sad, as he is just showing the truth.
Anyway, nova and me are now partners and supporting each other by working on some bugs together. This again will help us to improve the SteamCalculator as well.
Now, go ahead, and check out SteamPrices.com. Tell your friends, tweet it and post feedback if you like. I know some of you have been waiting for such a page already a long time.
Steam API
2010-03-07It looks like Valve’s new Steam UI 2010 uses a new API to present news and achievements to the users. Today, I bumped into this thread on the steam forums, where user ‘Lagg’ was so kind to share this information with us. As far as he figured out, valid XML, VDF or JSON formats are returned, when sending the right request to the Steam API.
I had to try it myself :
GET http://api.steampowered.com/ISteamNews/GetNewsForApp/v0001/?appid=20&count=1&maxlength=300&format=xml HTTP/1.1
host: api.steampowered.com
Accept: text/html,*/*;q=0.9
Accept-Encoding: gzip,identity,*;q=0
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8,*;q=0.7
Connection: keep-alive
User-Agent: Valve/Steam HTTP Client 1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:29:57 GMT
expires: Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:30:17 GMT
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 1796
Via: 1.1 api.steampowered.com
Connection: close
This request “GetNewsForApp” depending on the appID you enter. The arguments are pretty mush self-explanatory.
Another request, that was found by ‘DarkProcessor’, returns achievements:
http://api.steampowered.com/ISteamUserStats/GetGlobalAchievementPercentagesForApp/v0001/?gameid=550&format=xml
These are the only two requests we know so fare. However, it is likely to expect more in the future, because I do not believe Valve will keep the API for themselves.
Another Blog
2010-03-03I finally decided to have my own blog here on steamcalculator.com. Other than in the past, there will be only Steam, technical or development related stuff posted here.
