Friends 3.0 Pre-beta Interview

Chat client relaunching :: January 31st, 2006 :: Features, Interviews, Steam updates :: 41 Responses

Friends 3.0 will enter public beta in a few hours, so it’s just about time to give you all a preview of what to expect. I’ve been speaking with the Steam developer leading the Friends 3.0 project, John Cook, about what the new version provides, what drove and still drives its production, and how it now works.

The beta is now out. Add -beta steam3friends -clientbeta steam3friends to your Steam shortcut to access it.

The beta is is feature-light, focusing on stabilising the backend. Expect that to change with the release of the SDK.

Let’s start with the overview. Has Friends 3.0 gained any new features or lost any old ones?: This release concentrates on getting the core features stable – adding friends, sending chat messages, and seeing when your friends are playing a game. The underlying architecture of the new Friends on Steam 3 will allow us to add many new features in the not-too-distant future.
Do you have any plans to implement Friends into a wider community bracket than single, one-off conversations?: Yes, having an IRC-like Chat room system is on the short list of new Steam features to build. Another avenue we’re looking at is tightening the integration between Friends and the games, letting you see how your friend does in Counter-Strike, or letting users customize how they are seen in the game via Friends.
Some interesting ideas there, can you expand on any of them?: Sorry, no details yet.
Would Friends work with any game on Steam, or does it require Source and/or VGUI?: A Friends SDK will be added to the Source SDK and be available to Steam licensees after the beta is over, which will allow any developer to hook into the system. It doesn’t require Source to access friends inside a game, but if they’re using the Source engine it’s a lot easier because they can reuse the existing code.
So the community will be able to add new parlour games and other features to Friends?: That’s part of the long term plan.
Has anything been done to prevent people ghosting?: We are looking at ways of temporarily disabling chat between certain users for a certain time period. In Counter-Strike, spectating players would be told that their messages will be delayed until the end of the round. That’s not in the beta yet; we still need to do some experiments with the interface to make it clear what’s going on.
Does Friends show when someone is playing a single-player game now?: No, we don’t currently track [that]. This feature has been added since the interview took place.
Steam 3.0 is based on the TCP connection model, a change that came about at least partly due to Friends’ instability. Does the re-release of Friends mean that Steam itself will switch to the new connection setup too?: Steam 3.0 is actually based on a combination of UDP and TCP connections. UDP is a great lightweight protocol, which we currently use to maintain a constant connection between clients and the Steam servers for things like authentication, VAC, and the server browser. TCP is used mostly for the heavier high-throughput actions, like downloading content.; Friends runs over the UDP channel, to make the bandwidth usage essentially negligible for clients. We may at some point use TCP as a fallback for it if the client is having trouble making its way through a firewall or router.
One for privacy worriers: is chat data passed peer-to-peer or though a Valve server?: Chat messages go through the Steam servers. The proliferation of NATs and firewalls has made it very difficult to reliably make direct connections between users. We have the work mostly done to encrypt the data stream, although that may not make it into the beta.
How many people have been involved in the redevelopment?: Everyone on the Steam team is involved to some extent, typically around 10 people. Not everyone is working directly on Friends, but much of the work is shared between us.
Any final thoughts?: We all really believe in the importance of a system like Friends as a way to strengthen the community around Steam and our games, so we’re looking forward to this release. Hope to see you (and your readers) on the beta, and please feel free to let us know via the VDC page about any issues you run into.

Thanks to John for giving the interview, and of course for putting so much time into Friends 3.0 itself. Stay tuned for the beta’s release later today!

Tags: John Cook, Steam 3.0, exclusive

41 Responses to this post:

Comments

January 31st, 2006 at 7:23 pm ::
Mark Says:

Nice report, looking forward to it!
January 31st, 2006 at 8:57 pm ::
Beerdude26 Says:

Lovely interview, very well written.
Oh, and the fact that Friends will finally be fixed is also a fact to look forward to 😉
January 31st, 2006 at 11:01 pm ::
^Ben Says:

Out 🙂
February 1st, 2006 at 12:19 am ::
Hectic Glenn Says:

Awesome, to see it back, i hope all my friends haven’t been lost! Back to the old days 😀
February 1st, 2006 at 1:52 am ::
clown Says:

fix the favorites and server browser please
February 1st, 2006 at 4:20 am ::
DiSTuRbEd Says:

To #5, christ quit telling them what to fix and be happy for once. I know I am, Friends so far for me has worked far better than the whole time the old 2.0 version was out.
February 1st, 2006 at 5:17 am ::
bigburpco Says:

Don’t have any Steam friends :'(
February 1st, 2006 at 9:39 am ::
SP Says:

Well it damn sure took its time. Hopefully its finally fixed _for_good_.
February 1st, 2006 at 12:05 pm ::
Chris Says:

In reguards to the ‘ghosting’ spectators should still be able to talk to everyone on theire friends list *unless* they are trying to talk to somone in the same server who happens to be alive.

I would think this method would be better then disabling their ability to talk altogeather. (or make it so that players that are alive cant recieve messages from players that are dead – in the same server) Same thing basicaly.

I also noticed the fact that the network goes through steam, would steam log or view conversations or have a program that detects ‘key words’? I think I would feel safer talking ‘directly’ to a player (obviously with proper software/hardware protection on my computer).

IRC is a great idea though. Is it possible to have multiple people in one conversation with the current friends system, that could also be a goal.
February 1st, 2006 at 1:02 pm ::
fAn Says:

First of all good job getting Friends back on track! Are the old contacts are going to be restored? They`re not in this beta test, do we get them back later?
February 1st, 2006 at 2:54 pm ::
SK Says:

Great to see Friends back! Where I can get that Steam skin featured in the pictures? Looks cool!
February 1st, 2006 at 3:03 pm ::
Tom Edwards Says:

“I also noticed the fact that the network goes through steam, would steam log or view conversations or have a program that detects ‘key words’? I think I would feel safer talking ‘directly’ to a player (obviously with proper software/hardware protection on my computer).”

Given that the data will eventually be encrypted, I’d say that would be a no.

“Where I can get that Steam skin featured in the pictures?”

Here.
February 1st, 2006 at 4:58 pm ::
Film11 Says:

Great to see Friens is back. Impressed you could get an interview with Valve’s staff actually, nice to see them talking with the community.

Can’t wait to try the beta 🙂

Top notch interview.
February 2nd, 2006 at 2:10 pm ::
Karim Says:

Friends works just fine, BUT….

Now counter strike won’t find any servers anymore 🙁 what happened? 🙁
February 2nd, 2006 at 6:20 pm ::
Blueshift Says:

i didnt understand how you insert the “-beta steam3friends -clientbeta steam3friends ” , ehere to insert that line
February 2nd, 2006 at 9:36 pm ::
Ne0nguy Says:

Right-click the steam icon on your desktop
Go to properties
Add ” -beta steam3friends -clientbeta steam3friends” after steam.exe

It should look similar to:
“C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\Steam.exe” -beta steam3friends -clientbeta steam3friends

Make sure there is a space before each dash
February 3rd, 2006 at 12:33 am ::
sf Says:

i dont get the beta 3 steam friends thing, i added it to the properties then cut n paste thing but it still dosn’t work, cause it makes it think it isn’t an .exe anymore and wont turn on steam
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:33 am ::
Tom Edwards Says:

You are putting the paramaters inside the “quote marks”. They need to come afterwards. Look closely at Neonguy’s example.
February 5th, 2006 at 2:49 am ::
Kompressor Says:

Any word on when it may be coming out of beta?
February 6th, 2006 at 9:55 am ::
CsSpetsnaz Says:

Im a big critic of the friends list as its never worked since day one, but i do hope this new one works because even tho such programs as Xfire exist, a system in steam would have its benifits with reducing pings and not having any of the fiddly chat boxes that you have to jam the keyboard to type a message.
February 6th, 2006 at 10:27 am ::
Fiddler Says:

Nice, So for u to speak to a friend he also has to have Friends 3.0, correct ?
February 6th, 2006 at 4:30 pm ::
BandoH Says:

really hopes it comes out of beta soon
February 6th, 2006 at 5:38 pm ::
Ne0nguy Says:

I don’t know if anyone else has this problem but when the Friends beta is installed the in-game server browser doesn’t work
(just a warning)
February 9th, 2006 at 11:04 pm ::
Oichi Says:

I just want to konow what ports to open for DoD:S and Steam 🙁
February 10th, 2006 at 8:13 am ::
Tom Edwards Says:

Use the Support site.
February 22nd, 2006 at 6:06 pm ::
Shadow Says:

with the new friends beta i have been useing it has been kicking me to the desktop ever map change when i toke it out it stop doing it only happens in tfc tho not any other game and the browser doesn’t work in all games only when i am in the game when i am on the desktop the server browser works fine
February 26th, 2006 at 2:41 pm ::
Ne0nguy Says:

In replay to

Fiddler Says:
Nice, So for u to speak to a friend he also has to have Friends 3.0, correct ?

No, your friend does not need Friends 3.0 for you to talk to him.
You can send a message to him anytime but once he closes the chat window he cannot initiate a new chat
March 18th, 2006 at 9:35 pm ::
Jorgen Says:

i now found out about the friends, havent useed it for about 2-3 years.. but when i now logg in to the network, i found out that all the friends i had there was gone.. have i lost them for ever, or is it come back to me, when the friends is on full version ? or what can i do for get them i had on list
March 18th, 2006 at 9:36 pm ::
Tom Edwards Says:

They are likely gone. They were stored in a text file on your computer before and it looks like it’s now missing.