new to steam... plz explain

[Crawlerz]

hey fellow eGOvillians!

I myself have just downloaded steam. apparently I was registered a while back when I played HL2 (which I'm sorry I didn't like - maybe I hadn't had time to figure it out)... I installed steam. then I got the ArmA 2 demo and the game team fortress 2 (in russian) which I payed for. several questions:

-I'd like to backup steam-downloaded games. can I? if not, and I have a crash, will my steamID remember that those games are already payed for and can be now downloaded without a problem?

-can I ask steam to download things to another partition/HDD?

-team fortress 2's controls are not obvious - please elaborate - how do I: quit, change teams/characters, talk/type, heal people?

-why does team fortress 2 say "single player" as one of the characteristics on steam?

thank you for your patience.

 

[b0bfath3r]

-I'd like to backup steam-downloaded games. can I? if not, and I have a crash, will my steamID remember that those games are already payed for and can be now downloaded without a problem?

yes you can back up the games. Just copy the entire steam folder.

-can I ask steam to download things to another partition/HDD?

yes, but steam will have to be installed on the other partition instead. Where ever steam is installed is where the games will go.

-team fortress 2's controls are not obvious - please elaborate - how do I: quit, change teams/characters, talk/type, heal people?

to quit: press "esc" key, click label "quit'
to change teams: press "." key
to change characters: press "," key
to all type, for all to see: press "y" key, type message, press enter
to team type, only team can see: press "u" key, type message, press enter
to voice chat: I have it set to v, I'm not sure what default is
to heal people: you must be medic, have healing gun out, press mouse 1 at person of healing, and voila!

-why does team fortress 2 say "single player" as one of the characteristics on steam?

because you can't have multiple people playing on one account at a time, like say taking turns or something like that. Otherwise it is a solely multiplayer game.

 

[RustyPwns!]

You don't have to backup steam games. when you buy a steam game it registers it on your account. Meaning if you uninstall it, it will still be on your account just uninstalled. You can uninstall and reinstall the games on your steam account at anytime anywhere. Just don't loose your account info, user name, pass etc.

 

[Passerby]

ya it works like RustyPwns said but if you dont want to redownload stuff just make a backup of your steamapps folder which is in the steam dir

 

[Crawlerz]

thank you - okay