Steam Overlay in Eyefinity

[Gimpylung]

When in game and somebody chats to me via steam chat the message pops up on the far right lower corner of the rightmost screen and I don't see it half the time. Is there anyway to get those messages to appear on the lower right corner of the centre screen.

[Abram]

Nope. I've also looked into this,since whenever somone sends a message when the game is running, i rarely see the notification way down in the corner.

However, if you go the Steam forums, there's some info on editing a Steam file that lets you change which corner it shows up in, but some games override that setting adn other games re-write that edited file.... Perhaps we should starting bugging Valve about it. You wouldn't think it'd be too difficult.

Come to think of it, maybe there's a way to change the size of the notifications... it'd be hard to miss one that's the size of your side display.

[fiskstolpe]

As Abram stated you can modify the Notifications.PanelPosition value in steam.styles to change corner. However, games have the ability to override that default position (e.g. Left 4 Dead and Torchlight) and any major Steam client update will reset it.

The specific layout files for achievement and chat message notifications are buried in the winui.gcf file. Changing the position and/or size value has no effect though, so it's either "hard coded" elsewhere in the client, or you'd have to actually overwrite the original winui.gcf file. So your best bet is to ask for a possible change of behaviour on the Steam forums.

[MobsterOO7]

Isn't there a setting that makes a sound when you get a message in game? This would bypass having to muck around in files that will get reset constantly anyway.

[Abram]

There is, but it's often difficult to hear it over the explosions. Maybe there's way to use a custom sound.

[Delphium]

So far I have found that you can change which corner to send the notifications too, but not shift it inwards onto the central monitor, yet.

By editing
Desktop popups -> steam/resource/styles/steam.styles - Lines 165 to 171
Ingame overlay popups -> steam/resource/styles/gameoverlay.styles - Line 10

steam.styles

Code: Select all

Notifications.PanelPosition     "BottomRight"   // Can be "BottomRight", "BottomLeft", "TopRight", "TopLeft"

       Notifications.PanelPosition     "TopRight" [$OSX]  // the dock is on the bottom for OSX, so instead pop top right like other apps do

       Notifications.SlideDirection    "Vertical"    // Can be "Vertical", "Horizontal", "None" and controls slide effect

       Notifications.FadeInTime      "0.45"    // Controls the time it takes to slide/fade into view

       Notifications.FadeOutTime     "0.45"    // Controls the time it takes to slide/fade out of view

       Notifications.DisplayTime     "6.0"     // Controls the length of time at steady state after fade in and before fade out

       Notifications.StackSize       "6"     // Controls how many panels we will stack before background queuing

overlay.styles

Code: Select all

Notifications.PanelPosition     "BottomRight"  // osx has toast in the upper right, but in-overlay should not.

So it is possible to change which corner is used by setting "BottomRight", "BottomLeft", "TopRight" or "TopLeft".

However, as Abram points out

some games override that setting and other games re-write that edited file.

Each of these 4 locations/values must be defined somewhere but where ive yet to find out.
The cogs start turning... ;)

[Skid]

Textpad -> Search -> Find In Files:

Find: BottomRight
In Files: *.*
In Folder: D:GamesStream
Search Subfolders, check
Don't Match Case
File Counts Only

Results:
Searching for: BottomRight
D:GamesSteamSteamUI_1367.mst: 9 - Resource List
D:GamesSteambinvgui2.dll: 1
D:GamesSteamresourcesteamscheme.res: 10 - Resource List
D:GamesSteamresourcestylesgameoverlay.styles: 1 - Nope
D:GamesSteamresourcestylessteam.styles: 2 - Nope
D:GamesSteamconfightmlcachedata_3: 2 - Nope
D:GamesSteamsteamappswinui.gcf: 1 - Image Link
D:GamesSteamsteamappscommonchimeChime.exe: 2 - Game EXE
Found 28 occurrence(s) in 8 file(s)

vgui2.dll looks like the best bet if is in the main steam directory, the line it appears on reads something like:
|||Xå'? C"?Notifications.PanelPosition|Notifications.SlideDirection||||Notifications.FadeInTime||||Notifications.FadeOutTime|||Notifications.DisplayTime|||Notifications.StackSize|TopLeft|TopRight||||BottomLeft||BottomRight|Horizontal||None||||Vertical||||SetAlpha||||.NotificationManager.cpp|||Invalid m_Position for NotificationManager!

BTW, I have no experience decompiling or editing exe files so if someone else wants to have a look my bet is the vgui2.dll

[Delphium]

Nice info Skid :D
Thanks for the search results, I should prolly install textpad as that looks like it has a usfull search feature :D

[Skid]

Nice info Skid :D
Thanks for the search results, I should prolly install textpad as that looks like it has a usfull search feature :D

I originally tried using windows XP search but it will only find in files it knows contains text, so it wouldn't even scan the styles files. I was going to drag all the files into Textpad but then I saw the find in file button, didn't expect it to scan dlls and exes thought but I'm not complaining ^^

[Delphium]

Nice, much like your self ive little experience in decomiling dll's or exe's.
Racer_S or Dopefish, if you reading this, is this somehting you gents might be abel to kindly shed some light on? :)

[Gimpylung]

Whoa, nice effort so far lads. If its doable, you're the guys to do it.

[Abram]

Nice info. Finding a solution would be fantastic, even if it meant we'd have to re-do it after every Steam update. Keeping the notifications up longer is still of some help, though.

thanks, guys. And good luck.

Sometimes i wish i had got into decompiling and programming a bit more...

[portere]

good solution

[Bogomips]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but is there still much interest in this. I am mainly interested in placing the notification alerts on the centre monitor.