Steam Peer-to-Peer files *Update*

August 21, 2007

It seems Valve has done an update to P2P files hidden within Steam. The Steam Community’s voice chat is carried over Steam’s new BitTorrent-based P2P network, and the separation of the binaries that work that little bit of magic (into bin/p2pcore.dll and bin/p2pvoice.dll) strongly suggests that we’ll be seeing more applications of the technology at a later date.

Some further findings from Steam’s new files:

  • Use the VGUI Editor (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B) on the Downloads page in Settings and you’ll find an empty CSubPanelOptionsP2P, waiting to be filled with controls.
  • A #Steam_P2P_SharingColumnLabel_hidden label for the current Media tab is to be found in config/dialogconfig.vdf. For sharing mod trailers, right?
  • The public/P2PDetailPage.res dialogue includes a tracker field. Could refer either to community trackers for mod content, or official regional trackers that can be switched between.
  • “VST” appears in public\P2PMetaDataPage.res’s CP2PVstKeyValuesListPanel. Sitting alongside VMT, VDF, VCD and other keyvalue-based Valve file formats, it somehow seems unlikely that this three-letter acronym starting with V has anything to do with Virtual Studio Technology. “Valve Sharing Tracker” perhaps?

Thanks to Steamreview.org for the info on this one.