I get a lot of comments about the Calculator to the tune of "It says I bought X package but I bought all the games individually", "It's not showing the DLC I bought", "I didn't spend nearly that much."
I figured it's time to clear the air and explain just how the Steam Calculator works.
So the new Steam UI came along with a new, redesigned website. As a result the scripts I was using to grab all the names and prices of all the games on Steam wasn't working anymore, so the calculator wasn't updating. Furthermore, I couldn't download screenshots of games since that download script reference a list of games and appids that the first script creates. Yikes!
Well I've re-written two of those scripts (games and packages) from the ground up. Next up is the relationship between games and packages to see what games are in which packages.
One of the biggest comments around the Calculator that I see goes something like this:
Wow, $2000, but I didn't spend nearly that much, I bought mostly everything on sale.
With that in mind I'll soon be including sale prices and tallying those up as well. The calculator will make two assumptions; that you bought everything on sale and that you bought nothing on sale. It will give you a low and high value with the idea that what you actually spent is somewhere in between.
Thanks to omnilynx at Steam Deals I have historic sale pricing from the Christmas Sale which will give a good baseline to start from. Thanks omnilynx!
Alex at SteamCalculator.com has launched a new beta of his calculator app. Packages aren't currently supported as of this time, but it looks pretty slick. I'm not sure what's different from the older version at first glance, but the colours are nicer; I like that blue background.
I imagine there are a lot of behind the scenes optimizations, it's probably all been coded in perl.
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