Make sure that Steam and Idle Master are running in the same user context. This means that if you start Steam as an administrator, you'll also need to start Idle Master as an administrator.

The rate of card drops is dependent on the game that's being idled. There are some games that take 10+ hours to idle where it's possible you could run Idle Master for 4 hours and get only one card drop. If you'd like, you can place the game that's currently idling in your blacklist or skip it to move on to the next (which will likely have a more rapid drop rate).

Also, make sure that when Idle Master is running, that Steam shows you're "in-game", otherwise cards won't drop.

Yes, it's okay to idle VAC enabled games, as Idle Master is just like sitting in the main menu and won't connect to any VAC-enabled servers.

Nobody has been banned for using Idle Master since it was originally released in July of last year. A few people I know who work at Valve use it regularly. It's highly unlikely they would start banning or suspending accounts or punishing people in any way for using it.

I think what's happening is sometimes Idle Master will get stuck at 0:00 due to a timing error, and then won't proceed further because the countdown never "reaches" 0:00 again (as in, from 0:01).

This won't have anything to do with your firewall, it's most likely just a random occurrence. I'll see if I can find out what's causing this and get it patched in the next release.

Nope, that's not really what Idle Master is intended for.

A few other people here have reported running full online matches connected to VAC enabled servers and (to my knowledge) none of them were VAC banned, so I think you'll be fine.

Oprindeligt skrevet af donnandsusan:

OK. I didn't use the older version. What goes in each of the three fields?

This document was the setup instructions that was included with the old script version:

https://github.com/jshackles/idle_master_py/blob/master/Documentation/Setup%20Instructions%20-%20Start%20Here.pdf?raw=true

Which explains what you need to do to get this information from your browser.

Oprindeligt skrevet af donnandsusan:

I was able to sign in to the older version, but I can no longer sign-in in version 0.8. I click the sign-in link, the window for Steam starts to open, and then everything crashes.

In 0.8, instead of clicking sign in, you can open the settings menu, click the "lock" icon there and enter your login information just like the older version.

Unfortunately, information about trading cards and their drop status isn't something that's included in the Steam API. As such, the only way an application like Idle Master can determine which games it needs to idle and when those games are finished is to have information from your browser cookies. To simplify the process, the Windows version of Idle Master accomplishes this by having the user log in to Steam then copies the data it needs into the application settings. Your login information itself (user id and password) are never stored anywhere and are only transmitted to Steam once to verify they are correct.

The application is open source, and this window is heavily commented in the source code:

https://github.com/jshackles/idle_master/blob/master/Source/IdleMaster/frmBrowser.cs

In addition, in the latest version (0.8) you can enter your information the same way the old script did. Instead of pressing (Sign In), you can select File -> Settings. In the settings menu there is a lock icon in the lower right hand corner. Press this, and you'll be able to enter the three cookie values that Idle Master needs which you can get from your browser session in the same way Idle Master 0.1-0.6 worked.

I have reached out to Valve to see if a user's drop status could be added to the public API, but have so far received no response. If that ever happens, Idle Master will be able to move to the familiar "Sign in with Steam" dialog like most sites use.