Just add these games to Steam and when you got message from your friend just press Alt+TAB or CTRL+Alt+Del to respond him/her then enter the game. That is what I am doing.

Steam overlay is like a little interface that pops up when you press some key combination (of your choosing) which has your friends lists and active chats and a web browser and everything. The nice thing is it comes up over your game so you don't have to tab out. You can add the overlay to most any game, but for some reason Stardock games don't like it. 

Thanks for the quick response!

I tried this on Demigod but it is not working.

Stardock doesn't have an obligation to do anything, but it's definitely in their interest to do this, as the biggest pc community is on steam and steam is how you stay connected to your friends when in-game. I can't think of one person I could message with an Impulse IM (I'm the only person I know who even knows what impulse is). 

Shhh.  

Let's see if anyone asks for them to implement Games for Windows Live (which would actually be pretty cool) before we break out too much realism.

I'm replacing 'steam overlay' with 'MSN' or 'AIM' and giggling at the idea that it should be implemented in game by other developers.  Remember, steam is 'how you stay connected to your friends when in-game'!

The implementation is certainly complete balls, but if MS didn't suffer from serious inter-division competition it'd be a good idea.  They recently made it an external app (finally), but it doesn't actually let you do anything.  They've got it so hopelessly wrong you've got to wonder where all that funding went.

EDIT - Oh, sorry for not posting an unsupported one-liner.

In all honesty, a few sales aren't going to hurt, and buying a game based on if the steam overlay works with it or not is really sad. Yes changing the hotkey would be useful, but if you want to use the steam overlay so much why not change it's hot key? Which you can do.

I'd rather just ask for a stable windowed  environment able to change resolutions, and perhaps even to have additional windows (so that multi-screen users can have game windows on multiple screens)  to allow for easy access to any chat or voip programs; steam, skype, AIM, IRC, vent... you name it.

I think that is much more reasonable than asking for steam intigration (especially since steam is like THE compeditor of impulse)

Glad to hear that Brad.

World of Warcraft has a "windowed but full screen" mode. It *looks* like full screen mode (in that it takes up the entire screen with frame or anything), but it functions like windowed mode in that you don't have to alt+tab to use other programs or things on the other monitor. It also has a normal windowed mode where you can move it around on the screen and such. There's a minor framerate hit for doing that, but most of the time it doesn't matter.

Something like that would be nice in Elemental too. Presumably we'll be able to see what type of controls they have in mind once beta hits.

Thanks a lot Frogboy! I appreciate it. 

hmm will it be on steam aswell as on impulse  because  i would rather buy off steam were all my other games are  then on impulse were i only have demigod 

and it would be hard to get anyone from my clan intrested in the game if they cant find it on steam quick and easy 

I can use the steam overlay with Elemental just fine.