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Half Life 2 Stuttering Bug Official

sinner0423 writes "Due to recent complaints on several forums, Steampowered announced they are working on a fix to this stuttering problem in Half Life 2. Usually, a game bug isn't news-worthy, but the sporadic nature of this bug makes me wonder - who else has problems with HL2 pausing/skipping? This site outlines the problem certain users are having in a very clear & concise manner, and also includes some stopgap solutions from Erik Johnson & other Valve employees."

7 of 456 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hmmm.... by Kenja · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Given that they never figured out that you cant install the game without coutner strike without hte installer crashing or that you can ditch the water skimmer and then get stuck after playing for 20min and finding a point where you need it but cant go back to get it I dont think they realy had ANY QA on this product.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  2. Re:Hmmm.... by CountBrass · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    If I'd known how bug ridden HL2 was going to be I would never have bought it.

    It took me 3 hours of trying to get the fucking thing installed !

    It took another 2 hours to get a game started: it crashed to the desktop without an error every time I tried.

    When I finally got in (by running in windowed mode to start, then switching back to full screen to actually play) I started to play. Well wow! But then "load" and "load" and :oad": it seems every five seconds the fucking game has to load the next bit of content: that is so 1990s: haven't these guys learnt anything. The worst level (the level with the zombie hunting priest if you've played) the level is split: each time you cross this split you have to re-load: and you inevitably cross over multiple times doing the level. The guy who designed the level with this split in the middle should be sacked.

    Thinking about buying HL2? Take my advice and wait another five years for these munchkins to fix the bugs.

    --
    Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
  3. just report the bug, forget the conjectures by mqx · · Score: 0, Flamebait


    Honestly, I like the fact that the guy has collected a lot of data about the problem: but leave out the conjectures: that's the job of Valve engineers to rectify the issue, your job is just to report the defect and make sure it's got enough visibility to not get swept under the carpet.

    When I deal with customer issues I often find the conjectures wrong, and usually ignore them because the first thing you do is reproduce the problem or look at the debug logs or core and figure it out for yourself. In fact, once it irriated me so badly when dealing with sev1 that on an international conference call I had to tell some customer ops to stop their (what I could easily tell was uninformed and off the track discussion) conjecturing and just leave it to us as the engineers to sort out.

  4. Grammar Nazi! by Bill+Privatus · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    When I read the home page, my first thoughts, in rapid-fire fashion: That headline should have been "Half Life 2, Stuttering, Bug Officials".

    Or perhaps "Half Life 2, Stuttering, Bugs Official".

    Stuttering bugs me too. I s-s-s-sometimes do s-s-s-stutter, but it's usually when I'm with my wife and we see a truly stunning w-w-w-w-uh girl!

    8-)

    --
    Redundancy is good; triple redundancy is twice as good! - Me.
  5. Re:Finally! by cortana · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Interesting to note that Americans put up with the same "signal:noise" ratio while watching television... :)

  6. Re:Why is this exactly newsworthy again? by sinner0423 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Every other thread in this article has "yeah, it's happened to me" or "no, it hasn't happened to me". I wanted an honest opinion from some of the gamers here on slashdot about their experiences with the game.

    The stuttering is obviously a problem, and detracts from the whole HL2 experience. I'm not trolling with this story, I'm trying to get the word out to some customers who may be flaming mad because of this, on top of having steam activation problems.

    Rumor has it, it's happening on Vampire: The Masquerade as well. That's another Havok powered game developed by a company that licensed the tech from Valve. The bug also occurs when I play Half life:Source.

    I wanted to know how many other people it's affecting. I'm not holding a gun to your head to read this story. Doesn't seem like it's sporadic any more tho, perhaps I should've re-worded the submitted article. Oh well, I got my point across - this is an issue, and it needs to be resolved.

    I didn't post this specifically to the main area, It had originally been intended for the GAMING section of the site. There are people that care about this stuff, you know. If you don't like it, go to your preferences, and filter out the gaming news.

    Perhaps you'd like a little whine with your cheese?

  7. Re:Amen to that! by reflective+recursion · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    nonsense. Why can't Gordon just leave? As much walking as he does, you'd think that facility is larger than Rhode Island. How convenient that there are no doors to the outside. Been there, done that. It's called "Doom". Play it some time.

    You've obviously never played a game with a real story. Again, half-life is not a story. It's a scripted Doom. There are no true characters. You have the anonymous Gordon, identical Barneys, and some completely off-the-wall guy at the end that is never once explained. You just have a hard-on for him and want to follow him for no reason. You can remove just about any "scene" from the game and then entire thing will still make as little sense as it does WITH the scene. Try it. Remove one of the many annoying McGuyver "i must turn the power generator back on" scenes. Or the ninja fighting. Or any of a hundred other "scenes" that have nothing to do with storytelling.

    Let me get this right.. Gordon can launch a space rocket, bring down a military transport plane, bring down a military chopper, take out an entire army, but can't avoid it all by walking back the way he came before all this shit started?! And then your suspension of disbelief is crushed by game intermissions? Wow. What you really mean is your adrenaline kicks in during the action and then intermission occurs when you're still going strong like a porn star on his first take. Nothing to do with the story.

    --
    Dijkstra Considered Dead