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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."
...one might have thought given the year of so the game has thought to have remained in a workable state they might have come across a bug like this, especially if it's affecting large numbers of people...
I thought initially that it was due to my sub-par hardware, but the stuttering I've experianced coincides with this bug (also that girl's face in the begging wasn't fully rendering, but THAT's probably my hardware).
I only experience stuttering while the game auto-saves and after it has finished loading a new map.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
This bug has been degrading an excellent game for many people--good to see Valve finally acknowledge it.
Now if only they would fix the "Loading" delays that show up every 3 minutes... it's 2004 already, there has *got* to be some way to stream/cache/prefetch around having to break up the game experience so much.
...stutters because I have an Athlon running at 1GHz. It stutters when there it too much action going on. My ATI Radeon 9800 256MB w/1.17GB SDRAM helps, but not much.
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I experienced this, but moving my sound card up a pci slot and deleting an extrra sounds driver that XP installed seems to have corrected the problem.
.technomancer
The big problem for me was texture corruption. I'd have random colored triangles on apparently random textures. Finally tracked down a fix - turn off "Catalyst AI" in the Catalyst Control Panel (apparently it's an ATI-only problem), which required that I *get* the Catalyst Control Panel.
Bah.
On the other hand, I just finished the game, and it rocked. If anyone wants to read my review it's here :P
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
does it mean, that he had slept whole night?!
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Half-Life 2, not Half Life. Sorry, I am being picky. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Although I didn't experience the stuttering bug others are, I have noticed how great Valve has been supporting this game. They communicate regularly (sometimes individually) and are really standing behind their product. Too bad other companies don't follow their lead.
www.lonseidman.com
This will delay my purchase of the game. As the last link shows, these problems have been evident even in the E3 demos. Why didn't valve fix this?
I've seen this a couple times, mostly right after It loads a part of the game, but it isnt that annoying. The biggest problem I have with halflife 2 is that it takes close to 13 minuites to actually load the game...
Matt
from the you're-all-beta-testers dept.
...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?
Yawn. Every Linux distro gets released bug-free, right?
Well, you sure linked a ton of forums, how about you just read those threads? Or perhaps other gamer boards?
Listen, I know HL2 is the biggest thing to happen to the gaming community in quite some time. I know the controversy surrounding it, Gabe Newell, Vivendi, Valve and a piece of caerphilly cheese. I just don't see why a bug that is sporadic and what seems like a very minute number of people are having makes the frontpage.
Yes, I expected to get modded down.
No, I don't care.
Yes, I have "been around here for a while, and I know how the place works!"
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Well, I actually do have that problem, but it's not as bad as it is for some (taking from 5 to 10 seconds to fix itself). For me, it takes 1 or 2 seconds max, and it doesn't happen all the time. But when it does, it's a pain in the ass.
I used to have that with Doom 3, but lowering quality/resolution would fix it, which doesn't cut it on HL2. I used to have that with Counter Strike Source too, and wondered what was wrong.
There was a similar problem. I had major issues getting the sound to work right. It sounded like there was constant stuttering and repeats of the sounds. I searched all over the web for a way to fix it before finding one. All I had to do was type in a small console command, and everything worked great. Of course, I have had to do the same thing everytime I have re-installed it over the years.
this raises the question, "how many (known) bugs should be allowed to ship in a piece of commercial software?"
obviously its in the developer's best interest to hit production as soon as possible (to enter the market for the xmas feeding frenzy). so, some "minor" bugs are apparently considered acceptable.
i don't think so.
but some customers, in particular the die-hard fans, apparently are willing to accept some problems on day one and will put up with the problem until a patch is released eventually.
i wonder what the turnaround time will be. probably a few days. too bad its not open-source. we'd have a patch in a few hours.
I ran into this bug occasionally since I knocked down settings a notch. It usually happens whenever I turn around a corner and something big is coming up. Maybe my hardware is not good enough...
:)
AMD Athlon XP 1.4GHz (266MHz FSB)
ECS SIS-chipset motherboard
768MB 266MHz RAM
NVidia GeForce 4200 Ti 128MB
SB Live! 5.1
Other than that, I'm enjoying the game a whole lot. It's a lot more cheerful than Doom 3's dark corridors.
A bug in Half Life 2 is perhaps the biggest problem being suffered by the human race in our time. Perhaps every government worldwide, every corporation, every organization, and every individual should stop everything they are doing at this moment, so that all the resources available to mankind can be allocated to correcting the bug in Half Life 2. Otherwise, we are doomed to destruction.
I've got that bug, but only on my 386DX - my 2.0ghz Athlon's fine.
I had this problem too when I first installed HalfLife 2 and it was frustrating as hell... Just a little background on my system:
Intel 875 chipset (800 mhz. FSB)
P4 2.6C (hyperthreaded)
1GB PC3200 memory (dual channel, 800 mhz.)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB graphics
Windows XP Pro SP2
In other words, this is not a bottom of the line system, and runs Doom 3 perfectly...
Now, when I first installed the game, I installed it to my D: drive, which happened to be an older 30GB drive that came from my previous computer. I just stuck it in there as a slave drive for extra storage space, having filled up the 120GB primary IDE hard drive a while ago...
Anyway, I noticed the stuttering always seemed to happen when the system was accessing data from the hard drive.
I finally went into the Device Mangler (haha... that's what I call it anyways, you might know it as the Device Manager), and checked the DMA settings on my secondary hard drive... Sure enough, it was only using PIO Mode!!! I always wondered why that second hard drive was slow. I tried to enable DMA mode, but was out of DMA channels, so I couldn't.
Anyway, I freed up some space on my hard drive and moved it to the primary hard drive... voila, problem solved! Now the game plays smoothly and the immersion experience is what it should be...
This problem seems to be linked to either inadequate DMA support for your hard drive (which can spike the CPU during disk access and loading times), or a hard drive that just isn't fast enough to keep up. Also, because all of the sound in the game is MP3 files that are streamed off of the hard drive, hard drive bandwidth seems to be very important for this game, in addition, I'm sure all of the MP3 decompression makes you take a big CPU hit, especially when they're mixing multiple channels of MP3 audio together at once and outputting it to 5.1 surround.
This is just a theory of mine, but it worked for me... Put the game on your fastest hard drive, and defragment it... Make sure DMA is enabled for that hard drive, and you should (hopefully) be set.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I would think such a bug would be apparent, especially if it is happing on a lot of machines, so did they acutally test the game, or were they just lazy and didn't bother to fix it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
if Half-Live 2 was Open Sour.... hey, wait a minute!
Well, first off, I'd have to say this is clearly the most immersive game I've played in the past few years. Not to insult Doom 3, but it always felt like the game was to show off the engine, not that the engine was to show off the game.
Half-Life 2 has so much going for it in terms of making the player feel as if he/she is in the role of Gordon Freeman, actually fighting a totalitarian alien government. That's why, what would normally be such a small bug, is so serious in this case. It serves as a very blatant reminder that you're not actually fighting faceless combine forces for the fate of mankind, but sitting in front of a computer.
Can't be too bad if you could not stop playing it even at work.
I don't get much stuttering, but during loads and saves, the game audio stutters and this proves to be very annoying.
Do you turn around and blame Ford when you get ticketed for speeding 30mph over the limit? Do you turn around and blame Wal-Mart when you burn your the chicken you were making for dinner? Do you blame the local hardware store when you hammer a nail through a water pipe?
Yes.
Going off my current experience (reinstalling from a retail DVD right now after a windows reinstall), downloading it will take about as long as installing, decrypting and activating the damned thing. The only difference is that with retail you at least have something physical to show for it. Still takes sodding ages to install either way...
(amd 2100+ or whatever it is) but if they want to fix it, that's fine with me... It does kind of ruin some of the surprises, because it seems to always presage the addition of more enemies to the board. So whenever it happens I automatically get ready for battle, which they probably didn't have in mind designing the game.
http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/
Good game, bad delivery. Unlocking the game took me 20 minutes, and that was STILL too long to wait after installing several CDs worth of mass. For some, it took a lot longer. The backup thing is great. Points there. The system requirements are a little high, and the ATI/Nvidia thing is kind of shady. However, the loading times and the stuttering kill the game. Its like walking into an art museum with strobe lights and a lot of heavy smokers around. The game could be so much cooler.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Have a high end system with the stuttering bug, when I lowered the resolutions from 1024x768 to 800x600 it made it playable during the times that it has stuttering problems.
A word of caution from a long-time user of Slashdot... Don't ever make mention of taking hands off of keyboards or mice when posting about enjoying something.
What? News? I thought the point of Slashdot was to post as much random crap as possible and see how much of the internet you could take out.
When open source applications have bugs in them, people report them to bugzilla or equivalent and wait. If anyone complains people say "they'll work on it, if you want it done faster, do it yourself".
As soon as the software isn't free all of a sudden its "those bastards releasing software with more than 0 bugs in it!"
Guess what. The introduction of money doesn't all of a sudden make developers more perfect. They have deadlines, priorities and are imperfect, like other people. Just because software is less than free doesn't mean you can expect it to be perfectly bug free.
It's also funny all the complaints about half-life 2 have to do with the steam system. Nobody seems to be making comments about the actual game itself. Oh, could that be because the game itself is an indisputably amazing work of art? Sorry warez dudes, you can't get a free ride on this one. For me, I don't mind as its probably the only PC game I will buy for the next 5 years. Half-Life 2 and its mods will probably be the only pc game worth playing for a long time to come. Half-Life 1 lived up to that, and I expect no less from 2. It's worth more than the lousy 50 bucks they charge for it. So quit your bitching. If you don't like the DRM, then crack it, just like you do with all the RIAA and MPAA DRM.
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It seems quite simple what's causing the stuttering, at least on my PC.
Remember the deja-vu scene in The Matrix? That's what it is.
No, I'm not joking. Whenever I hit an invisible trigger that causes the world to change (ie spawn bad guys, spawn helicopter), that's when it stutters for me. The majority of the stutters I get are immediately followed by some action happening.
It actually makes it easy for me to tell when I'm about to be ambushed. Unfortunately, this takes away the thrill of the surprise for me.
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I thought it was stuttering because my computer wasn't fast enough (1.3ghz duron). Mine DOES tend to happen around new audio though. It's enough to be annoying, but not to ruin the game.
Has anyone else noticed that it almost always coincides with new audio happening?
Yup, I did too. Apparently, this is common - or so I read on a couple of boards.
- Steam allows automatic patching, so once a bug is found and fixed, it can be applied immediately; no more having to search for patches.
- You can install the games on as many computers as you want; you just can't play them on more than one computer at a time.
- Steam allows for a delivery system that I think most people (those who have high-speed internet connections, anyway) would agree is much more convenient than having to buy CDs from a store and then having to make sure that you don't lose or damage the CDs.
- And the most important of all (that so many people seem to overlook or forget): After activation, you do not have to be connected to internet to play the Steam-based games; just start Steam in off-line mode.
I'm sure there are more.Look, I hate DRM controls as much as the next guy, but I realize that many software companies feel that they need to use such measures to try to make sure that they get rewarded for their work. All that I'm saying is that of all of the DRM/activation systems I've encountered, Steam seems to be the least intrusive and most flexible...and it has a few added benefits for the users as well (i.e. instant patches).
I don't see how a bug in an overhyped game is newsworthy at all on Slashdot. There's been plenty of bad fluff here before, but this is some of the worst I've seen in a while.
This bug is now official, since it appeared on Slashdot.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Yes mine gets worse towards city 17 as well. I also get a lot more graphical glitches towards the end of the game (strings and triangles of yellow) I thought it was just my PC... Oh well... Its a brand new game- It'll all be solved in the next update I hope. Prolly drivers need to be updated too.
kin242.net
Some people are getting motion sickness from this game. See this newsgroup thread.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not only that, but it will give them a false sense of security, "well, at least if I get killed I only have to sit out for a few minutes until the next round starts," or "Oh well, I took 3 shots, but they were all to the leg so I'll still be able to run around quickly and jump over boxes."
What?
Running two monitors gives me a different perspective on this bug. When the stuttering occurs, HL2 loses its grip on my mouse, and the mouse is free to move into my second monitor. The game pauses until I move the mouse back over the game screen.
Ouch! You just dont tell that to customers, in any sort of manner.
If there's a problem with your hardware/software that a user perceives, you have them "work for you", by either having them innundate you with useless information, or send them on 'idiot quests'. Give them something to do, even if it is worthless for them to. It'll make them feel important.
You never, EVER tell them to stop acting like "engineers". You'll end up with no contract when the year turns around.
In 5 years, once the activation server is down, or in 10 or whatever, what you got is a pretty coaster because you can't activate your legally purchased game without a crack.
OTOH about your points : * you can automatically patches if you program for it. That msot game except MMOG don't do it isn't because of a technical ground, but rather a money/marketing ground. So no advantage here. * I can install normal CD on many computer as I want, and only play on the one I have the physical CD. No change either here. * Delivery isn't as convenient as you say, if you do not have a broad band, or a nice DSL. Heck with a 26 modem I can order something on an online store and it is delivered at home. But Steam would be unusable on such a connection.
I am sorry, but you are overplaying the advantage a lot. True this is a new mode of delivery for those which want the game on the day retail begin to sell it, but do not make up things out of thin air. This is pretty much the only advantage, the rest is only nice for the company selling the game.
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It seems you have no choice as to whether you want a patch or not. It's all automatic. Now, there are advantages to this, but it also means that if your game was previously working and then they somehow introduce a bug into the game, you can't avoid it.
You can install the games on as many computers as you want; you just can't play them on more than one computer at a time.
Well... I've got a few computers at my home and I've been able to play it on multiple computers without forcing offline mode. One thing that appeared to work before, but might not now, is the ability to play counter-strike:source in this manner. I'm not sure if this is because of a Steam update or some difference in how I was playing.
Steam allows for a delivery system that I think most people (those who have high-speed internet connections, anyway) would agree is much more convenient than having to buy CDs from a store and then having to make sure that you don't lose or damage the CDs.
It's nice, as long as Steam is freely available. There are several risks with Steam, including whether Steams stays online, and whether Valve changes the rules on Steam, perhaps charging a fee for redownloading games. Hell, just recently people were having trouble just playing single player due to issues with their servers. While I don't think Half-Life 2 will disappear just because Steam might at some point, it would be a pain to deal with.
And the most important of all (that so many people seem to overlook or forget): After activation, you do not have to be connected to internet to play the Steam-based games; just start Steam in off-line mode.
You can't just start in off-line mode... I wish that were an option but it's not. To get it into off-line mode, you must not be connected to the internet, which may involve disabling your network card. I've heard that people with LANs not connected to the Internet have extra trouble since Steam has to timeout before it will allow you to play in off-line mode.
I certainly understand why Valve is doing this, and Steam is a bit more flexible than I thought it might turn out to be. However, we are to a large extent at their mercy on this. They can change the rules after the fact, and certain things you could do before in the game may not work. I have enough trust in Valve that nothing too serious on this front would happen, though it wouldn't be their first time. While not officially allowed as far as I understand, Half-Life 1 allowed you to play on multiple computers online, but after several years that rule was changed. Steam is an interesting experiment in this type of business model, but all these types of systems carry with them the varying rules that can change after purchase.
Earlier this year I read in several PC gaming mags about how 2004 was Year of the PC Game; about how Half Life 2 and Doom 3 would set the record straight and reclaim the crown of video gaming from the consoles. Doom 3 was fun, but didn't change the world, and Half Life 2 fully proves why the PC will remain a niche market. One person's comment here on this story tells people to quit whining about the problem because all they have to change their hardware around. That kind of comment - that it's a matter-of-fact that you have to spend hours monkeyassing with your PC to get a game to work - should deeply worry stalwarts of the PC industry.
Even with fairly rampant Xbox piracy, Microsoft's anti-piracy strategy with Halo 2 was transparent to nearly all xbox owners who legitimately bought the game. Yet, not only are all of HL2's users penalized for the piracy, but obviously the game was rushed through testing. Now, to be fair, testing a PC game is far more work than testing a console. But when that so-called mainstream gamer goes to pick up Half Life 2, they don't give a rip if someone else is pirating or if Valve didn't have the time or resources to check if their game worked. To them, the only thing that matters is that their game takes hours to work, and when it does it does so half-assed.
Console makers (Nintendo, MS, Sony) keep the publishers in check with quality issues like these. For the PC, there's no one entity at stake if PC games take 5 hours of work to run properly. But Valve is hurting not only themselves but the entire PC gaming industry by releasing games that require anti-piracy measures like Steam and then ultimately don't work.
I didn't? Really? Shit, I sure as hell remember reading the website.
I experienced this as well, maybe 4 or 5 times throughout the entire game. I thought it was just my fragged harddrive, since my specs are decent (xp3200+, radeon 9600 pro, 1 gig pc3200 ram). But now that I find out it's affecting most people... I STILL dont care, because honestly, it's not that big of a deal. Of course I would prefer it not to be there but I never once thought to myself, "Gee this sure ruins the experience, what the hell was Valve thinking, now I'm pissed off and will rate half life 2 poorly". Come on, people. Relax, chill the F out, enjoy the excellent game that Valve has created. I'm sure they'll release a fix for it eventually but in the meantime, don't be so uptight about it.
Joseph?
anyone else have trouble with a strange "reverb" effect?
I had problems right off the bat in the opening sequence -- the g-man dialog was so echoey and garbled I couldn't even understand. Really annoying.
One of the work-arounds I read was to move the soundcard (sb live) to the highest PCI slot possible. I did this and re-installed the drivers but it didn't seem to really help.
In the end I found the best workaround was to disable the 5.1 sound in creative's contol app and then tell HL2 to use 2 speakers. It works, but now I only get plain stereo out of my 5.1 system.
Anyone else run into this?
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Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
I realise thisll probably be modded offtopic, but I thought itd mention it anyway: My main problem isnt that Half Life 2 stutters, its that I paid ~£35 for it and cant even play the damn game. I bought the game yesterday, it took about a day to download all the files then i started playing it. About half an hour into the game, my computer crashes (cant blame it specifically on half life, and no biggie anyway, ill just go back to the last save point.) So i boot up steam to play HL2 again and... unable to connect to steam. And its been like that for the past 6 hours. Now, i can understand this would be a problem if i was trying to play counterstrike but not letting me play Half life 2, an OFFLINE GAME, because their servers are only up 50% of the time? Thanks a fucking lot. And im aware that steam is supposed to have an "offline mode", but that just causes errors and crashes. I could potentially reinstall just to be absolutely sure its not a bad install, but ~10 gigs is rather a lot to be downloading just to fixing one game at the moment. (steam and apps 10 gigs, not just hl2) I am SERIOUSLY unimpressed. I will not be buying anything from valve again, and I just wish someone had told me about this before i encountered these problems.
Isn't this stuttering just the game loading textures into the video card's RAM?
I have an ATI 9700, and when HL2 did its little autoconfiguration of video options, It set me up to have medium texture detail (smaller, less detailed textures resulting in blurry, pixellated walls but consuming less video RAM). I had no problems with stuttering, but I hated the low-detail textures, as they took away from what was supposedly one of the best looking games in history.
So I changed the texture detail to high. And, predictably, whenever I entered a new area within a map (going from an underground tunnel to an outdoor setting, for example), the game paused for a moment as it (I presume) had to pull subway-wall textures out of video memory and put in side-of-house textures. It was annoying, but it seemed a fair trade-off for a better looking game.
I would suggest to anyone who's having this problem, if you have a card with less than 256M of RAM, try setting the texture detail down. It was the source of the stuttering in my case.
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Doom3 plays just fine on my 2.0Ghz machine with 512Meg of RAM and an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro card.
Half-Life 2 stutters all the time, sometimes badly. I thought it was just because my machine is under-powered for the game, but I definitely exceed the specs, and turning down some of the detail and unloading some services and other applications to free up more memory didn't help the problem.
Glad to see it's not just me, and is likely a problem wtih the game itself.
I still think it's a kick-ass game, though.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Forget bugs, my main problem with this game is having to put it down and retreat to somewhere with more light, and surround myself with crates, looking for a magnum...
I bought my GameCube in the fall of 2002, and the first game I owned for it was Metroid Prime. I got about 7 hours into it, the game froze, and a buzzing sound filled the speakers.
I thought, "Holy shit! My GameCube is broken!"
Why? Because I thought that was more possible than a Nintendo game having a bug of that magnitude.
My GameCube wasn't broken. Metroid Prime did have a bug, a rather rare one, that overflowed a buffer (I believe) when changing areas. the overflow was rare enough that most gamers never experienced it. I was one of the lucky ones that had it happen twice.
My point is not that consoles can have bugs too. My point is that with the good console game companies this sort of thing is so rare, you can think your hardware died when it happens.
I assume that PC games will have fatal bugs when they are released, and I also assume that if the game is not popular, these bugs may never be fixed. That is why I don't buy PC games until they have been out a year. How can you get excited about a launch when there is a decent chance you will not be able to play the game?
By the way, Nintendo fixed that bug and offered a replacement to anyone who wanted it. The Metroid Prime discs today do not have the problem.
Why ? Doom 3 worked perfect right our of the box. No tweaks needed, no hardware changes, etc.
...
HL2 is a nightmare. I can't even play the damn game. The intro gets 1fps, while all other maps get 80fps. Meaning, I can't even play the game without cheating
Valve isn't being very supportive either, they don't respond to posts or emails regarding the issue. I have tried for 2 days to figure it out.
If you haven't bought the game yet. DON'T! It is nothing but trouble. I am presently trying to find a way to get a refund, which of course is falling on deaf ears.
Everywhere I turn, there is nothing but complaints from people who can't play the game, or it have serious audio issues.
Total waste of money.
BTW: Before you flame, yes my system can handle the game. It runs World of Warcraft and Doom3 just fine, no issues what so ever.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
While his computer is stuttering, he goes out and lays sod in people's yards. Sod is the dirt/grass layer that you can literally roll onto an unfinished lot and it will grow into a normal lawn.
The loading times are awful, and loading occurs way too often. It really wrecked my suspension of disbelief. Example: At the beginning, when you're running to the roof, the game stops to load for 30 seconds or so in the middle of fierce action! How am I supposed to keep my adrenaline up during that time, by slapping myself in the face or what? This is not good game design.
What I cannot understand is the people praising this game as a whole to high heavens. Sure, the Source engine kicks ass and everything, but what I really expected from a sequel to Half-Life was a coherent story and script. After completing the game, all I had was an aftertaste of a huge railroaded marathon and a handful of loose ends in the script.
I was left confused and unsatisfied. Props to Valve for making the game, but even the most decorated shell is empty without a good plot.
Maybe Half-Life 2 is really an introduction to third part of the story, where all the pieces come together. But it makes me a bit unease thinking that all these years I was only waiting for a prologue to the real thing.
__
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I am experiencing the stuttering issue when I play HL2. At first, I thought it was just a performance issue. I have a 2.4GHz P4, 512MB RAM, and a GeForce4 MX 420 graphics card (AGP 2x). I can't run the highest graphics settings, but I was pretty happy with what I was seeing. Loading each new chapter takes quite a long time... close to a minute in some cases. This kind of breaks the illusion of the game. The stuttering seems to happen most often just before and after a game load, and whenever there is dialog between characters. With so many people making note of it, and considering my specs are very close to the recommended (not minimum) specs for the game, perhaps this really is a bug.
I do have some other gripes with the game. But before I get into those, I should note that I LOVE HL2. The game itself is totally engrossing, and the action is varied and interesting. It has all of the elements of the original, and has built on that success. The transition from frantic action to puzzle solving to skilled jumping and traversal... it's a recipe that I really enjoy.
That said, I do have my gripes. Like I mentioned before, the long load times and the stuttering definitely take away from the game. Another big gripe I have has to do with the fact that the DVD is required. I purchased the Collector's Edition of the game from a real store because I wanted to install from physical media rather than waiting on the download, and I wanted to get Half-Life : Source. I really didn't care about the t-shirt or Prima book. So I spent $87 on the CE when I could have had all I wanted, minus the media, for $60 on Steam. I had assumed that, once loaded, the DVD version and the Steam version would be identical. Big mistake! The CD-Key that comes with the retail version of the game requires that the media be present in the drive. THis means constantly inserting the disc, and carting it with me to work, home, LAN parties, and wherever I might want to play. One of the beauties of Steam is that you can go virtually anywhere and play your Valve games. Not so with the retail version, as now you must remember to bring your media with you. If you purchase your version online on Steam, however, no such requirement.
So now I'm stuck. My CD-Key is associated with my account, and there is no method for removing it. The store will not give me a refund, as they CD-Key is used. There is no option to upgrade or transition to another HL2 purchase level from Steam either. I also learned that my copy of the original Half-Life is now worthless, as I can't sell the game (the cd-key for it is associated with my account as well). I don't need it, as I can play the Source version, but I can't sell it, because I can't seperate the key for the original half-life from my account.
I'm really hoping that Valve comes up with some type of workable solution soon where I can either seperate the CD-Keys from my account so I can sell / refund my current copies, or provides a patch that removes the need for the media to be in the drive.
It's not off topic ... it could be a similar problem is all that I was suggesting
"You can't just start in off-line mode... I wish that were an option but it's not. To get it into off-line mode, you must not be connected to the internet, which may involve disabling your network card."
Odd. On my system, all I have to do is log out of my DSL, or not log in when I start up. Steam happily (if somewhat slowly) starts in offline mode and off I go. I heard all these horror stories about people having to physically unplug their network cable but I'm not sure why you'd have to do that. Are they all on isolated LANs?
Freedom: "I won't!"
And somehow, the auto-save at the beginning of the level is gone too.
"2004: Year of the PC Game" ?? I'm assuming this expression came from GameSpot in particular...they have a particular tendency to come up with such pretentious, hype-laden phrases at times.
;-))
a) Doom 3 - AKA Glorified graphics patch.
I read reviews of this on a couple of sites that fortunately DON'T rate everything that comes out of id at 9.8/10 whether said game actually deserves it or not, and the results were telling. The average score seemed to be about 7.5, and I suspect that while these sites weren't engaging in the aforementioned id whoring, they *were* still trying to be somewhat kind. The *only* thing this game apparently had going for it *at all* was the graphics. The game itself was fundamentally the same as what we first played in 1993, and network play was also almost entirely non-existent...which finally conclusively proves what I've been saying about id Software for years. They're strictly graphics people. Yes, they're very, very, very talented graphics people...but graphics alone do not a game make. The main reason why they managed to get away with it with Doom and the original Quake was because they originated said genre...so at the time we were all so busy being awed by the graphics that we paid no heed to other areas of the game/s being somewhat lacking. That was something which (to me, anywayz) was becoming rather noticeable by the time Quake 2 reached us...and Epic pretty much completely dethroned them fairly shortly afterwards.
(Note: This is not meant to be exclusively an id bashing session. They *are* an extraordinarily talented group of people, IMHO. I'm just asking for a slightly more balanced perspective regarding them than what I'm used to seeing)
b) HL 2, while not being as much a complete retread as Doom 3, is still extremely conservative from what I've read...which is especially disappointing given how much ground the first game broke. The AI in the game is actually something of a step backward from the original. I don't blame Valve at all for this, however...I lay any and all blame for HL 2's lack of originality squarely on the shoulders of Vivendi, who seem to be the usual class of corporate SS. (Soulless Suits, not to be confused with Himmler's group
So to be blunt, I don't think this year's been the greatest for gaming that I've ever seen...not by any stretch of the imagination. Possibly in terms of *quantity*, yes...but some of us look at such things in terms of quality, as well.
I am running a SATA/Raptor and I get the stuttering problem. It does seem to occur more if I pause the game often or alt-tab out.
2500Barton/1gb/6800OC... so my system isn't wimping out. Compared to DOOM3 the loading and sound problems are shameful.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I seem to be experiencing the same problem in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which also uses the Source engine. Hopefully the same solutions can be applied there.
Why don't display manufacturers start labeling CRTs and LCD panels as to the maximum resolution they're rated for displaying w/pixel for pixel accuracy?
In the past, I guess this issue never even came up, because the electronic circuitry in the displays (and even in the video cards) weren't able to synch up with (or generate resolutions greater) than what the phosphors on the tube could display accurately.
But in the age of even "consumer grade" video boards outputing resolutions of upwards of 1600 pixels vertically, this point seems to be pretty valid.
Granted, the wide aspect ratio LCD panels (such as Apple's Cinema displays) are going to allow for accurate viewing of larger horizontal pixel resolutions before hitting their upper limits - but the vertical hasn't changed much.
Vampire: Bloodlines also suffers from this in a horrible way. (Vampire: Bloodlines uses the Source enging the drives HL2.) Activisions official response for this is to make sure you meet the minimum system requirements. Of course, they don't say anything about the fact that most of the people complaining about this problem are well above the minimum requirements.
But then I just finished the game today, so I probably won't be needing that fix for a while. I was a bit disappointed in the ending. Unlike the first one, this tried to establish more relationships with other characters (Eli Vance, Alyx, Barney, etc.) and I don't think the ending lived up to that.
After the first couple times the stuttering happened to me, I started thinking... I've seen this somewhere else... Another game did this to me... What was it... Oh yeah! Half-Life 1.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
Steam is far from the first system with an auto-patcher. If you are just saying this is nice, fine, but I've seen too many posts where people point this out as if no one had tried it before Steam.
How is this different than any other game ever created?
Yes and no. Downloads are nice but I don't think we've reached the point where they are more convenient than buying from a store. Not on something like this. Maybe more convenient than buying from an online store and having it shipped, but I can drive to Best Buy and back in under 20min. Will my Steam D/L be done by then? Maybe one day, but we aren't there yet. And yes, I have a high speed connection.
Head over to the Steam-Powered forums. Close your eyes and click a thread. Chances are you'll hit one where people say the instructions for activating off-line mode don't work. But even if it works perfectly, that is not the only complaint about the online requirement for activation. As you said; "that so many people seem to overlook or forget" is the point that people who bought the physical box edition and only care about the single player game have a brand new set of coasters without that online activation. Of course there are still arguments to be made against this, but all the Steam supporters seem to gloss over this fact and just address the ability to turn on off-line mode.
Here is the problem as I see it. The Steam detractors have been a bit too harsh sometimes, but I'm actually inclined to give them a small bit of leeway since they did spend money here. However, the Steam supporters are TOO forgiving of Steam. No one said you can't support Steam AND make some noise about its problems. A lot of Steam supporters talk about how "this is the first of its kind, of course it will have bugs, we just have to wait for them to get worked out, it's always like this in the beginning". Who do you think is going to be a bigger catalyst for that change, for the improvement of Steam; the people who scream, yell, and demand that the problems are unacceptable, or the people who sit idly by and accept everything as perfect? Whether you think everything is perfect or not isn't the point, if you are being quiet about it, that is the same as saying there is nothing wrong. We need to find the middle ground between the two groups.
Well, it's a conservative year. Look at console's fare, and the biggest games of the year are more of the same: Halo 2, KOTOR2, GTA:SA, Sims 2, the list goes on. However, where I think the console seems to always edge out the PC are titles like oddball Katamari Damacy, whose gaming purity you will never see the likes of on a PC. Ninja Gaiden takes something old and makes it very new - nothing revolutionary, but the combat system is just damn good. Something like Gish comes close on the PC, but Gish feels like a console game that's lost its way and ended up on the PC. Nothing new has happened on the PC since The Sims, sadly. Even the upcoming Pirates! is essentially, well, Pirates!. Whine.
I wish I could do a ctrl+z on the last 5 years of my life
Usually, a game bug isn't news-worthy
And neither is this one.
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
the fact that you can't give away or sell used copies of Half-life 2 if you want to keep your Steam Account?!
This just set the precedence that anything you buy you must keep for ever.
What if they start doing this with cars?!
at least you can play it.
? s=&threadid=176998&perpage=15&pagenumber=1 or http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=6 9940b3af0c4026c73f52b06585fe6ba&t=52983
There's a large group of us out there who can't run it at all: Install, ok, connect to steam, ok, update, ok, run game.....wait.....dvd drive spins up....wait.... nothing happens.
See http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php
Seems to be a problem with DVD+R/RWs.
henry -- the human evolution news relay
Ripostes:
1) Bully for them. In what way does Blizzard's behaviour predict Valve's?
2) Until you need to reinstall for some reason, say a hard drive upgrade/crash.
3) Would they? How do you know that would happen? Yes, it seems likely, but it's by no means guaranteed.
I have better things to do than rationalize every single possibility out there and instead deal with what actually IS
Indeed; and yet that's exactly what you're doing, especially in point 3.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The bug is horribly annoying. I thought perhaps it was my system but it appears that is not the case.
don't worry, the last 5 years have sucked for everyone
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
Stopgap 1:
Run dxdiag and try changing the Hardware Acceleration down to the first or second step. You can play with this reloading the program each time and you will most likely find that the problem does not return until the last stage of the game where the audio is a bit more intense by an order of magnitude.
Stopgap 2:
The next thing that immediately made the sound bubbles go away was simply changing the in game options from 5.1 speakers down to 2 speakers. Frustrating to have to do this when your card is so hot, I know, but it's a stopgap measure that can at least make the more intense scenes more enjoyable.
Symptom of the problem I had:
The most noticable sympton my relatively new system had with the game that could help is that if I forced the sound by moving so that it was entirely left or entirely right the bubbles went away - even with full hardware acceleration and 5.1 setting in game. From a layman's perspective this intimates that there seems to be a problem with the 3d environment code mixing or otherwise (hey it might be something buried in directx that Valve were the first to truly exploit who knows).
If this helps anyone then today I have done some good.
I've got this bug and got it bad, right from the G-Man's opening spspspspspeech. My machine is not underpowered at all - AMD 2600, Radeon 9800 video card, 768Mb RAM - it played Doom3 acceptably. I'm very glad to hear that people are getting on Valve's case about this.
After this, frustratingly sticky ladders, the way things jump and shake when you pick them up, the long loading times, the way it can die a grindingly slow and agonising death if you accidentally whack the windows key instead of ctrl, and a couple of other once-off things (Managed to get stuck halfway through a floor once), my lasting impression is that half-Life 2 is a great game (greater than Doom 3), but a shaky engine (not as good as Doom3).
This may be teething troubles, but you don't get a second chance at a first impression. Not after how far I've already gotten in the game.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
"* Steam allows automatic patching, so once a bug is found and fixed, it can be applied immediately; no more having to search for patches."
:
Other game companies just include a little program you can run that gets the patch for you. Ever hear of Sierra?
"* You can install the games on as many computers as you want; you just can't play them on more than one computer at a time."
So? thats not an advantage. You an do the same with a disk.+
"* Steam allows for a delivery system that I think most people (those who have high-speed internet connections, anyway) would agree is much more convenient than having to buy CDs from a store and then having to make sure that you don't lose or damage the CDs."
Lets think about this for a minute:
*I go to the store anyways
*I get it CHEAPER at the store with box, disk, manuals.
*I can Back up my CDs.
"* And the most important of all (that so many people seem to overlook or forget): After activation, you do not have to be connected to internet to play the Steam-based games; just start Steam in off-line mode."
Yes, but if something happens to your offline mode file, your screwed.
Now, somethings that people seem to be over looking
1) Loss of resale ability. In the US we enjoy the ability to resell out products. You have totally lost out on that.
2) What happens when they have maximized there profit and decide they don't want to spend money 'supportting' a product anymore?
3) What happens If they get bought by another company? when that happens, You can bet those servers will be shut down, especially if the compmany is bought do to 'branding'. Your going to start seeing this in a few years amongest MMORPG. Where a company buy another company for its customers and then shuts down the product. It happens in all service industry markets.
4) what if Valve goes out of business? Seems unlikly, but the road through the home computer market is lttered with the carcasses of companies that people thought would be around 'forever'. espcially the game industry.
5) What if someone has a slow connection? or no connection? There are many Americans with no internet connect, and a Hell of a lot more people in the world with a poor to no connection.
If in exchange for the consumer to take those riskes they cut the price to 20 bucks for the 'steam' model version, and the regular price for the store version it might be worth it...maybe.
My children are not allowed to have an internet connection in their room. so that 2 fewer sales right there.
+ Personally, I'd like to see games adopt a family license model, where anybody in a house hold can play together with one purchase. Like every other game out there.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hmm... My problem is worse than stuttering. It won't run at all on my p-p-p-powerbook :/
Not sure if this is the same thing, but when making an auto-save (check the console) my audio would stutter slightly for a few moments.. nothing horrible or game ruining..
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Hey, read my post again: I said "customer ops", not "customers" - i.e. customer operations _internal staff_ - it goes without saying that only an idiot would tell customers that they're stupid.
I'm not posting this as flame-bait, but when I played the original Half Life on the PS2 (I'm a mac user, was my first chance to see what the fuss was about) I found a fun, solid shooter, but I had heard so many people laud the game's story, and how great it was for a FPS to have a good plot. I really didn't see anything impressive with the plot, at all.
Warning, possible Half Life 1 spoilers, for those who haven't played the 7 or so year old gameYou have a scenario suspiciously similar to Doom where a bunch of aliens come through a wormhole, you're a bad-ass scientist with a crowbar able to kick more butt than the many wimpy scientists or security guards. Eventually soldiers arrive as the aliens get bigger, eventually you kill their homeworld's giant space baby, all the while, Men in Black run around and chuckle at you.
Perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention, but even if I was, I cannot possibly see how that can be lauded as a great story, especially when games like Bungie's Marathon, released 6 years before Half-Life, had plots that still confound people to this day. Half-Life may have captured the experiance of being a bad-ass alien asskicker scientist rather well, but it's the same as Gran Turisimo capturing the experiance of being a race car driver well. Both are great games, but please don't pretend there was a good story where there wasn't.
That aside, I wouldn't be surprised if Half-Life 2 actually made a better attempt at a story than the first game, though as the parent post implies, it's probably not very good, and at that point, it's safe to ask "Why try?" Much like the first Half Life, a FPS can be very good without a plot, look at Far Cry. That was one of the year's most fun games, but you could write the entire game's story on one side of a napkin.
Yup...
This loosely translates to: Since we know everytime Valve gets mentioned on slashdot, steam causes quite the controvery and the discussions about it never resolve anything, or contribute to anything, let's discuss it again and again and again...
It seems upgrading to the latest Audigy2 drivers has helped... but nevertheless I was a bit surprised and annoyed with the stuttering happening at key moments and putting a damper on my experience.
It's not as severe now but still there.
Slashdot is news for nerds and most nerds are playing HL2 right now
Rubbish. Most nerds are lamenting the fact Valve stuck two fingers up at their OS and left them out in the cold.
You're an idiot.
I expected that. How pedestrian.
If you go to the Steam forums, the "Audio Stuttering" thread has now surpassed 100 pages and 100,000 views, the highest of any thread ever on that board. Half-life2.net has a similar large thread as do all the other forums.
You do know that a 'view' constitutes refreshing any page in the thread, right? Just because the thread appears everywhere doesn't make it a huge problem. What's to say the same person isn't posting to 2 threads on 2 separate forums?
This isn't some "minute number of people," this is the fucking majority of Half-Life 2 gamers, including a large percentage who have high-end systems that surpass the recommended system specs.
Prove to me where this is the "fucking majority". I've had some problems getting old DOS games to work correctly. Maybe I should downgrade?
If you want to play Slashdot editor and sit here pondering why stories make the front page, why don't you just skip over the article then?
Well, last I checked the comments pages of all threads have people complaining about the posts. What makes me so special?
Some of us have paid $90 for this game and its variants
Well, you just bent over and took it didn't you?
It took them days to even acknowledge that there was a problem, and they're still slapping us in the face with a "small number of people" claim on Steam's news page.
Once again, I'd like to see your "fucking majority".
He is limited by the memory bandwidth of his video card.
2048x1536*80Hz = 251,658,240251,658,240 pixels per second.
At 24 bit color, assuming that the video card actually uses 32 bits per pixel to keep things dword aligned, yields 1,006,632,960 bytes per second. Depending upon how wide the video chips path to memory is, and how fast it is, that could saturate the memory bandwidth.
By going to 16 bits, he halves the memory bandwidth needed.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I've played countless hours of doom, quake{1,2,3}, doom3, half-life, counter-strike, etc., and never had any symptoms of motion sickness.
HL2, however, makes me want to hurl my cookies. Violently.
I can play for about a half hour at a time, but then feel completely sick for the next 4-6 hours.
This seems to be a relatively common problem.
I *love* what I've seen of HL2 so far, but unfortunately I really can't afford to feel physically ill for the rest of the day after playing it.
You listening, Valve?
I'm not sure.. I am running a P4 3.0 ghz HT, Intel 875PBZ mainboard, ATI 9700 Pro with a gig of RAM. I do on occaision get a brief hiccup (and I mean very brief) when walking through a large area where an enemy or another object may appear. That's a rare occaision, however.
I'm sure there must be some little bug somewhere that's behaving badly with a particular combination of drivers. One of the downfalls of PC gaming are the infinite combinations of hardware and software each user has.
I still remember having to fight with boot disks and the like to get games like Wing Commander to run in the DOS days.
www.lonseidman.com
Steam allows automatic patching, so once a bug is found and fixed, it can be applied immediately; no more having to search for patches.
ITYM "Steam allows automatic patching, so once a bug that isn't effecting you is found and fixed, a patch can be applied to your game that stands a chance of breaking something else."
If a patch is a fix for a problem that I don't have, why should I install it? All it does is stand a chance of breaking something else. I fail to see how this is a positive step.
I encounter this bug, however, I ONLY encounter it if I set my graphics to be HIGHER than the reccomended amount for my system. Then this becomes immediately apparent. If, however, I leave the settings at the reccomended level, then this problem does not occur, and the level loading times are quite short.
Pay close attention to what Valve has suggested for your video card, and follow it. If you don't like it, well, buy a better card and or machine. Granted, I have a medium spec machine, and the game runs very well ( the only issue being occasional hard lockups ).
The instant I set some of my settings for video to be higher than reccomended... Stuttering bug.
FYI, my specs:
Athlon 2500 @ 3200 on an Asus k7n8x-deluxe
512 MB ram
ATI all in wonder 9800 Pro 128MB
250 GB HDD
The game runs well at a combination of high and medium settings as reccomended by valve.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I didn't have any stuttering problems myself, but my surround sound doesn't work properly. I can only get 2-channel or headphones working. Does anyone else have this problem?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do people really have problems finding patchs for games? Just do a google search if you don't know the games website. I can't think of a game I had any problem with finding a noncracked patch for.
I could always install games on as many pc's as I wanted to, some games even let me play more then one copy. I could even install them on my laptop that didn't have internetaccess.
Nice being able to stream the game and all, but what about when my internet goes down and I decide I want to pull this game from the shelves and kill some time?
Last point is good, except for me who had tons of problems with halflife 1 cd key.
42%...... .... 43%...... right now I'm sitting here writing this post on Slashdot wasting my time while waiting for Halflife2 to start up, yet Steam felt the need to "Validate Steam files - Please wait while Steam verifies game files." Hmm.. 47%. So I have to sit here and watch the progress bar ever so slowly, one percent at a time.
50% now. Tell me again how Steam made everything convenient, and how it made life easier for you... well, it sure hasn't for me, because right now it's wasting my time WHEN ALL I DID WAS DOUBLECLICK THE HALFLIFE2 ICON!!!!! I just want to play the freaking game already! I don't need a software cop giving me permission to play the game!
Yeah, so I sound bitter... but hey, it's at 75% already! I should be happy right? Who knows, I might even finish this post before it finishes!
*sigh*
Mod this flamebait. Or a troll. I don't care. I'm just sick and tired of this bullshit. Whatever.
89% now... soon.... soon.... my precious, sssssoooonnnnn.....
Just a thought to those who think that you won't be able to play Steam'ing games in 10 or so years: 1. The game would probably have to be run in a "Ye Olde Windowse Emulator", much like a current DOS app. 2. Emulators can fake IO. 3. The Steam protocol can be reverse-engineered. 4. Regarding points 1-3, you can safely say that you could write a fake Steam server module for said emulator. Problem solved.
I mod down pathetic posts.
[POSSIBLY SPOILERS BELOW]
I'm running it on a 2.4ghz pentium 4 with a 128mb fx5600 and 1gb RAM- ancient hardware by modern standards, yet HL2 runs flawlessly, even with all graphics details turned up to full (except for water, which my 5600 won't render at full detail)
I have to load the next section of the level perhaps once every 30 minutes or so- hardly an annoying problem. Perhaps you should get more RAM- it's cheap as chips nowadays.
--SPOILERS--
As for the Zombie hunting level? I loved it- definately my favourite part of the game (Shotgun + Zombies == "Evil Dead" kinda fun).
Sitting on a rooftop as half decayed zombies jump 50 feet through the air at me, only to cop a double blast of buckshot at the last moment... it just doesn't get better than that.
--END SPOILERS--
Wake me when Console games are actually not mind-numbing.
Even with GTA: SA, It's nothing like PC gaming... graphics, speed, etc. Consoles will always be low-class PCs.
This sig is the express property of someone.
One small thing you should be aware of, the Nvidia optimized ide drivers are NOT compatable with the copy protection system on some games, I know from first hand experience that neighter FarCry nor Doom3 will run with them installed. Instead they complain you don't have the proper cd in the drive. All I had to do to that computer to get it to work was use the driver rollback feature of xp-pro(sp2) and they both now work fine on that system.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
LOL. Anyone who labels someone "pedestrian" is trying so hard to sound like the enlightened intellectual. Put down the coffee.
Actually, I was referencing a Penny Arcade comic. Nice try, however.
You're right, it's a conspiracy of a small minority of gamers crossposting to all the threads listed in the linked site of this article. Next.
Didn't go as far as to say that. Don't put words in my mouth.
Nothing makes you special. Sorry. It's rather amusing when people click the Read More link of an article they think shouldn't be there, read it, and post a reply...instead of just skipping over it and moving on. Some people apparently need to see their words up in a Slashdot post.
Just like you did?
Nope, it's called refund. Rather "pedestrian" of you, I should say.
Come again? How does paying 90 bucks for a game mean I get money back? Please, give me a pass to your magical world. I wish to join in the vast richness involved.
Next.
Next what? Next up on Maurry, we have some girl that banged a 60 year old?
Oh, and stop hiding behind the AC.
This bug was really annoying me for the first couple of levels, until I noticed the stutter would coincide with heavy hard drive activity.
;)) and put it in mine. Up from 512 to 768 meg. The game ran perfectly for the very fun remainder.
So I `aquired' more RAM (only 256 meg worth) from another computer in the house ("oh, sorry, I'm doing some maintenance, this computer doesn't work at the moment."
It's a Bagel.
I would hope not, AFIAK the aperture size is software changeable and most games will adjust it if needed. Though I suppose there might be a chipset/bios out there that locks to the bios settings somehow I doubt that could acount for the large numbers of complaints.
So if the aperture settings in bios is causing a problem it's still due to a lack in the game engine.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Ooooooh, lets all whine about HL2! one of the biggest PC game releases of the year and someone has to bitch about it. Got it activated at 00:02, played the whole game for 16 hours solid to the end, and not a single bug to complain about - no loading issues, no stuttering, no corruption, no nothing except plain old fun - it you've got some dodgy drivers, some l337 overclocked piece of crud - sort it out yourself. This is one great game - good plot, decent graphics, a complete laugh. Everyone knows that this game is demanding in terms of specs - if you've got a 3Dfx or a TNT, buy a new bloody machine! It runs like a blast on my X800 - if you can't afford it, stick to your PS2!
blah sorry for lack of formatting in previous post. the cure is:
sv_cheats 1
fov 90
separate commands
I don't know if anybody else has said this, but I noticed that the stuttering bug occurs ONLY during saves. Not at any other time have I seen them. When you hit the quicksave button, it happens, and Every time it would stutter, and then I'd die soon after, I'd look back, and the stuttering happened at the last save... Just my 2 cents.
I went to the site listed in the original posting, and among the other workarounds were...
...and other pearls of "screw you if you want to use your computer for anything else besides Half-Life 2." Disable virus protection applications? This is the same company that got royally hacked for their most prized source code, right? You'd think they'd know better.
"Disable virus protection applications."
"Uninstall various third-party CODEC packs."
"If you are running the 5.1 or 4 speaker settings in Half-Life 2, change the setting to 2 speakers."
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
The point of HL2's story isn't the story that is told by your actions. That rarely works well; either it's a crappy game with a great story, or a great game with a crappy story.
The thing Half-life and HL2 do, is provide great *backstory*. The world makes sense in its universe, and is built solidly. Weapons from characters, corpses and weapon-storage facilities, instead of strewn all over the place. Bases that actually look defensible, fronts for the resistance marked with the Half-life symbol, physics that work, etc.
Is it a story? Not really. But that's not bad. I get the feeling of a headlong dash. I don't mind that, it's why I play the game.
(I'm NOT the AC you've been talking to)
Really, if you're not having this problem with the game, why do you need to whine about the fact that others whine about it? From what you've written, I don't even think you've bought the game at all. Just ignore the story and move on.
If I see a story I'm not interested in, I don't go and whine about it. I just ignore it.
meh
A man and a woman are standing at a bus stop. A second man walks up to the first man and says: "Do yyyyou hhhhave the ttttime?"
The man at the bus stop doesn't answer. The stuttering guy repeats his question, but the man still doesn't answer. After the third time, the woman tells him the time and the stuttering man goes away. She then turns to the man who refused to answer and says: "Why didn't you tell him the time?" To which he repies: "Dddo you tttthink I want tttto get ppppunched?"
On a side note, this joke probably works better verbally.
You haven't been playing the right console games. With regards to the PC, where is the experimentation we see in console games like Katamari Damacy, REZ, Ico, Panzer Dragoon Orta - I could go on. Bejewled? Age of Empires? Doom 3? I'll give you the Sims, but that's all I can think of. "Graphics, speed, etc" do not a good game make.
Funny thing, I had the exact opposite experience.
Out of the box, I had tons of problems with system freezes and system crashes playing Doom 3.OTOH, I was playing HL2 about 10 minutes after paying for it on Steam, with no problems.
I did hit the "stuttering" bug later on in the game, but it was mildly annoying at most. Hardly gamebreaking.
Of course, YMMV.
Humans are imperfect.... So why do humans excectps others humans to produce perfection? Bugs happen. When was the last time you ran to your car dealer because you had to call a tow truck?
... the John Lennon patch?
*sigh* Why do you have to go to the whole console vs PC garbage? So what if PC gaming mags say that sort of stuff, it doesn't mean you need to follow them in to a stupid and pointless debate. I have a PC and play games on them. I have multiple consoles and play games on them. Guess what, on both platforms I have FUN. I prefer PCs for FPS's and I like RPG's better on consoles (but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy Halo 2 on my x-box and star wars: galaxies on my PC).
You whole comment on PCs being a niche market is a common, over-used stupid argument. Consoles and GAMING IN GENERAL are a niche market as well. Don't use that as an argument because you prove nothing and only come off as some sort of console zealot. The great thing about a PC is that it is much more flexible and customizable than the console. So when new drivers are released, my system is now improved and games look better and perform better. When you have a console, you are locked in to the same old stuff you have when you bought it. You may try to argue that console games are bug free and don't have these problems like PC game do. But you would be wrong. So many console games are bug ridden and have stuttering issues. And guess what, you can't fix those because you are on a console. Now with the X-BOX..they are moving in the right direction because they act MORE LIKE A PC. That's right, consoles are improving because they emulate a PC by having a hard drive and an internet connection where they can fix hardware and software problems. You do not have to spend hours monkeying with your PC. Mine worked fine, why not other people? Because they don't keep their PC up to date with current drivers. If that is too much of a hassle, then yeah, you would be better off playing console games.
Now, let's touch on Steam. You are under the common misconception that Steam is an anti-piracy tool. Let me clarify this for you. Steam is a distribution system that allows people to buy directly from the people who buy the games and bypass the RIAA-like distribution companies. It also has a lot of other benefits. It automatically keeps your games patched and up to date so that you have all the bug fixes and are compatible to play with everyone else online. It also helps to prevent massive cheating in multi-player games. Cheating really hurts the enjoyment of online games, and it is very difficult to prevent on PCs, so this service is highly desirable. Does this also provide anti-piracy...sure, to a certain extent, there will still be cracks, but they will have a much harder time being able to play in the multi-player. This is a good thing. Why should they enjoy all the benefits I do when they didn't pay for the game. Why doesn't Valve deserve money for their work? You probably don't agree with piracy, you are just bothered by how intrusive and painful Steam is. Well, this is how painful it is: I installed the game through Steam, it authenticated and loaded, and I was playing right away with no problems. Yes, I know, how horrible for me to be "pealized" for piracy. Give me a break, if you think Steam is just a piracy preventer, try re-reading this paragraph. The sad thing is, Steam does a lot of things to make things easier on a PC gamer (more like a console experience, if you want to go from your perspective) yet you jump all over it. Sad. If you do not understand how PC games have a harder time being bug free, then you are ignorant. Half Life 2 was not rushed to market or done "half-assed". It is the best game I have played on ANY platform and I have not encountered any problems. They will work a fix for the stuttering problem and people will be happy. Maybe it's hard to understand because you don't write software...I make a living off of software and networks, so I can see what a quality job Valve did with this. From the sounds of it, you haven't even played the game...you just try to jump over it because of the vocal people who like to make a big deal out of nothing on here.
I think you should sit down and think hard about the garbage you are spewing. What causes this console zealotry? Why can't you enjoy games on both? I sure do. You should join my side...it's a lot nicer over here.
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