Slashdot Mirror
Half- Life 2 Stutter Solved
As a followup to the story on Saturday about the HL2 stutter bug, Voodoo Extreme has news that a patch is on the way, with an ETA of tomorrow. "A patch will be coming for this issue that will load all of the required textures into video memory on level load, rather than doing it during game play."
I hope someone will make a torrent for it, for all the people that don't have a legal copy.
"A patch will be coming for this issue that will load all of the required textures into video memory on level load, rather than doing it during game play."
Surely this would have been noted during Beta testing, unless they were testing on all high end machines ?
Business Voyeur
I wonder what else this patch will include. Maybe some anti-piracy stuff. Valve has to working on cracking down on that more. Anything else that needs patching?
Will make the loading times even longer? Great!
I would have preferred to have them say "Oh, the only way to fix it is by upgrading to 64-bit AMD, 3GB RAM, etc. etc." My stock would have gone up :-/
Now the level load times will be longer. More important, someone explain why there's any video memory to spare? I'm presuming the main point was to free up space and swap textures out when entering a new area that didn't need those anymore. If all level textures are loaded at once, some aren't going to fit, right?
Hooray! Now will there be revised system (memory) requirements too?
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
STEAM: Still Time Enough After its on the Market
Sooooo, no word from Troika yet. Are they just sticking their heads in the sand on this one? The HL2 problems are amplified in Bloodlines.
schild
editor, f13.net
Now I won't have those annoying stutters on the rest of my second pass through HL2.
Pretty Pictures!
Aggressive memory management of textures is an optimisation. If you don't absolutely need to do it, you shouldn't do it. And it seems from the nature of the patch that you don't absolutely need to do it.
Obviously, I'm not being 100% fair - perhaps it needed to be done and then the texture load went down because the assets were redesigned.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Wh-wh-wh-what st-st-st-st-stutt-tt-tt-ering?
Just when I finish the game :-P
(No matter, I'll be playing parts of it over again anyway...)
In stuttering like this, the hard drive changes nothing. If the hard drive size does make a difference, it's a sign that there's another problem. The hard drive's seek time could make a difference, seeing as to how each half of the level has to be loaded into the RAM when approached, but not the capacity. The only time that hard drive capacity comes into play is with swap files. If you run out of available system RAM, your computer treats a swap file hard drive as though it is volatile memory. Reading from and writing to the hard drive is far slower than storing level detail in RAM. Having very little space on your hard drive left could yield a worse stutter. However, as I said, having to use a swap file at all is evidence that your computer is not adequate for this game.
Boy am I a klutz. . . *notices sarcasm in grandparent post*. Sorry moderators. At least I had useful information, no?
If the patch is distributed by Steam, legit users will need the torrent as well!
So is it safe to assume that the copies sent to the store, sometime later, will already have this patch? This patch obviously raises memory requirements, I wonder if Valve will change the packaging to reflect that... Although I haven't played Half-Life 2. The patch could only load one or two new textures...
Your ad here.
Played Half-Life 2 and noticed a bit of stuttering on occasion (a bit every five minutes maybe), though nothing like that demo video someone posted. However, when I play CS:Source, it eventually hits a point where the game freezes and the sound stutters constantly, necessitating a three finger salute to kill the process. Are these related? Or should I be madly trying all sorts of various drivers?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Ahh...texture thrashing. My CD store bought copy is nothing more than a burnt version of what is downloaded from Steam. I kind of wish I downloaded it and saved the gas and time to pick it up, plus I would have gotten more goodies.
This will really date me, but on the box for Conan for the Commodore 64, it advertised:
"Revolutionary Slow Motion Feature when the action gets really intense."
It was basically the same flickering slow motion many c64 games got when the hardware wasn't up to the task.
On my P4 1.8 512mb
gf3.200ti w/128mb vid ram (obviously nothing fancy...)
I added 256mb of system ram and there was no more stutter. Kind of surprised me actually. Even quick and auto saves are no worries anymore.
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot
Valve has just disabled 20,000 steam accounts for using a banned CD key!
:) Anyone want to submit this as a slashdot story in the games section? I can't be fscked writing it up.
Story here.
Interesting reading
-- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
The reason I ask is that I have only a 56k modem at home - so would rather get the downloads on a fast connection, drop them onto a USB stick and take them home rather than sitting around for 2 hours for the updates to come down.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I just want to note that this game has a great team behind it to be so quick with a fix. I mean nothing coming out the door is perfect. Unless you've ever developed anything more complicated than "Hello World" you know this. Doom 3 I think was extremely polished, but HL2 is an example of a developer wanting to make sure everyone gets a great playing experience.
-- taking over the world, we are.
funny ebay listing