Half-Life 2 Under Linux Review

Cool! by zulux · 2004-12-09 05:36 · Score: 1

Sounds like with a one more update or so, HL2 on Linux will be just fine.

I'm waiting to install it in about 9 months:

1) A good video card will be cheap by then
2) Bugs in the video card drivers that HL2 triggers will be worked out.
3) Bugs in HL2 and Steam will be worked out - load time problems might be fixed.
4) The few bugs remain in WINE will be worked out.

1 though 3 apply to out Windows owing friends as well.

I took the same stratagy in the 90's for all of Origin's Ultima games - if you waited a year or so, you'd have a fast enough computer and all the bugs would be gone.

--

Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.

Re:Cool! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-09 07:08 · Score: 0

I did the same thing with FarCry - hold off and bought it when I thought that the remaining bugs in Cedega (and FarCry!) have been fixed.

Now, even _after_ downloading, patching and installing a brand-new Nvidia driver _and_ a brand-new Cedega v4.2 - it still does not work reliable :(

* There is no fullscreen mode (meaning I have to play essentially in 1600x1200 or loose my desktop settings)
* water reflections don't work - bummer :(
* when I enter level 2 (the carrier), the save game functionality stops working - it says "game saved" but the save game does not appear on the disk - meaning I have to restart the level when I die :-(

Oh well, that will teach me next time to wait a few more iterations of bugfixes/patches :/

I am just soo glad that I didn't pay the full retail price for FarCry - I would have literally cried for far too long..

Tels

PS: Far Cry wiki page

Did you read the article? by MMaestro · 2004-12-09 05:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

If 'one more update' is going to fix HL2 on Linux, then it'd have to be a pretty big update. Just from the review:

Brand new video drivers have to be downloaded.
There are loading issues.
The graphics are not loaded correctly.
Gameplay and frame rate drop for an unknown reason.
Turning down the graphics settings do little to fix the frame rate.
Attempts to modify the video settings results in HL2 locking up.
Different drivers do not work.
Textures and lightmaps do not always work.
Sound does not work properly.
Loading screens are very long despite high system specs.

I don't know about you, but it sounds like there are some serious problems with the Linux version.

Re:Did you read the article? by lubricated · 2004-12-09 05:50 · Score: 3, Informative

> I don't know about you, but it sounds like there are some serious problems with the Linux version.

looks like you didn't read the article. There is no linux version only windows emulation.

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It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Re:Did you read the article? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-09 05:59 · Score: 0

>looks like you didn't read the article. There is no linux version only windows emulation.

Looks like you didn't read the recursive acronym. WINE Is Not an Emulator.
Re:Did you read the article? by lubricated · 2004-12-09 07:04 · Score: 1

If it works like an emulator, does an end-user really care?

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It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Re:Did you read the article? by wolf31o2 · 2004-12-09 07:52 · Score: 1

Actually, it works nothing like an emulator. It is simply a win32 implementation for Linux. If it were an emulator, it would allow you to run on hardware different from the original, such as running NES games on a PC. An emulator changes hardware calls from their native format into the format of the machine running them. Calling WINE an emulator is like calling a truck a "car emulator" because it has 4 wheels and drives on the road.
Re:Did you read the article? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-09 08:07 · Score: 0

Yeah, well, LAME ain't an MP3 encoder either, but if you install it you sure can encode MP3s.
Re:Did you read the article? by lubricated · 2004-12-09 09:36 · Score: 1

no it's like saying that a certain animal is really a wallabee instead of a kangaroo.
Technically you may be right, but no one cares.

--
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Re:Did you read the article? by 0racle · 2004-12-09 10:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

allow you to run on hardware different from the original
That would be a hardware emulator.

win32 implementation for Linux
No, its intersepting win32 calls and translating them to something the Linux system understands. It is emulating a Windows environment.

There is nothing about it being an emulator that means it has to pretend its running on different hardware then it is, for instance VirtualPC running on a Intel machine. Its still an emulator, but it is providing exactly the same machine type and hardware to the guest OS. Wine emulates a Windows environment, it is an emulator.

--
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Re:Did you read the article? by colinleroy · 2004-12-10 04:30 · Score: 1

Hence its name, "Wine Is Not an Emulator". tsss.

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blah
Re:Did you read the article? by Minna+Kirai · 2004-12-10 11:59 · Score: 1

An emulator changes hardware calls from their native format into the format of the machine running them.

No, that is absolutely not what "emulator" means.

Wine is an emulator by the definitions used both in normal English speech and computer science.
Re:Did you read the article? by NonSequor · 2004-12-11 03:36 · Score: 1

It wouldn't be the first time that a name is inaccurate.

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My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Re:Did you read the article? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-11 03:48 · Score: 0

Technically he's wrong. The word emulator has had a broader meaning than simply "software capable of running programs written for a different processor architecture" in the computer industry. Any claims to the contrary are historical revisionism.

Framerate by tolan-b · 2004-12-09 05:46 · Score: 3, Informative

One likely cause of some of his graphics problems (framerate) is the use of an nVidia 5xxx card. I've played with a 5600, and it seems to be emulating dx9 in software, but saying the card is dx8. Generally it's just very slow.

I tried setting the mat_dxlevel command line arg to 80 for reasonable performance, and later to 70 for a nice high framerate. This does cancel out a lot of the pretty shaders, but to be honest I really didn't notice them all that much before turning them off, and haven't missed them since.

Re:Framerate by jasonmicron · 2004-12-09 06:38 · Score: 1

I have the FX5950 and I don't have the DX problem you speak of. Nope, I think the problem is in the emulation.
Re:Framerate by snuf23 · 2004-12-09 08:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

My understanding is that the Nvidia 5xxxFX line runs the direct X 8.1 path in half life 2. This is mostly due to these cards being too slow at running the DX 9 path with 32bit precision (Nvidia cards do not support 24bit precision).
There is a hack for running the FX series at 16bit precision on the DX 9 path which supposedly gives much better performance in HL2.
Dropping the DX lvl to 8 or 7 will definately speed things up at the expense of some graphical niceties.

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Sometimes my arms bend back.
Re:Framerate by vespazzari · 2004-12-09 16:08 · Score: 2, Informative

I dont have time to reread the article but anandtech did a review a bit back of different cards and setting them at dx9 and dx8 and benchmarking, probably some fairly usefull info for you all. here is the article http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281

--
"Alcohol, cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" -Homer Simpson

looks like it still sucks as bad by lubricated · 2004-12-09 05:48 · Score: 0

Playing games under linux has never been easy, or much fun for that matter. So I bought a playstation2 and only use my computer for work. Computer gameing has always been more buggy, especially as the games get more complicated.

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It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.

Re:looks like it still sucks as bad by mwielgosz · 2004-12-09 06:05 · Score: 1

Computer games can be more buggy becuase they have the option to release a patch for anything thats wrong with the game...with a console system, this just doesn't happen. Therefore computer games seem to be of lesser quality. Lets hope that console systems do not start using a patch system or all games will be released with bugs that were not fixed before the develop freeze.

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-Mike
Re:looks like it still sucks as bad by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-09 06:07 · Score: 0

You might be off-topic, but I (sadly) agree. I couldn't wait for GTA:San Andreas until next year anyway :).
Re:looks like it still sucks as bad by mahdi13 · 2004-12-09 06:18 · Score: 1

Imagine that, a game that works with some big problems running on a Operating System that the games was not designed for!

Yes, Transgaming has done a great job with Cedega and their work using Wine

No, it is not perfect and has a lot of problems...especially with games that have been available for only a month

Why did someone do this review? To look 'cool'?
Let's have a review next of running Windows Longhorn in VMWare...at least that would make more sense

--
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Re:looks like it still sucks as bad by satoshi1 · 2004-12-09 07:08 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually, patching does happen on consoles. It happens quite a bit on the Xbox, so I hear, and it happens a bit on the PS2. FFXI has a patching system, but it's an MMORPG (also on the PC), so that's kinda expected. SOCOM II, however, has had two patches and I also believe that StarWars: Battlefront has had two patches as well.
Re:looks like it still sucks as bad by snuf23 · 2004-12-09 08:07 · Score: 2, Informative

Yes you hook up your PS2 and play some HL2... oh wait.

This article is aimed at people who want to play a specific Windows game on a different OS.
We all know that consoles play games made for them just fine. We all know that its easier to put a PS2 disk in and turn it on then it is to install a computer game - even a Windows one!

Inspite of how much it may suck, there is a small niche for people who want to run some games on Linux versus running a dual boot setup, having a windows box OR playing console games. This article and the Cedega product is aimed at that niche.

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Sometimes my arms bend back.

bleeding edge? by gl4ss · 2004-12-09 05:48 · Score: 1

it's hardly bleeding edgier than any new game(unless you mean that it bled out of the box).

though, I wonder, does this mean that the activation works as well?

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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.

Allow me to summarize by jvmatthe · 2004-12-09 05:52 · Score: 4, Informative

1) Steam is bad, yes, but the shiny Half-life 2 box was so pretty I overcame my compunction.
2) I'd already installed Cedega 4.2 from CVS, so I don't know how new users would do it. Good luck.
3) Half-life 2 didn't load the first time.
4) The game loaded the second time, but I don't know how long because I took a nap.
5) I changed the resolution and the game locked up.
6) I couldn't see the cut scenes, so I skipped them.
7) Graphics were rough, framerate was low, sound skipped. It was a fine experience.
8) Hacking my video card settings hung my machine.
9) I'm a little bit disappointed.

That's about it. Have fun.

--
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy

Re:Allow me to summarize by justforaday · 2004-12-09 06:08 · Score: 1

7) Graphics were rough, framerate was low, sound skipped. It was a fine experience.

Is this "fine" in the RTFM sense?

--
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Re:Allow me to summarize by gl4ss · 2004-12-09 06:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

*6) I couldn't see the cut scenes, so I skipped them.*

hl2 had cutscenes?

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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:Allow me to summarize by fireduck · 2004-12-09 07:20 · Score: 1

if we count that strange guy with a valve for an eye that pops up while the game is getting ready to load, sure.
Re:Allow me to summarize by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-09 07:32 · Score: 0

well, it's a "short review" not an extensive "get the end user started even if he hasn't a clue"- how-to. bashing around on everything is fun, eh?
Re:Allow me to summarize by c0p0n · 2004-12-09 07:32 · Score: 2, Funny

I didn't know you were also commenting here, and I would like to post my post to your article at Linux Gamers:

*** START PASTING
I experienced some problems on gaming using custom kernels, specially ones running the koliva's patchset (like ck or nitro). Last time it was with Vendetta Online (low framerates and specially choppy sound). They're mostly caused by buggy task schedulers.

Keep in mind that those patchsets are often very very buggy. I remember specially huge 3D perfomance lows when running 2.6.7-nitrox (they have all the CK patchset).

Half of the issues I had with gaming went when I upgraded to 2.6.9-nitro1. The rest, when upgrading to the last nvidia drivers.

Have you tried to run hl2 against a kernel.org kernel or a 2.6.x kernel from Debian Sarge/Sid? I think that you should REALLY try that. The cedega thing is VERY sensitive to kernel issues (like any cpu intensive app).
END PASTING ***

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Your head a splode
Re:Allow me to summarize by jvmatthe · 2004-12-09 07:38 · Score: 2, Funny

I'm not the writer. I was just summarizing. In retrospect, I perhaps should have said "Let me summarize [in the voice of the reviewer]" or some such indicator that I was writing in the voice of the reviewer, despite not being the reviewer.

Yep, that overexplains it nicely.

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Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Re:Allow me to summarize by c0p0n · 2004-12-09 09:12 · Score: 1

Oops!

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Your head a splode
Re:Allow me to summarize by Jacek+Poplawski · 2004-12-09 20:57 · Score: 1

1) Steam is bad, yes, but the shiny Half-life 2 box was so pretty I overcame my compunction.

Microsoft is evil. Bill Gates is evil. I hate Windows. I hate Microsoft products. But my shiny PC is so pretty... I love new games, I love using that Internet thing I love writting these great letters in editor... so I use Windows, I use Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Internet Explorer and all these other Microsoft products and I am proud of it.

The truth is - you just can't choose.
Re:Allow me to summarize by oliverthered · 2004-12-11 09:14 · Score: 1

No, no, no, no, no!!!!
A lot of his issues are that Transgiming has kept Direct X and Install shield updates out of CVS, because Transgaming don't to OSS.

Problems with copy-protection are problems with copyprotection, so just no-cd and make the problem go away.

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thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Re:Allow me to summarize by jusdisgi · 2004-12-11 13:35 · Score: 1

Informative? Ridiculous. Almost all of this is bunk:

1) Steam is bad, yes, but the shiny Half-life 2 box was so pretty I overcame my compunction.

Whatever. It's the promise of a good game in that box that overcomes our issues with steam.

2) I'd already installed Cedega 4.2 from CVS, so I don't know how new users would do it. Good luck.

This is a game review, not a howto. Cedega has adequate documentation on its own.

3) Half-life 2 didn't load the first time.

No, the author lacked patience and killed it before it loaded. He found out later that the first load takes a really long time. This may or may not be solvable with the heapsize fix he mentions in the update which you obviously didn't read.

6) I couldn't see the cut scenes, so I skipped them.

This is wrong. The author says:

"I selected new game, and after waiting for ages again, I heard someone speaking, but had just a white screen. Turned out that my concerns about having problems with my graphic card/setup have been unnecesarry for this was just part of the intro. Well, I won't bother you with the contents and storyline here."

There were no problems with the cut scenes.

7) Graphics were rough, framerate was low, sound skipped. It was a fine experience.

If you read the update at the bottom of the article, all these problems are fixed and had reasonable explanations. The guy was telling cedega to use the wrong audio subsystem, for one; that solved the sound issue. Then he was trying to push directx9 through a GF5900; changing that setting fixed the framerate issues. Even the startup problems were fixed.

8) Hacking my video card settings hung my machine.

Huh? It's possible that I just missed it, but I did read all the way back through the article trying to find mention of any hanging of the machine. I could not find one...there's the application hang which you already mentioned in #5, but that wasn't a system crash at all. I think you made this up completely.

9) I'm a little bit disappointed.

Not any more. It looks like since the update he's pretty happy.

--
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.

agghhh by slubberdegullion · 2004-12-09 06:01 · Score: 0

If you're going to use the awful expression "bleeding edge," at least use it in places where "cutting edge" is somehow insufficient.

Example: "My bleeding-edge custom-designed CPU which I requested from some friends at Intel does contain this feature, although you won't find it on the cutting-edge chips reviewed here."

Anti-example: "The bleeding-edge US government (elected scant years ago!) today acted to outlaw the bleeding-edge innovation in music sharing, that is the mp3. Many bleeding-edge innovations in CS are expected to be affected,including Valve's bleeding-edge action shooter Half Life 2, which uses mp3 format for its bleeding-edge musical score."

A better term in this case would be "recent."

Re:agghhh by raygundan · 2004-12-09 06:09 · Score: 2, Informative

I always thought it was supposed to refer to "things so new they don't work properly." Which, given the bug reports (stuttering, crashing) for HL2 and the hoop-jumping required and general lukewarm success in running it on linux make the phrase seem like a better fit.

This would seem to confirm that definition, but wikipedia isn't exactly the most authoritative source in the universe.
Re:agghhh by Entropius · 2004-12-09 06:16 · Score: 1

I was always under the impression that "bleeding-edge" meant that something was not only new, but so new that it didn't work reliably.

For instance, 64-bit computing (on an A64, not talking about Alpha etc.) is bleeding-edge: there are no drivers for anything.
Re:agghhh by gothzilla · 2004-12-09 07:34 · Score: 2, Funny

Can something be bleeding edge when it goes through as many delays as HL2 did?
I know that I was bleeding on the edge of my chair waiting for it for so long that I practically amputated both legs. Good thing I don't need legs to play it.
Re:agghhh by slubberdegullion · 2004-12-09 08:15 · Score: 0

It may bear this additional connotation, of which I was not aware. Cutting-edge products always carry a higher degree of risk, so it's hard to be sure from use.
In any case, even if bugginess is a necessary condition for "bleeding-edge," it is not sufficient. "Bleeding-edge" definitely carries the connotation that the thing is at the very forefront of progress, i.e. cutting-edge. While Half Life 2 is among the very latest generation of games, it is not the first or the most technologically advanced of those games. For the most part, the bugs in the game are not because it is at the cutting edge of technology, but because it was released before the bugs had been worked out.
I agree that Half Life 2 could accurately be described as a "bleeding-edge" game as far as linux gaming is concerned, i.e. Half Life 2 support is at the bleeding edge of linux gaming. However, this is not how it was used in the article.
Re:agghhh by stanmann · 2004-12-10 03:01 · Score: 1

I was always under the impression that it referenced a pricetag as well. ie the new ATI Radeon 1 billion would be cutting edge with 256MB of RAM for $200. The bleeding edge version would have 1Gigoram and sell for more than my last computer.

--
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Re:agghhh by oliverthered · 2004-12-11 09:23 · Score: 1

cutting edge is on the for-front of technology.
Bleeding edge is still in the alpha stages and usually catching up.

Just replace bleeding edge with the word buggy and it makes a hell of a lot more sence.

--
thank God the internet isn't a human right.

Don't use Cedega for new games by advocate_one · 2004-12-09 06:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

How does using the game with Cedega register as a Linux sale??? The games publishers aren't going to get any feedback that it was a Linux sale at all... they'll just see it as an ms-windows sale and thus won't have any incentive to port it to Linux. Using Cedega to run new games isn't doing Linux gaming any good. You should be boycotting the game and telling the publishers exactly why you are doing this.

When an exciting game is announced by a publisher, take the trouble to go to the website and check if it will be available for Linux. If not, let them know you're not happy by using the feedback provided. If they don't know they're losing customers, they'll think everybody is happy.

--
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.

Re:Don't use Cedega for new games by vettemph · 2004-12-09 07:31 · Score: 1

Mod funny? WTF? Anyway, I bought UT2004 because it runs on linux (installs its own wine maybe?). The games server let me know when a new (windows) patch is ready. I usually have to check back in a week to find the linux patch. Do they even know how many linux customers they have? You would think that this would be priceless infomation for them.

--
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Re:Don't use Cedega for new games by wolf31o2 · 2004-12-09 07:46 · Score: 2, Informative

UT2004 was a native port. It uses no emulation.

Also, Epic keeps records from their master server. I'm sure it would not be too hard to find out how many people are using Linux versions of the game.
Re:Don't use Cedega for new games by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-09 08:29 · Score: 2, Funny

>Do they even know how many linux customers they have?

It used to be 5, but Jake hasn't logged on for weeks.
Re:Don't use Cedega for new games by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-10 05:38 · Score: 1, Insightful

That is retarded.

If there is no linux version, there will be no linux sales. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO.

If you want to go bitch to them about it not being available for linux, go for it.

But there's absolutely no reason not to buy the game and have a good time playing it under emulation.

Saying "there are no games for linux and no one should use emulation" is a great way of keeping anyone from using linux in the first place. Great job ass.

If people migrate to linux using emulation, there will still be a huge push on developers to make the game for linux, because
a) there will be a lot more games on linux
b) the performance and bugginess under emulation will always be worse than a native port

Re:I cannot be stopped. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-09 06:11 · Score: 0

You will be banned if you get modded down too much.

Bummer by fearanddread · 2004-12-09 07:09 · Score: 1

When I read about this on /. a few weeks ago I was really looking forward to playing HL2 under linux.

I recently suffered a fatal hard drive crash and decided to use the opportunity to start using FC full time. FC has been great but I sure would like to play HL without booting to the windows partition I also created just for gaming.

I guess I'm just part of the ongoing problem but my desire to play the game outweighed my urge to send a message to the game publishers.

Re:agghhh Mod Points by vettemph · 2004-12-09 07:24 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Where are my friggin mod points when i need them !?!?!

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The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.

end game by JDizzy · 2004-12-09 08:05 · Score: 1

If he doesn't like the original HL platform jumping in the first one, he is really gonna hate the ending in HL2. No spoilers though.

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It isn't a lie if you belive it.

More trouble than it's worth by hogger · 2004-12-09 09:22 · Score: 3, Interesting

I've tried winex about half a dozen times over the last three or so years, and every time my conclusion has been that it's more trouble than it's worth.

Games generally push the limits of affordable technology. If a cutting-edge game is designed solely for windows, it usually pushes the limits of memory, CPU, and graphics to such an extreme that it's barely playable on a typical gaming PC. HL2 is no exception. If you take that barely playable game and then run it through an additional layer of overhead (winex) then it's going to be less than "barely playable." How could it not be?

Doom3 is cutting edge, yet it works great in Linux. The powers that be at Id were nice enough to devote sufficient resources to insuring that a native Linux version existed. Maybe it was done out of respect for the community that makes the high-availability servers possible that host the multiplayer doom (and quake, and RTCW) games. Whatever the reason, Id deserves the Linux gaming community's support.

The makers of HL2 seem to have shown very little desire to support Linux. They don't want the Linux gaming community's business. I can accept that, and move on. If the game is so friggin great, I'll suck it up, buy Windows XP home for $100 or so, install it on a 10G partition, and play the damn game. It probably won't take any longer to get going, or cost much less (if any) in the long run.

Re:More trouble than it's worth by vespazzari · 2004-12-09 16:17 · Score: 1

Although i do agree with you that I think that it is more trouble than it is worth at this point, I think one thing you must remember is that W.I.N.E. IS an acronym. It means, Wine is not an emulator... Meaning that wine does not add any "extra" layers on top of the os, but actually adds the functionality, such as libraries, so instead of the game linking to "windows.dll" (or whatever...i dont know) it links to a "windows.so" which is just a reverse engineered version of the windows.dll. Allowing the system to run the same on both. I dont really remember exactly all the specifics but I know that is the gist of it anyway

--
"Alcohol, cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" -Homer Simpson
Re:More trouble than it's worth by Minna+Kirai · 2004-12-10 11:57 · Score: 1

Wine is not an emulator

Actually, Wine stands for "WINdows Emulator". Someone dishonestly changed it to "not an emulator" later, but even the Wine webpage reveals that is untrue.

Meaning that wine does not add any "extra" layers on top of the os

That's precisely false. Wine absolutely adds extra layers on top of the OS; including the wineserver for example.

Issues in Windows? by Khuffie · 2004-12-09 09:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

From the review: The sound _is_ a problem for I didn't found a way to get it without the dropouts and hangs.

It doesn't explain HOW much this happens. This is also an issue in the Windows version (it still happens to me even with the latest patches).

Regardless of those issues this game has one major drawback: 'Loading..'

Once again, these issues are also present in Windows. It takes ages to load, sometimes up to 2 minutes...

Re:Issues in Windows? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-09 11:37 · Score: 1, Interesting

Once again, these issues are also present in Windows. It takes ages to load, sometimes up to 2 minutes...

I'm on an Athlon 3200 and I've never had a loading time longer than twenty seconds (not counting the startup). Sounds like more of a system issue to me.
Re:Issues in Windows? by ukyoCE · 2004-12-10 05:50 · Score: 1

Here's how to make HL2 load a bit faster on startup. I wrote this little howto when I got so sick of hl2's load times that I figured out how to stop it.

How to make starting up Half-Life 2 somewhat bearable:

1) First to stop Half-Life2 from loading an entire map every time you start. The loading times are bad enough when there's actually a REASON to load the level...

Go into this folder:

?:\Steam\SteamApps\accountname\half-life 2\hl2\cfg

Open valve.rc in Notepad and add two forward slashes to the line that says "startupmenu", so it looks like this: //startupmenu
This "comments out" the line, so it gets ignored.
Now the game will load the fuzzy background image and thats it.

2) Next for the obnoxious Valve startup movie:

Go into this folder:
?:\Steam\SteamApps\accountname\half-life 2\hl2\media\

Used to be, in half-life 1, you could delete "valve.avi" and not have to watch the annoying video over and over every time you run the game. Now it seems the game "regenerates" the file for you. How kind.

Next I tried creating a 0-byte file of the same name. But on startup it still regenerates the movie file and forces you to watch it.

HOWEVER, try right clicking on your 0-byte valve.avi, go to properties, and check the "read-only" box, then hit OK.

Now Half-Life 2 is unable to overwrite your much more pleasant version of valve.avi.

Note to Valve: Nothing wrong with the video itself, but it's completely obnoxious to not let people press a button to skip it, especially after having started the game 500 times already. WE KNOW WHO MADE THE DAMN GAME, LET US PLAY IT!!!!

Note to all: Similar load times can be achieved with some kind of developer=1 paramater set on the command line options. But then you got developer messages scrolling on your screen the whole time you play, unless you go in and manually turn developer=0 after the game boots. So IMO a pain in the ass and not at all ideal solution.
Re:Issues in Windows? by Khuffie · 2004-12-10 06:04 · Score: 1

I'm on an Athlon 3200 and I've never had a loading time longer than twenty seconds (not counting the startup). Sounds like more of a system issue to me. I'm on an Athlon 2200+, 1 gig ram and Radeon 9700 Pro. The processor isnt the fastest in the word, but it's still a relatively beefy system.
Re:Issues in Windows? by Khuffie · 2004-12-10 06:08 · Score: 1

First to stop Half-Life2 from loading an entire map every time you start. The loading times are bad enough when there's actually a REASON to load the level
Which would make you wonder why Valve put that there in the first place. "OH LOOK! WE HAVE NICE FLASHY MENU! WEEEEEEEEEEE!" It doesnt seem to reduce loading times for when you actually load your save, so whats the point?

Bleeding edge in spite of delays? by emarkp · 2004-12-09 12:03 · Score: 1

Amazingly, yes.

I hate Steam. I hate the user agreement. But it is quite simply the best game I've ever played.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2004-12-09 15:06 · Score: 2, Interesting