Actually, it's mostly akin to DX8, not DX9. But at the moment, there aren't too many obvious differences other than a bit better speed and optimization in DX9.
The lag is because of the same reason all initial releases are laggy: most of the servers you see are listen servers started up by people with bad net connections that wanted to play right away. Dedicated servers take a lot longer to get set up, and they are updated far less often (since most admins just leave them running with set gametypes they've chosen, and they have to decide to switch.
I've had extremely laggy games (look pretty cool) on 32 player servers that were obviously on an ADSL connection with a Pentium2 CPU, and I've had fantasticly smooth 14 person games on good servers. As time goes on, the server pool will improve.
"If it can be done on a console in quite a CPU intensive game (Halo 2) with such weak hardware, there's no reason why it can't be done on a PC."
But it isn't done in Halo2. Halo2 uses far lower quality textures, far fewer sounds, and even then, the textures "pop" into place all the time. Halo also isn't anywhere near as CPU intensive. Just don't confuse dreams with technological reality.
"The in-game loading...no game should have loading nowadays, especially not one that claims to be ultra realistic,"
Laugh. How do you propose you work THAT? Stupid Valve: they should have just ticked the magical "levels/textures/sounds instantly teleport into your memory whenever needed" option instead of using boring old cables! This is a PC, not a console, and with the geometric increase in textures sizes, polygon models, high quality sounds, etc., it just isn't doable on current hardware. But then, maybe Valve should have tried to be like Doom3 or Painkiller or Far Cry: I mean THOSE titles don't have any loading screens, right?
"You look down...what do you see? Oh wait...I HAVE NO LEGS!"
They said they tried it, as well as hands on the wheel. They didn't LIKE it. Just like you thought it was stupid not to have them, they thought it was stupid TO have them: that it actually takes you out of the game and gets in the way more than it helps.
Other games aren't as memory intensive. I had bad RAM, and HL2 was the only thing other than having tons of applications open that ever triggered major errors.
On the other hand, your problem sounds a lot like a corrupt gcf problem.
What you can find out in HL2 is you look around and put things together:
1) Who the Xen aliens and the final boss of Hl1 were. 2) What the heck has happened to the earth since HL1. 3) Why Breen is doing what he is doing, who the Combine are, and so forth
The fact is, no one runs up to you and tells you all the backstory. All the characters in the game assume you know what's been happening in the world, since they don't know that ---spoilers about where Gordon has been deleted---. You have to piece things together from hints and clues and implications of what people are saying, newpaper clips in the game, things you overhear, etc.
The problem with Doom3's story via the PDAs is that they are all pre-incident. This gave the story nowhere to go but the obvious. It would have been far more interesting if some of the PDAs had been recorded post incident, tracking some ongoing events within the facility: attempts to resist, leading to more interactions with NPCs. As such, what there was of Doom3's story (Swan, the OMG YOU STUPID IDIOTS HES A ZOMBIE MASTER, etc.) was very simplistic, though ok. NPC interaction was generally dull (I can't help you right now (erie shades of HL1's intro) or I have to stay here. By and large, HL2 had a better sense that stuff was going on all around you: events rather than just a series of rooms.
Doom3? Better gameplay? Eh? No. Hl2 is worlds more creative with a far greater variety of neat new experiences. It also has something id doesn't quite have: powerfully good game design. Valve is a master at steadily building in new elements and then combining them for teh gameplay win. Doom3 is the exact same game, exact same experiences, that id has made for years, now 20% prettier.
Doom3 graphical wow comes at the price of not being able to do a lot of the incredible, but intensive and open environment things that HL2 does. And high polygon counts? Try again: Doom3 has very LOW polygon counts: it makes up for this with incredible normal mapping.
"Nothing new, all products these days have updates."
Patches that users have to install, leaving lots of people out of sync with servers. It also means that patches don't have to wait till enough issues are solved and bundled up to do a release: usually taking months per patch. With Steam, Valve can fix little issues as they crop up and not have any problems with people not matching up with each other.
"That it currently doesn't have. There are already a number of wall hackers playing in CS:S."
Okay, but it works fine for VAC1. We're just waiting on VAC2.
"
Nothing new here either."
Nobody said anything about new: they said it's just an online store. It's obviously not just that (even if all else it was was another MP front end), but hey, I'm humoring you.
"If Steam do find a cheat on your machine, your account is disabled. This means all the games you bought using that account will no longer work."
No, your account is VAC banned, meaning you can't play on servers that run VAC as cheat protection.
"Fine for removing cheaters, but what if your a wronged party?"
You plead your case and present evidence. At worst, all you get for anything is VAC banned for a year, not banned from playing the SP game or any non-cheat protected server.
You've got to be kidding. They are getting absolutely flooded with email all the time. Sometimes they respond, sometimes they don't. That they respond so much is already pretty amazing. Just because you didn't get a reply doesn't mean they hate their fans. I've gotten plenty of replies ANd plenty of unanswered email both.
Note, however, that not having a crack port-release was never the purpose.
1) it wasn't cracked prior to release, which was the point (most games are: Valve avoided this)
2) it was released worldwide on the same time 3) Having a crack is going to suck when you can't play MP on official servers, get VAC banned, have to download a new crack every couple of days to keep up with Steams patches, etc.
So, no, not a perfect way to prevent piracy, but definately a big improvement from Valve's point of view.
Steam is for a lot more than online purchasing: incremental worldwide updates, online cheat-protection security, basically HL2's multiplayer client, etc. And more. Online purchasing and virtual rights to all Steam games is just part of it.
"Which means what if you are using a 56k modem? You get to play the game in a few days time?"
Nope. You can just use the handy option in Steam called "make backup" It then creates files of suitible size to be put on CDs or on a DVD, and then you can carry these wherever you want, plop them down on another computer, fire up steam, and play. I don't know of any other major game that not only encourages you to make physical backup/alternate copies of their content, but even includes an option to do so right in their programs.
You only technically have to log in to authenticate once: when you install the game. After that you can play in offline mode. If you are online, steam does automatically search for updates and patches, but again, it's not necessary to go online again after you first install.
If a company wants to support an open standard, let that be because of the standard's merit and benefits.
And also because of market incentives. If it really were profitable for Valve to completely rewrite their engine so that they could get more people to buy it, they would. But geez, wasn't the game delayed long enough already? They made the kind of game they wanted to made with the tools that seemed to make the most sense to acheive what they wanted. Like everything else that opened up some opportunities and closed others. Welcome to the universe, it's complicated here!
You can play offline without checking in with Valve. However, IF you have a steam connection, steam logs you in and searches for patches and updates. When it quickly and seamlessly fixes a sound stuttering bug or any other small issue, it'll definately prove to be worth it instead of the ridiculous rigmarole of patches, which either come out too infrequently to satisfy people (since they wait till lots of major issues are fixed first) or so frequent that they are annoying. With Steam, Valve can even do things like improve enemy AI or fix a map bug in SP: not a some comprehensive patch, but as a tiny update.
Slashdot Mirror
This won't stop them: they have a device that sees RIGHT THROUGH your tinfoil hat!
Actually, it's mostly akin to DX8, not DX9. But at the moment, there aren't too many obvious differences other than a bit better speed and optimization in DX9.
They didn't release it because it wasn't done. The lagginess is from the same reason all initial releases are laggy: lousy server pools.
The lag is because of the same reason all initial releases are laggy: most of the servers you see are listen servers started up by people with bad net connections that wanted to play right away. Dedicated servers take a lot longer to get set up, and they are updated far less often (since most admins just leave them running with set gametypes they've chosen, and they have to decide to switch.
I've had extremely laggy games (look pretty cool) on 32 player servers that were obviously on an ADSL connection with a Pentium2 CPU, and I've had fantasticly smooth 14 person games on good servers. As time goes on, the server pool will improve.
"If it can be done on a console in quite a CPU intensive game (Halo 2) with such weak hardware, there's no reason why it can't be done on a PC."
But it isn't done in Halo2. Halo2 uses far lower quality textures, far fewer sounds, and even then, the textures "pop" into place all the time. Halo also isn't anywhere near as CPU intensive. Just don't confuse dreams with technological reality.
"The in-game loading...no game should have loading nowadays, especially not one that claims to be ultra realistic,"
Laugh. How do you propose you work THAT? Stupid Valve: they should have just ticked the magical "levels/textures/sounds instantly teleport into your memory whenever needed" option instead of using boring old cables! This is a PC, not a console, and with the geometric increase in textures sizes, polygon models, high quality sounds, etc., it just isn't doable on current hardware. But then, maybe Valve should have tried to be like Doom3 or Painkiller or Far Cry: I mean THOSE titles don't have any loading screens, right?
"You look down...what do you see? Oh wait...I HAVE NO LEGS!"
They said they tried it, as well as hands on the wheel. They didn't LIKE it. Just like you thought it was stupid not to have them, they thought it was stupid TO have them: that it actually takes you out of the game and gets in the way more than it helps.
Other games aren't as memory intensive. I had bad RAM, and HL2 was the only thing other than having tons of applications open that ever triggered major errors.
On the other hand, your problem sounds a lot like a corrupt gcf problem.
Sounds like there is something very very odd about your particular net connection/steam install: i.e. NOT a general or common problem with steam.
What you can find out in HL2 is you look around and put things together:
1) Who the Xen aliens and the final boss of Hl1 were.
2) What the heck has happened to the earth since HL1.
3) Why Breen is doing what he is doing, who the Combine are, and so forth
The fact is, no one runs up to you and tells you all the backstory. All the characters in the game assume you know what's been happening in the world, since they don't know that ---spoilers about where Gordon has been deleted---. You have to piece things together from hints and clues and implications of what people are saying, newpaper clips in the game, things you overhear, etc.
The problem with Doom3's story via the PDAs is that they are all pre-incident. This gave the story nowhere to go but the obvious. It would have been far more interesting if some of the PDAs had been recorded post incident, tracking some ongoing events within the facility: attempts to resist, leading to more interactions with NPCs. As such, what there was of Doom3's story (Swan, the OMG YOU STUPID IDIOTS HES A ZOMBIE MASTER, etc.) was very simplistic, though ok. NPC interaction was generally dull (I can't help you right now (erie shades of HL1's intro) or I have to stay here. By and large, HL2 had a better sense that stuff was going on all around you: events rather than just a series of rooms.
Doom3? Better gameplay? Eh? No. Hl2 is worlds more creative with a far greater variety of neat new experiences. It also has something id doesn't quite have: powerfully good game design. Valve is a master at steadily building in new elements and then combining them for teh gameplay win. Doom3 is the exact same game, exact same experiences, that id has made for years, now 20% prettier.
This is probably because of the authentication problems they were having, as is posted on their news section in steampowered.com
Doom3 graphical wow comes at the price of not being able to do a lot of the incredible, but intensive and open environment things that HL2 does. And high polygon counts? Try again: Doom3 has very LOW polygon counts: it makes up for this with incredible normal mapping.
"Nothing new, all products these days have updates."
Patches that users have to install, leaving lots of people out of sync with servers. It also means that patches don't have to wait till enough issues are solved and bundled up to do a release: usually taking months per patch. With Steam, Valve can fix little issues as they crop up and not have any problems with people not matching up with each other.
"That it currently doesn't have. There are already a number of wall hackers playing in CS:S."
Okay, but it works fine for VAC1. We're just waiting on VAC2.
" Nothing new here either."
Nobody said anything about new: they said it's just an online store. It's obviously not just that (even if all else it was was another MP front end), but hey, I'm humoring you.
"If Steam do find a cheat on your machine, your account is disabled. This means all the games you bought using that account will no longer work."
No, your account is VAC banned, meaning you can't play on servers that run VAC as cheat protection.
"Fine for removing cheaters, but what if your a wronged party?"
You plead your case and present evidence. At worst, all you get for anything is VAC banned for a year, not banned from playing the SP game or any non-cheat protected server.
You've got to be kidding. They are getting absolutely flooded with email all the time. Sometimes they respond, sometimes they don't. That they respond so much is already pretty amazing. Just because you didn't get a reply doesn't mean they hate their fans. I've gotten plenty of replies ANd plenty of unanswered email both.
Thirdparty mods are already listed on Steam. Valve is working on getting them and their patches incorporated into steam as we speak.
Okay, so just burn a DVD of the game and use that... there's even an option for doing that built into Steam.
Note, however, that not having a crack port-release was never the purpose.
1) it wasn't cracked prior to release, which was the point (most games are: Valve avoided this)
2) it was released worldwide on the same time
3) Having a crack is going to suck when you can't play MP on official servers, get VAC banned, have to download a new crack every couple of days to keep up with Steams patches, etc.
So, no, not a perfect way to prevent piracy, but definately a big improvement from Valve's point of view.
Steam is for a lot more than online purchasing: incremental worldwide updates, online cheat-protection security, basically HL2's multiplayer client, etc. And more. Online purchasing and virtual rights to all Steam games is just part of it.
"Which means what if you are using a 56k modem? You get to play the game in a few days time?"
Nope. You can just use the handy option in Steam called "make backup" It then creates files of suitible size to be put on CDs or on a DVD, and then you can carry these wherever you want, plop them down on another computer, fire up steam, and play. I don't know of any other major game that not only encourages you to make physical backup/alternate copies of their content, but even includes an option to do so right in their programs.
You only technically have to log in to authenticate once: when you install the game. After that you can play in offline mode. If you are online, steam does automatically search for updates and patches, but again, it's not necessary to go online again after you first install.
If a company wants to support an open standard, let that be because of the standard's merit and benefits.
And also because of market incentives. If it really were profitable for Valve to completely rewrite their engine so that they could get more people to buy it, they would. But geez, wasn't the game delayed long enough already? They made the kind of game they wanted to made with the tools that seemed to make the most sense to acheive what they wanted. Like everything else that opened up some opportunities and closed others. Welcome to the universe, it's complicated here!
Do you play console games? Do you play any games that are no open source? Good grief?
That's their forums: the support section should still be up, it is at the time of this posting.
You can play offline without checking in with Valve. However, IF you have a steam connection, steam logs you in and searches for patches and updates. When it quickly and seamlessly fixes a sound stuttering bug or any other small issue, it'll definately prove to be worth it instead of the ridiculous rigmarole of patches, which either come out too infrequently to satisfy people (since they wait till lots of major issues are fixed first) or so frequent that they are annoying. With Steam, Valve can even do things like improve enemy AI or fix a map bug in SP: not a some comprehensive patch, but as a tiny update.
Sorry you're not enjoying the game. Too bad it's awesome, and you're missing it!