Half-Life 2 Troubleshooting & Spec discussion

[Moodmon]

Dammit, it doesn't fix it for me either. The difference is that I have games to play that actually work. At this rate, I'll never finish it. I feel royally short changed.

[Zapp$ter]

I wonder if SvenCoop will do a HL2 version? I'd love to play this game coop....

I believe there is a svencoop mod being made for Half Life 2.

Such is the joy of pc gaming. I've gotten used to it. It happens, they fix something while breaking something else. I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it, but then I didn't go out and buy a brand new rig to play it(so I can understand where some people are coming from). Heck I haven't even played HL2 since yesterday so I most likely haven't got the update and even tested the effects on my pc.

I'm glad I finished the game though before this update.

[crazylegs]

The patch has cured the stuttering on this work PC (it's a P4 2.6Ghz Xeon with an NVidia Quadro NVS onboard sound), which makes it all the more annoying that it won't run on my XP3000+ with the X800 Pro.

Steam - nice idea, but has shown there are more cons than pros. Despite Valve's claim in this article, I can't see that it's done anything to prevent piracy of the game. 20,000 Steam Accounts banned? ... yup that'll stop them playing HL2

they're just paniky after the whole source code debackle
its ironic that the biggest complaint about what might be the best game ever made isnt about the actual game at all

goddamn steam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Concept]

Right everyone, I apologise for being a ghastly whinging git the other day, when the patch messed up everything for me.

Thankfully adding this line to the autoexec.cfg file has done wonders and restored my lousy frame rate performance back to normal (before the patch). For anyone else experiencing problems, add:

mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware "0"

I only needed a few minutes back on the game again today to realise how much I've been missing it.

[Spatial]

So now you've done that, did the patch solve the stuttering after all ?

I'm not allowing Steam to update if its going to b0rk my gaming nirvana

[Concept]

So now you've done that, did the patch solve the stuttering after all ?

I'm not allowing Steam to update if its going to b0rk my gaming nirvana

Not at all. I'm just glad to have Half-Life 2 back as it was three or so days ago before the patch. The stuttering is acceptable because it only happens every few minutes. A loss of 30 frames per second though isn't. With the effects of this line turned on or off, the same jumps happen in all the same places, although having only briefly played the train station section, I'd need more time playing through the game to more conclusively say.

This isn't surprising. Valve believe that most computers suffering from stuttering are experiencing video-related problems, so they've compressed and loaded level textures at each load-point to ease the burden on the sound cache. Doesn't work for me. The sound cache memory size is still ridiculously low.

Think about it. If it were the Miles Sound System codec responsible for this problem, then Valve aren't going to come out and change when legally they're probably contractually obliged to use it in Source for a set time. Also, if Source has been coded with that codec in mind, then it isn't going to be a simple solution in just changing a few lines of code. No doubt it'll be a lot more complex in terms of scope. Not only that, but look at who is behind Miles Sound System. We know Rad Tools has a good relationship with Valve and that they've supplied useful tools such as the bink system for the video segments in the past. Valve may not exactly be overly enamoured with the prospect of coming out and admitting that the audio codec one of their closest allies has produced simply doesn't work very efficiently for the game. It could be a delicate situation for example.

Why do I keep harping on about Miles Sound System? Because if you download Rad Tool's associated MP3 player using it, and try and do any other demanding tasks while listening to a piece of music, you'll notice it-it-st-sttu-sttuters like hell.

Typing snd_memasync in Half-Life 2's console during a heavy stutter also shows a whole bunch of sounds are coincidentally being loaded from the sound cache at the same time. A sound cache, (which according to others), has a ridiculously low cache limit of 16MB.

We need to be able to expand the sound memory cache size, but there's probably a reason why we can't do that in the config. It'll probably affect performance in other areas I'd wager, or interfere in some other way.

It looks as though Source is a balancing act of several delicate elements. Whether it performs well on your system is due to how that balancing act fits with your configuration.

[Concept]

So now you've done that, did the patch solve the stuttering after all ?

I'm not allowing Steam to update if its going to b0rk my gaming nirvana

Good idea actually. For the immediate time being, I'll cut off all automatic updates from Steam, because although I've done this with Half-Life 2, the recent patch seems to have affected Source as an engine itself, not related to any game. And if you check your Steam folder, then you'll notice that Source is separately confined.

Edit: Out of interest, how do you do that Spatial? I see the option to cut off automatic updates for individual games, but not the whole application itself.

[Spatial]

There's an option to stop Steam loading on start up of Windows (somewhere in Steam's main options I think ). I also use my firewall to block it temporarily if it tries to connect when my internet connection is active. That way it can't do anything without my say so ( control freak that I am )

What I find hard to understand about the sound s-s-s-stutter thing is that no one picked up on it before the games release, and from what I understand Vampire Bloodlines has the same problem.

Surely when HL2 was being tested on a multitude of different systems from DX7 to DX9 someone must have come across it. And what about those that reviewed the game ? None of them had the problem ?

Or maybe Valve / VU knew this was a problem and decided to throw caution to the wind ? After all, why let a major bug get in the way of a PC games release and getting some cash through the door ?

Something tells me Valve had the problem and managed to reduce / eliminate it themselves somehow. If you check out the E3 2K4 Bink of the games intro ( Rise and Shine Mr Freeman ), the Gman stutters in exactly the same spot as he does in the game.

Could be that Valve found a workaround that fixed everything for them, and assumed that it would solve it for everyone (which it obviously didn't) .

I did also hear a rumour that all the PC mags and Edge reviews were all done by the same writer. Might explain why the `reviewers` never came across the problem

I'm just glad the s-s-s-stuttering is not too bad on my system, certainly nowhere near as bad as some people have had / have got it.

[yashiro]

Or maybe Valve / VU knew this was a problem and decided to throw caution to the wind ? After all, why let a major bug get in the way of a PC games release and getting some cash through the door ?

That one.

[nips]

I've never really had any stutter in the game. The odd bit, when I press save, it loads or something huge happens, but not random stuttering. It's always been explainable.

[Concept]

The stutter isn't awful, but it does stamp itself over the game. There are large chunks when it's not there (cinematic segments such as Red Letter Day, Black Mesa East, Dark Energy etc. along with Ravenholm and Highway 17/Coastline parts). But then there are parts in City 17, near the beginning (water hazard for example) and end of the game when there are noticeable stutters from part to part.

Anyway, enough rambling.

Here's an in-depth tweak guide covering all bases with Half-Life 2 which I thought some of you might find interesting.

http://www.tweakguides.com/HL2_1.html

(Although the relevant parts to most here I feel start from the following page):

http://www.tweakguides.com/HL2_7.html

[Ginger Tosser]

Thanks for the links concept, i'll see if i can correct my 'Norman Collier' version of the game. Mind you its probably my ****e PCI ancient Soundblaster.

[Concept]

Damn it. Source is horribly buggy.

Today, I've been faced with problems involving shaders (welcome metallic face G-Man/Barney/anyone else, respawning NPCs (say hello to two alyx's in the same room), blue/red/psychedelic textures, even worse stuttering, frame rate loss again, the game's textures corrupting when I replaced my sound drivers, and to top it all off refusing to load as well.

It's not like I'd even been heavily tweaking the config file either at the time.

Ugh. This game has been riddled with technical problems for me. Time to leave it for a while.

[Spatial]

Just how do you keep managing to break Source in these wonderful ways ?

If you were on Valve / VU's testing team, the games release might have gone a lot smoother

[MartyG]

Well more joys with steam - since the DM update, HL2 won't even launch on my work PC now. Anyone else having issues with this update?