About the loading screens. . .

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

Is 20-50 second load screens about normal for Half-Life2 (as well as the mods)?

I am playing it on all the highest graphics settings my hardware is

AMD Athlon 3500+
1.2 GB of DDR400 Ram (yes, i need more)
Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT KO PCI Express(made by EVGA)
160GB Harddrive (guessing 7400rpm)
Generic Sound Card X

 

[giant384]

takes about 30seconds for me.

 

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

So it's just the fact that the Source engine sucks?

 

[giant384]

umm no the source engine doesnt suck. it just loads each map you play on.

 

[Ashitaka]

Turn down your graphics and the loading will decrease.

Really, it isn't that bad to just sit back and wait for 30 seconds.

 

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

they aren't too bad, really. i was just making sure that my hardware didn't have any problems. .

 

[ríomhaire]

Turn down your graphics and check if your game is fragmented (you can do this in your Steam menu). Also, your signature is far too long. Forum standard is aprox 4 lines.

 

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

It says they're no fragmentation, so i think it's just the graphic settings, and i timed them, they're between 15-30 seconds, depending on the level.

HEY WAIT A MINUTE. . .

.ROFLROFL:ROFL........
........._^__...............
.L....__/..[ಠ]\.............
LOL===__.......\............
.L......\_______]...........
..........I...I.............
.........=======/...........

that's a way bigger sig than mine. . .

 

[Danimal]

Mine take minutes. Count your blessings!

...Either that or they feel like minutes. Meh.

 

[Naudian]

HEY WAIT A MINUTE. . .
>my sig<
that's a way bigger sig than mine. . .

Shhh!

Also, loading times shouldn't be longer then 30 seconds on that machine I would say...

 

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

and is it just me or does Substance have even LONGER load times?

 

[Naudian]

and is it just me or does Substance have even LONGER load times?

It definitely does, always happens with mods like that...SMod loads pretty slow too

 

[giant384]

it depends on the map size......genius

 

[Para]

When HL1 came out, it took a few minutes to load a new map. Over time they managed to make the engine faster PLUS hardware got a lot faster in the process and that's why HL1 is very fast loader nowadays. The same natural cycle of software and hardware upgrades isn't as far progressed with HL2 yet so stop complaining or I'll take away your PC and give you a C64 with one of those tape drives or whatever they were called.

 

[Piers89]

I bought hl1 when it first came out and loading screens had a max load of about 10 seconds

 

[Jintor]

Pah, I used to bugger off and get a drink when I ran into HL2 loading times.

I'm quite happy with 30 odd seconds.

 

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

i think HL1 loads in about 8 for me on max graphics. . if not 5

 

[Laivasse]

You can try sv_forcepreload 0 in the console. That should decrease the load times. I could be talking out of my rectum but I think Valve set it to default to '1' because it made the stutter/crash thing less likely for some people.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

You can try sv_forcepreload 0 in the console. That should decrease the load times. I could be talking out of my rectum but I think Valve set it to default to '1' because it made the stutter/crash thing less likely for some people.

Actually i believe that increases the load time as it forces the game to fully load everything instead of doing it on the fly with can cause stuttering.

 

[Laivasse]

Yeah that's what I mean - set it to 0, because Valve changed the default to 1.

 

[McGooTheWise]

Turn down your graphics and the loading will decrease.

Really, it isn't that bad to just sit back and wait for 30 seconds.

Huh... Guess my comp really does kick ass... On the highest graphics and sound settings my load times are anywhere between 10-15 seconds.

 

[Xendance]

Use the loading times to sit back, and have a break.

 

[delusional]

wow you people are so lucky, i get about 2 minutes wait with the lowest settings.

 

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

owch. . .

and i used that SV_Preload thing, and it makes a big difference actually.

 

[Laivasse]

As mentioned, it does however put you at higher risk of falling foul to the dreaded stutter/freeze bug if you set it to 0.

 

[Chabo]

When HL2 came out, I was running it off of a 30GB drive with 2MB of cache. Half gig of DDR266 ram, P4 2.8 on a 533 FSB. Video card? GF4 MX440. (DX7 FTW)

And this was BEFORE valve came out with the pre-caching update.

Load times were definitely in the minutes range.

 

[Acepilotf14]

I've got an awesome computer. I"m in the 10-20 seconds range.

 

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

I've never had the stutter crash after 6months of having the game so i'll gladly nab shorter loads for that risk.

 

[Przemek]

Hey guys, some of you are saying your loading times are way below 30 seconds... could you post your system configs? The CPU, amount of RAM, hard disk and how much RAM on graphic card. Thanks

 

[CyberPitz]

Hey guys, some of you are saying your loading times are way below 30 seconds... could you post your system configs? The CPU, amount of RAM, hard disk and how much RAM on graphic card. Thanks

AMD 3800+
2 gig ram
x1800XT

mines around 20 secodns.

 

[ríomhaire]

Not sure what mine are. Definatly under a minute, probably under 30 seconds.
Intel Pentium 4 3GHz
1 Gig RAM
Radeon X300

 

[heer0]

For me:
8-10 seconds for HL2
10-12 seconds for EP1
(i have 3x 256MB DDR400, Dual Channel ON)

But since i have the game for a long time and i've seen all the menu scenes, i run the game with -console parameter (to monitor my FPS) and they don't show up and speed up my loading times

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

mostly about thirty seconds, loading a new chapter somethimes takes about a minute.

 

[ríomhaire]

For me:
8-10 seconds for HL2
10-12 seconds for EP1
(i have 3x 256MB DDR400, Dual Channel ON)

But since i have the game for a long time and i've seen all the menu scenes, i run the game with -console parameter (to monitor my FPS) and they don't show up and speed up my loading times

I'm pretty sure EP1 loads faster for me.

 

[McGooTheWise]

Hey guys, some of you are saying your loading times are way below 30 seconds... could you post your system configs? The CPU, amount of RAM, hard disk and how much RAM on graphic card. Thanks

Intel Pentium D dual core Extream Gaming (3.4ghz per chip)
2 1 gig mem sticks
GeForce 7600GT (About to get another and link em togther, then my frame rate with fraps is + 1000 )
320 GB HD

theres me.

 

[kewlnick12]

I have a slow comp.....well not really my graphics card is not great but everything else Is perfect.It takes my comp 10 seconds to load a map.

 

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

Wow. . a 3 page thread by a noob. . not bad : )

 

[heer0]

In fact, the loading times in particular do not depend on your GPU power, and less on your CPU...it mostly depends on the speed of your RAM and the fragmentation of your HD.

PS: In HL2 there are many different loading scenes, some are bigger than the others and contain more objects, so they load slower, this should also be taken in mind.