Draw Distance / Missing Audio

[CrunchyFrog]

When I first started the game it worked ok, but with lousy view distance. There is no adjuster in the options menu, and my high-end PC is pulling worse pop-up than than Driver2 on the PSX (and that`s bad). I don`t care if FPS goes below 50fps, so long as i can see objects more than 10ft away! How does one adjust object draw distance? This seems to be an unfortunate omission.

Regarding sound, after restarting the begining of the game, the audio has stopped functioning properly - i don`t have the `stuttering` issue, rather, certain samples aren`t playing. It only seems to effect video streams - Dr Breen`s `Welcome to C17` monologue in the train station, and the section shortly afterwards where an old Black Mesa colleague talks to a scientist on a monitor, who then addresses Gordon, but again, this audio is also missing. I haven`t ventured beyond this point, as I don`t want to ruin it for myself by playing with bugs present.

I`m ommiting HW specs as initially they were entirely sufficient. The audio worked, and now it doesn`t. It`s not a HW / driver issue... I`ve checked everything obvious and the problem appears to be with HL2. Is there a way to toggle audio setup to defaults?

 

[ZoFreX]

Steam\steamapps\<USER>\half-life 2\bin\dxsupport.cfg

Try messing with that to change draw distances. Warning: back it up first!

 

[CrunchyFrog]

Thanks mate, i`ve looked, but there`s hundreds of lines there and it`s not clear which variables need tweaking. Frankly, after the inordinate amount of time i`ve spent trying to get this thing working i feel like just giving up. I`ve had to research so much about the game there`ll be few surprises left for me if i ever get past the first level. I just wanted to play it, not waste a fortnight trying to configure the thing.

There`s going to be a second wave of disgruntled customers who`ll discover on xmas day that their most anticipated xmas present ever is a turkey. I pun not... :|

 

[CrunchyFrog]

*update* I fixed this problem (and the crash from Options menu i hadn`t mentioned) by adding an old SB PCI512 to replace the onboard ADI SoundMax.

Onboard SoundMax appears to be a common theme in HL2 support forums. Before fitting the SB i tried various MS and Dell/ADI driver updates, disabling HW acceleration in XP`s Ctrl Panel/Sounds, minimizing sound quality in both XP and HL2, and various other tweaks. None of these had any affect.

The SoundMax is a fairly common onboard solution. I could play HL2 on my tower system, but want to use my faster Dell desktop w/FX5200. Now i`ve fitted the SB my PC`s lid doesn`t close as the card`s too big! Very frustrating workaround for a system that runs everything else with ease. I don`t want or need 5.1, just basic DX or S/W mixing would do. I only want to use headphones and basic stereo speakers. If Valve don`t know how to make an OPTIONS menu or an audio mixer they could at least apologize and ask help from the community in accomplishing these huge feats of software engineering. Unreal has decent setup options, Farcry and Quake don`t need `em coz they just work, leaving Half Life trailing miserably with an unconfiguirable game that works great on 50% of machines but trainwrecks on the rest. Why, with a budget exceeding 4M, wasn`t this game tested on modern Dell machines? It`s scandalous - not only do we need a Net connection to play, we also need crappy Creative soundcards? They shoud have tested this product even if it meant delaying release until New Year. Instead we`re paying to test it for them.... Nice one Valve, merry freaking xmas