Funky Loading

[duckmoose]

Erm... I decided to play through the game again and for some reason SOME of the loads now take like 3-4 minutes to complete!!! Some take the usual 10secs-1minute and if I'm not mistaken on the long ones I think I usually hear a repeating soundbyte, like part of a footstep or something. I JUST defragged my system AND I ran Norton Sytemworks Premier scan and Pest Patrol scans and STILL it persists. On my last load (it's when you go under the big bridge the first time) it sat there for like five minutes with a repeating footstep soundbyte and finally I ctrl+alt+deleted and ended task. It said "running" and ended without a fight so it must have actually still been loading.

Any tips?

 

[joule]

Enter the following in your "Launch Options" of Half-Life 2 in Steam.

-heapsize [Kilobytes]: This command tells Half Life 2 to allocate more RAM to the game system heap, where it can be accessed by the game to improve performance by storing more game information in RAM and hence reducing loading pauses. The default heapsize is 64MB, however you can safely allocate around 128MB (i.e. -heapsize 128000) for most systems. You can use higher values if you have more RAM, but I don't recommend exceeding half your physical RAM (e.g. for 1GB RAM, set heapsize of 512000).


+map_background none
This command prevents the loading up of the 3D animated background which sits behind the startup menu. Instead the game will load much more quickly with just a blurry color background. If you want to start the game with the console open instead, substitute the -console command in place of +map_background none above.

Enter the following in console:

mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware [0,1] - If set to 1, attempts to force texture information into your Video RAM at the start of a level, alleviating any stuttering in the game. Note, this setting was introduced with the "stutter fix" patch (See Patches Mods & Steam section for details). Also note that from feedback and in my experience this setting can reduce FPS by up to 50%. Setting this variable to 0 may improve performance on some machines.

cl_forcepreload [0,1] - If set to 1 forces all information to preload, reducing loading pauses and stuttering by not loading information on the fly.

sv_forcepreload [0,1] - If set to 1, forces server-side preloading, once again reducing loading pauses.

cl_smooth [0,1] - If set to 1 attempts to smooth the view after prediction errors, however this can increase stuttering and so should usually be set to 0.

Also, make sure all your drivers are up-to-date.

*Taken from TweakGuides.com*

May I ask, how much RAM do you have?

 

[duckmoose]

1024MB PC3200 DDR

It's the shiznit.

EDIT: Where is "Launch Options"?

EDIT2: BTW, my loading time getting INTO the game seems fine.

EDIT3: Thanks for all the useful information!

 

[RAST]

1024MB PC3200 DDR

It's the shiznit.

EDIT: Where is "Launch Options"?

EDIT2: BTW, my loading time getting INTO the game seems fine.

Have you tried defragging the drive?

 

[joule]

1024MB PC3200 DDR

It's the shiznit.

Wow. That is an unusual amount of waiting for that much RAM. :O

I would just say to do what I posted.
Maybe download this:
http://www.ccleaner.com/

and

http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10289035.html?tag=lst-0-2

Have you tried defragging the drive?

He says that he did in his post.

duckmoose, the "Launch Options" can be found by doing this:
->Click on Steam Icon in System Tray
->Go to Play Games
->Right-Click Half-Life 2
->Properties
->Launch Options
->Enter the command(s) in the field there

 

[duckmoose]

Um... mind reading my whole post first (maybe it was a little cluttered).

YES.

EDIT: This was in reply to RAST.

 

[duckmoose]

Thanks, joule, I think that did the trick.

 

[joule]

Thanks, joule, I think that did the trick.

You're welcome. :thumbs:

 

[duckmoose]

Is it just me or do the preload options seem to have little to no effect?

Also, do they reduce ingame loading pauses by lengthening LOADING loading?

 

[duckmoose]

Anybody know?

 

[Dumb Dude]

The preload helps stuttering. I'm sure since it has to load extra things it takes longer. Not nessecary in your case since you want to make load times shorter.

 

[duckmoose]

Indeed. And it didn't seem to aid stuttering either.

 

[Crispe]

joule, thanks alot for that info, that helped me alot

 

[Dr.breen]

..................Chips

 

[L337_Assasain]

Wow Joule, that actually helped me out as well, thanks. One question though, for the first and third console commands you gave, there aren't any negative side effects are there? and is 512mgbs' of RDR good?

 

[joule]

Wow Joule, that actually helped me out as well, thanks. One question though, for the first and third console commands you gave, there aren't any negative side effects are there? and is 512mgbs' of RDR good?

No. There aren't any known negative side effects to those commands. And 512MB RDR RAM is pretty good, but I would consider adding another stick of that to fully appreciate HL2. You'd experience much quicker loading times.

 

[L337_Assasain]

I've been thinking about getting another two sticks of 256, just need to save up.