How long does this have to continue...?

[Flyingbig]

There is an obvious flaw in the source engine and its been over a week since there has been an update, i mean i am actually beginning to be quite concerned and losing faith with valve. I mean this is a joke, nearly 4 weeks and i still don't feel the game is in a playable state. This has nevered happened before with any game i have bought for the PC so is this it? The final product, if you don't like it buy a new PC? I really don't see this being solved completey anytime in the future. I hate to do it but i might just ruin the whole hl2 experince and just play through the game and make do with what i got. So much for forking out on a top PC, I have learned my lesson and a hard one at that. Anyone else on the same boat?

 

[Shinobi]

about 10% of the players are on the same boat....

 

[Flyingbig]

10 percent? Abit low don't you think? Everyone i know personally has this problem so i think 60 percent or more would be more accurate.

 

[skarrob]

everyone you know have a old comp?JK lol im not sure what your problem is,does it lag or just look crappy.

 

[dogboy73]

10 percent? Abit low don't you think? Everyone i know personally has this problem so i think 60 percent or more would be more accurate.

I would certainly say it's significantly more than 10%.

 

[Gargi]

I'm on this boat dude!
And yes, there are surely more than 10% . A freind of mine having almost the same configuration got the same stutter. But he played it completely cause he didn't want to wait for a fix. Most of the people are doing that way. For me absolutely not bareable.

cu
Gargi

 

[Flyingbig]

everyone you know have a old comp?JK lol im not sure what your problem is,does it lag or just look crappy.

This is how you can tell a person that has no problems at all, he's blissfully unaware of any of the issues that are rendering the game unplayable for a high percentage of players. For your information the game has a problem either with textures or with playing sounds without effecting frame rate or causing the video to stutter for a split second, or both.

 

[Flyingbig]

I'm on this boat dude!
And yes, there are surely more than 10% . A freind of mine having almost the same configuration got the same stutter. But he played it completely cause he didn't want to wait for a fix. Most of the people are doing that way. For me absolutely not bareable.

cu
Gargi

Not pleasant but i am very close to doing this myself. I just can't wait for something when i don't even know when its going to be fixed never mind the possibility of it never being fixed. If valve could give me a date of when i can play if perfect i could work with that, even if it is a month up the line, but this not knowing is soo annoying. I can't bare i!!! You hear me!!!!!

 

[EtherealTML]

Cmon dood, At least Valve has gotten a couple of patches out in the first month after its release. Believe it or not, that is actually good customer service. For comparison, it took EA Games/DICE 3 months to release their FIRST patch for Battlefield:Vietnam, and about 2-3 months for subsequent patches. Don't even get me started on UBISOFT.

I have confidence Valve will get this right in a timely manner.

 

[dogboy73]

I'm coming round to the idea my PC sucks & it's time to upgrade - Out of interest I just ried re-installing Far Cry. With auto detect settings all graphics options come out as LOW! That's just GAY & requires some attention ................ Around £200 should do it :thumbs: That's a new mobo, 64-bit CPU & RAM + a bit extra for SATA HD & new PSU. Good 1.

 

[Quixat]

If you have an ATI card they released the 4.12 driver (not beta) today. I've installed it and the game runs a lot smoother, not perfect but noticably less stuttering and higher fps.

 

[doomed - uk]

Ah, cool. I'm downloading the new drivers. I recognize killer robot Maximillian in your avatar, by the way.

 

[Quixat]

:cheese:

That's him, it's hard to see but his saw hand is extended and about to drill a hole through someones chest!

 

[BlackMesaDude]

This ****ing sucks... I Know that there will be no update this years, its x-mas soon and HL2 will be collecting dust on my damn shelf because i refuse to play a game with a computer that is more then enough to play any other game but this game is just a joke.. audio stutter and ingame freeze no thank you very much.

JUST GET THAT DAMN PATCH OUT VALVE WHAT THE HELL IS TAKING YOU SO LONG ??????????????????????

 

[destrukt]

i like memory errors, they turn me on.

 

[Flyingbig]

Cmon dood, At least Valve has gotten a couple of patches out in the first month after its release. Believe it or not, that is actually good customer service. For comparison, it took EA Games/DICE 3 months to release their FIRST patch for Battlefield:Vietnam, and about 2-3 months for subsequent patches. Don't even get me started on UBISOFT.

I have confidence Valve will get this right in a timely manner.

Well the issue is that the patches made my game worse and i have no way of reverting back to the way hl2 was. All that was sort of solved was the autosave function but i could have solved that myself by making the save files read only. Thankfully setting HL2 to low priority solved the added stuttering that the new patches introduced so i am lucky in some respects.

BF:V worked fine for me except for a lag issue that i thought if you tweaked the game correctly or joined the right server it would solve it.

 

[Flyingbig]

Apparently downloading the pirated version (the one that doesn't use steam at all and has uncompressed all those source files) combined with setting hl2 to low priority solves the issue to the point that the game is actually playable. Interesting that.

 

[BlackMesaDude]

Apparently downloading the pirated version (the one that doesn't use steam at all and has uncompressed all those source files) combined with setting hl2 to low priority solves the issue to the point that the game is actually playable. Interesting that.

SO whats taking valve so long ? cant be that hard really to solve i dont get it.. all the feedback they have gotten this is ridicilous.

 

[Flyingbig]

SO whats taking valve so long ? cant be that hard really to solve i dont get it.. all the feedback they have gotten this is ridicilous.

Pride, turning their back on Steam. It's feasible for them to send these compressed gcf files rather than having to send hundreds of little files to every customer which would mean more chance of error, files missing etc... Its just better to have 3-4 BIG files but unfortunately this makes the game less efficent and more processor intenstive hence stealing most of the computers resources. Haven't said that why would Vampire Masquerade have the same issue if it doesn't use steam. Does it use compressed GCF files as well? Can anyone confirm this? If it doesn't then i have no clue what is causing this stuttering issue :upstare: All i can say is i have witnessed the Pirate version and it has 50 percent less of the stuttering issue with the stutters that do happen must be due to texture thrashing as a valve employee informed us many moons ago.

 

[dogboy73]

It's just better to have 3-4 BIG files but unfortunately this makes the game less efficent and more processor intenstive hence stealing most of the computers resources.

Does it though? This doesn't explain why some & not others. Just been talking to a guy on the Steam forums that has a similar spec to me but is running the game with no problems! It makes no sense.

I'm going to try raw power! I was thinking of the new MSI socket 939 mobo with NForce3 & 1GB FSB, 512MB 400mhz RAM & a 64 bit Winchester 3000 CPU. Then I'll buy HL2 again & if it doesn't work on that set-up I'll eat my own testicle! (Only 1 of them mind :cheers

 

[Unfocused]

dogboy73 why buy it again?

 

[Ennui]

The stutter bug is honestly not that horrible. Sure, it stutters for like 2 or 3 MINUTES after load and then occasionally for a little bit after a new sound has to be put in place - but Half-Life 2 is such a great game that I can overlook bugs like that.

 

[doomed - uk]

I'd be reluctant to build a machine for HL2 in particular but I'd try to build a machine like someone's I knew which runs HL2 well and copy all their drivers and stuff. Build an as identical a machine as possible.

 

[Flyingbig]

Does it though? This doesn't explain why some & not others. Just been talking to a guy on the Steam forums that has a similar spec to me but is running the game with no problems! It makes no sense.QUOTE]

Why is he even in the technical part of the forums in the first place? He's there because he feels insecure and wants people to think his hl2 runs perfect when it doesn't. It might run slighty better but i am convinced there is no machine out there that has no stuttering at all. On 2 occasions i have had mates tell me they don't have a problem yet when i test the game out for myself i can see it stuttering in all the same places so my advice is to pay little attention to these idiots that come one these forums to tell everyone there game is flawless, they are liers or to put it better they are not very observant or just don't care that the game stutters now and refuse to acknowledge it as a problem.

 

[doomed - uk]

You even get people from Valve saying they weren't aware of the stuttering, but you can see it during the E3 video. There's 1 stutter during the G-man intro and 3 stutters during the Black Mesa East footage that I noticed.

Of course, some of the E3 footage could be from sections that have been replayed before being recorded as the initial loading stuttering from the first time through an area is usually where it's worst for me, unless I choose High textures. So, the stuttering could have been even more common than the E3 footage shows.

Even if it wasn't, though, out of 20+ minutes of footage this couple of seconds of stuttering is obviously a tiny amount but Valve were surely aware that there was some stuttering even if for them it was rare.

Having G-man stutter during the intro is simply too noticeable for someone at Valve not to have stopped and asked, what the hell was that?

Then I guess they'd notice like I do that the stutter occurs with harddrive access, so you'd think Valve would then have to wonder about the level of stuttering for people with slower drives, slower CPUs, less memory, fragmented drives, older drivers, etc. than the machines Valve used for their E3 demonstration, but people still well within the minimum recommended specs.

Then they'd have to ask, if that was stuttering in just the G-man intro, what about in the rest of the game if a PC is under far more strain?

The stutter also occurs in Counterstrike: Source the first time you load something or access something, but often not afterwards. It's a problem related to loading. It was present in the Beta and it's present in the full game. It even occurs the first time in any session you run the Stress Test. So Valve never saw the Stress Test running on anything but their own machines, and it always ran perfectly the first time it ran? The looping of sound at the menus or a new map was something they never witnessed?

All in all, it seems deeply strange that the stutter bug is news to people at Valve.

 

[dogboy73]

dogboy73 why buy it again?

I sent my copy back to Amazon who gave me a refund.

 

[Flyingbig]

Yeah Doomed some good points there, i also noticed the stuttering in Counter-strike: Source and even noticed it in the first footage they released of CS and remember thinking was there something wrong with my pc that it couldn't run the video without jerking. So when it came to release day of HL2 i was secretly praying that the stuttering in CS was on-line related but boy was i disapointed, within 2 minutes of playing i knew i had a big problem. To be honest i was glad other people were experiencing it as well, could you imagine if it was just you that had this issue?