Steam GCF

[RobertPBham]

Hi folks,

I'm new to Steam and have obtained the Valve games via an Ati coupon. I already owned Half Life, Opposing Force and Blue Shift etc.

I've noticed when replaying Half Life that there are stutters and a delay in the game when it gets to certain loading parts. I don't remember this with the original games I purchased on CD. I came to the conclusion that steam works by only extracting what is required at points in the game from the downloaded GCF files and this is where the stutter and delay come in - I am guessing this is how steam works??

If so, is there anyway of extracting the GCF files so that you don't get the stutter? Is there anyway to do this? Is GCF a compression format? Also, am I right in thinking that if I backup the GCF files and format my hard disk, I will not have to download them again - even on Broadband it takes ages.

I'm guessing that Half Life 2 will be the same, and I would like to eliminate the delay as that would be a little annoying.

Thanks for all your help
Rob

 

[Varsity]

If you mean the inability to move (but still look around) for a moment after each level load, that's a bug. There's no way to fix it.

Steam doesn't extract the content, it just reads it straight from the cache. Only stuff Windows needs to see before the game has loaded is extracted, and custom/customisable content.

 

[RobertPBham]

Ah cool, that explains it. Thanks for your help.

 

[CrazyHarij]

Welcome to the forums.

 

[RobertPBham]

Thanks CrazyHarij. I only recently found this forum after using planethalflife for a long time and it's great. Lots of news and most importantly, plenty of info on Half Life 2. Lets just hope that Steam can cope with the demand when the preload starts!!