When will hl2 preloading begin?

Adidajs

Adidajs

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Well, we are all speculating when hl2 is coming out, but a new email from Valve states that preloading will begin far in advance of the actual game being released. so when do you think that will begin? a couple of days ahead? a week or longer?

personally i think preloading will begin July 25th with the game released on Sept 1.

oops, this belongs in rumors/speculation.
 
That last sounds like a fairly reasonable estimate. Might be a little too optimistic, but it's certainly not as unreasonable as thinking it might start in just a couple of days. This is a HUGE project they are trying to launch, and I'm sure they have a lot to finalize and test before they'd even think about pre-loading.
 
Well, given that many users will take about 1 day of Steam being on all night to download it...probably 3 days in advance.
 
July 4th, to celebrate! w00t! Fireworks will fly!!11111111
 
SubKamran said:
Well, given that many users will take about 1 day of Steam being on all night to download it...probably 3 days in advance.
Click to expand...
That was meant to be funny, right?
 
I don't think they'll preload more than a month before release. My guess is that it will start when they've announced it's going gold. That way you have like an equivilant time period for manufacturing and preloading.
 
Varsity said:
That was meant to be funny, right?
Click to expand...

LOL, I think it'll be more like 3 weeks. BTW, no doubt people will be trying to h4x00rz it...
 
its been preloading on my steam for 3 days
 
Erm, yeah...


You honestly expect to fool the people of HL2.net?!

We are like the most hardcore fans in existance. If it had begun preloading we would actually know before valve physically pushed the button! :D
 
most steam users are most likely dial up users.

If they have any hope of getting it, at about 4gb at 5k/s unsustainined, id say a healthy 2 weeks, possibly 3.

To be honest, i hope that once they do start to preload, once you downlaod it, you can play it, rather than having to wait the actual '3 weeks' or whatever until the official preloading period ends. How did it work with CZ?

4gb based on sizes of new upcoming releases.
 
They can't preload until it's finished. It's not finished until it goes Gold. Once it goes Gold, there's between one and two weeks before it hits the shelves. So they will presumable start preloading as soon as the Gold is announced.
 
A week and three days.

4 gb (A little big don't you think?) At 5kbs = 9.5 days.

I assume it will begin a week or two in advance.
 
SD1 said:
To be honest, i hope that once they do start to preload, once you downlaod it, you can play it, rather than having to wait the actual '3 weeks' or whatever until the official preloading period ends. How did it work with CZ?

4gb based on sizes of new upcoming releases.
Click to expand...


CS:CZ was locked till the official release date.

so was codename gordon.

and so will HL2.

it wouldnt be fair on slow connection users/people without credit cards to buy the game/people who will buy the boxed version.

Ill be getting the box, my machine gets wiped way too often for me to be bothered about downloading HL2 everytime.
 
SD1 said:
most steam users are most likely dial up users.
Click to expand...
I don't think thats actually true. All of my friends who have steam are cable or dsl users. Besides one of my friends used to have 56K and he hated steam cause it was slow as hell.
 
SD1 said:
most steam users are most likely dial up users.

If they have any hope of getting it, at about 4gb at 5k/s unsustainined, id say a healthy 2 weeks, possibly 3.

To be honest, i hope that once they do start to preload, once you downlaod it, you can play it, rather than having to wait the actual '3 weeks' or whatever until the official preloading period ends. How did it work with CZ?

4gb based on sizes of new upcoming releases.
Click to expand...

like 5% of steam users have 56k internet or slower (according to the HL2 survey). thats a negligable amount, therefore nobody cares.

seriously though, i think preloading will start late next month and be available mid-late august
 
Dougy said:
it wouldnt be fair on slow connection users/people without credit cards to buy the game/people who will buy the boxed version.

Ill be getting the box, my machine gets wiped way too often for me to be bothered about downloading HL2 everytime.
Click to expand...

excellent reason to get the box. i think i will do the same even though it will preload on my computer.
 
Adidajs said:
Well, we are all speculating when hl2 is coming out, but a new email from Valve states that preloading will begin far in advance of the actual game being released. so when do you think that will begin? a couple of days ahead? a week or longer?

personally i think preloading will begin July 25th with the game released on Sept 1.

oops, this belongs in rumors/speculation.
Click to expand...

ur guessing is at least reasonable... hmm.. i think pre-loading will start once its gone gold and have a 3-4 week time period for that and after that the boxed versions :)
 
It has been preloading on my computer a couple of days... :E
 

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personally i don't think i will want hl2 to preload for three weeks before i get the chance to play it.
 
Heh, and all the shortcuts to image editing programs such as photoshop really make me want to believe you!

:p
 
Adidajs said:
personally i don't think i will want hl2 to preload for three weeks before i get the chance to play it.
Click to expand...

You do know Half-Life 2 will be around 5 Gigs in size? Having large amount of people preloading it means it will take a while to preload it for everyone. That way it'll be done before you get to play it instead of waiting god knows how long to download it after you can actually play it.
 
Dedatorv said:
You do know Half-Life 2 will be around 5 Gigs in size? Having large amount of people preloading it means it will take a while to preload it for everyone. That way it'll be done before you get to play it instead of waiting god knows how long to download it after you can actually play it.
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unless you buy the game at a store (no d/l necessary i hope)
 
PiMuRho said:
They can't preload until it's finished. It's not finished until it goes Gold. Once it goes Gold, there's between one and two weeks before it hits the shelves. So they will presumable start preloading as soon as the Gold is announced.
Click to expand...
Remember the CS:CZ. Between Gold & shelves are around a month AFAIK (of course it varies) but I seriously doubt Valve is any faster than other companies. Not with their twisted view on Alpha/Beta & practically WEIRD way of delaying games & releasing info of any kind etc.

But they'll probably start pre-loading it at least a month ahead so 56k:ers would have any chance at all. It sounded like that in one of the latest mails from them anyway.

Summary of argument: Why would they excel (sp?) @ shipping when they are kind of questionable on a lot of other topics? Stupid argument really but I can't help it :)

Edit: Damn. DeltaBlast beat me to it ;)
 
Adidajs said:
unless you buy the game at a store (no d/l necessary i hope)
Click to expand...

but then u sit through a long installation.. oh well i guess for 56k users they really don't have a choice.
 
Dr. Freeman said:
but then u sit through a long installation.. oh well i guess for 56k users they really don't have a choice.
Click to expand...

One long instilation. (wich i enjoy actualy)

as apposed to hundereds of long waiting times for steam to access the next level, (at least thats what it does with my half life).
 
Last night, my steam updated my Half-Life engine for awhile, don't know if that's a sign of anything.
 
The game is going to be huge, probably a couple of gigs, so you can expect a nice long preload time to make sure everybody gets a chance to get it down. The load from when CZ went gold is peanuts compared to the crush from loading HL2.

I'd say three weeks, at minimum, from gold date. That gives time for Vivendi to dup the CDs, print the boxes, and ship them out, as well as giving all of us eager Steam beavers time to download the whole thing. There WILL be Steam crashes, bandwidth crunches, etc. There always are when you do something this massive. Trust me, Valve wants to have time to correct those things so we're not stuck at 58% download at 4K/sec on release night. :x
 
Valve Confirmed it will beguin uploading one week before its release date.
 
AgentXen said:
Valve Confirmed it will beguin uploading one week before its release date.
Click to expand...

When
Where
Who
How

etc...
 
Alec_85 said:
Between Gold & shelves are around a month AFAIK (of course it varies) but I seriously doubt Valve is any faster than other companies. Not with their twisted view on Alpha/Beta & practically WEIRD way of delaying games & releasing info of any kind etc.
Click to expand...

It usaully takes less than 2 weeks.....not a month.
 
You know, they don't -have- to wait until it goes Gold to pre-load some of it. I'm sure there is data there that is signed off and not going to change at all, for example some textures, music, sound files and such. They could package some of it up into a smaller file and start distributing that, and distribute a program that re-packs it all together in the correct format once it's gone gold.

And maybe 1% of the stuff they thought was finished actually gets changed? Well they can re-distribute that later and alter the re-packaging program to use the new data instead of the old (and delete the old data, if they were so inclined).

I doubt they'd do something sensible like that though.
 
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