Who else did not have a fun experince with this game?

[RaBiD WeAzEL]

Before I Say anything, I don't mean to create a flamewar. just a little disscussion. :E

Ok. when I upgraded my cpu and ram last year to 512 mb and 2500+ barton, I was so excited. that soon when I upgrade my videocard, I will have no problem for two years or three. I guess I was wrong. when I got my geforce 6800 and hl2 on christmas, I was super excited. I played half-life 2 and was dissapointed in the preformance. very long load times, stuttering everytime I enter a new area or get in a firefight, and 20-30 frames per second. I don't know about you guys, but that totally ruins the game for me. I was expecting near fluid gameplay, and little to no stuttering.

then I search for a month or two for help. everywhere I go i'm told to get more ram, upgrade my CPU, check new drivers. it's really sad for me. I don't have the money to get a new CPU, ram, and motherboard. my parents did, but now my dad quit his job because he hated it. sucks for me, huh? and I would prefer not getting an xbox just for hl2. that $200 could go to upgrades anyway..

I can't play anything related to hl2 now, mods and all that. I know it's going to crash, stutter, and run poorly. and 90% of the time i'm always right.

so, yeah. who else didn't have a fun experince with this game?

I'm not COMPLETELY sure, but... It kind of sounds like you're slightly bottlenecking, and running in dx9 may not be the best thing to do because as you pretty much said, your processor probably can't take it very well...

The Long load times have to do with RAM, but... 512 perfectly fine for playing the game, just longer load times, just be patient.

However, I may have a solution... Since it's a slight bottle neck, if you have the old video card, I recommend maybe trying to take out the 6800 temporarily, and try the old one to check if the game actually runs better with that, since it's gonna be in a lower dx, I'm assuming that your processor may be able to handle the game a little better.

And if you don't wanna try that just try lowering the dx level in the game...

mat_dxlevel 70 (or something like that) - DirectX 7
mat_dxlevel 81 (or something like that) - DirectX 8

Just my 2 cents.
Good luck.

 

[Greatgat]

I'm sure this topic has been beaten to death, but just to throw in my two cents: No problems whatsoever.

I know you are probably not essentially denying that HL2 is a fun game, but this is for those poor souls that couldn't get it running, or once it was you had problems. But for me, I was validated within fifteen minutes and loved the entire experience, no problems and laughed my ass off with joy at several points.

 

[Jintor]

I dunno, it's still pretty easy on Hard Mode (not that i've completed it yet, i've got two Alyx's in Entanglement for some reason and neither of them MOVE)

I think the main reasons people didn't like it: Validation, Steam, compulsorary CS:S, Hardware, STuttering bugs, They were expecting DOOM/Far Cry/Halo, etc. It's a great game, guys.

 

[Alksesh]

Im guessing you have a drivers conflict and this is the fix

If you have a ATI card before the 6800
1. Go into the Control Panel and under the ADD/REMOVE SOFTWARE icon uninstall the ATI MultiMedia software and/or the
ATI DVD software.

2. Uninstall the ATI drivers also found in the Add/Remove section. Once removed, it will prompt you to reboot....do so.

3. When returning to windows, the NEW HARDWARE FOUND wizard will come up and will tell you that it has found a new VGA card and will prompt you for drivers. Hit CANCEL!

4. Now, go to START - SEARCH - FOR FILES OR FOLDERS and do a search for all files and folders using the filename ati*.*
This search will normally give you 3 to 4 files found in your c:/windows directory and subdirectories (including the Windows/System directory). Select these files and erase them. Now go to your Recycle Bin and Empty your bin.

5. Next...time to go to your Registry. Go to START -- RUN -- regedit

Here go to key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -- SYSTEM -- ControlSet001 -- Control -- Video . Here there should be 4 entries. 3 of them are default Windows XP entries and the 4th one is put in by the ATI drivers. Expand each one by one until
you see ATI entries. Once found, erase the entire key.

Now repeat the same step above for the ControlSet002 key and the CurrentControlSet Key. Normally, whenever you erase a key in the ControlSet001, XP automatically deletes it in the CurrentControlSet section too. So if the ATI key is not found in the CurrentControlSet section, don't worry about it.
Once all keys are deleted, proceed to the next step.

6. While still in the registry, go to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -- SOFTWARE section. Here you should find an ATI Technologies key. Select it and delete it. In that same section, look for an Installed Options key. Expand it and there you should find another ATI Technologies key. Select it and erase it.

7. Still in the registry, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -- Software and there you should find another ATI technologies key. Select it and erase it. Once all this is done, close the registry. the registry is now clean.

8. Close all windows and reboot.

9. When in windows after the reboot the NEW HARDWARE FOUND WIZARD will pop up again. Cancel that. Now find the new ATI drivers that you have downloaded and extracted and run the SETUP file. Once complete, reboot and you are done.

You may want to reinstall your ATI MMC software and DVD software if you use them. DONE!


For all those who do not like going into the registry and rather have an easy to use program to do it for you, you can grab a nifty tool called "RegCleaner" here and it will do it for you without getting your hands dirty in the registry. Follow steps 1 through 4 as stated above, then run RegCleaner to do the rest. Once completed, follow steps 8 and 9 and you are DONE!

If a Nvidia card run detonator destroyer

Then reinstall the new nvidia drivers

 

[Fliko]

It was fast for me.... though i got Radeon 9600, and 1GB DDR Ram.
20-30 fps is awesome... that is what i use to have all my games at, from the most advanced games of the 1900s, to the oldest of games... it always ran 20-30 fps, and even slower online, but i never noticed a thing.

Edit: My computer was horrible then too, extremely old card, and almost no RAM.