Half Life 2 Stuttering Bug Official 456
sinner0423 writes "Due to recent complaints on several forums, Steampowered announced they are working on a fix to this stuttering problem in Half Life 2. Usually, a game bug isn't news-worthy, but the sporadic nature of this bug makes me wonder - who else has problems with HL2 pausing/skipping? This site outlines the problem certain users are having in a very clear & concise manner, and also includes some stopgap solutions from Erik Johnson & other Valve employees."
Stuttering (Score:3, Informative)
Problems, uh-oh (Score:2, Informative)
I just thought it was my hardware... (Score:3, Informative)
I do, sort of (Score:2, Informative)
I used to have that with Doom 3, but lowering quality/resolution would fix it, which doesn't cut it on HL2. I used to have that with Counter Strike Source too, and wondered what was wrong.
I had this problem too and here's how to fix it (Score:4, Informative)
Intel 875 chipset (800 mhz. FSB)
P4 2.6C (hyperthreaded)
1GB PC3200 memory (dual channel, 800 mhz.)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB graphics
Windows XP Pro SP2
In other words, this is not a bottom of the line system, and runs Doom 3 perfectly...
Now, when I first installed the game, I installed it to my D: drive, which happened to be an older 30GB drive that came from my previous computer. I just stuck it in there as a slave drive for extra storage space, having filled up the 120GB primary IDE hard drive a while ago...
Anyway, I noticed the stuttering always seemed to happen when the system was accessing data from the hard drive.
I finally went into the Device Mangler (haha... that's what I call it anyways, you might know it as the Device Manager), and checked the DMA settings on my secondary hard drive... Sure enough, it was only using PIO Mode!!! I always wondered why that second hard drive was slow. I tried to enable DMA mode, but was out of DMA channels, so I couldn't.
Anyway, I freed up some space on my hard drive and moved it to the primary hard drive... voila, problem solved! Now the game plays smoothly and the immersion experience is what it should be...
This problem seems to be linked to either inadequate DMA support for your hard drive (which can spike the CPU during disk access and loading times), or a hard drive that just isn't fast enough to keep up. Also, because all of the sound in the game is MP3 files that are streamed off of the hard drive, hard drive bandwidth seems to be very important for this game, in addition, I'm sure all of the MP3 decompression makes you take a big CPU hit, especially when they're mixing multiple channels of MP3 audio together at once and outputting it to 5.1 surround.
This is just a theory of mine, but it worked for me... Put the game on your fastest hard drive, and defragment it... Make sure DMA is enabled for that hard drive, and you should (hopefully) be set.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Half Life 2...Steam (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Informative)
looks like engine problem.
Re:The Irony of Half-Life 2 (Score:3, Informative)
- Steam allows automatic patching, so once a bug is found and fixed, it can be applied immediately; no more having to search for patches.
- You can install the games on as many computers as you want; you just can't play them on more than one computer at a time.
- Steam allows for a delivery system that I think most people (those who have high-speed internet connections, anyway) would agree is much more convenient than having to buy CDs from a store and then having to make sure that you don't lose or damage the CDs.
- And the most important of all (that so many people seem to overlook or forget): After activation, you do not have to be connected to internet to play the Steam-based games; just start Steam in off-line mode.
I'm sure there are more.Look, I hate DRM controls as much as the next guy, but I realize that many software companies feel that they need to use such measures to try to make sure that they get rewarded for their work. All that I'm saying is that of all of the DRM/activation systems I've encountered, Steam seems to be the least intrusive and most flexible...and it has a few added benefits for the users as well (i.e. instant patches).
Motion sickness too! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:1, Informative)
A dozen or so monitors that can do that resolution for between $80 and $220.
Re:I just thought it was my hardware... (Score:2, Informative)
Go into your Steamapps folder, open the folder that is your user name, then hl2, then gcf, then open the valve.rc file with notepad and add "//" to the beginning of the last line that says "startmenu" or something.
Works like a charm.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, I run it at 1280x1024 normally, but that's just because I like my 75dpi bitmapped fonts, and they're a bit too small to read at higher resolution (even though, if I look really closely, they're perfectly reproduced). I doubt it could go much higher, though, because the thin vertical lines from the trinitron grid will start getting in the way.
On the other hand, 1920x1600 is unusually square, so I'd guess an error of some sort (1920x1440 is more normal).
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Informative)
This Can Help (Score:2, Informative)
Stopgap 1:
Run dxdiag and try changing the Hardware Acceleration down to the first or second step. You can play with this reloading the program each time and you will most likely find that the problem does not return until the last stage of the game where the audio is a bit more intense by an order of magnitude.
Stopgap 2:
The next thing that immediately made the sound bubbles go away was simply changing the in game options from 5.1 speakers down to 2 speakers. Frustrating to have to do this when your card is so hot, I know, but it's a stopgap measure that can at least make the more intense scenes more enjoyable.
Symptom of the problem I had:
The most noticable sympton my relatively new system had with the game that could help is that if I forced the sound by moving so that it was entirely left or entirely right the bubbles went away - even with full hardware acceleration and 5.1 setting in game. From a layman's perspective this intimates that there seems to be a problem with the 3d environment code mixing or otherwise (hey it might be something buried in directx that Valve were the first to truly exploit who knows).
If this helps anyone then today I have done some good.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:4, Informative)
I unlocked the game at 8am 16/11/2004 (GMT), and was playing 15 minutes later. Not had a single crash.
I had a similar experience. Installed via Steam and it worked fine right away. However... there are known, verified problems with the standard installer for people who got the game the old fashioned way, so neither your nor my experience here makes a bit of difference if this guy ran into those installer bugs.
Wow! you must be racing through the game very quickly and missing lots of the gameplay if you find it loading content every five minutes.
I've been going through the game at a leisurely pace and there are quite a few stretches of game where the loading comes even quicker than every five minutes. It is somewhat inconsistent though.. Sometimes you'll go 10-20 minutes without a reload, then sometimes you seem to be reloading every 3-6 minutes. It does seem a bit excessive, IMO.. but not a deal breaker.
Not seen that at all on the Ravenholm level. I'm quite surprised you say that, as the map boundaries always seem to be far away from the next/last monster. I've not played the entire game yet, but I certainly didn't see it on the map you talk of.
I know exactly what he is talking about. On the part of Ravenholm where you need to position the platform so you can jump across to the roofs.. and there is a little courtyard with one of those spinning metal things you can control with the gravity gun. There is a door portal in that area that triggers a level load and if you happen to not go exactly the right way the first time, you'll walk around in a circle that causes the level to load again, and then if you back up a bit? Loads again... Annoying little spot. FWIW, that's the only one like that I've seen in the game so far (I'm currently pretty deep into the antlions part).
In any case, Half-Life 2 is absolutely an amazing game and I suggest it as a must buy for any PC gamer, but the original poster's problems are all pretty valid. I disagree that they are bad enough to merit waiting 5 years to play the game.. but then I got lucky and wasn't hit by the annoying installer bugs either...
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:2, Informative)
Crash to desktop bug was fixed for me by downloading the game files again.
Also, defragment your drive, and create a file autoexec.cfg in the directory where config.cfg and valve.rc reside.
In there put:
snd_mixahead "0.7"
sv_autosave "0"
sv_forcepreload "1"
cl_forcepreload "1"
cl_smooth "0"
cl_ragdoll_collide "1"
snd_async_fullyasync "1"
r_lod "-2"
Picked this from HL2 fallout forums.
Experiment with snd_mixahead values. Thanks to that poster for improving my games performance somewhat.
Take note this is also disabling autosave which I found to be a major source of stuttering problems.