Half Life 2 Stuttering Bug Official

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."

Finally!

[EventHorizon]

This bug has been degrading an excellent game for many people--good to see Valve finally acknowledge it.

Now if only they would fix the "Loading" delays that show up every 3 minutes... it's 2004 already, there has *got* to be some way to stream/cache/prefetch around having to break up the game experience so much.

No bugs here, but Valve deserves praise

[Mean_Nishka]

First, Valve knocked it out of the park on this game. It's absolutely the most incredible game I've played in years.. I'd even venture to say I'm as hooked on this one as I was on Doom way back when.

Although I didn't experience the stuttering bug others are, I have noticed how great Valve has been supporting this game. They communicate regularly (sometimes individually) and are really standing behind their product. Too bad other companies don't follow their lead.

Re:Finally!

[rodrigogo]

GTA San Andreas has done something wonderful to that effect btw - no loading screens at all, ever! Pretty amazing IMHO, considering the level is about 10 times the size of the previous games even with their respective loading screens taken into account!

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

With 2 monitors

[Henry V .009]

Running two monitors gives me a different perspective on this bug. When the stuttering occurs, HL2 loses its grip on my mouse, and the mouse is free to move into my second monitor. The game pauses until I move the mouse back over the game screen.

Re:Motion sickness too!

[antdude]

Bombcar: But if you read carefully, some people never had this problem before.

Re:Hmmm....

[SpryGuy]

Amen to that. I can't believe something as obvious as the installer bug got through. It caused me no end of delay until I finally got on line and found out the problem was known and what the work around was.

A story of a bug.

[SetupWeasel]

I bought my GameCube in the fall of 2002, and the first game I owned for it was Metroid Prime. I got about 7 hours into it, the game froze, and a buzzing sound filled the speakers.

I thought, "Holy shit! My GameCube is broken!"

Why? Because I thought that was more possible than a Nintendo game having a bug of that magnitude.

My GameCube wasn't broken. Metroid Prime did have a bug, a rather rare one, that overflowed a buffer (I believe) when changing areas. the overflow was rare enough that most gamers never experienced it. I was one of the lucky ones that had it happen twice.

My point is not that consoles can have bugs too. My point is that with the good console game companies this sort of thing is so rare, you can think your hardware died when it happens.

I assume that PC games will have fatal bugs when they are released, and I also assume that if the game is not popular, these bugs may never be fixed. That is why I don't buy PC games until they have been out a year. How can you get excited about a launch when there is a decent chance you will not be able to play the game?

By the way, Nintendo fixed that bug and offered a replacement to anyone who wanted it. The Metroid Prime discs today do not have the problem.

Re:Motion sickness too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Valve even has a stickied thread on their forum here [steampowered.com].

Re:Hmmm....

[gweihir]

Seems to me like getting a slightly corrupted file off of Steam isn't something that you can really plan for when no other game has been distributed through Steam before.

Seems pretty incompetent to me. Checksums (crc32, md5, ...) have been around for a long time and are used in many places rountinely, e.g. in virtually all losless file compressors.

Amen to that!

[Zarathustra.fi]

The loading times are awful, and loading occurs way too often. It really wrecked my suspension of disbelief. Example: At the beginning, when you're running to the roof, the game stops to load for 30 seconds or so in the middle of fierce action! How am I supposed to keep my adrenaline up during that time, by slapping myself in the face or what? This is not good game design.

What I cannot understand is the people praising this game as a whole to high heavens. Sure, the Source engine kicks ass and everything, but what I really expected from a sequel to Half-Life was a coherent story and script. After completing the game, all I had was an aftertaste of a huge railroaded marathon and a handful of loose ends in the script.

I was left confused and unsatisfied. Props to Valve for making the game, but even the most decorated shell is empty without a good plot.

Maybe Half-Life 2 is really an introduction to third part of the story, where all the pieces come together. But it makes me a bit unease thinking that all these years I was only waiting for a prologue to the real thing.

Re:Hmmm....

[Antony.S]

Finally, someone on Slashdot who isn't whining ;D

We need our own thread, or maybe forum!

So many people whining about stuff, it's a joke, most of their problems are probably down to clue or having settings too high. I have a moderate system (2.08ghz, 512ddr400, 9600xt), I play on 800x600 medium, loading times are OK and I get very little stuttering (did on high detail).

RE: brings up a good question/point

[King_TJ]

Why don't display manufacturers start labeling CRTs and LCD panels as to the maximum resolution they're rated for displaying w/pixel for pixel accuracy?

In the past, I guess this issue never even came up, because the electronic circuitry in the displays (and even in the video cards) weren't able to synch up with (or generate resolutions greater) than what the phosphors on the tube could display accurately.

But in the age of even "consumer grade" video boards outputing resolutions of upwards of 1600 pixels vertically, this point seems to be pretty valid.

Granted, the wide aspect ratio LCD panels (such as Apple's Cinema displays) are going to allow for accurate viewing of larger horizontal pixel resolutions before hitting their upper limits - but the vertical hasn't changed much.

Re:Motion sickness too!

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

It's not "motion sickness" it's a Simulator sickness that airforce pilots also experiance. There was a long thread discussing it on the GameFAQs Half Life 2 forum, but it's probably been spammed to the 50th page by now.

Low-Class PCs

[superultra]

You haven't been playing the right console games. With regards to the PC, where is the experimentation we see in console games like Katamari Damacy, REZ, Ico, Panzer Dragoon Orta - I could go on. Bejewled? Age of Empires? Doom 3? I'll give you the Sims, but that's all I can think of. "Graphics, speed, etc" do not a good game make.