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First Person Shooters (Games)

Half- Life 2 Stutter Solved 81

Posted by Zonk from the texture-loads-lead-to-grumpy-gamers dept.
As a followup to the story on Saturday about the HL2 stutter bug, Voodoo Extreme has news that a patch is on the way, with an ETA of tomorrow. "A patch will be coming for this issue that will load all of the required textures into video memory on level load, rather than doing it during game play."
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Half- Life 2 Stutter Solved More

Half- Life 2 Stutter Solved

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  • Great (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 22, 2004 @05:38PM (#10891938)
    I hope someone will make a torrent for it, for all the people that don't have a legal copy.

  • hmm? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @05:41PM (#10891971) Homepage Journal
    "A patch will be coming for this issue that will load all of the required textures into video memory on level load, rather than doing it during game play."

    Surely this would have been noted during Beta testing, unless they were testing on all high end machines ?

    • Re:hmm? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jpmoney ( 323533 )
      I'm not sure what these "high end" machines were. I have the problem (intermittantly and only for a few seconds, but it does happen) on my Athlon 64 3200+, 1G PC3200, Nvidia 6800, etc. I know its not the "latest" with PCI express, etc out, but I'd still call it "high end".

      I guess if I had a 4.0ghz overclocked, watercooled system with a 512 meg 6800 Ultra PCI express (do they even exist yet?) I'd be smooth, but for now I'm mostly smooth.

      You think it'll work? It'll take a miracle (or longer load-times up

      • Re:hmm? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by vhold ( 175219 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:18PM (#10892393)
        If its only intermittent and only for a few seconds, you might have the auto-save stutter. The game has auto save points sprinkled about rather liberally that are the only cause of quite a few peoples' stutter. I don't know what part of suddenly writting out 8 megs to disk in the middle of gameplay seemed like a good idea at the time, with no way of turning it off.

        I'm worried that even after this fix, that problem might still remain.
        • I have a friend who bought HL2.
          Was over at his place last friday night watching the gameplay. He has a 2.2 gig ath, radeon 9700 i think.

          Anyway, all details turned up. The studder he expeirneces is right before alot of enemies pop up. he actually likes the studder because it gives a quick warning of what's to come.
          • Incorporating hardware limitations or software bugs into gameplay is kind of a cool idea. Something like the 'I love bees' website crashing your browser while displaying an error message that might lead to a clue would be fun to see. Once.
            • This will really date me, but on the box for Conan for the Commodore 64, it advertised:

              "Revolutionary Slow Motion Feature when the action gets really intense."

              It was basically the same flickering slow motion many c64 games got when the hardware wasn't up to the task.
              • Hehe, looks like Marketing is good for something after all. That's a riot. FWIW, I don't remember that 'feature' in the Apple version of the game (are we talking about the one that had death messages like "you succumb to lassitude"?).
          • Exactly!

            I feel the same too. But sometimes it gets really in the way, so it's really a double edged sword of sorts.

            Sometimes, it comes up at the wrong time and sometimes at the right time. But I've gotten used to it, so I might as well play it with the bug - it's like the Quake rocket bug, once you're used to it, it's a pain playing without it.
        • I downloaded the patch and I still have the stuttering problem. I have an Alienware Aurora ALX - AMD 64 FX-55, 2 GB RAM, 2 75GB Raptors in RAID 0 config, nVidia 6800 Ultra 256MB... I don't think it's hardware resource issue... is it? I love the game and continue to play it even with the stutter... but it's getting annoying. I need to try a clean reboot and play it that way with nothing running in the background - I don't have much running in the background now except for AOL IM, and MSN Msgr and some ant
          • Ok... after reading a bit on the HL2 forums, etc... I found that whatever I downloaded off of the STEAM News page is NOT the fix I thought it was... must be some new updated validation BS... anyway... there are apparently 3 fixes, 2 of which they've solved the 3rd is nVidia-specific - which is what I have... the waiting game...
      • I read an interview with Gabe and there a question where he was asked to spec out low, mid, high end machines. From what I can recall, your specs are closer to mid range than to high end.

        Sadly, mine was actually slightly below the low end.

      • Unfortunately for you I doubt PCI-E machines show the stuttering. The problem is caused by uploading the texures from where they were stored in system memory to the video card. The AGP bus gets saturated and everything stutters.

        The vastly increased bandwith of PCI-E can probably handle the paging without issue.

        • I have a Dell P4-3GHz, with an ATI X800 SE PCI-E, and it exhibits the stutter. It's pretty scattered throughout the game, but it does happen in the same places every time.
        • I'm running HL2 on a twin proc Xeon 3ghz with 2 gig of ram and a PCI-E ATI AX800 XT and I get stuttering. It's always right before a badguy shows up too.
    • I have a P4 3GHZ machine, 2GB of RAM, 120B Serial ATA hard drive, and an ATI X800XT PE ... and I STILL get stuttering. I don't think testing on high-end machines was the problem.
      • I reduced the stuttering to non-existence by changing the size of my AGP aperture. They may have been using a range of High- and Low- end machines that were simply better configured than most people's machines are.

  • Hmmm.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by comwiz56 ( 447651 )
    I wonder what else this patch will include. Maybe some anti-piracy stuff. Valve has to working on cracking down on that more. Anything else that needs patching?

  • So the fix... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by llevity ( 776014 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @05:51PM (#10892082)
    Will make the loading times even longer? Great!

    • Re:So the fix... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SuperRob ( 31516 )
      I don't know entirely why this was modded as funny, but I suppose it's because there is no way to mod a post as "Bingo!". I'd bet this will do nothing but make the already atrocious loading times even more ... atrocious.
      • Hmmmm, but would you rather wait for another 3 seconds and have the game play flawlessly, or would you rather be completely sucked out of the moment in a firefight when your system stutters so that you could play the game three seconds earlier?
    • On a 2, almost 3, year old p4 1.7 with 512MB of PC133 the loading times aren't that bad. The first load is about 20-45 seconds, and level transitions are between 5 and 15 seconds.. loading from a save after the first load is about 20-25 seconds..

      Maybe I'm just lucky.

  • This hurts the computer industry (Score:5, Funny)

    by 2bluemike ( 588800 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @05:51PM (#10892084)
    I would have preferred to have them say "Oh, the only way to fix it is by upgrading to 64-bit AMD, 3GB RAM, etc. etc." My stock would have gone up :-/

  • Great (sarcasm) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NeMon'ess ( 160583 ) <{flinxmid} {at} {yahoo.com}> on Monday November 22, 2004 @05:52PM (#10892093) Homepage Journal
    Now the level load times will be longer. More important, someone explain why there's any video memory to spare? I'm presuming the main point was to free up space and swap textures out when entering a new area that didn't need those anymore. If all level textures are loaded at once, some aren't going to fit, right?
    • Well, we're talking about system memory here, not video. Maybe it turns out that Windows virtual memory paging is faster, or more importantly, more interrupt/interactivity friendly, then HL2's implementation of the same basic concept?

    • Re:Great (sarcasm) (Score:5, Informative)

      by cookd ( 72933 ) <douglascook&juno,com> on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:30PM (#10892515) Journal
      Textures can be in one of 3 "places":
      1. In the HalfLife level files, compressed and raw.
      2. In system memory, properly formatted for direct transfer to the video card.
      3. In video card memory.

      Going from stage 1 to stage 2 takes some CPU power as well as disk access. Going from 2 to 3 is probably a lot easier on the system, even if the system memory has been paged out (just page back in, no significant CPU cycles used, just a bit of latency).

      If properly done, you can do some of the stage-1 to stage-2 work while the game is playing, but it is a real balancing act between keeping frame rates up during play and keeping load times down between levels. If the balance is off just a bit, the work isn't done by the time the texture is needed, and the game stuttttters.

      • Re:Great (sarcasm) (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ZosX ( 517789 )
        Going from stage 1 to stage 2 takes some CPU power as well as disk access. Going from 2 to 3 is probably a lot easier on the system, even if the system memory has been paged out (just page back in, no significant CPU cycles used, just a bit of latency).

        By hitting the pagefile, the resulting memory space is swapped. It would take it a very long time for it to be passed from the hard drive back into RAM. Probably it would occur somewhere around 33-66 MB/sec. Compared to the hundreds of megabytes per sec

        • The point was that swapping doesn't have much of a CPU hit, and the latency for swapping is smaller than the latency for loading and filtering.

          Pulling in 10 MB of textures from swap and getting them onto the video card takes less than one second of latency and almost 0 CPU.

          Pulling 10 MB (decompressed size) of textures from the level files, decompressing them, filtering them for the installed graphics card and settings, and getting them onto the video card can take 5-10 seconds of 100% CPU usage.

          Guess whi

          • So do something like GTA3, and many other games (that's the first one I can think of off the top my head, though) do; format the textures for your card during the install, or during the first time you play. Check to see if the video card has changed on run, and if not, well, you've already got the textures sitting on the harddrive ready to go.

  • Hooray! Now will there be revised system (memory) requirements too?

  • They planned this all along (Score:5, Funny)

    by 2bluemike ( 588800 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:02PM (#10892223)
    STEAM: Still Time Enough After its on the Market
  • Sooooo, no word from Troika yet. Are they just sticking their heads in the sand on this one? The HL2 problems are amplified in Bloodlines.
    • I've heard from an insider that Troika is pretty much no more, so I wouldn't expect a lot of post-release patches for that game.
  • Now I won't have those annoying stutters on the rest of my second pass through HL2.

  • Optimization gone awry? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by seanellis ( 302682 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:40PM (#10892616) Homepage Journal
    Rules of Optimization:
    • Rule 1: Don't do it.
    • Rule 2 (for experts only): Don't do it yet.
    • - M.A. Jackson

    Aggressive memory management of textures is an optimisation. If you don't absolutely need to do it, you shouldn't do it. And it seems from the nature of the patch that you don't absolutely need to do it.

    Obviously, I'm not being 100% fair - perhaps it needed to be done and then the texture load went down because the assets were redesigned.

    • What's going to be really strange is if it turns out that the reason they were able to eliminate it is because Windows virtual memory was naturally better at doing the same basic concept.
    • If the problem's been fixed then what's your problem? I don't care about 'rules' that shouldn't be applied universally, I care about the game working properly. Why are you trying to hurt half life?
      • His point was that since the "on demand" texturing loading was causing the stuttering, it was Yet Another Example that premature optimization is the root of all evil. Trying to be clever about optimizing texture memory usage only ended up hurting performance.

        By loading all textures on level load, they remove the attempted optimization, and solve the problem.
        • By loading all textures on level load, they remove the attempted optimization, and solve the problem.

          And probably introduced the problem of much slower loading times. This screams of "stopgap" to me, and I wouldn't be surprised to see dynamic loading reintroduced at a future date without the associated, relatively minor problem.

    • I have to object to your rule. As a QA Engineer, hasty, ill-conceived optimizations provide me with job security.

  • St-st-stutt-tt-ttering? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bryhhh ( 317224 ) on Monday November 22, 2004 @06:41PM (#10892628)
    Wh-wh-wh-what st-st-st-st-stutt-tt-tt-ering?
  • So is it safe to assume that the copies sent to the store, sometime later, will already have this patch? This patch obviously raises memory requirements, I wonder if Valve will change the packaging to reflect that... Although I haven't played Half-Life 2. The patch could only load one or two new textures...
  • Played Half-Life 2 and noticed a bit of stuttering on occasion (a bit every five minutes maybe), though nothing like that demo video someone posted. However, when I play CS:Source, it eventually hits a point where the game freezes and the sound stutters constantly, necessitating a three finger salute to kill the process. Are these related? Or should I be madly trying all sorts of various drivers?
  • Ahh...texture thrashing. My CD store bought copy is nothing more than a burnt version of what is downloaded from Steam. I kind of wish I downloaded it and saved the gas and time to pick it up, plus I would have gotten more goodies.
  • On my P4 1.8 512mb
    gf3.200ti w/128mb vid ram (obviously nothing fancy...)

    I added 256mb of system ram and there was no more stutter. Kind of surprised me actually. Even quick and auto saves are no worries anymore.
  • Valve has just disabled 20,000 steam accounts for using a banned CD key!

    Story here. [steampowered.com]

    Interesting reading :) Anyone want to submit this as a slashdot story in the games section? I can't be fscked writing it up.
    • Someone really needs to help me out here, as I'm incredibly confused by this situation.

      Am I to understand that there are individuals out there who pirated a copy of HL2 and still allowed their machines to log into Steam to authenticate. AND they used a valid Steam account to do all this with, so now they are blacklisted for life?

      My understanding to the inevitibility of HL2 getting cracked would be that the "fix" wouldn't be a CD Key that works, but probably be something that prevents HL2 from dialing
    • So.. Valve purposely lets people register steam accounts and play the game for free for a couple days, and then bans them.. A lot of those people probably beat the game within that timeframe and lost nothing. I don't totally get it.

      Perhaps they managed to accomplish:

      Scaring some people away from pirating in the future.
      Misdirecting people away from the -real- warez versions that completely bypass the real Steam servers.
  • Can you download steam updates onto another machine?

    The reason I ask is that I have only a 56k modem at home - so would rather get the downloads on a fast connection, drop them onto a USB stick and take them home rather than sitting around for 2 hours for the updates to come down.

  • Response Time (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aliens ( 90441 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @12:14PM (#10898901) Homepage Journal
    I just want to note that this game has a great team behind it to be so quick with a fix. I mean nothing coming out the door is perfect. Unless you've ever developed anything more complicated than "Hello World" you know this. Doom 3 I think was extremely polished, but HL2 is an example of a developer wanting to make sure everyone gets a great playing experience.

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