Half-Life 2 Finally Activated

Thomas Scovell writes "After over half a decade of development, stolen source code debacle, a promised deadline that was missed by a year, and a feud between the developer and the publisher that is still in court, Half-Life 2 has finally started to activate for those who have purchased online via Steam online or who grabbed the boxed version at the retailers that let it slip early. Go play!" Reviews are available via Gamespot, Gamespy, HomeLAN Fed, and IGN.

No net connection

[psergiu]

So this game is unplayable if i have no internet connection ?

Re:No net connection

[RonnyJ]

So this game is unplayable if i have no internet connection ?

I'm not quite sure how you've got first post then ;)

Re:No net connection

[Jugalator]

Do not underestimate the power of the RFC 1149 [faqs.org]. They need careful fine tuning, but if done right, the results are mind boggling. :-)

Re:No net connection

[orta]

The point is that millions of gamers will be left in the cold when they realize the game they just bought is a painful paperweight. Which is exactly how I feel, and I'm sure many others do around the globe at University networks too strict to allow Steam to update. I personally can't believe the lack of proxy options on Steam so we could have at least activated the freakin' game!

Re:No net connection

[Builder]

Actually, what a 1st world country centric view you have. Many people I know have PC's at home, but only have Internet access from the office. That is how they post to /. :)

Even dialup is still VERY expensive in a lot of countries when you factor in ISP costs, minimum term contracts and metered phone calls. And believe it or not, millions of gamers live in these countries. So yeah, millions of gamers out in the cold sounds about right :)

Re:No net connection

[jaxdahl]

Here are some videos of me playing (captured with fraps, encoded in DiVX):

Half Life 2 Opening Sequence up to security guard interrogation (4m 56 sec, 36.1mb) [zenblue.net]

Half Life 2 Chapter 1 "Point Insertion" up to beginning of Chapter 2 "Red Flag Day" (19m 25s, 120mb) [zenblue.net]

Re:No net connection

[Anonymous Coward]

You still can't play it without connecting to steam during the installation.

Planned Obsolence

[Lucky_Norseman]

As soon as the server is taken down, no one will ever be able to install HL2 again.

Thus copyright on HL2 is forever.

And as soon as they want their users to switch to HL3 they can pull the plug on HL2.

Re:Planned Obsolence

[Schnapple]

Is this accurate? Do they not plan on releasing a retail boxed version that does not need activation (via steam)? That would be a pitiful thing to see. I always liked id's product key idea where you cannot play multiplayer if you have an invalid or duplicated key so prior to any decent keygens nobody would ever give out their key. We were more than willing to share the media but we kept our keys locked up tight. Now if HL2 is committed to online activation that would be a slap across the face of the legit customers.

You do have to activate it online - not sure if the installation stops you cold (I doubt it since as early as Saturday I saw screenshots of installations in progress) but you do have to "activate" it to play. However, remember that id Software took out the need to authenticate Quake 3 in a patch once the retail effectiveness of that game was done. I'm sure that Valve will do the same - especially if VUG pulls something. Valve will probably do a "FU VUG" patch at some point. Plus, with the mint they make off of this game, they can keep activation servers around forever...

From what I hear though the game's DRM is pretty lenient. You can install on as many PC's as you like, they just can't use the same key simultaneously. This isn't activation in the "Windows XP" sense of the word.

I do recall that at one point the plan was to release a less expensive single player only version of the game "to the Costcos of the world" that couldn't run mods, etc. Perhaps that's the version which won't need activation (assuming it ever comes out)

LANning with your bro allowed?

[MunchMunch]

"From what I hear though the game's DRM is pretty lenient. You can install on as many PC's as you like, they just can't use the same key simultaneously. This isn't activation in the "Windows XP" sense of the word."

Two questions then:

1) Does this mean that it not only needs to check an internet database during installation, but also every time a game is loaded up (and closed, to affirm a time frame)?

2) Does this mean that you can't install a copy on your brother's computer for LAN play (i.e., you and

Re:LANning with your bro allowed?

[cortana]

1. Yes, for online games. Single player and LAN games don't require you to be logged into Steam.

2. Presumably you can do this using offline mode. Of course, you must authenticate the game during installion on each PC--so your little brother will have access to your Steam account, and will be able to get you banned from online play (say, by cheating).

More annoying, Steam has to be run as an administrator. When will Windows programmers get it through their thick heads that this is not a good idea! *sigh*.

Re:LANning with your bro allowed?

[general_re]

More annoying, Steam has to be run as an administrator.

Not true. You should probably install as administrator, but from that point onward it will be perfectly happy to run with power user privileges. User-level accounts cannot, by default, write to the Program Files folder, but I would guess that if you gave explicit write permissions to the Steam folders, it might very well work.

Read the requirements...

[LinuxGeek]

HL2 Minimum System Configuration

1.2 GHz Processor
256MB RAM
DirectX 7 capable graphics card
Windows 2000/XP/ME/98
Mouse
Keyboard
Internet Connection

Is it Valve's fault if you cannot read?

Re:Just wait

[FictionPimp]

its safe to assume everyone with a good pc has a internet connection, but its not safe to assume anyeone with a $200+ video card has a dvd player?

Re:No net connection

[the real darkskye]

You'd buy a game with out first reading the customer reviews [amazon.co.uk]

Just because its looks like a fish and moves like a fish doesn't mean it can't steer like a cow.

Re:INSTALL WARNING / Disappointment

[Dimensio]

You shouldn't have to do that. As long as your work computer isn't logged into Steam, you should be able to log into Steam and go right into HL2 once you install it.

After the install, Steam will start up and ask for the CD key. Just hit Cancel, since you've already registered the product with Steam, and you'll get a list of the installed games. When you choose HL2, it will connect to unlock the files, as the game is already registered.

I've just confirmed this by running an install on a second machine.

timezone

[Bog Standard]

I was wondering if this was going to be 12.00 AM GMT, EST or PST. Looks like it was PST.

Re:timezone

[citizenc]

PST. Where Valve is. :)

Re:timezone

[DigitumDei]

Shit shit shit shit!!!!

6 more hours at work before I can get home. This is going to be the slowest day ever...

Re:timezone

[omicronish]

6 more hours at work before I can get home. This is going to be the slowest day ever...

Dude, 6 hours is nothing. I accidentally marked the wrong date on my calendar for Half-Life release, and spent Sunday afternoon anticipating it. Midnight came and I was ready to burst, but then I was wondering why it wasn't activated. Then I noticed I was off by 24 hours ;(

Re:timezone

[DigitumDei]

The problem with working at an IT company, is all the managers know HL2 just got released.

Time to take some leave I think. :)

Re:timezone

[DrSkwid]

tell 'em you shit your pants, no-one ever wants to check that one.

sadly I can verify that

Re:timezone

[That's Unpossible!]

tell 'em you shit your pants, no-one ever wants to check that one.

You insensitive clod, I did just shit my pants... playing HL2!

Re:timezone

[Sj0]

If you want to feel better, how about this:

For the next 2 years I'm trapped on a Celeron 1.33Ghz with a Cyberblade XP al1, an integrated video chipset so slow it chokes on Quake 3!

so no UT2k3, Doom 3, or HL2 for me!

The upside is that by the time I'm done, even S3 and Trident will be making cards to play doom 3, so I'll be able to put together a sweet Doom 3 machine for the price of a ham sandwich! w00t!

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Duke Nukem Forever will be better !!

ahem...

Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[d2_m_viant]

Yeeeeeehaaaaaa!

So much for the rest of this college semester. Between this and Halo2, I'll be lucky if I even come in contact with a female during the next 3 months...

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[thatJoshGuy]

You're posting to Slashdot dude, like there was a chance of that happening anyway.

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[Sj0]

DDR man, DDR gets the chicks.

Yeah, but then their mother goes "What are you doing to my 9 year old daughter!" and it's a whole mess...

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[Kwaichang]

So much for the rest of this college semester. Between this and Halo2, I'll be lucky if I even come in contact with a female during the next 3 months... Good to see you have your priorities straight.

On behalf of the women...

[gosand]

So much for the rest of this college semester. Between this and Halo2, I'll be lucky if I even come in contact with a female during the next 3 months...

On behalf of all the women at this guy's college: Thank you Half Life 2, thank you Halo 2.

Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[citizenc]

I've seen a number of reviews say that Half-Life 2 is the best FPS of all time. After playing it even for only the hour that I have (I have a Social Psychology mid-term tomorrow morning ;), I can tell you that it is, hands down.

I have to commend Valve for doing it right. They didn't rush. They didn't over-hype. They didn't fuck it up. =)

I believe Valve deserves a round of applause. Half-Life 2 is a masterpiece.

*Applause*

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[citizenc]

Agreed. I remember seeing the first screenshots of Half-Life in PC Gamer (it was a guy in green, in a checkered hallway, if memory serves), and thinking "wow, that looks like Quake".

Releasing Half-Life: Source was a pretty kick-ass idea as well -- I know a lot of people who have never PLAYED Half-Life, but given that the graphics were rather dated by today's standards, I don't think I could get them to pay attention. Now I can. =)

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[Coryoth]

The truly amazing part is that unlike id, who up until (and some would argue, including) Doom 3 simply made an engine and slapped some quick levels together to show it off

Anyone who thinks the levels in Doom 3 were "slapped together" to show off the engine should spend a little time designing levels. The general design, lighting, sound design (which was surprisngly important for some levels), and all around attention to detail in Doom 3 was very impressive. Whether you were a fan of the gameplay or not, you would be a fool to claim the levels were "thrown together".

Quake I... well, you might have an argument there. Some truly excellent levels, some appalling levels, and a surprising hodge podge of inconsistent design - that speaks of a certain amount of "slapped together".

Jedidiah.

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[CausticPuppy]

Anyone who thinks the levels in Doom 3 were "slapped together" to show off the engine should spend a little time designing levels.

I agree. id meticulously designed one map, and then used it for the first 20 levels of the game.

Re:What happens when you light the levels

[junkgrep]

HAve you seen the version of Doom3 someone got running on Voodoo2 SLI cards. First of all, pretty amazing achievement, but second of all, it shows exactly what you are talking about: blocky level design that really looks a great deal like a Quake2 level. However, that just isn't fair. Yes, Doom3 does cut down on the geometery to make the best use of bumpmaps and lighting. And the effect is astonishingly good looking. It may be a very limited SORT of good looking, but there is no doubt that the actual i

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[Nosf3ratu]

"obsoleet"(n): Stop reading my post. I am a retard. Synonyms: lolz, d00d, and OMGWTFBBQ.

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[LurkerXXX]

I dont' know that every other game engine just became obsolete...

Doom III seemed to have much better texturing, lighting, and environmental effects.

HL2 runs tons better on old hardware and has better physics. (much better storyline too, at least so far, 3 hours in, but we are talking game engines here)

I'm having a lot more fun playing HL2, but as far as game engines, I think the DOOM3 one will do just fine when the average spec of machines is up a bit. And if they can work on the physics. It looked a

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[Zorilla]

Id Software took great pride with their maps. Each black pixel was meticulously rendered by hand.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The 3 way battle: Halo, Doom, HL

[MightyPez]

I remember all the previews and special edition magazines that had the same theme, "Who will come out on top: Halo 2, Doom 3, or Hal-Life 2?"

To be honest, I was rooting for Half-Life 2. I always respected Valve's commitment to their community in their support of their game(s). Halo 2 was more of the same (yet somehow more fun than the first). Doom 3 was pretty, but had the personality of a tray of ice cubes.

I guess what I am trying to say in my own biased way, is, I'm glad I was backing Half-Life 2. So far I am not disappointed.

And by the way, has anyone noticed the excessive use of exploding barrels yet? It's like City 17 is a giant nitro nitro plant and they can't seem to keep track of the product.

Re:The 3 way battle: Halo, Doom, HL

[Zilquis]

Far Cry beat them all to it

Re:The 3 way battle: Halo, Doom, HL

[Idarubicin]

And by the way, has anyone noticed the excessive use of exploding barrels yet? It's like City 17 is a giant nitro plant and they can't seem to keep track of the product.

Barrels (and their sister containers, the crates) are an essential part of any FPS.

One of the canonical pieces of FPS review literature is the Crate Review System [oldmanmurray.com], which measures the time in game until the appearance of the first crate or barrel (StC: Start to Crate).

Re:The 3 way battle: Halo, Doom, HL

[frog51]

What are you on about? They did this precisely so you could download or buy in the shops and not be disadvantaged timewise. Top idea, not "Screwing the customer!"

Sheesh!

Activation went off without a hitch

[NotAnotherReboot]

I started up Steam precisely at 3:00AM, and had it tell me it was 'unlocking' (decrpyting) the files for the game. Minutes later, I was in game.

I played about 45 minutes when I swore to myself that all I would do is the intro. The game is just plain amazing, and runs pretty damn well on my computer with detail turned up (this is a 1.5 year old laptop).

Re:Activation went off without a hitch

[Mr.Ned]

"this is a 1.5 year old laptop"

That laptop was pretty new when the game was supposed to be released.

Wow..

[BrookHarty]

Been playing it for the last 2 hours, simply Amazing.

AMD 2600/ATI 9700PRO and I'm getting 60-100FPS with 2X AA, at 1024x768. Smooth as silk, fast, and great.

Only problem, Its a tube chaser so far, just run and run and run. But damn if it dont look amazing.

BTW, she looks cute in those Jeans, Good job Valve.. ;)

Re:Wow..

[jayhawk88]

No no no no...that joke only works if it's a crowbar in his hazard suit.

why $49.99?

[vaylen]

I don't understand why downloading it through Steam costs $49.99 when you can get it from places like http://www.yesasia.com/ [yesasia.com] for $39.99. I thought using Steam was going to cut out the middle man and save the buyer money while also increasing Valve's profits. So much for their great idea of direct downloading...

Re:why $49.99?

[mattbee]

In UK pounds (and I suspect this applies to other countries that can take advantage of a weak dollar and fast connection) that's £27, slightly cheaper than I can get it at amazon.co.uk and slightly faster than in the shops.

Re:why $49.99?

[MightyPez]

When I buy over Steam I get a few things for my dollar. For starters, the game right now. But that's neither here nor there.

For this demonstration, we'll follow the train of my thoughts with the package I selected, the silver package. At the price of $59.95 USD, I get the following:

1. The Half-Life 2 game (duh)
2. Counter-Strike: Source, the multiplayer component
3. Half-Life (original) Source
4. Day of Defeat Source
5. The complete Valve catalogue, including all expansion packs and modifications
6. And most importantly, the satisfaction that my dollar went towards the actual developers of the game, and not a middle man that printed a bunch of boxes and slapped their name on it.

Sure you may be able to get it cheaper if you are looking at the bottom line. But with Steam I am getting value.

Re:why $49.99?

[DrXym]

That was my thought too. There are no printing, distribution (see note) or stocking costs, the middle man and the retailer have been removed from the equation and the end user is expected to use a large chunk of their bandwidth allowance to grab it online and burn the game if they expect to keep it.

$29.99 seems fairer. That's $29.99 of money that goes to Valve as opposed to the $8 or whatever it is that goes with the retail version. Everyone wins except the legacy distributors - Valve because they get 4-5x the profit, the customer because they get the game for less.

Okay, so there are some distribution issues surrounding online downloads, but these can largely be mitigated with P2P. For example World of Warcraft uses a (very sucky) custom Bittorrent client to download the game. I have no idea what the savings are for distributing via a .torrent but I can well imagine that bandwidth consumption is slashed to 1/50th.

Expecting people to pay what they could reasonably expect to pay in the stores, is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. Norton / Symantec do something similar.

As an aside, the WoW custom torrent app is so abysmally slow (as in broken slow) and requires various open ports, that I followed the advice I found somewhere, and split the .torrent out of the executable to download through a normal BT client. It was about 5 times faster.

Re:why $49.99?

[gonzoxl5]

I'm sure there are elements of the contract with Vivendi that prohibit Valve undercutting the retail price when distributing via steam.

The same type of restrictions stopped valve from activating clients purchased via Steam before the in-store release date

However, that doesn't stop me disagreeing with the previous poster about the price of the game.

I personally think that $49.99 is a pretty good price for a game like this irrespective of the distribution medium.

Re:why $49.99?

[strider44]

heh, I live in Australia. At the cheapest place it'll be saving me $30.

What about premium service?

[-noefordeg-]

What about those who paid a lot of money and ordered it over steam, to get it "before people buying it from retail stores"?

IF you pay for a premium service you should also get it. In this case everyone got it at the same time. I would be pretty pissed right now.
I know people who paid $75 for it, with the promise they would get it before everyone else.

It Doesnt Work!!!

[VC]

Ive downloaded it, unlocked it and get the menu page but when i start the game it crasheds.

Oh the humanity! (and being in london, i was late for work as well (release 8am GMT) )

Re:It Doesnt Work!!!

[VC]

Replying to my own post incase anyone else has this same problem:

Apparently steam didnt download all the files. What files are missing varies from machine to machine. Valve is working on a fix.

Insomnia tonight

[mcknation]

Couldn't sleep and I was sick of infomercials so I decided I would try this steam thing...seeing as it was unlocked today. I dusted off the copy of HL1 a few months back and got aquainted with steam. Steam got HL1 down and playable on my machine in notime. They must be getting SLAMED. I have 4 meg down and steam (when used for HL1) saturated my bandwidth. As it sits now I bought the game and started downloading it at 4am. It's now 4:45 EST and I have 6% of HL2 downloaded. Ready to play in aprox. 321 minutes. So maybe this stint with insomnia will be spent watching the progress bar. If you are planing to buy HL2 as much as I'd rather the money go to Valve I would have to suggest you get a boxed copy....and leave Valve content server 18 alone...:P

/-McK

Re:Insomnia tonight

[KapnShak]

Strange, the Steam Status [steampowered.com] says their using less then half their available bandwidth. Maybe its just a really big download?

Re:Insomnia tonight

[jasoncart]

The max bandwidth stat they use on that page is very theoretical - the actual max is a lot lower.

Re:Insomnia tonight

[mcknation]

Well I don't know if you would consider a 838 Meg download a big download. However I just checked and the steam download is jumping from 20KB to a max of 95 or so. It's all over the place. It's not steady and it's not saturating my bandwidth. I guess I can't argue though as other people are downloading just like me :)

/-McK

Re:Insomnia tonight

[TomServo]

I would imagine that, at this point, the vast majority of people buying it on Steam have already pre-loaded the game, as I had. I had the entire thing downloaded over a week ago, just sitting and waiting to be unlocked with what appeared to be only downloading some keys for decrypting, not any real content. The rest of them probably bought it retail, so they already have all of the files necessary, they just have to get the keys as well.

The only one that's getting me is that I didn't realize that I had

But what about install speeds?

[King_of_Prussia]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Valve fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Linux box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 35 minutes now while it attempts to Install Half-Life 2. 35 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Linux box, installing Doom 3 took about 15 minutes. In addition, during this install, Mozilla will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Emacs Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while installing Valve products, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Valve product that has run faster than its ID counterpart, despite the Valve products faster optimised code. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram installs windows faster than this 800 mhz machine can do Half-Life at times. From an ease of installation standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Valve is a "superior" company.

Valve addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Valve product over other faster, cheaper, more stable games.

Re:But what about install speeds?

[Agret]

I don't think you can really comment on install speeds when you are using a Linux box to install a Windows game. It won't run anyway since it is heavily reliant on DirectX 9 Technology unlike Doom 3 which uses OpenGL.

Your computer is below the minimum requirements too. :: Half-Life 2 Requirements

To play Half-Life 2 and other Source add-ons you need at least the following specification PC.

Minimum Requirements

* 1.2 GHz Processor
* 256MB RAM
* DirectX 7 level graphics card
* Windows 2000/X

Re:But what about install speeds?

[rootofevil]

Even Emacs Lite

i think i found your problem...
try using vi or pico and save approximately 100% of those resources ;-)

Finally some realistic humans

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=46 [gamespot.com]
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=17 [gamespot.com]
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=10 [gamespot.com]
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=7 [gamespot.com]

water doesn't look so bad neither::

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=4 [gamespot.com]
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=12 [gamespot.com]

Re:Finally some realistic humans

[spuzzzzzzz]

Water looks sweet, but the humans look a bit flat compared with the dynamic shadowy bump-mapped goodness of Doom 3.

Maybe I'm just biased because this bloody game is Windows-only.

Re:Finally some realistic humans

[strider44]

actually I think the half-life humans look like crap. It's their skin - there's no pores and it's too smooth. Doom 3 did a whole lot better representing humans, though there wasn't many of them.

However, I haven't played the game, and if the animations are done properly it may account for the bad texturing.

Re:Finally some realistic humans

[Mr. Flibble]

If you are talking about screenshots - yes, Doom 3 looks better. However, given that I am playing the game at around 100 fps I can tell you that the characters in Half Life look better than those in Doom 3. Why? They move properly, and they actually seem to display emotion. In fact, right at the beginning in the train when you go up to the others in the train the people look disturbingly real. Their eyes follow you, their whole faces change, you can SEE that they are miserable, and you just know by how they

I've been playing...

[mtrisk]

I was on #halflife2 on IRC for the countdown. Then I started playing. In the hour that I have played Half-Life 2, the only thing I can say is that I am in complete awe.

First off, If you've played CS:Source, you don't even know the half of it. Half-Life 2 is one hell of a single player. It manages to scare you in broad daylight. It scares you not just by monsters, but by the dystopia/authoritarian thing going on. It's really freaking scary.

The voices, facial movements, physics, "Civil Protectorate", it's all awesome. After just one hour, I've forgiven Valve. Half-Life 2 is just as revolutionary as the original Half-Life was. You really have to play it to believe it. I can't even begin to describe in words the euphoria and the terror it strikes in your heart.

Not bad for a company's second game.

How's the replayability?

[Jugalator]

Is there any?

I didn't play HL1, but think that while the single player mode is great and pretty, I fear it gets worn out pretty quickly? :-/

A major factor when I buy games is nowadays is the amount of replayability.

Re:How's the replayability?

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

The first Half-life only stuck around so long because there were so many mods for it.. Valve has surely made HL2 mod-friendly (I think the SDK has been out for at least a month), so if you're tired of the original game, there will be several more new ones you can play for free.

Re:Infidel

[HeghmoH]

As for replayability being your major factor for buying games. What a weird choice. Do you only watch movies wich you can watch over and over again?

He probably only buys movies that he can watch over and over again, like most people I know. Normally when somebody wants to watch a once-only movie, they rent it or watch it in a theater. These are not generally options for games.

Re:Infidel

[Jugalator]

That's actually a comparison that matches better how I think. Good replayability => fun a longer time => more value in the game since... well, you have fun a longer time. I'd be much more easily convinced of buying a game if I knew it would last for at least a few months rather than a weekend or two of hardcore gaming. But of course, I can have fun with short games too, and it's not the only deciding factor (and why I don't play Tetris all day long).

I'm sure many game developers know this too, otherw

Finally

[JakeD409]

I feel like I am truly alive for the first time ever. It's like my life itself was finally fully activated at midnight PST on November 16th, 2004. Infanthood, toddlerhood, preschool, elementary school, middle school, puberty, high school, these were just pre-loads.

Re:Finally

[SamSim]

Don't forget to save, then

Opening....

[fishmasta]

And the opening train ride took less than 10 minutes! Thank you, Valve!

Re:Opening....

[Zorilla]

Don't worry - I'm sure my brother will find a way to fall off the first tram ride without saving.

Awesome tech support

[junkgrep]

So mygame kept crashing loading the very first level. I wanted to cry. Not knowing what to do, I did the only geek thing I could think of: I simply posted my tears on Shacknews [shacknews.com]. But within minutes a Valve guy showed up asking if he could help. Then Erik Johnson himself popped in and started troubleshooting. I practically had Valve guys fighting over who could help me fix the problem first. And all this at like 2am in the morning. That's some pretty sweet support kids: they tracked ME down instead of me having to beg them to help.

Re:Awesome tech support

[TheLoneDanger]

I practically had Valve guys fighting over who could help me fix the problem first.

Valve's next press release: Valve regretfully announces that Team Fortress 2 has again been delayed due to injuries sustained by our techs during a massive free-for-all brawl. "Bob totally knew that glitch that guy was experiencing with his Gefore 6400 was mine, man. He already got the one with the problem that guy in Iowa had with the crashing during installation, and that was one sweet bug to fix. Bastard."

Re:Awesome tech support

[junkgrep]

Basically, the current thing to try is to rename or delete (I'd rename) the source models gcf in the steam/steamapps folder and then restart Steam so it redownloads it. Seems that some downloads of pre-load content were corrupted or slightly mismatched.

By the way, could everyone stop playing/pre-loading so that we can have the bandwidth to redownload quickly? Please? :)

Playing it now *WOW*

[Mr. Flibble]

The only reason I am typing this is because during the first 30 min my system locked while playing - I had to hard reset. No big deal (I am one of those dangerous overclockers ;)

But *WOW* This game has already destroyed Doom 3 in the FIRST HALF HOUR OF PLAY!

You will excuse me, I have uh, important uh, stuff to uh, go and do now...

*starts steam again*

Why lord why...

[FluffyPanda]

...did they have to release HL2 on my girlfriend's birthday.

Now I'll be looking over a candle in a romantic restaurant picturing gordon freeman's beardy mug.

I wonder if macdonalds would do...

Re:Why lord why...

[Kithraya]

There's probably some truth in that. Pretending to forget will probably land you in less trouble than admitting you remembered and ditched her anyway for a game.

Linux

[Kirth]

And what the hell am I going to do with that? Does it at least run in wine/cedega? Or does it look like this:
- Half Live 2: 59$
- Windows: 250$
- Having to repartition harddisk: fuck you.
Even the additional cost of windows (Microsoft-Tax), is very discouraging, but the general behaviour of said operating system raises the cost even more. I can't for instance just install windows on the third disk.
--

Re:Linux

[CortoMaltese]

An alternative looks like this:

• Half Life 2 (X-Box): 59$
• X-Box: 149$
• Having to wait until May, 2005: fuck you.

But hey, at least the Microsoft-Tax is 100$ smaller!

Doom III vs UT2004

[tjwhaynes]

Doom III is a pretty amazing experience on a well spec'd linux box but most of my gaming time is spent with UT2004, partly because Onslaught is such an amazing multiplayer experience but also because of the mods available for UT2004 are plentiful.

Any decent AAA game has extensive modding capabilities and Epic have done well in encouraging mod-makers to expand upon UT2004. The NVidia-sponsored "Make Something Unreal" competition has resulted in some really impressive mods, from Alien Swarm to Red Orchestra and UnWheel, Clone Wars add to the fun. Hell - there is even a Golf game built on UT2004. Doom III will get it's top quality mods given time but for now UT2004 will continue to command my Linux gaming attention.

And while I spare a thought for Half life 2, I'm not going to fret too much. If Valve doesn't want my gaming money I'll continue shovelling cash towards Epic, id software, Grimm Software, Garage Games, Epic Interactive, Running With Scissors and any other company out there who feels that Linux gaming is worth the trouble.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

WHAT A COINCIDENCE!

[JollyFinn]

Now it has taken ALMOST 2 hours since this came online, and no other stories in slashdot coming. Is this coincidence, or is there some correlation between those too.

A graphical timeline of my HL2 experience

[Jakhel]

6:15 am opens steam =|
6:17 am unlocking game and taking a shower =O
6: 45 am half life 2 logo comes up =)
6: 46 am menu screen =..)
6:50 am starts a new game =D
6:52 am starts playing =..D
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
7:30 am craps his pants =|
8:02 am takes another shower and gets ready to go to work =(
9:32 am posts on slashdot

Hahahaha

[NitroWolf]

Hahahaha Steam is so slashdotted...

Oh wait... maybe it's not slashdot, I suppose it's *MAYBE* possible it's the million people trying to download multimegabyte files to activate HL2?

Naaa... gotta be slashdot.

Steam Must Die

[koreth]

I played the game for an hour or so before I went to bed last night. Wanted to play it again this morning, but I made the idiot mistake of disconnecting from Steam in the meantime. Now (presumably because their servers are getting hammered by thousands of users) I can't connect to the Steam server at all. Which means I can't get to the list of games. Which means I can't play the goddamn single-player game I paid $60 for and that's sitting on my computer, already unencrypted.

When I try to launch the Half-Life 2 executable on its own, I get an error that it can't find filesystem_stdio.dll, which indeed does not exist anywhere on my hard disk. There is a filesystem_steam.dll, though. How helpful!

Is this what I have to look forward to? Buying a game and being able to maybe play it from time to time, whenever their servers happen to be up and not too terribly busy? Way to go, guys.

I can understand requiring Steam for multiplayer. Fine. No problem at all with that. But I should not need to connect to their servers every time I want to fire up the game on my own.

The first hour of my experience with this game was incredible. So far, the second hour of my experience is frustrating, annoying, and completely dissatisfying.

HALF-LIFE 2 DOES NOT WORK IN OFFLINE MODE!!!

[c1one]

I PAID FOR THE GAME. I AUTHORIZED THE GAME AND UPDATED STEAM (ANOTHER 20MB IN ADDITION TO THE 5 CD'S.) I UPDATED HL2 TODAY (ANOTHER 20MB) SO I COULD FINALLY PLAY IT. I CLOSED MY CONNECTION (I DO NOT LIKE MY GAMING PC ONLINE.) I DOUBLE, TRIPLE, QOUDROUPLE, ETC, ETC, CHECKED MY SETTINGS SO I COULD PLAY IN "OFFLINE" MODE. I CANNOT. THE EXACT ERROR IS ...
Steam - Error
This operation cannot be completed when Steam is in offline mode.

I will never buy VALVe software again, I don't care if they make a game where Tr

Re:Steam Must Die

[grangerg]

I'm sort of in the same boat; extremely frustrated. I, however, have not been able to play yet. I have been able to waste my entire afternoon and I'm not happy in the slightest.

My first problem came attempting to install it. I made the mistake of de-selecting Counter-Strike; the install fails on disc 4 if you do. It can't find "hl2.ico1". Well, Duh! It's on disc 5 retard! After waiting for the forums on steampowered.com, I found the problem was that I had chosen to not install Counter-Strike. Wasted time: about an hour and a half.

Next, I fired up Steam to create an account. Oh, my living hell! Who coded that thing? What requires 100% CPU time? Was someone at Valve experimenting with spin-locks? It seems like every click means a 2-minute wait while it pegs the CPU---then it finally does something. Another hour and a half---maybe 2---wasted.

Finally, after it decided to create my account, it got stuck validating my CD-key. I let it attempt to validate for---I kid you not---1:45 before I killed the stupid thing. Thereafter, I get the

Error:Steam error: SteamProcessCall(Login)(0xab0002,0x15efc04,0x15efd 0c) failed with error 200: Failed to find Master AuthenticationServer

error in the logs. I guess the servers finally melted down. The scary part is, when they come back online, will I have to call customer support to fix my account? I shudder to think there are more suprises like this waiting.

The forums at steampowered.com are now officially offline and I have yet to find anywhere else (well, through Google at least) with help. It seems the entire support/authentication system has melted.

It is now almost 7 hours since I bought Half-Life 2 and I still cannot play it. I'm just now barely getting myself back to the state where I don't want to kill/maim/destroy something; I'm extremely dissatisfied with Steam. It was not up to the task, and has left a bad taste in my mouth. I hope Valve can fix this soon, but the damage is done.

Re:I guess the idiots are happy

[Grandmasta]

...So I guess you're a Halo 2 fan?

Re:HL2 = HL1 clone

[richy freeway]

You sure he wasn't accidently playing Half Life : Source?

Re:From Mexico

[Zorilla]

...0....-1....-2.....-3

Nothing. Whatever strategy Valve may have planned (speculating) seems to be working beautifully. Craploads of fake HL2 files on ed2k which are mostly porn site rips, but some which are other games disguised as HL2 - usually UT2004. The Steam crack is actually nothing but a virus and there is nothing but the beta to be seen on torrent sites.

Re:Steam is taking a pounding....

[TomServo]

I'm pretty certain, especially given the complete lack of activity on my Steam Monitor during the unlocking process, that once the unlock starts, it's not going over the network. It's just the process of decrypting the game files, and that's wholly processor dependent. I literally saw no traffic between my computer and Steam during the unlock process, but I had a hell of a lot of hard drive activity.

Re:Steam is taking a pounding....

[Sj0]

My mind couldn't comprehend installing HL2 on 90 machines, so I read it as "90 minutes" not once, but three times.

Thanks a freaking lot for shattering my puny human psyche! :P

Re:Call me an idiot, but...

[Sj0]

It's because ever since that creepy mannequin arm in Tresspasser, I've yearned to be able to bitchsmack dinosaurs with more and more realistic physics!

Re:GORDON FREEMAN DIES in hl2

[Anonymous Coward]

But don't worry, he respawns!

Re:STEAM vs. CDs, or CDs from STEAM?

[Zed2K]

Yes, there is a backup option. You select what you want to backup then it asks you what media you are going to put it on. It then creates files of appropriate size.

The cd you buy from the store is basically a backup of the steam cache files without a hl2 executable to run the game.