Half- Life 2 Stutter Solved 81
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."
Great (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:1, Funny)
Torrent: It's not just for pirates anymore (Score:5, Funny)
hmm? (Score:3, Interesting)
Surely this would have been noted during Beta testing, unless they were testing on all high end machines ?
Re:hmm? (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
I'm worried that even after this fix, that problem might still remain.
Re:hmm? (Score:2)
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.
Re:hmm? (Score:2)
Revolutionary Slow Motion Feature (Score:3, Interesting)
"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.
Re:Revolutionary Slow Motion Feature (Score:2)
Re:hmm? (Score:2)
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.
Re:hmm? (Score:1)
Re:hmm? (Score:1)
Re:hmm? (Score:1)
Sadly, mine was actually slightly below the low end.
Re:hmm? (Score:2)
The vastly increased bandwith of PCI-E can probably handle the paging without issue.
Re:hmm? (Score:2)
Re:hmm? (Score:2)
Re:hmm? (Score:2)
Re:hmm? (Score:2)
Size of hard drive won't change anything (Score:2)
Hmmm.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:1)
So the fix... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So the fix... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So the fix... (Score:2)
Re:So the fix... (Score:2)
Maybe I'm just lucky.
This hurts the computer industry (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This hurts the computer industry (Score:2)
Still wouldn't have helped...
That's what my system is, and the stutter is horrible.
Re:This hurts the computer industry (Score:2)
The game still runs far superior than Doom III, which if I can add.... I am still struggling with these white spots after like 3 months now.
Great (sarcasm) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great (sarcasm) (Score:3)
Re:Great (sarcasm) (Score:2)
Re:Great (sarcasm) (Score:5, Informative)
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 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
Re:Great (sarcasm) (Score:1)
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
Re:Great (sarcasm) (Score:2)
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 (Score:1)
They planned this all along (Score:5, Funny)
Bloodlines, plz? (Score:2)
Re:Bloodlines, plz? (Score:2)
Re:Bloodlines, plz? (Score:2)
Oh good. (Score:1)
Optimization gone awry? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Optimization gone awry? (Score:2)
Re:Optimization gone awry? (Score:2)
Re:Optimization gone awry? (Score:3, Informative)
By loading all textures on level load, they remove the attempted optimization, and solve the problem.
Re:Optimization gone awry? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Optimization gone awry? (Score:3, Funny)
St-st-stutt-tt-ttering? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great. (Score:2)
Re:Great. (Score:2, Funny)
I remember keeping a save of the original H-L for months.
It was right before the ninja/assissins.
I'd load up the game, go into god mode and crowbar the frak out of them.
Great stress relief after a bad day.
Packaging change? (Score:1)
Re:Packaging change? (Score:2)
Re:Packaging change? (Score:1)
Counter-Strike: Source fix too? (Score:2)
It doesn't matter (Score:2)
I had the stutter somethin' fierce... (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:I had the stutter somethin' fierce... (Score:1)
Re:I had the stutter somethin' fierce... (Score:1)
20,000 steam accounts disabled!! (Score:1)
Story here. [steampowered.com]
Interesting reading
Re:20,000 steam accounts disabled!! (Score:2)
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
Re:20,000 steam accounts disabled!! (Score:2)
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.
Download steam updates elsewhere? (Score:2)
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)
Someone who gave up... (Score:1)