I had a stupid dream about Half-Life II

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 11:33 am

I feel like a moron for even writing this.

I had a dream where a guy I knew in dream world had a copy of Half-Life II that was wholly legitimate. Only, none of us had a computer that could run it, so it showed up in black and white. In my dreamstate mind, apparently, there's no frames per second drop or heavy chugging of the graphic engine or anything like that, you just lose colors. So the game was in black and white.

Well, we were playing it, and the guy tells me that I will just flat-out lose it when I get to the first jaw-dropping scene. Suddenly I am in an elevator (can't tell if it's the game or real life) and -- all in black and white, more white than black -- I get out of the elevator and go up some stairs and a bunch of people are fighting aliens in a large office room.

I had to leave my friend's house, so I took my save game home and then realized that *I* did not have a copy of Half-Life II and I did not have a computer in the dream.

Then I woke up.

Nothing I even remotely associate with Half-Life II or Half-Life or Counter-Strike or the game where you play the Barney was depicted in the idiocy of my slumber. And I'm not even that psyched for Half-Life II, especially due to the requirement for an Internet connection, which will bring my network to a crawl. (I hear people saying, "You only need it to start the game! Yeah, fantastic, I'm sure there's no chance that Valve will accidently try dumping a whole bunch of shit on my machine the first chance it gets. Give me a break. It's inevitable.) I think the only HL2 "things" that had anything to do with anything else is that it's a big release coming soon.

Vitriola · Post by **Vitriola** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 11:40 am

Countdown to 'big release coming soon' joke referring to either poo or goo, depending on whether it's Ben or Bruce that gets there first.

The imagery in your dream sounded alot like the scenery in 'Saw', so it's not like you're completely off your rocker. Well, not because of that.

bruce · Post by **bruce** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 11:43 am

Vitriola wrote:Countdown to 'big release coming soon' joke referring to either poo or goo, depending on whether it's Ben or Bruce that gets there first.

Take it as read.

Bruce

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 1:33 pm

By the way, trying to install HL2 through CDs was the most horrible experience I have ever had in computer gaming and I will never... ever go through something like this again.

I'll have plenty of opportunity to add to my thoughts here later because I can only run HL2 for ten minutes before it tries to access RAM badly on my computer and sends me to the desktop.

But while it looks like it was smooth for people who used Steam, it absolutely fucking wasn't for those of us who got the discs. We paid an extra $5 for an extra 5 hours of install time, as Bill Dungsroman said.

What a joke. If this is the future I'm getting a PS3 and letting my computer fall into disuse.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 1:51 pm

When does PS3 come out?

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:22 pm

Not soon enough.

HL2 Installer Fun Fax: The installer will crap out on CD #4 if you don't decide to install Counter-Strike along with HL2! And it gives no notification that this is the problem! And then it forces you to BEGIN THE INSTALL AGAIN from the first disc!

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:40 pm

Note to self, try this:

oblem: stuttering sound and video accompanied by severe hard drive thrashing and very long level load times. also virtual memory (page file) errors and an OS that's very slow to respond after exiting HL2.

description: when loading a new level and/or at random, you may experience stuttering sound and/or video. for me, it made HL2 pretty much unplayable and i have a pretty high-end box (XP Pro, MSI K8T Neo, AMD 64 3200+, 1 GIG Corsair, RAID 0 array -- on which the OS and all programs (including HL2) run --, ATI 9800 Pro with the Omega drivers). also the HD was getting thrashed like crazy and the OS was slow after quitting the game.

solution 1 (a band-aid fix)): set texture detail to medium. i thought it was pretty silly to have the hardware and software i have and have to run the game with anything less than FULL detail/quality settings, but it worked. all other video and sound options remained at default.

solution 2 (the REAL fix): what worked for me was to ENABLE compressed textures in my video driver. simple as that! this solved 95% of the problem and the only time i experience some slight stutter is when loading a level (and even then, it is very acceptable). after doing this, i set texture detail to high (default) and the game ran very well. no more severe hard drive thrashing, virtual memory errors or long load times.

don't ask how to change this setting in your video drivers, because i can't really spell it out. i have an ATI 9800 Pro with the Omega drivers. i believe the default for these drivers was to have compressed textures enabled, but i changed it at some point. the setting for these drivers is here:

R-click desktop > properties > settings tab > advanced > advanced 3D tab > options tab -- under DirectX, look for "compressed textures" and set it to "enabled" (default may work as well, didn't try it).

what did NOT work, or did not work well:

-heapsize - made a small difference for a very short time.
cl_smooth - useless
snd_mix_ahead - useless
changing windowz swap file size, or using 2 swap files - useless

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:53 pm

Two more links:
http://halflife2.net/forums/showthread. ... e=23&pp=15

http://steampowered.com/forums/showthre ... adid=85158

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 4:21 pm

Does CS use the old engine, or has it been retooled to use the new one?

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 4:27 pm

New engine!

Nobody's been having trouble with Counter-Strike as far as I know.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 11:22 pm

The solution to HL2 crashing every ten minutes is to ensure that you have one piece of RAM in your second RAM slot and only that. Maybe other combinations work. The ones that fucking don't are:

Slot 0: 512MB DIMM
Slot 1: 256MB DIMM

Thanks, Valve, you assholes. I bet every system had a single piece of 512MB RAM in their laughable testing department.

And what kills me is that they had some scheme (according to an article on what it was like before it shipped) where everyone had to have zero bugs attached to their name before it could ship. What a joke. I found at least 10 trying to just play the stupid thing.

I'll be signing my posts with HL2 Fun Fax from here until I run out of Fun Fax.

HALF-LIFE 2 FUN FAX: Adjusting your advanced video settings will cause Half-Life 2 to completely lock up your computer!