Halflife 2 episode 2 problem (New OP)

Lardalish

Hey, I was told that help threads pertaining to games weren't too frowned upon. Of course if I'm wrong just lock this.


Ok, I had a problem with episode one and I lowered my settings and that fixed it. I played through that whole game without any other issues. I started Episode two and went ahead and lowered my settings just as a preventative measure. Well, the game played fine up until

I had retrieved the larval extract and got back to Alyx and the vorgons. The movie started and apparently the G-Man is supposed to be talking to me but he never starts. It shows his face eventually and his lips arent moving so I didn't suspect anything, but then it freezes.

In the middle of the movie it just stops and I cant do anything but ctrl+alt+del and closing the game.

Well, I tried lowering my settings, but they were already lowered.

I tried updating my sound and video drivers, but they were already updated.

A friend found a thread on the steam boards and someone had my problem and they put somethin, I cant find the length of code, but it changed the "heap size" to half my memory or something like that.

And I clicked some stuff in my video card settings, made a few things application controlled.


Well, after all that I tried to play it again and it was worse than before. It was choppy, constantly, like "the game is just loading for a second" choppy but all the time. It was unplayable. The menus were sluggish and the sound was all messed up. So I went back I reset all those things to the way they were before and that didnt change anything. So I reinstalled the game, that didnt work.

All the other games in the Orange Box work just fine, so Im kinda confused. I meet the minimum requirements for the Orange Box, just not the reccomended ones.

Heres the system specs that the System Requirements Lab website gave me,

Intell Pentium 4 CPU 1.99ghz
767 MB RAM
Windows 2000 Service pack 4 build 2195
NVidia GeForce FX 5500
256MB RAM
3D Acceleration
HW Rasterization
Pixel Shader Ver. 2.0
Video Card Driver Version (DirectX) Your driver version number is: 6.14.11.6218
DirectX 9.0c
Creative SB Live! Basic (WDM)
Your driver version number is: 5.0.2184.1
7.6 GB Free Space
SONY DVD RW DRU-810A (but I downloaded off steam, so I don't think the CD drive matters)




So, I seem to have managed to not fix the original problem, but infact made it worse. What do I need to do?

august

When's the last time you did a defrag? I find that sometimes helps, especially after downloading a large amount of content from Steam.

Lardalish

It has been a while since I did that.

Ill get that started, but any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Ohtsam

I've unfortunately had this problem as well and it only happened in the citadel
I found that I had to turn every graphical setting to low to make it work

Lardalish

Just bumping the thread cause of the new OP.

Lardalish

No one has any ideas?

sonictk

the -heapsize var basically allocates a certain amount of additional memory to the application when it loads so that it doesn't end up clogging up your system due to not enough RAM being allocated to it iirc. It should not have screwed up HL2 unless you set it to a very low/very high value, and even then after you remove it things should have reverted to the way they were.

I'm guessing you did:

And I clicked some stuff in my video card settings, made a few things application controlled.

Yea, probably shouldn't have done that. If you manage to change back whatever you did, btw, I'd say you should first verify your GCF files, and if that works, try to check what's going on by opening the console during the sequence.

I have a feeling one of the sound files that it's trying to play is corrupted and thus it hangs, but I'd imagine that files unable to be played would merely be skipped instead of resulting in a crash. Either way, verify your GCF first.

Also, why not just skip the entire sequence altogether?

Azio

sonictk wrote: »

Also, why not just skip the entire sequence altogether?

Well. It's a pretty important -- and awesome -- sequence. And you can't skip it.

sonictk

You can if you use map <mapname> to load the next part. I think there's even a command now to load per checkpoint, I haven't been fooling with the HL cvars for years now.

Well, you could listen to the audio in the GCF, but yea it's infinitely more awesome to see the dream sequence.

Wetsun

I had the same problem, but forcing dxlevel 90 and adjusting the heapsize fixed it (I believe there was another option I used as well, but don't know what it is anymore...HD crashed a few days ago).

If you don't set any launch options, you can quicksave after it starts getting choppy, then quickload and it will run the rest smoothly (This doesnt work for the end-game sequence, however...I had to suffer through it at 3fps until I fixed the launch options).

Quantux

My money is on a corrupt file or HDD problem for the original issue. As for your display drivers, go back and change everything to app controlled. If you can, throw some ram at that thing. I remember I had a similar setup (athlon xp 2.0GHz, 512MB ram, fx5200 w/128MB) when HL2 came out and it barely ran with most everything turned down. Later I added 512MB to get up to a gig 'o ram, and it was like night and day. I could use the "recommended settings" without slowdown.

So in short:

1.chkdsk /f
2.defrag
3.add ram

Other than that it may be time to start thinking about your next system.

Lardalish

Ok, yeah I know I probly shouldn't have messed with the video card, that was stupid. Is there a way to set it back to factory settings?


As for the save and quickload thing, its choppy all the time. It doesn't "start" getting choppy, it just is. Even before the game starts, the main menu is barely responsive, taking a second or two to realize that I moved my mouse.

Ive defragged a couple times (by the way, is it normal for the comp to say the defrag is done, but theres still a lot of red files in the analysis? Like, I defragged twice in a row and there was still a ton of red left.)

Is the verifying the GCF what you do when you right click in steam and verify the files? Cause I did that, and I didnt see any errors or anything.

Lardalish

Is there someplace that would be better for me to ask?

I signed up for the steam forums but they're approving me or some other bullshit. I went through their little automated help thing, and that didn't help. I found the email address to send a question to, but who knows when Ill hear back.

So where else can I look? you guys dont seem to have much idea what I need to do to fix this.

sonictk

Steam forums take a while to verify, yes.

I'm quite sure the nForce control panel or whatever Nvidia calls it these days has an option for you to revert your video card settings.

Try checking the console to see if the error actually writes to it, That way it's easier to see what's going on.

BTW since your entire game seems to be stuttering, I suggest you check whether anything is wrong with your sound/video by running dxdiag. Just in case. Since you said you got it running fine before I'd think that messing up your gfx card settings might cause some report or other to show up.

Drovek

The original problem magically got fixed for me by just saving (not quicksaving) right before the chanting started (exactly where the choppiness starts), then quitting the game. Then I loaded it again and loaded the save and it automagically worked. No need to lower settings and no framerate drop. Also I didn't even have that problem in the other couple of scenes where it's supposed to happen too.

As for the rest of your problem... well, no idea.