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HL2 Anyone got it? First impressions?

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  • KeyserSoze
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    KeyserSoze polycounter lvl 18
    I had a sighting of Gman that I don't think has been mentioned yet. At the beginning of "Anticitizen One," when you return to the apartment buildings from earlier in the game, he appears on a television set in an abandoned room. When you first walk in the hall you can hear creepy, horror-movie music playing; when you turn the corner and look at the TV, you can see Gman for no more than a second, then the TV turns itself off and the creepy music stops playing. It was pretty cool, and my favorite GMan sighting so far (still haven?t finished the game).
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Ah cool thanks swampbug.

    I never saw the Gman in the game at all! frown.gif
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Hey so this is weird and really a pretty major issue.

    Anyone had problems with their save games?

    I may be being a total idiot here, but it seems theres some kind of weird limit to how many save games I can have. I noticed it the other night but didnt think too much of it. Ive quicksaved gazillions of times throughout the game, with the exact purpose of wanting to replay various epic moments, but Ive only got like 10 save games showing If that. It's really weird. Its like the later ones are overwriting the previous. Ive looked tonight and Ive got about 4 from the Citadel, leaving me with only a handful spread over the entire rest of the game!

    Anyone hear anything about a problem? Am i missing something obvious here?
  • Sett
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    Sett polycounter lvl 18
    I think that the QuickSave(F6,F9) gets it's own slot. So if you Quicksave it will over write anything in the Qs slot.

    What you should have done is Save. Saving adds a new slot.(Guessing here)
    Also the game auto saves a load points.
  • mr.toast
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    mr.toast polycounter lvl 18
    anyone know a way to start the game with the blue grav gun, that was the funnest weapon i ever used
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Quicksaves get deleted because most people quicksave often and don't want to clutter up their harddrive with that. Most games limit you to one quicksave, HL2 is relatively generous.
  • iMag
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    iMag polycounter lvl 18
    The videos shown at e3 were for the most part proof of concept demo's and never made the game for various reasons.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    This game is teh gay!

    gay.jpg
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    nah. more lord of the dance.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    hahaha oh man that picture just made my day!
  • Redlemons
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    Redlemons polycounter lvl 18
    I haven't been this engrossed in a game since Deus Ex! That was many years ago too.

    Unfortunately Half Life 2 looks like Half Life 1 to me. I have every single detail turned down lowest, and I've got a 2.4Ghz processor, DirectX 9, a Radeon 9600 Pro with the latest drivers, but only 256MB of DDR RAM. I'm getting frame rates of around 5-10 in empty hallways and almost unplayably choppy whenever any action happens. The video card isn't the greatest in the world but surely my system should be doing better than this? I assume it's the lack of RAM that's slowing it down, but this really is like I'm playing on a 486 here. The time between double clicking the .exe to get into HL2 and getting to the game menu is 13 minutes, I don't understand why. Defragged, no programs running in the background, latest drivers, etc. etc.

    --- Might be spolers ---





    Anyway, apart from pissing and moaning about the framerates, I love the game. Right now I've just met Alex's dad again in the prison thing, tied up like Hannabal Lecter, and discovered the secret about that other female scientiest, whatshername.

    -Good-
    - Ravenholm was scary as all hell, lots of places reminded me of Dawn of the Dead, and a later tunnel run in the dune buggy was like some scenes in 28 Days Later.
    - Gravity gun turns out not to be a gimmick, is actually an awesome idea
    - Getting across the sand without disturbing the ant lions was an awesome puzzle, a little obvious but still cool
    - The shotgun feels powerful, especially when the soldiers turn to jelly and slam into a wall ten feet away
    - The bug bait seemed like a bit of a gimmick, but was helpful
    - Facial animation is great from what I can see
    - All the sounds are top-notch, especially the crying zombies
    - The really fast running zombies that climb up the drain pipes, they scare the shit out of me! Best. Enemy. Ever.
    - Water effects, shaders, all that stuff rocks


    -Bad-
    - Hoverboat sequence was way, way too long, too predictable (ramp, jump, helicopter, ramp, jump, helicopter...)
    - Headcrabs are cool, spiders not so cool
    - Sewer and warehouse levels always suck ass, no exception here

    That's about all I can think of off the top of my head, I've had it for a week now (since the 18th) so it looks like I've got another week or so to go.
  • bearkub
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    bearkub polycounter lvl 18
    HAHAHAHA. How the hell did you capture that image, Daz?
  • b1ll
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    b1ll polycounter lvl 18
    HAHAH best pic ever daz. ROFL

    I was checking Steam news yesterday and OMG
    "Next week we will be releasing the Source SDK, along with a surprise for the community."

    So yeah surprise next week? What will it be ya think?
    DOD source release?
    HL 2 DM ?
    TFC source ?

    Hl 2,5 or 3 Release date?

    TF2 !

    CS source map early release?

    Or something poopish like Ricochet or DMC source Lol

    I hope its something interesting hey?
    AHHA
  • gauss
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    gauss polycounter lvl 18
    i think we're best off not hoping for too much. if i had a guess it'd be either the rest of the C-Strike maps/models, maybe a couple of example maps to go with the SDK... something along those lines, though it possibly could be DoD.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    It's TeamFortress 2 you twits.
    /end dream.exe
  • FatAssasin
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    FatAssasin polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    Officials from Half-Life 2 developer Valve have announced that they have suspended almost 20,000 accounts on its online distribution system Steam. The move was related to gamers trying to register pirated copies of Half-Life 2, all of whom apparently tried to use the same CD key.

    The accounts for all those concerned have been suspended indefinitely, although the company has given no indication that they will try to take legal proceedings against any users concerned.

    Valve have also moved to deny rumors that the company purposefully released a doctored version of the game online in order to trap gamers trying to using it.

    "The method used was extremely easy for Valve to trace and confirm and so there is no question that the accounts disabled were used to try and illegally obtain Half-Life 2," said a spokesperson. "Valve did not put out any kind of fake key or fake warez or hack instructions to trap people. The hack came from the 'community' as do they all."

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Suckers.
  • b1ll
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    b1ll polycounter lvl 18
    well yeah, but thats not the surprise FatAssassin Lol
  • mr.toast
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    mr.toast polycounter lvl 18
    well iam happy to know that at least my account is suspended and not banned for good
  • Scott Ruggels
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    Scott Ruggels polycounter lvl 18
    Finally finished it last night. I completed it. I have to say that for me, it was the best single player experience I have had. Such a broad range of styles in the game. The ending was abrupt, but I amnot disatisfied with it. It ended like it begun. Looking forward not to good Multiplayer Mods. HLS Deathmatch is amusing, but not quite up to what I like about UT2K4. COngrats to the folks from Valve.

    Scott
  • KeyserSoze
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    KeyserSoze polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    I have every single detail turned down lowest, and I've got a 2.4Ghz processor, DirectX 9, a Radeon 9600 Pro with the latest drivers, but only 256MB of DDR RAM. I'm getting frame rates of around 5-10 in empty hallways and almost unplayably choppy whenever any action happens.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Damn, that's bad. I have an Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6GHz), GeForce 3 Ti200, and 512MB of PC2600 and I get frame rates between 20-25 even in heavy action (this is an estimation... I haven't actually checked my FPS). I run it with all details on high (except reflections, which I have on "reflect world" rather than "reflect all"), 1024x768 with no FSAA, and of course in DX8 since my card isn't capable of DX9. The RAM might be what's hurting you.

    I'm actually surprised how well it ran on this aging machine. This thing has held up pretty well considering I built it on a small budget almost 3 years ago, but it's really starting to struggle with most current games frown.gif.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah Im with ya Scott.

    Hey on the subject of the games performance.....I would much appreciate anyones input here but I have a totally bizzare problem. I have by all accounts a pretty decent spec machine ( P4, nvidia 9800 Ultra, 1.5 gig ram ) cable internet ( although it is those fuckers comcast ) and heres the thing: Since it came out Ive not had one moment of remotely playable experience with HL2 DM. I'll connect to a game that lists a ping of <20, only to join and my ping is up and down like a whores drawers, and usually between 200 and 300. I am truly stumped. I have run some tests on my cable and the connection reads as good, I play other online games with a really low ping ( <30 ). I played earlier tonight with a friend in Utah on a server in CA: He had a ping of <50 and mine was 250 ( and Im in CA ).Anyone heard of anything like this? Its pretty weird.

    As for frame rates and HL2, turns out that 'cos of the physics, the game is way more dependent on CPU power than grafx card. Check the Gamespot HL2 performance guide. Its pretty revealing.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    I mean yeah. The 764 ping aint really doin' my game any favours here ;-p

    What the hell could cause this when other games play fine online?!

    ping.jpg
  • tpe
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    tpe polycounter lvl 18
    There are a bunch of players having the same prob, try this search from the halflife2.net forums http://www.halflife2.net/forums/search.php?searchid=235993

    one is possible solution is Ctrl+Alt+Del
    Processes
    Right Click on Steam.exe (or HL2.exe)
    Set Priority to Low

    But there are also a couple of other things you can do, have a look at the first 5 results or so and you should get most of the possible solutions.

    tpe
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Hey thanks tpe. I found the threads above and tried a few things suggested, but alas no joy. Whats hilarious is that my CS: Source pings are consistently <30. How bizzarre is that when its the same game engine?! Oh well, I'll do a bit more digging around I guess.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    tpe: I'd recommend using CTRL-SHIFT-ESC because that triggers the task manager in both XP and 2k. I think it works in some Linux desktop environments, too.
  • swampbug
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    swampbug polycounter lvl 18
    Saw this posted on another mesageboard//
    The pic simply speaks for itself. laugh.gif
    120604_full.jpg
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    rofl swampbug laugh.gif

    however i'd like to know how that cheating bastard got the ultra-grav-gun on the first level... the console command "give item_physcannon" should work, but it doesn't... bah!
  • KeyserSoze
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    KeyserSoze polycounter lvl 18
    HA! That's awesome. That guy already got his comeuppance when I played; instead of putting the can in the trash, I threw it in his face and ran around him when he started to chace after me laugh.gif.
  • Redlemons
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    Redlemons polycounter lvl 18
    Edit: god damn this non-HTML business!

    Mop, in the console, type
    sv_cheats 1
    map d3_citadel_04
    changelevel mapname (whatever map you want)
    give weapon_physcannon

    Ta-da!
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