Arrrgh. Half-Life must have it in for me. . .

[Kenlon]

I got Half Life, installed it, patched it to the latest patch and played it in D3D at 640x480. It is so choppy as to be nearly unplayable.

I'm running a P2 300, 175 megs of RAM, AWE 64 sound card, AOpen motherboard.

Anyone know anything that could help me?

(It runs better in software mode than under D3D!)

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Kenlon
"I am. All else is negotiable."

[Rags]

What video card?

Rags

[Kenlon]

D'oh!

I feel dumb.

It's a G400 MAX, un-overclocked.

[Kruzin]

Try it in OpenGL mode. HLs D3D is not real D3D, and the game was written in OGL.

And detail the problem a little better. Id it slow in single player, or just multi-player? If only in MP, is it a lag problem?

Is the sound skipping? AWE64 had known issues with HL, causing skipping sound, and sometimes slowing things down.

Switch to OGL, and put these lines in the autoexec.cfg file in the valve folder, and in all mods (like TFC) folders...

// Video
gl_ztrick "1"
gl_dither "1"
gl_polyoffset "2"
gl_lightholes "1"
gl_keeptjunctions "1"
r_drawviewmodel "1"
gl_keeptjunctions "1"
r_shadows "0"
cl_himodels "1"
gl_texturemode "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR" brightness "2.5"
gamma "3.0"
gl_playermip "0"
gl_picmip "0"
gl_round_down "0"
gl_texsort "1"
gl_overbright 1
gl_palette_tex "1"
r_decals "500"

// MultiPlayer
rate "3000"
fps_modem "30"
fps_lan "50"
fps_single "72"
cl_allowupload "1"
cl_allowdownload "0"

// Sound
_snd_mixahead "0.200"
_snd_noextraupdate "1"

[Kenlon]

Okay, all of my problems have been in single player only.
Sound skips sometimes, but not often.

Also, I just tried messing with the resolution, and it runs better at *00x600 than at 640x480!

WTF?

[Kenlon]

Just tried those settings. Much better, except for when I try a quick turn.

Any other hints?

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Kenlon
"I am. All else is negotiable."

[Jonesy @ work]

set up a permanent swap-file. HL was slow and jerky until I did this (if you have an empty partition put it at the front of it).

I only have a G200 in my PC and HL rocks (where's the mission pack!!)

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PII-266, G200, 128mb, Win95b.

[Nuno]

Kenlon: Don´t take me wrong, but a PII 300 isn´t cutting edge nowadays... and half-life is very cpu dependant.
I have a celeron 300A at 450 and HL is choppy at 300 Mhz. It was the same way with the G200 (but now I play it at 1152x864 )

Are you sure you aren´t expecting too much?

[Wombat]

He should be just fine. I'm running a K6-2/400, 128MB RAM, AWE64, and a G200 and I'm very fluid at 800x600.

Are you running the desktop at 32bpp? Try turning it down to 16bpp before you start up the game.

-Wombat

[burre burrito]

HL runs fine on my P2 350, 64 ram and G400 32 HD(vanilla?) except it hangs spontaniously...

[The Rock]

Half-Life is built on a modified Quake 2 engine, so a P2 300 should be fine. Although Half-Life is FULL of bugs; they're gonna be patching that one more than Unreal.

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The Rock
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: His eyes are closed."
-- Albert Einstein

[Nuno]

I know a PII 300 is more than enough to run HL, but you have to agree that it will not give optimal performance. The guy is complaining about choppiness and blaming the G400, but from my personal experience going from 300 -> 450 mhz does a BIG difference in HL. And the video card remained the same...

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 06 November 1999).]

[Kenlon]

Hey!
I'm not _blaming_ the G400 for anything.
It's a sweet card.

I was just looking for tweaks.
I'll try running HL with the desktop in 16 bit color and see what happens. I like being able to run my dsktop at 1600x1200x32bit though.

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Kenlon
"I am. All else is negotiable."

[Nuno]

Sorry I was more harsh than I intended. "Blaming" was a strong expression I read more carefully your previous posts and definitly you weren´t whining about the G400.

Because HL is based on Q2 engine, it will default the game color depth to the desktop color depth. 16 bit desktop will give you more performance (specially in higher resolutions).

But believe me HL is VERY cpu dependant. I remember that earlier Blowout timedemo - I had a G200 and the diference from running the 300a at 300 Mhz and at 450 was something like 17 to 26 fps. 50% increase in the frame-rate - exactly the increase in the CPU clock speed. So my point is that at 300 Mhz you are completly CPU bound in performance. 640x480 or 1024x768 it just doesn´t matter, the G400 (specially the Max) is just waiting for CPU data.

As for the 16 bit/32 bit I always run the desktop at 32 bit, but before I run HL or Q2, I change the color depth on the fly and after playing I change it back to 32 bit again. No need to reboot.

[Kenlon]

Well, with the autoexec.cfg and the desktop set to 16 bit color, HL is now a joy to play.

Except for when there is a large amount of sound being played. I'm afraid replacing my AWE 64 is not possible, so what else can I do to help with this?

BTW: Thanks to all of you who have helped me out.


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Kenlon
"I am. All else is negotiable."