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Valve sux the big one sometimes >
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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by half-dude on Fri Oct 12th at 8:56am 2007

Ok I liked Valve, notice the ED. They used to be a nice little company with a simple delay issue. But now they've really started pissing me off, and what's worse is that you know it's because they're too high and mighty to care anymore. What I'm talking about here is the annoyingly frequent source engine bugs, namely the "looping sound crash." This problem has been around since Half life 2 came out, it has been talked about by the masses on steam forums, and asked to be fixed by countless customers.

Has Valve fixed this obviously large problem? NO, they just seem to brush it off and keep making more games based off the same buggy engine. For example, I just got finished reseting my mechine after Episode one crashed BEFORE IT EVEN LOADED THE LEVEL! And this has happened 3 different times out of the most recent times I've TRIED to play it. GOD, Im practically afraid to play my own games out of fear of it crashing my PC. I can tell you with absolute confidence that if I wanted to play episode one from beginning to end in one sitting I would NOT be able to without my PC crashing. I've seen it crash at every point I can think of. While the level loads, between level changes at like 84% done, and the looping crash in level. It's just so f**cking ridiculous givent how long Valve's known about it.

Oh and I failed to mention, a friend recently got me The Ship for my Birthday. Heh, I cant even finish the first level because it'll freeze if I go out a cirtain door T_T....

This completely ruins the game experience for me, because I cant take two steps in the game without fearing it locking up any second. You just feel like you're running a timebomb! It pisses me off that I cant even get episode two without worry of something not working. Which, by the way, I've looked at on the steam forums. Apparently the game has several big bugs, one laughable one involving the NPCs not talking because of missing sound files. XD

Oh god Valve ^^

You have probably the easiest opportunity to fix these problems (ie steam) and still havent. *clap clap* congratulations. I at least hope they fixed the all the crashes in episode two, seeing as they said they've massively redone the engine... knowing them they probably just made more.




Yes I spell bad, but remimber Mighty are the stupid.

Check out my drawings at http://half-dude.deviantart.com/



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by RedWood on Fri Oct 12th at 9:12am 2007

In my experience, Valves games have run better than any other. I think i'v had Hl2 crash to desk top only once or twice. Though i have had several problums with steam its self.
My only real complaint it that it takes so long for the game to reset its self after changing the video settings.

What kind of comp are u running? It's not a dell or Compaq, is it?


Reality has become a commodity.



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Yak_Fighter on Fri Oct 12th at 10:01am 2007

hey half-dude long time no see

oh and would it be mean to note that not only did HL2 not crash once on release day 2004, but that ep1, ep2 and Portal haven't crashed at all? Usually if there's long standing bugs in programs that get updated constantly it means that bug is really hard to either reproduce or fix. Its PC gaming, s**t happens deal with it.





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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Andrei on Fri Oct 12th at 10:19am 2007

I haven't had any trouble with HL2 nor EP1 nor any other source-based game, and my computer isn't exactly top-notch.
Maybe you've got some bad video drivers or something? If you have an nvidia card, then stay clear of the latest drivers, they're almost unusable.



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Crono on Fri Oct 12th at 11:06am 2007

The whole "stuttering sound crash" thing was due to limited hardware abilities (namely the sound card).

See if lowering the quality of the audio in the settings helps at all.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Le Chief on Fri Oct 12th at 12:40pm 2007

Make sure you're pc is defragged. The biggest problem I have with valve is the loong level loading. It is possible with the same level of graphics to have almost seamless level transitions.


Aaron's Stuff



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Crono on Fri Oct 12th at 10:21pm 2007

? quote:
Make sure you're pc is defragged. The biggest problem I have with valve is the loong level loading. It is possible with the same level of graphics to have almost seamless level transitions.


While fragmentation does cause blocks of data to be, potentially, scattered, that is NOT going to increase load times significantly. The access time is not much longer.

Something that effects loading, specifically, is the processor, memory bandwidth (as well as size), and the bus.

Having a dual core processor over a single core will show massive improvements in loading time, making the transitions in something like HL2 (with relatively small areas to load) nearly seamless.

If you don't have enough memory, the game will page it on the disc. Which, if the page file were fragmented severely, that is something that could slow down performance. That still doesn't require complete defragmentation of the drive. (If you want to, go ahead, my point is it's probably not the problem).

If something in HL is running then you get a BSOD screen (said that HL2 crashes the machine), then there's a very good chance that a driver is crashing as a result of something in DirectX. One of the only guaranteed ways to crash a Windows XP machine is to make a device driver terminate inappropriately. Windows has no recovery for such an event and assumes something random is happening and turns your computer off "for safety".

Earlier, I didn't actually read the entire post, I thought you had that old stuttering sound problem, but it seems you have a much larger one.

I'm starting to think now, you should check out your sound card drivers.

I just want to point out that these issues are not related to the source engine in any way. The source engine uses the directx api ... which in turn is being managed by the OS. An error can occur in DX and the OS will catch that and do something about it. All the game did was call a DX function ... like InitializeAudioStream(), or something and the audio stream failed and Windows flailed it arms about.

Blame people whom are responsible for things like this.

As far as missing files go ... re download the GCF cache. I know for a fact that there are intact ones on the Steam servers since I've played the games you're talking about recently with no issues.

This is a localized event and doesn't happen to the majority of people using the products.

However, if it isn't missing any data, then there's obviously some sort of issue going on, and if it is only localized to you (and a few other people), then there's a good chance that the common difference is the cause, which would be hardware drivers ... again.

You can check the Windows log to see if there's any information about system crashes or driver errors.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by omegaslayer on Sat Oct 13th at 12:29am 2007

Lets see if we can actually see where the problem lies half dude, before you start bashing a company that *obviously* does care about its community.

-Post your computer specs - If your playing on a Dell inspiron from 2003 ...well.... I don't think I really need to say whats wrong with this >_>.

-Have you recently done a full system clear? - generally speaking if you've been playing on the same windows format for the past 3 years... your gonna encounter bugs/crashes/errors in any program that requires intense processing and threading - IT IS MICROSOFT AFTER ALL.

Now for a little response to Your "Valve/source sucks"

Generally speaking Valve designed an engine that has fall backs built into it. If you couldn't run a certain aspect of the engine in DX9, it would fall back to DX8...or even as drastic as DX7! I mean Source was designed to be played on a VAST variety of gaming systems. Sure you had Doom 3 that had all the intense graphics and dynamic lights, but if it weren't for its suck ass game play that was its main down fall, not many people bought it because of it required so much to play it!

I mean look at a few games coming out right now..or soon.. Unreal Tournament 2007 (or 2008 whenever they release it) isn't going to sell much because you require a 5000$ rig to play it! When as here your look at HL2: E3 (whenever it/if comes out) is going to sell MUCH more because of its capabilities of providing an awesome game with variable graphics and awesome game play for an affordable rig! Granted your case might be different because you may have the newest Alien ware rig, at which point I'd have to say that theres something more amiss there, but I don't know you, so I can't really say.

Can your really blame a company for going with the most profitable business model AND provide some great games?

Welcome back BTW!


Posting And You



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Trapt on Sat Oct 13th at 1:20am 2007

I had the same problem as you. I fixed it using this:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6765969&postcount=1261

Fixed my problem perfectly. I set mine to 256mb.

Make sure you reboot your PC afterwards.

Enjoy!

Edit: for the record, since using this fix, I've played 24 hours of TF2, 5 hours of Ep2 and 3 hours of Portal WITHOUT a looping sound freeze, along with numerous hours of Dystopia which used to freeze on me all the time.


I seem to have done toilet on your floor



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Crono on Sat Oct 13th at 2:58am 2007

Oh, Windows page file, what problems are you not responsible for?


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Yak_Fighter on Sat Oct 13th at 4:15am 2007

uh... is that saying the page file should only be 256 megs in size? 'cause mine's 2gigs...



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Crono on Sat Oct 13th at 6:43am 2007

It can be nearly any size. Window XP puts a cap on it at 2GB.

The page file is, basically, working memory on the hard disk. It's there to extend ram for running applications.

It can be able size, really, as long as the size is appropriate and not too small, being too large isn't really an issue.

In Windows, it generally sees that more stuff has to be put into virtual memory, and sees that, there isn't enough space allocated, what Windows does is notify the user, then expands it. When it's done, it doesn't contract.

You can set the page size in the utilities and restart. The page file is never carried over from different sessions of use (besides coming back from hibernation or suspension).

Generally, for Windows, people suggest half the amount of physical memory you have as a size. But it really doesn't matter as long as stuff fits and your HDD isn't too small. There's a chance that the access speed for the page file can diminish during use if it's too large, though.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by FatStrings on Sat Oct 13th at 9:49am 2007

? quote:
Generally, for Windows, people suggest half the amount of physical memory you have as a size.

agreed



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Le Chief on Sat Oct 13th at 11:23pm 2007

Windows Xp put a cap on it at 2gb?

I have a 10gb page file and I have windows xp.


Aaron's Stuff



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by omegaslayer on Sun Oct 14th at 3:54am 2007

I've heard several different things actually-

1) Set your page file to 2 TIMES your physical memory.

2) I've set mine to 3000mb (two times my 1.5 gb memory) - although I think i've also read that although you can set it that high, windows will never use more than 2gb by default. So arron I think you should set your page file to down because your wasting HDD space with a 10gb page file... I mean 7gb is is a lot to give up... especially on a lap top like I think your on.

3) You should set your page file on the HDD thats NOT on the windows HDD. aka: I have windows in C HDD, and I have my page file on F HDD (no they're not partitions, they're actually two different physical drives).


Posting And You



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Crono on Sun Oct 14th at 4:06am 2007

? quote:
You should set your page file on the HDD thats NOT on the windows HDD. aka: I have windows in C HDD, and I have my page file on F HDD (no they're not partitions, they're actually two different physical drives).


Okay ... I have to ask, why?


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by omegaslayer on Sun Oct 14th at 5:04am 2007

Thats what I read. And maybe my logic is incorrect on this, but while your computer access files from windows HDD, it can set the other HDD to do the page file accesses. Or can windows only control one HDD at a time? In anycase here is the guide that I follow that helps my computer boot up faster, run faster, and generally just makes windows easier to work with:

http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

(Windows XP one...the vista one I have yet to try)


Posting And You



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Crono on Sun Oct 14th at 6:15am 2007

A lot of hard drive details have nothing to do with Windows, in regards of performance. All Windows does is do a request and then puts the thread to sleep, when the HDD's manager is done with the request(s) (as the OS can do many requests that get stored in a cache on the HDD's controller card) it flags the CPU and sends the data that was requested, in the order it was requested.

Now, the only argument would be, Windows doesn't request things in a nice order (which is probably true) ... but, as far as I know the page file's placement on the disc is near the beginning of the disc, so it's readily easy to get to. I would also imagine (and hope) that the entire page file is not fragmented (much more common) as that would give noticeable lag.

In general though ... it's like saying I need a Oct-Core CPU next week to play Unreal Tournament 3 ... the added payoff is just not worth the overhead cost and complication.

There's also something working against this idea. If it's on a second HDD that is not being used as the OS Install disc ... it would be safe to assume that, in a lot of cases, the drive is idle. If that is the case, when the page file is accessed, an idle state would occur more often, meaning you'd have to wait for the discs to spin up before accessing the page.

That would be noticeably slower, as well.

I just can't see how any real performance gain can be squeezed out of that idea.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by wil5on on Sun Oct 14th at 7:06am 2007

I think it works assuming that the windows drive and page file are constantly being accessed, so one drive can stay in the page file area as opposed to alternating between the page file and other files, improving seek time for the page file.

Those assumptions are rarely the case, so I'm inclined to fully agree with Crono on this.




"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"
- My yr11 Economics teacher



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 Re: Valve sux the big one sometimes >
Posted by Le Chief on Sun Oct 14th at 7:32am 2007

You got a good memory there omegaslayer, yes I am on a laptop. My page file is so high because sometimes when I compile a map it stops 3/4 of the way through and says that I need to increase my ram or page file. So everytime I get one of these messages I just increase it by about 1gb, haven't got one in a while.

So that means that the computer is using the 10gb of page file and not only 2gb of it, because increasing the page file is the only thing that makes the message go away.


Aaron's Stuff




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