Stuttering Problems

Read this:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=403258

Hope this fixes those darn stutters.

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:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer

This is funny because when people were first bitching about the
stuttering bug Valve claimed it wasn't a problem with a game, but
rather people's systems. They said they were unable to reproduce
the stuttering on a variety of machines in their offices.

At least now they're admitting its something they can fix, and are working on a solution.

By "stuttering problem" are they referring to the terrible way elevators behave in multiplayer? That was one of the biggest factors that turned me off from HL2 mapping.

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Some people are like slinkys...

They aren?t really good for anything, but you can't help but laugh when one tumbles down the stairs.

I think they're referring to the fact that NPCs stutter on certain machines.

By "stuttering problem" are they referring to the terrible way elevators behave in multiplayer? That was one of the biggest factors that turned me off from HL2 mapping.

Engine limitation, I think. Really sucks, yeah. :smile:

It's about the audio stutter some people have.

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:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer

By "stuttering problem" are they referring to the terrible way elevators behave in multiplayer?

No, and it's not what Andrei suggests either.

They're referring to sounds being streamed into memory as & when
they're needed and the massive fps nosedives when this happens. These
sounds can be ambient effects, NPC speech, sounds required for
soundscapes, or whatever. Just streamed sounds in general.

I have this problem myself; I can run HL2 with all settings on high,
lots of AA, etc and maintain very high fps yet every single time a
sound has to be streamed into memory the fps nosedives into single
figures for a few seconds, during which the first half second or so of
the sound repeatedly plays, hence this stuttering effect.

Some people have figured a way around it by writing .cfg files that
load all sounds required for a level into memory before the level
begins, so in effect no sounds have to be streamed in while playing.

I didnt get it when I first played HL2, about a year ago, but I get stuttering now. I think it can be avoided (at least in my case) if you stop every program you dont use before playing.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

keved said:
I have this problem myself; I can run HL2 with all settings on high, lots of AA, etc and maintain very high fps yet every single time a sound has to be streamed into memory the fps nosedives into single figures for a few seconds, during which the first half second or so of the sound repeatedly plays, hence this stuttering effect.

Not to be argumentative but it sorta sound like, you reached the limit of your machine, and the sound was the straw that broke its back.

No matter how massive any PC is, its got to have a limit.

Now, if you had said that you had your settings on normal, and this happened I'd say, it was prolly an engine problem. (knowing that you would be apt to have a very large PC and the setting of normal wasn't to difficult to manage)

My PC is not massive, by todays standards, but running on high, gives me problems sometimes too.

shrugs

Perhaps, you should try to create the stutter on a lower setting to see whats really at fault.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Not to be argumentative but it sorta sound like, you reached the
limit of your machine, and the sound was the straw that broke its back.

Perhaps, you should try to create the stutter on a lower setting to see whats really at fault.

Believe me Orph, for those of us having problems with it, it's not to
do with HL2 running at higher settings than our PCs can handle.

My PC has 2 gig ram and an Ati 850XT PE. I've tried running in the
lowest res possible with everything on low settings and no AA. My PC
will be happily flying along at 200-300 fps even with loads of action
on-screen, then...WHAM...it'll have to stream in a sound (or sounds), I
get a nice single-figure fps slideshow for a few seconds when the
stuttering thing occurs, then it reverts back to 200-300 fps again once
the sound has finished loading.

So, even on the absolute lowest settings it still happens on my PC.

On my second PC it doesn't happen at all, despite it only having an old
Nvidia FX5600 and half a gig ram. It seems nothing to do with PC power
tbh.

At least Valve have now stopped doing their Ostrich head-in-the-sand
routine and acknowledged the problem exists for many people. :wink:

keved said:
On my second PC it doesn't happen at all, despite it only having an old Nvidia FX5600 and half a gig ram. It seems nothing to do with PC power tbh.

Read this, the way you wrote it exactly. Since it is an intermittent issue and seems to be only certain machines then it has to be , or by my figuring a hardware issue.

Sure, HL2 may be at fault because it has a conflict with the machine but essentially, it is HL2's issue with YOUR hardware.

What if its a simple case of how your mainboards bridge handles sound? Suppose your older machine has a much better sound handling system?

I had an old 1 gig hard drive and an old A drive that were on my old K62 400, that had a faster response time than my next machine did which had a 10 gig drive and ran at 1.4 ghz.

My point is, perhaps its your machines ability to utilize the quirky nature of how the HL2 code is toward sound.

If it effected all PC's the same, I'd say it was 100% Valves fault. Since it only effects certain machines... Well, is it really Valves responsibility to foresee every mainboards construction and code the game accordingly?

shrugs

I think not, but, I seem to not have sound issues either so I may be biased.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Sure, HL2 may be at fault because it has a conflict with the
machine but essentially, it is HL2's issue with YOUR hardware.

Sure, it may well be some sort of hardware or driver problem/conflict,
or maybe an audio codec, and sure Valve can't be expected to forsee
every possibility and combination, but I'm far from the only person to
have this problem Orph mate.

ONE thread on audio stuttering at the Steam forums has had 200k+ views
(and there have been umpteen other threads on this topic), and ONE
thread at halflife2.net has had 81k+ views.

Check out the "Do you experiment audio stuttering in Half Life 2?" poll in this thread below. That only 133 people cast votes isn't relevant, what is relevant is that half
of the votes went into the "Hell yes and this is really annoying"
category. If this poll is anything to go by, half the people who bought
HL2 have this problem!

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33792068

More reading material here if anyone's interested...

http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/

This all smacks more to me of a major problem, not some obscure
hardware possibility that Valve couldn't reasonably have accounted for.

Unfortunately it's not a case of soldiering on and putting up with the
problem, because it's literally every single corner when new assets
have to be loaded.

Anyway, the point is that Valve have only finally acknowledged that a
large number of people have the problem, instead of the patronising
reply telling us to turn down the video settings and try again.

Maybe after a year of not playing HL2 on my "best" PC I'll soon finally be able to. :smile:

keved said:
but I'm far from the only person to have this problem Orph mate.

And, I am not unsympathetic to your woes bud. You should know that much about me.

Machines, especially the massive monsters we have now, have quite a few commonalities in their general makeup. Perhaps the people who have this issue all have ASUS boards, or BIOSTAR boards. I dunno. I do agree that its an issue that needs addressed but what if it boils down to just plain old "poor maintenance" on the part of the machine owners?

I run Spybot weekly, as well as adaware. I make sure that my registry is clean ALWAYS! and I make sure, within reason, that I have no sound codecs that could/can cause issues. Yeah, I cannot be sure but i try.

What if the people who have this issue aren't quite as diligent as I?

My machine is nearly 100% a gaming machine. Its only other task?? Creating backup's for my DVD collection.

I have no work to clutter it. I have 56k so I seldom visit any sites to catch bugs from. My machine hasn't been reformatted since the day I bought it and it still zooms along nicely.

What if its simply clutter?

I dunno, but its like the problem we are having here at Snarkpit when we run out of bandwidth... What if its something that cannot be solved except finding the true cause? Valve throwing money at it won't solve poor maintenance.

As I said, I just don't know. I have no problems playing my game.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

What if the people who have this issue aren't quite as diligent as I?

Yep, could well be the problem in some cases, Orph.

I doubt it's the chief problem though; some people have gone to the
trouble of noting which sounds are required for each level in HL2 and
writing a massive cfg for each level listing all its required sounds
(which the player execs before playing the level to load all required
sounds into memory to avoid streaming them in mid-game altogether.)
It's reasonable to assume these people have tried all the defraging and
whatnot long before resorting to such measures as spending
days/weeks/months writing long cfg files. I've tried it all myself to
no avail; even fresh XP installs.

Other games like Battlefield 2, Fear, Quake 4, etc run smooth as silk,
yet this audio problem is so bad HL2 is unplayable on my "best" PC. :sad:

These cfg files I mention DO pretty much eradicate the problem, but
it's an unacceptable solution; these guys have only done cfg files for
the HL2 levels meaning all amateur single or multi player levels still
have the problem. :sad:

The fact that there is a solution on a user level at least proves that its fixable.

Lets hope that its worth fixing on the commercial one as well.

Good luck bud.

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The best things in life, aren't things.