Half-Life 2 problems thread.
 

Well, I purchased HL2 today, the collector's edition, and can't play. Why? Because the game insists I don't have the DVD in the drive when I do. Their site has nothing about this problem, Sierra's tech support line is constantly busy, and SteamPowered Forums are sporatically down. All this was after waiting an hour for all three games to be "unlocked" and installed. Anyone have this same problem and find a way around it?

Here's my problem (minor):

The opening movie (which is apparently just the Valve logo or something) won't play. I get "Video Not Available" and something about the "decompressor"?

After that the game loads up and I get the nifty rendered splash screen, but I haven't actually tried to play it yet.

Re: Half-Life 2 problems thread.
 

any chance you have a burning program like Alcohol 120% that uses virtual drives or use something like Daemon tools?

Those virtual drives will piss off copy-protected discs

The game gets stuttery once in a while, normally before a sound plays. Probably just my system not being good enough, but I'm hoping a patch might smooth it out, since it's the same on any resolution I've tried.

I get that too. I'm pretty sure it's related to not having enough RAM. I have 512mb, which is pretty low by today's standards. Defragging your hard drive can help a little, too. Basically you want to cut down on how much the game has to access the hard drive.

I have a gig of ram, and defragged yesterday in preperation for today...

I'll cross post this here. Its a minor problem but it bugs me.

I can't connect to the friends network. Never have been able to since I purchased on Sunday. I've forwarded the ports on my router and rebooted... Everything else network related seems to be working fine.

Half the time I connect to it, half the time I don't. I have no ports for it forwarded on my router (but maybe they use the same ports as something else I have forwarding.)

No one is on my list anyhow...

The stuttering problem is actually a widespread issue.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=51351

It turns out some Sonic DVD program was causing my initial problem. Some idiotic program that I never used pre-installed on my laptop. Ugh.

I get the stuttering a LOT. Very annoying. Pretty fun game, though I'll sure be glad when I'm no longer on this dang airboat.

The airboat kicks ass, but goes on too long. Anyways, we can discuss it in the other thread.

I am having some video problems. After the Valve splash screen, I see for a brief moment another splash screen that says loading in the lower right hand corner. Then my screen goes completely white. Some data is being loaded from the hard drive for a few seconds and then I get kicked back to windows. I am able to run CS: Source with no problems. Anyone have any ideas?

In the Steam 'My Games' section, right click on Half-Life 2, and select properties. Make sure the 'Status' says "Ready to Play". It could still be downloading data.

I am just curious if anyone else had this problem in Half-Life 2. I believe there is a bug in the game during a section where you have to jump that hovercraft vehicle from one ramp to another. It is towards the beginning of the game. About 3 hours in maybe. I included a picture of the place where the bug is so you know what I am talking about. Well, everytime I jump the hovercraft from one one ramp to another, the hovercraft just crashes to the ground in midair right before it is about to land on the other ramp. I have tried jumping at least 100 times with no success during the past two weeks. Did anyone else have this bug in their game, and how did you fix it?

http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/users/41c9d...xtdyBB6z0r0JtH

I'm not sure exactly what you are talking about since your picture is down, but you may want to go back one saved game and replay from there and see if that fixes your problem. Also, may have better luck going to www.steampowered.com forums and ask there if my suggestion doesn't work.

Are you using the turbo while you jump? I have had a few problems similar to the one you describe but not in the area you show on the picture.

I pressed shift to turbo with the hovercraft, but it didn't seem to go any faster. Then I tried clicking every button on the keyboard to see if there was a turbo. The turbo on my hovercraft must have broke.

Here is a link to the part where the bug is. http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/users/41c9d...xtdyBB6z0r0JtH Hopefully that image doesn't go down like the last one did. The hovercraft just seems to drop like a rock in the middle of the jump. The momentum is all of a sudden just lost. It is weird because the physics throughout the game are so real until up to this point.

Sounds like it might be a glitch in that game save. Try restarting from a previous save and see if that helps.

Thanks for the ideas. I'll try starting the game from a previous save point. If I can't get that to work, I think I am just going to look for a "god" cheat code and just walk through the entire level without the hovercraft and start shooting at everything like I am Rambo.

I finally just got past the part of the the level that I was stuck on. It was a glitch in the game. I'll explain what I did in case anyone else was having the same problem as me.

The best way to explain the problem is to first show which part of the level I had the problem on. It is on the "Water Hazard" level which is level 4. Here is a quote from the IGN walk through that explains where I am: "You'll end up in an area with ships, and trucks that'll fire missiles
towards you. Enter the containers you see for goodies. Go to the ship that's
in a corner, and leave the boat. Hide under the platform, and find a
container. Inside are barrels, which you have to let explode. This will open
the door of the container, and you can take the boat, and follow the path that
way. You'll end up at a ramp, and this allows you to enter a tunnel Follow it."

The part I bolded above is where the bug in the game was. I just pounded my hovercraft through the wooden fence which I guess the game designers didn't plan for. I never blew up the barrels and took my hovercraft through the door of the container. So what this did, is it made an imaginary fence when I tried to jump the ramp with my hovercraft. The imaginary line in the air didn't disappear until I blew up those stupid barrels. After I blew up the barrels I was able to jump the hovercraft across over the ramp no problem. It's kind of lame. It only took me 9 months to figure out. Well, time to finish the game now. They should make a Half-Life movie by the way.

another HL2 question. I got this awhile back and have been unable to install it due to a scratched up disk 3. Would anybody's disk 3 work to load it? Or is it tied to my serial number? I no longer have the recipt plus I live a minimum of 200 miles from anywhere I could exchange it, and I dont want to pay $10 for sierra to fix one scratched disk.

If you have broadband, you should be able to install it directly from Steam. There should be a button labeled something like "Register a product I already own". This will let you enter your serial number from your package and then download all files. After it's all installed, you can then create a backup set of media through Steam to replace your scratched set.