Can anyone else NOT get HalfLife2 working? (1 Viewer)

[Matt Stone]

It doesn't, though. I disconnected my ethernet cable and was able to play in offline mode. It doesn't need to authenticate every time.

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

That's awfully small-minded of a company that spent 4 years on a game just to make the fans happy. Besides, I bought the retail version because: a) I thought the only way to get the cool extras was from the Premium Edition (which it was when I preordered it months ago), and b) I figured that even if it had everything pre-fetched or whatever on Steam, at midnight on the 16th or whatever, the servers would go crazy (which they did). I appreciate the theory and effort behind Steam, I just figured I'd let others stress-test it while me and my DVD would be fine. The idea that even having the DVD wasn't enough by a factor of several hundred megs is infuriating. Added to that that my video drivers were 3 weeks old(!) and wouldn't work, and I was (and still am a little) pissed.

Now that I've got the game up and running, I'm quite pleased with the gameplay, graphics, AI, and so on. Still, what would have been shocked excitement is little more than amusement. I hope the game lasts a lot (like several times) longer than I've played (about 5-6 hours), the story and gameplay will have to keep me playing to wow me.

 

[Steve Deacon]

I know you can play offline, but since I have an ADSL conection maintained by a router which is always on, I'm not about to start unplugging cables just to avoid the authentication. I'm not saying it's any effort, it just needs to fire up Steam before the game starts, which only takes about 20 seconds to log-in, but it does seem over the top for a game, especially a single player one.

As for my "fuck you" comment regarding Valve, it was just that. I have no reason to believe they actually think that way, it's just the cynic in me. I actually believe Gabe Newell really does care about the game, it isn't *just* about the money. But no doubt the money is very welcome.

 

[Matt Stone]

I know...that's not what I was implying. It seemed like you were saying Valve needed to authenticate every time the game is started. I was just pointing out that isn't true.

 

[Nick Sievers]

I’m only up to Ravenholm (love the gravity gun/buzz saw combo) and decided to stop and wait for my 6800GT to arrive. I’m totally hooked on CS again, it feels different yet familiar. I can’t figure out why I’m so hooked again when it is essentially the same game, it’s been 2½ years now. The only disappointment is some of the maps that were removed, it would be nice if they put Assault, Train and Prodigy back in the mix.

 

[brentl]

"I’m only up to Ravenholm" that's quite a well done section I love it. I'm about half way through the same area!

Brent

 

[Max Leung]

According to the "official" H-L2 stutter site, there will be a fix tomorrow:

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

Now, going by Valve's history with announced release dates - they didn't mention what year.

 

[James T]

How does Steam work if you're offline?

I tried to run HL2 10 mins ago(it's about 1:30am here) and up popped the Steam Validating files screen with the status bar crawling up. Since I'm typing here, I can tell you that I'm still not playing HL2. At around the 30%, I unplugged my modem and it still kept crawling up.

I just want to play the game...I didn't think there would be a problem connecting to Steam at one in the morning.

 

[Martin Rendall]

Well, forcing a CD validation iff you install from the CDs is just stupid. So I guess I'll uninstall my copy, and download it from Steam instead? Hell, that's only another 6 or 8 hours. Downloading/validating is much better than the game anyway.

Hey, has anybody thought about the fun which would ensue if Steam went out of business or got bought out by someone even less competent?

Martin.

 

[Don Giro]

This game's on my Christmas "wish list," because Half-Life was my all-time favorite FPS.

Let me see if I've got this straight...You install the game, and you have to download over 800MB from the internet before you can play the damn thing? Aside from the fact that it makes it nigh on impossible for millions of dialup users to download the content, I have to worry that my DSL connection may crap out (as it usually does when I attempt to d/l more than 100 MBs of files at a time)?

If so, what about the broadband users who are limited to a certain amount of downloads per month (a reason I think the new "watch movies online" services are going to fail)?

 

[David Galindo]

Correct me if Im wrong, but I think you just have to download a small file to get Halflife running. The reason it takes so long is because there are millions who are trying to access the file at once.

If you want to buy it online...thats where you download the GBs of stuff on your computer.

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

Not for me. I bought the Premium Version on DVD, and it still told me it had 800+ MB to download during the "authentication/verification/making my head explode" phase. That was just for HL2, and I had similar (but shorter) processes with HL:Source and CS:Source. Why, I don't know, and from my forays into other forums, I probably won't get a straight answer.

ETA: Let me just state that I seem to be having way more problems with the game than most folks here, and as such I'm not really representative of the installation experience. I'm just being extremely vocal and annoying about it. I am enjoying the game, just not as much as I had hoped.

 

[Matt Stone]

I assume that the extra files are only downloaded on Steam purchases. I had a friend who mistakenly told me that he bought the CD set and had to download 800 megs, when in fact he bought it over Steam and had to complete the last preloading step.

Decide on you own whether you want to play the game or not. For every horror story there is a success story. IIRC, Nick Sievers has dial-up and had no problems getting it up and running relatively quickly.

Obviously, it's only my opinion, and I'm biased...but whatever problems may exist are worth it. I think this is the best FPS game ever released.

 

[Don Giro]

Oh, I DO want to play the game. But I should be receiving the retail boxed version as a Christmas gift. I have no problem downloading a small file of two to play the game. I just can't justify the need for an 800MB download when the game comes on a DVD or several CDs.

 

[Matt Stone]

As I said, people have gotten it working quickly (15 mins or so) on dial-up, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Also, for those of us that bought off of Steam, we can backup the game files on CDs or DVD for quick installation later. I'm going to install it on my mom's machine later today, and I'll see how long it takes.

 

[Rob Silver]

20,000 people got their STEAM Accounts locked

Seems like the people who bought the game are getting the hassle as the pirates don't care b/c they generally don't have a legit steam account, but no one really has much better ideas... wonder if classaction suits will occur

Unfortunately,
steam forums (steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=14) are down now from slashdot effect:

Valve have disabled 20,000 steam user accounts belonging to users who have been caught using a pirated version of the game, or have attempted to use a cdkey to bypass the securom protection found on the retail version of the game. The Steam Forums have been swamped with people now claiming they are unable to play, many claiming they have had their accounts disabled for no reason. A Valve spokesman says, 'The number of people who actually had bought HL2 and used the CD key cheat was VERY small. VERY small. Most people just tried to rip off the game and not bother buying it.

Note - not only did people lose their HL2 account, but any and all software also registered under that steam account

Glad I have zero interest in virtual laser tag and saved my money for WoW.

 

[Matt Stone]

:rolleyes

It's wrong that people lost games they paid for (I'm assuming that's an oversight that will be corrected), but I'm all for accounts using bootlegged CD-Keys getting banned.

Planet Half-Life posted something about this happing last week. Gabe said that they were watching to see who was using the leaked key.

 

[Anthony Thorne]

As with my prior posts, and after some thought, I'm not about to buy a second modem, open my good PC, install it and the modem drivers, install a proper firewall and virus protect, register HL2, download the files and then rip-out the modem again just so I can play the game. I have Sonar 3 on my second hard-drive/windows install (I have two hard-drives and XP installs, from the one XP, on the one machine) and by every account I've ever read in music mags and forums sequencer and VST use always tends to play up when combined with internet use on the same machine. As it stands, this situation is just too much fucking hassle and is a royal pain for someone who just wants to buy the game and play it on a PC that should be good enough for the task.

20,000 warez kids is a lot of lost income so it serves as a reasonable argument for Valve doing something to prevent software theft, but a lot of VST software simply has a unique numerical code generated, which you then email to the company for authentification, which then provides you with another number that you can use to unlock the software. I can keep my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) net free and still authenticate whatever software I want. I would have preferred it if Valve had done something similar, but if they keep HALF LIFE 2 as a web-activated exclusive in perpetuity then I will never play the game, Radeon 9800 Pro, 3Ghz and 1 gig of RAM or not. Keeping my VST software stable is more important to me than playing HL2, and while I thought that I'd set my PC up to have the best of both worlds, that obviously isn't the case in this instance. If Valve ever make this product a fully-contained piece of software (maybe in a GOTY edition a year ahead or something) then I'll happily play it, but as things are I'll leave it alone for good and chalk it up as their loss of my sale.

 

[Max Leung]

Rob, does this mean that if you run a legitimate version of Half-Life 2, but with a hacked exe that disables Securom, your Steam account will be locked? I'm considering this because I want to save wear-and-tear on my old DVD-ROM and also eliminate stutters that can occur because of this inconvenient protection.

 

[MikeH1]

We have been discussing this subject at Wolf.

http://wolfgaming.net/wgn/vB/showthread.php?t=10027