Half Life 2 Tweak Guide
[Page 10] Neat Stuff & Conclusion
Here we are, almost at the end of a lengthy Half Life 2 Tweak Guide. Stick it out for a few more minutes and you'll find some useful tips and links to valuable resources for the game below.
Speeding Up Startup Time
While this is covered under the relevant command variable in the Advanced Tweaking section, I thought I'd spell this one out here for those that may have missed it. You can speed up the time it takes to load to the Half Life 2 menu by adding the following command to the end of your Half Life 2 icon's Target box under its properties, or to the Launch Options box under Steam (See the Advanced Tweaking section for details):
+map_background none
This command prevents the loading up of the 3D animated background which sits behind the startup menu. Instead the game will load much more quickly with just a blurry color background. If you want to start the game with the console open instead, substitute the -console command in place of +map_background none above.
If you want to further speed up your startup time, go to your \Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\[username]\half-life 2\hl2\media\ directory and delete the Valve.avi file. Now create a new blank text file (Right-click in a blank area, select New>Text Document) and rename it to Valve.avi (not Valve.avi.txt). Once renamed, right-click on this file, select Properties and tick the 'Read Only' box then click OK. If the file is not made read-only the game will simply overwritte it with another full copy of Valve.avi. Having done this, the game should now skip playing the Valve animation at the start of the loading process, speeding up startup time even further.
Disabling Autosave
If you are tired of the way Half Life 2 automatically saves your game every time you turn a corner or meet (or defeat) a new character, you can use two tweaks to disable autosaving in the game. Firstly, refer to the sv_autosave command in the Advanced Tweaking section, as using this will disable the autosaving which occurs at the start of new levels. You'll have to insert sv_autosave 0 in the autoexec.cfg file to disable it.
Secondly, go to your \Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\[username]\half-life 2\hl2\ directory, and find the following files:
autosave01.sav
autosave01.tga
autosave.sav
autosave.tga
Right-click on each file, select Properties and tick the 'Read Only' box to make each unable to be written to. This prevents Half Life 2 from actually performing a save onto these autosave files, and in the process you reduce all the saving pauses within levels as you pass certain autosave points.
If you wish you can choose to disable one form of autosaving and not the other, and if you do disable both then make very sure that you manually save often, either by using the Save option, your Quicksave key, or the save console command.
Large Performance Boost for Nvidia Cards
According to this thread on the HardOCP Forums, there is a method of forcing lower precision levels in the DX9 shaders used in Half Life 2, thereby boosting performance and fixing any water bugs visible on some Nvidia cards when DX9 is enabled.
The method involves downloading this program: 3DAnalyze, installing it and launching it and then following these instructions:
1. Select HL2.exe file in half-life 2 folder
2. Select any file inside the folder half-life 2\bin
3. select Steam.exe than check these options:
- Under the section Pixel and Vertex Shader: FORCE LOW PRECISION PIXEL SHADER
- Under the section Remove stuttering: PERFORMANCE MODE
- on the bottom left: FORCE HOOK.DLL
Type in the section DIRECTX DEVICE ID'S the ATI Vendor and Device ID, there are just two device though.
Please note I personally haven't tried this method, and the instructions above are from the link posted, but essentially it should force lower shader precision on your Nvidia card, resolving errors and providing a performance boost as well as an image quality boost.
Latest Catalyst and Forceware Drivers
Both Nvidia and ATI have already started optimizing their drivers to perform better in Half Life 2. For ATI users you can receive a free performance boost for Half Life 2 by downloading and using the Beta 4.12 ATI Catalysts.
For Nvidia users, you can try the Beta 65.62 Nvidia Forceware Drivers to gain performance in Half Life 2. Note that I am planning on doing a comprehensive Nvidia Forceware Tweak Guide shortly to complement my ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide, so keep an eye on the TweakGuides.com. Until then you can refer to the 3DGPU Nvidia Tweak Guide.
Please note that despite ATI claiming to beat Nvidia in Half Life 2 (or vice versa), your actual results in Half Life 2 are dependent on the age and model of your graphics card, and the speed of your CPU rather than the brand of the card. The ATI logo on the Half Life 2 Retail box means nothing at all, just like the "Nvidia the Way It's Meant To Be Played" logo at the start of games is no guarantee that an Nvidia card will perform better. Refer to the articles listed in the Graphics Card & CPU entry under the Troubleshooting section for benchmarks which show you the way specific cards perform in Half Life 2.
Half Life 2 Multiplayer
The multiplayer component of Half Life 2 has recently been released, and is available for download for free for all Half Life 2 owners. Simply open Steam, go to 'Play Games', right-click on 'Half Life 2:Deathmatch' and select 'Install Game' to install the game. It is approximately 30MB in size, almost identical to Half Life 2 in terms of settings and tweaking options.
However, your in-game settings and control bindings for Half Life 2 Singleplayer are not carried over into Half Life 2 Multiplayer, or vice versa. You can assign these controls separately, including different video and sound settings for example. Furthermore, if you want to apply any config or command line tweaks for Half Life 2:Deathmatch, you must apply them separately in the \Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\[username]\half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2mp\cfg\ directory. The config files you have placed in your Half Life 2 Singleplayer directory will not be implemented in HL2 Multiplayer, nor will the command line options such as -heapsize for example. You will have to repeat these tweaks for Half Life 2:Deathmatch separately. The good news is that for the most part you can simply copy and paste any Half Life 2 Singleplayer config files (as long as they don't contain cheat commands) into your Half Life 2 Multiplayer config folder.
Finally, since Half Life 2 Multiplayer is an online game, your performance depends on two factors - your graphical performance (measured by your FPS), and your Latency (measured by your Ping). If you are noticing that your multiplayer experience is choppy or unresponsive, first reduce your settings to ensure consistently high FPS and a reduction in stuttering. If this doesn't improve your gameplay performance, you can initially check your Latency (or Ping) by pressing the TAB button during online play. If your latency is high, you can use the instructions here to diagnose and improve your connection. Note that if you are a long distance from the server (e.g. the server is overseas) then your ping will be higher regardless of any tweaking, hence your gameplay will be laggier.
Credits & Links
The following sites provided me with a wealth of useful information in researching for this guide. I recommend that if you're interested in finding out more about HL2, or discussing it with other players, that you visit these links when you get the chance:
Till next time, take care!
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