Halflife 2 (not really a spoiler, but dont read if you're afraid of it)

**novacain** · 11-18-2004

Can you play HL2 without an internet connection?

What about multiplayer on a LAN without internet?

>>I love playing with people I know, though.

Nothing like fragging people you know (for some reason only you know).

Starwars Battlefront is good for this style of play, very similar to BF1942.

**hk_mp5kpdw** · 11-18-2004

I got to play yesterday without an internet connection. You do absolutely need a connection during the installation and first time Steam does it's connection/verification/registration/updates. After that, if your connection is disabled, then when you start the game you will get the first window comming up saying "Connection to Steam Account" and after a couple minutes of that (seemed like a couple minutes to me at least) then another window pops up basically saying it can't connect and you can click on a "Start offline game" button.

It seems to take a long time to just get to the game's menu screen for me. After I clicked on that "offline" game button, I seemed to spend another couple minutes before the desktop disappears to be replaced with a black screen and my mouse cursor, then another couple minutes of that black screen before all the Valve and other logos appeared. Then a blurred background image with a "Loading" message in the lower right corner appeared for another couple minutes, and then finally I got to the main game menu. I can go downstairs pull a frozen dinner out of the freezer, nuke it in the microwave and just about eat it before this menu comes up. Does this happen with anyone else? This happens on my 2.8 GHz, 1 Gb RAM, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (I think that's the gfx card I have) PC.

Gameplay itself for me is fairly smooth, about comparable to Doom 3. Levels take about a minute to load. Loading a quicksaved game seems to take about 10-15 seconds. Levels for me tend to be laggy/jerky for the first 10 seconds or so after they have been loaded.

**Govtcheez** · 11-18-2004

Originally Posted by hk_mp5kpdw

Loading stuff

Yeah, I've noticed the same thing with the load times. The first time I started it, when the screen went black, I thought the game had crashed.

If anyone else is having problems where the sound skips/repeats and your drivers are all up to date and everything, try changing the speaker setup in game to 2 speakers, if you had it on anything higher. I did that and the game runs very smoothly for me now; a lot better than Doom 3

Athlon 1800+
512MB DDR 2700
GeForce4400Ti

It's not the most demanding game in the world - nothing in my PC's been upgraded in over a year, and I get pretty good framerates at 1024X768 with most of the details turned to at least medium.

**hk_mp5kpdw** · 11-18-2004

I think all my game settings are on high. And I have the 5.1 speaker option selected. When the intro movie was played I got a lot of stutter with the sound, but at that point I hadn't been able to go to the options menu yet and change things from the 2 speaker default to 5.1.

Sidenote: Dear god when is that "airboat" level going to end, I've been on that thing for ages and I'm ready to get off of it now... seriously!

**Magos** · 11-18-2004

Dear god when is that "airboat" level going to end

Yeah, I hated it too. Wasn't fun at all, hard to steer, visuals were a bit limited, couldn't attack. I didn't really like the train level in the original HL either...

**Shadow** · 11-18-2004

> over-sugared 12 year old
God those kind are annoying!

**Govtcheez** · 11-18-2004

hahaahah, i just got the gravity gun - this is probably one of the better weapons I've ever seen in a game, especially with the sawblades.

**Darkness** · 11-18-2004

I haven't bought HL2 yet, but I remember when playing Doom3 you'd be walking along with fine framerates, then you'd change your view in a certain direction and all of a sudden it would suddenly go from 60FPS to 30FPS, because of what you are looking at, then a second later it'd go back to 60FPS...do you get a similar experience in HL2? Or is everything laid out evenly enough that you don't get this effect?

**axon** · 11-18-2004

Deer Uncle Cheez,

Please stop playing the game and read us a story. Or, better yet, go to your league commissioner control panel over at yahoo sports and approve the trade that has been in progress. This is vital as axon has no WRs and/or does not know when to play them to maximize his points. Also, please tell Priest Holmes not to have a season ending surgery and just play through the pain.

Love,

Your bastard nephews.

P.S.
Mommy says that you are starting to get a beer gut.

**Magos** · 11-19-2004

The gravity gun is indeed the coolest weapon ever. I have never felt so satisfied cutting a zombie in two with those sawblades. I'm disappointed you cannot lift bodies using it though as you could see in the demo videos.

**Govtcheez** · 11-19-2004

Yeah, for the better part of Ravenholm all I've been doing is toting around a cinder block and blasting guys across rooms with it.

edit: It's probably asking too much, but I wish you could cut other body parts off instead of just cutting them in half. Decapitating them would be cool.

**-KEN-** · 11-19-2004

edit: WOW DO I EVER OVERTHINK GAMES.

HL2 is cool.

**Brian** · 11-19-2004

Originally Posted by Magos

I'm disappointed you cannot lift bodies using it though as you could see in the demo videos.

Hehe, you obviously haven't got to the last stage.

oops

**Magos** · 11-19-2004

I'm really disappointed in how it uses Steam. Fine, I really don't have a problem that it takes like 2 hours to install and start up the first time, but when it has to connect through steam for 10 minutes every time you play an OFFLINE SINGLE PLAYER game it's just plain stupid.

**EvBladeRunnervE** · 11-19-2004

Steam is rather crappy IMO. I don't agree with a system that makes it that you can't play a game without an internet connection that isn't broadband when it is a single player game....