Half-Life 2

It has been delayed again to 9/01/2005. No word yet if there is going to be a Collectors Edition.

I'll wait until next summer to buy it.

Hey guys, I was wondering if I should buy it. I mean they say it is THE best PC game ever. But I need some questions answered.

1. Will it work on my system?

128 MB graphics card
384 RAM
100 GB HDD
390 kbps Connection

(No mouse or keyboard though) 😛

2. How exactly is the installation? I heard all these bad things regarding Steam and now I'm not so sure. I'd really like a perspective from a person who's bought it already. Not from some website.

Thanks bunches!

Hmm what CPU you got? (CPU is the processor thats the Mhz) also what graphic card is it, you know there are GFX cards that have 128mb that kick as and there are those like the old GeForce3, so I need to know that too, also about Steam, its pretty much just staright ahead, I really dont know that people are complaining about, I mean sure if you've cracked the game you'l get truble, but other then that, i just dont see how you could mess up, and yeah its a great game, everytime I play it I love it more

I knew I was missing something.
😛

1.8 Ghz

Um kinda hard to say, snce I dont know your graphic card yet, could you fill me in on that aswell?

Hold up...it says ASUS A9250 (Radeon 9200 PRO AGP)

lordandres told me to write this..

Well in that case your in a bit of a truble, see you need at least a 9500, tell you what I would do, go to a pc hardwere store and ask if they have a 9600 even if its a 128mb ram it'l do, you'l feel a immence booast when using the 9600, the 9600 aint expansive these days, your most likely looking at 90US.D or so, but you can get some better once for maybe 50US.D more but thats all up to you.

This game is crazy on the CPU. It does the majority of the sound plus everything thing else.

Dont matter if you scared of Steam, you need it. Unless you get a cracked game, but thats stupid considering you'll never play online and you might jeopardize your chance of ever playing another Valve game.

So you're saying I won't be able to play it at all?

you should be able to, but try everything on lowest settings first
then gradually raise them to see what your system can handle... the 2 main culprits of cpu killing is Anti Aliasing / Buffering / and Shadows.. the rest is usually easy for the graphics card to handle..

Everquest 2 eats my card alive when I turn on shadows.. and I have a 9800 pro 256 MB

Dude, I've been playing San Andreas and I was wondering what the Anti Aliasing was.

Could you tell me what is does exactly?

ok lets say we have a polygonal circle... we will be noting the circles outer edge

Without Anti-aliasing, the circles outer edge will be jagged.. this jaggedness will continue to worsen as distance between the camera and object increase, until it comes to a point where it doesnt look very circle-like anymore

With Anti-aliasing, the outer edge will be very smooth, and round regardless of camera distance and angle

another example would be like a telephone pole's wire.. if it wasnt AA'ed , the wire would be only slightly visible.. sometimes vanishing at certain points.. where if it 'was' AA'ed .. you'd see the wire clearly

It ties in very closely with graphical resolution.. but I cannot say exactly how it works, since Im no visual programmer hehe

Heres a graphical representation of AA
http://www.widearea.co.uk/designer/anti.html

why dont they just put it on 360?

No clue, probably because they have been porting it over to the original XBOX, and didnt want to change completly and lose that money.

Half Life 2 runs pretty well on lower systems, it was designed to do that. The problem is that you'll be missing alot of the game due to the low graphic settings. But if it doesnt bother you, try it. My suggestion is to dl the Demo and see how that runs.

Alright. Thanks a lot for the help guys.

Peace out!

Yes very true Smas, hehe I have a friend with almust the same system as Neo, only he has the Geforce3 128mb ram, and we constantly play CS Source, well the other day I went over to his house and acturly saw him play CS, and I kept wondering, is that bloody old CS 1.6 or condition Zero? cause it looks like it, but nope it was CSS and it didint run to well on his 1800Mhz, well anyway any of you guys looking forward to' THE LOST COAST'? I personaly cant wait to see it run on my pc, it looks awesome

so what is The Lost Coast about... its a multiplayer map? or a singleplayer map?

Its a single player map. Supposely its a reject area from Half Life 2 they thought up during mapping and afterwords Valve decided to make the map using the most crazy ass technology right now, for more as a tech demo and gameplay less than part of Half Life 2.

Its only for high end users that have a killer system, and I mean killer system. My comp right now is 3 Ghz, 256 9800 XT, a gig of ram, and I dont think I can run it.

No I think to run it(at high that is) you need the newest gen of GFX, 6800 and the new radeon series, I have the 6800GT with 256mb DDR3 Ram, and 1Gb of RDRAM the best rams run at 1066Mhz rams! 😄 so i'l be good, but you will be able to run it at medium I think Sma, without AA maybe, just hope its a free upgrade not just someshit that silver edition and gold edition users can get, man am I pissed of at Steam for makin it NOT upgradable! I mean I was at the store the first day when HL2 got released and bought the retail DVD game, later on I find out that they are planning a upgraded HL1 with encahnted stuff, and that DoD is gonna be realesed with Source Engine, and I have to BUY HL AGAIN TO PLAY THEM, thats milkin users for money!