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.
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. These are safe to use, and you can refer to my ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide for instructions on how to do a clean install of them, and configure them correctly.
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
Half Life 2 doesn't have a formal multiplayer component: it was always intended that other mods on the Source engine such as CounterStrike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source would provide the multiplayer part of the Half Life 2 experience.
However the good folks at HL2World have found a way to enable a multiplayer server for Half Life 2. Accordingly, you can refer to the full instructions at: HL2World. Note that you can find more details of Source engine multiplayer commands under Multiplayer Commands in the Advanced Tweaking section.
Conclusion
Well that brings another TweakGuides.com guide to a close, and not without a big sigh of relief from yours truly! It took me a lot of effort in a short space of time, so I hope you find this guide useful, and I hope you find the rest of my site useful too! As always, shoot me an Email if you want to give me feedback on this or any other of my guides ? I'm always happy to hear from you. I can tell you now that there are some pretty amazing guides coming your way shortly as I complete my Windows XP Tweaking Companion and get to work on a brand new Nvidia Forceware Tweak Guide to match my already popular ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide. I'm gonna be busy, but it'll be worth it ? stay tuned!
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!