** Half Life 2 - Bug Report Thread **

[lexatwo]

(PC Version)

Game: Half-Life 2

Bug Title: Lighting (and some skyboxes) messed up when HDR is set to None" or to "Bloom".

Bug Location - Game Chapter: Starting from the "Black Mesa East" (hadn't player father than "Highway 17" chapter, bug still presents).

Bug Location - Map Location: d1_eli_01.bsp, d2_coast_01.bsp, there are a lot of other

Bug Description: When using dxlevel 90/95+ with mat_hdr_level set to 0 or 1 (i.e. when HDR is set to "None" or "Bloom") or when using dxlevel 80/81 the lighting of the levels starting from the Black Mesa East seems to be messed up. On the level d1_eli_01.bsp there's also a bug with incorrectly rendered skybox. Setting the game to use Full HDR (mat_hdr_level 2) fixes the bug (see attached screenshots).

In case you get to the Ravenholm playing non-stop from the Black Mesa East the lighting still remains messed there - game render would act just like it is the middle of day instead of night. Saving a game somewhere in Ravenholm, exiting HL2, starting it up back and loading a savegame will fix the things: Ravenholm would fall into the cover of the night as it should.

Playing on through Ravenholm after the above "fix" will keep the lighting normal (night), but as soon as you get from the mine to the railroad things will break again making the picture look overbright.

Screenshots:
Black Mesa East:
correct render with dx90+ Full HDR
same scene with dx90+ Bloom HDR
same scene with dx90+ None HDR
same scene with dx81 (also notice incorrect water shader rendering here!)

Highway 71:
dx81 - incorrect lighting

Possible Bug Cause: Porting the game to a new engine version allowed the use of the HDR effects. As older graphics cards are becoming relatively rare the developers just hadn't payed enough attention to the testing on dxlevel 80/81/90+NoneHDR when adding new HDR effects to the old maps. My opinion is that this bug should be fixed as soon as possible as it is real show-stopper: now I'm no more able to run the game I had paid for on the hardware it was initially designed to run on! Valve, come on, don't take back the thing your customers had purchased.
I had used to play HL2 on moderately old PC notebook equipped with GeForce FX-level card. Now it had garbled lightning. Another PC I have got is quipped with GeForce 6600 and it is able to use HDR but the FPS is way to low to play.

So Valve fixed the bug with Alyx getting stuck, but did they fix the lightmap bug where everything is super super bright? and, no, its not bloom.

[ljbade]

On another note, I confirm the "Blast From the Past" achievement to be rewarded as soon as the scrapyard is entered.

I can confirm this too.

[lexatwo]

(PC Version)

Game: Half-Life 2

Bug Title: Water shader texture missing when going underwater in Highway 17 when using dxlevel 80/81

Bug Location - Game Chapter: the beginning of Highway 17

Bug Location - Map Location: d2_coast_01.bsp

Screenshots: here

Bug Description: SUBJ. If the game is running on the dxlevel 80/81 card there would be rendering bugs when going underwater on the Highway 17 coast: in place of the normal refracted picture there would be pink checkerboard displayed instead (see attached screenshot). Switching to the dxlevel 90/95 fixes the bug, but makes the game unplayable playable on the lower-grade hardware.

Possible Bug Cause:Game designers forgot to map correct water shader/material for the dxlevel 80/81 cards to the back plane of the water surface.

[Stimms]

Bug title: Mat_Fullbright 1 on Map start

Bug Location - Chapter: Black Mesa East

Bug Location - Map Location: From Begining to end of d1_eli_01, continuied if mat_fullbright isn't turned to 0 on or after d1_eli_02

Bug description: Spawning in d1_eli_01 will result in Mat_fullbright automatically setting to 1, not letting you disable it until map change.

Screenshot: Link Here

Cause (Comfirmed to be the cause): If Full HDR is off, this will be the result.

Edit: this bug is also on Smod redux, to fix this, open half life 2 content in gcfscape and extract d1_eli_01 from the gcf, then place it into the smod redux map folder, the reason this fixes is because the half life 2 content gcf is from the original non-mac 2004 release.

Edit: d1_eli_01 isn't the only fullbright bugged map, a list is at the smod redux site Here.

[sv3nx]

Operating System: Mac OSX 10.5.8
Processor: Intel T7500 2.2GHz
Motherboard:MacBook Pro 3.1
Video Card:8600M GT 128MB
Sound Card:MacBook Pro 3.1
Memory:2GB DDR2 667

Bad performance. Getting about ~30FPS avg with low settings(1440x900). At the same Windows version is running 50-60FPS with high settings(AA off).

[seseorang]

Originally Posted by sv3nx

Bad performance. Getting about ~30FPS avg with low settings(1440x900). At the same Windows version is running 50-60FPS with high settings(AA off).

The drivers for the Mac aren't as optimised as those on Windows' versions. So the Mac version will suffer some performance loss in comparison.

[Nimbulan]

Originally Posted by sv3nx

Operating System: Mac OSX 10.5.8
Processor: Intel T7500 2.2GHz
Motherboard:MacBook Pro 3.1
Video Card:8600M GT 128MB
Sound Card:MacBook Pro 3.1
Memory:2GB DDR2 667

Bad performance. Getting about ~30FPS avg with low settings(1440x900). At the same Windows version is running 50-60FPS with high settings(AA off).

That performance sounds about in line with the Mac vs Windows benchmarks I've seen. I'm sure Valve is working on improving performance but there's only so much they can do on a platform without constantly updated video drivers.

[Nimbulan]

Originally Posted by lexatwo

I've seen similar behavior on PC when the multithreaded rended was active. Try to disable it in menus or set cvar mat_queue_mode to 0 or 1 in console. It might correct the rendering but at a cost of slight performance drop. Still, this is surely a bug the developers should fix.

Interesting, I've never run into this lighting issue and I always use multicore rendering. I have a GeForce GTX 260.

Bug Title: Cannot acquire "Keep Off The Sand!" achievement.

Bug Location - Game Chapter: Sandtraps

Screenshots: N/A

Bug Description: Even if I get this achievement, no notification is displayed in the bottom right corner. However is shown in the achievement menu that I got it and even the percentage is right (33/33 - 100%). If I exit the game and re-enter the achievement is gone and the stats are back to before (32/33).

[UnclGhost]

Originally Posted by bebbodvx

Bug Title: Cannot acquire "Keep Off The Sand!" achievement.

Bug Location - Game Chapter: Sandtraps

Screenshots: N/A

Bug Description: Even if I get this achievement, no notification is displayed in the bottom right corner. However is shown in the achievement menu that I got it and even the percentage is right (33/33 - 100%). If I exit the game and re-enter the achievement is gone and the stats are back to before (32/33).

A temporary fix might be to delete gamestate.txt from steamapps/username/half-life 2/hl2 (you might want to back it up first).

Bug Title: Killable NPCs in vortigaunt camp

Bug Location - Game Chapter: Sandtraps

Bug Location - Map Location: Vortigaunt camp

Screenshots: here

Bug Description: After the antlion myrmidon fight, you will enter the vortigaunt camp. Just as you enter, you will see two npcs near a fire. If you grab with the gravity gun the metal sheet nearby, you can shoot it at them and kill them. You can hurt them with the first shot only, and if you are not quick you will not be able to kill them anymore. Also it seems to work with the metal sheet only, no barrels/guns/explosives.

Originally Posted by UnclGhost

A temporary fix might be to delete gamestate.txt from steamapps/username/half-life 2/hl2 (you might want to back it up first).

That worked! Thank you!

Can I ask you how could you know it would have worked?

[Nimbulan]

Originally Posted by bebbodvx

That worked! Thank you!

Can I ask you how could you know it would have worked?

I posted about that fix in a separate thread a while ago. The gamestate.txt file stores your in-game achievement progress. Sometimes achievements will get recorded in there but not on your Steam profile so the game will not let you achieve them again to fix it. Deleting this file forces the game to resync with your Steam profile so you can get the missing achievement(s) again.

[jeanlain]

Originally Posted by bebbodvx

Bug Title: Killable NPCs in vortigaunt camp

Bug Location - Game Chapter: Sandtraps

Bug Location - Map Location: Vortigaunt camp

Screenshots: here

Bug Description: After the antlion myrmidon fight, you will enter the vortigaunt camp. Just as you enter, you will see two npcs near a fire. If you grab with the gravity gun the metal sheet nearby, you can shoot it at them and kill them. You can hurt them with the first shot only, and if you are not quick you will not be able to kill them anymore. Also it seems to work with the metal sheet only, no barrels/guns/explosives.

You sadistic basterd.