Half-Life 2: Episode One Error Reports

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Crashes

Intro

• I'm not getting far at all - in the opening sequence Alyx is rendered as wireframe and there is a whole bunch of wireframe... something... moving over the top of her. I get these errors:

No such variable "$entityorigin" for material "models/alyx_intro/alyx_faceandhair"
Error: Material "models/alyx_intro/alyx_faceandhair" : proxy "EntityOrigin" unable to initialize!
No such variable "$entityorigin" for material "models/alyx_intro/alyx_faceandhair"
Error: Material "models/alyx_intro/alyx_faceandhair" : proxy "Add" unable to initialize!
...
Error: Material "models/vortigaunt/eyeball_blue" uses unknown shader "vortwarp"
Error: Material "models/vortigaunt/vortigaunt_blue" uses unknown shader "vortwarp"
No such variable "$entityorigin" for material "models/vortigaunt/vortigaunt_blue"
Error: Material "models/vortigaunt/vortig...

- RodeoClown 17:46, 1 Jun 2006 (PDT)

• Verify the integrity of your cache. --Alph Tech STUART 11:32, 3 Jun 2006 (PDT)
  • I did before posting this - didn't make a difference.- RodeoClown 14:52, 3 Jun 2006 (PDT)
    • Stupid question, but you don't have any extraneous files in your SteamApps folder hierarchy, do you? --Alph Tech STUART 15:20, 3 Jun 2006 (PDT)
      • Not that I can see, they all just look like the usual gcf files- RodeoClown 00:41, 4 Jun 2006 (PDT)
        • No, I mean the folder in SteamApps/RodeoClown/half-life 2 episode one. Also, your Half-Life 2 cache is verified too, right? And are you running with or without the beta engine parameters?--Alph Tech STUART 07:01, 4 Jun 2006 (PDT)
          • I'll try verifying the HL2 cache as well, could be that I guess (but I'm pretty sure it's fine). The only files I have in that dir are the MDMP file and the HL2.exe.
            • Nope verifying the HL2 cache doesn't help :S - RodeoClown 15:37, 6 Jun 2006 (PDT)
              • You have subfolders, right? What's in those? --Alph Tech STUART 16:48, 7 Jun 2006 (PDT)
                • Nothing out of the ordinary - seems like the normal dlls etc. It looks like I'm just missing a bunch of shader files etc :S I have an onboard video card (using my old laptop, which worked fine for HL2)- RodeoClown 20:00, 7 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Verrry beginning of chapter

• I just crashed out, so before I bother to formalize this, let me address the one thing I did notice (Crash right after the intro, like, while buried in rubble- rest is in Bug Reports)--Alph Tech STUART 12:34, 1 Jun 2006 (PDT)
• UPDATE: OK, it just happened again. Basically, it ran with some minor stuttering until Alyx tells D0g to set up the monitor. Then it went ".........sssssssssssssssseseseseseseseseseseseseseseswwewewwewewewewewewewewewewe .e.e.e.e.e.e.e.e.e.e.e.e.e.weweweweweweweweweeweweweweweweewew werwerwwreererererererererrerererererersssssssss" with one frame update during all of this. Then my cursor displayed, I went "Crap" and clicked around a bit, then it froze for a while and I rebooted (manually). I'm using the Cat 6.4 drivers. Also, I'm in 19465-7110 USA (Pottstown, PA, right outside of Philadelphia) and the current temperature is 89 degrees.--Alph Tech STUART 12:30, 1 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Slightly after that

• Crash when getting out of the red van in the end of the fall. Reproducible - happened to me twice. Running on XFX GeForce 7900GT, fresh drivers. I was forced to restart because Ctrl+Alt+Del had no effect. —Matveims 12:25, 1 Jun 2006 (PDT)
  • - Have you tried beta nVidia drivers? A lot of new GeForce cards are not supported in the current drivers. d3vil 2/06/06 22:28 (GMT)
  • Same here, but before on a Radeon X800 Pro once. Latest drivers. --Alph Tech STUART 13:57, 1 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Lags / stutter

• Ridiculous lag in the intro sequence, just before vortigaunts appear - about 5-7 seconds of twitching sound. —Matveims 12:24, 1 Jun 2006 (PDT)

• I'm getting WAY TOO MUCH (lots of cursing) LAG EVERYWHERE in the game. Quite often, this forces the game to crash. Also note that I noticed that every time I got this debilitating lag/stutter, Steam was eating up over 90% of my CPU power. I have the priority for steam.exe set to "low", and changing it does not seem to fix the problem. --Alph Tech STUART 16:01, 2 Jun 2006 (PDT)
  • Well, it's supposed to lag every time there is an autosave - and there are quite a few autosaves everywhere. The lag is, however, pretty horrible despite the promised precaching improvements. --Matveims 17:10, 2 Jun 2006 (PDT)
    • No, I get a little noticeable skip during the autosaves, but it really happens when it would normally happen: during dialogue and other scenes where new sound comes into play. I can't even get through the commentary without Steam tripping over itself: "For this intro, we reused the reRERERERRERERERERERERERERERERERRE E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E.E EFEFEFEFEFEFEFEFEFEFEFEFEF FRFRFRFRFRFRFRFRFRFRFRF RARARARARARARARARARARARARARA ACACACACACACACACACACACAC CTCTCTCTCTCTCTCTCTCTCTCTCTCT" and so on until I axe the process. I don't know what the deal is, because I never had this problem with Half-Life 2- not even on the beta engine (which I assume has gone public with this game release). --Alph Tech STUART 20:39, 2 Jun 2006 (PDT)

• Here too... Much lagg and I didn't had any fragmentation. FPS was around 40/50 constantly... Other games run fine --dutchmega 01:46, 3 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Suggestions

Drivers

I'm going to go update my drivers. Then I'll see if I don't crash, then I'll start this 200-point Social Studies assignment that's due tomorrow. --Alph Tech STUART 13:08, 1 Jun 2006 (PDT) (UPDATE: I'm turning the assignment in late for a point deduction... believe it or not more factors than E1 contributed)

(It seemed to get a little better after I updated by the way)

OK, still crashes, but later each time. I thought soundcaches cached THE first .125 while it loads the sounds, not EACH .125 BY LOAD? --Alph Tech STUART 14:03, 1 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Hey, I finally got that assignment turned in. I think it would be logical to presume that this lag has something to do with Steam? --Alph Tech STUART 13:52, 6 Jun 2006 (PDT)

I'm running the game with -dev flag, hoping to catch normally-suppressed errors or warnings related to the lag. No luck so far, but I just started an hour ago. --Matveims 14:17, 6 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Process Lasso

Turning Out-of-control process restraint on in Process Lasso kept it stable (more often) when Steam went out of control. It's a good tool and I highly recommend it. --Alph Tech STUART 11:36, 3 Jun 2006 (PDT)

A bunch of finger pointing

Caused by 64-bit mismatch?

I've seen a few people now who have reduced or eliminated their problems by specifying -32bit in their Launch Options. Perhaps the engine is misdetecting or misinterpreting their hardware? I would have thought that the game simply wouldn't run if this ever happened, but the evidence is pretty convincing. --TomEdwards 08:03, 4 Jun 2006 (PDT)

• Using -32bit, and a larger -heapsize eliminated the 1st chapter crash for me. But all the lags are still there! Surprisingly, even though I specified 400000 as heapsize (390.6 mb), HL2:EP1 only uses about 190 mb at a time. Imagine how much faster the thing would run if those extra 200 mb were used to precache all dialogue/sound/music. Matveims 21:05, 4 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Steam

Whenever has happened lately (even in DOD:S), a quick glance at Task Manager shows that Steam.exe, not hl2.exe, is taking up 9X% of the overall CPU power. What is Steam's problem lately? --Alph Tech STUART 16:51, 7 Jun 2006 (PDT)

It has been brought to my attention that Steam uploads my mdumps when the game crashes (or possibly stutters). Could the CPU and bandwidth usage involved in this action be what's causing the problem? --Alph Tech STUART 16:48, 9 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Seeing as that only happens after a crash, no. The resource hogging itself is an issue though. It mostly happens to people with dual core systems. --TomEdwards 07:33, 10 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Stuck in Urban Flight after shooting down gunship.

I've just resolved this issue in the last few minutes. I simply replayed from an earlier save, taking down the gunship with Alyx by my side and the down has just been blown in by the enemy. I still think this was a bug, but it doesn't affect me any more so I'd be happy to just close this. Aaron McDaid 14:18, 8 Oct 2008 (PDT)

I've just shot down the gunship, and according to walkthroughs I have seen (about 3m55s into this video [1]) the door on the ground floor should now be opened by the enemy without any intervention by Gordon. But it won't open. In the walkthrough, Alyx is present for the entire battle but my Alyx got frozen at the other end of the long corridor (the place where the gunship first starts shooting in through the windows). I've gone back and managed to restart her (by retreating further cuasing "Loading ..." to appear) but when I bring her to the downed gunship and the door I still can't get that door to open. My plan now is find an old save game and fight the gunship again, ensuring that Alyx is beside me, and I hope that it works again this time. Have defragged and check cache integrity - it's a Windows XP install that I've used for little other than Steam. I had crashes in hl2.exe today, I think I didn't see such crashes before. I have two MDMP files [2] and [3]. If I manage to refight the gunship with Alyx present, I will update this report. Aaron McDaid 13:51, 8 Oct 2008 (PDT) Update 22:16pm: That worked, no further problem for me and I'm able to play on now. Aaron McDaid 14:18, 8 Oct 2008 (PDT)

See also

• Half-Life 2: Episode One Bugs