anyone know how to get timedemo working in Half Life?

[LrngToFly]

Anyone know how to get an average fps from Half Life?

It was recommended that I use the timedemo "Blowout", but I can't get it to work (even w/ protocol 35) I get

"ERROR: demo had bogus # of directory entries: 0"

Anyone know what this means?

I'm finding the game playable w/ vsync off w/ OpenGL (G200, P2 400), but not with vsync on (although it is very, very close!- a few more fps would do it I think). The fps is still much lower than in Direct3D mode...

I do like the "look" of the OpenGL more than Direct3D.

[troop]

In MP , type~ , timerefresh.
Don't know that this will work in SP.

[LrngToFly]

troop-

I don't really like that for figuring out fps. Timerefresh "spins" you around in place and averages the refresh of that, right? That's highly subjective as to where you are on a map.

Anyone know if it is possible to get the timedemos to work?

[IceStorm]

YES! Someone else trying to use my favorite FPS!

First, the blowup demo works fine for me. I got the latest incarnation of it from I Am Half-Life (don't have the URL off hand - do a Yahoo search for it).

HOW DID YOU TURN OFF VSYNC??? I can't get it to turn off for the life of me. I tried the vid_wait console command, among others. I'm getting absolutely NO tearing in the video, so I'm assuming that something's wrong.

Anywho, REGARDLESS of resolution - 800x600, 1024x768, or 1152x864, I'm getting 25 FPS in Direct3D (sure doesn't look like it, but whatever). OpenGL I get 21 FPS at 1024x768 (didn't test the others).

My old V2 SLI rig got 30FPS, but was MUCH smoother than the G400 - the frames tore a bit, but that's fine as long as gunfire doesn't go tat tat tat, instead of tatatata.

Suggestion: make sure you have the LATEST version of Half-Life. It's up to 1.0.1.3 You can get the latest from www.won.net, choose Action games, and Half-Life from the game menu - that'll get you to the page with the update.

Anywho, I saw Ant's posts about turning off vsync for Q2. Doesn't seem to work for HL. I don't play Q2 (I don't like the engine - too rough around the edges), but I've it installed. Guess I'll have to try it out.

For the record, I've got the G400 MAX, with DualHead Multi-monitor ENABLED. OPENGL DOES NOT WORK WITH MULTI-MONITOR!!!!! I've no idea why, but I have a feeling it has to do with OpenGL. Only the 3dfx miniGL works...

Right now, there's a Millennium II in the machine as well as a Hollywood Plus decoder card. The MII and the decoder card are coming out as soon as I'm back at my machine, and my V2 SLI rig is going back in.

If ANYONE has suggestions on how to get HL to 30 or 40 FPS at a resolution of 800x600 or higer, please let us know. Thanks.



------------------
Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 256MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium G200 AGP, Millennium II, Voodoo2 SLI, Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster 32, Altec Lansing AC5 spkrs, 2nd Parallel Port, WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba XM-6102b CD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 96MB of non-parity RAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C900, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, OS of the week

All specs subject to change.

[Nuno]

That´s what you are looking for:

http://files.pcgame.com/hl/demos/blowup.zip

[LrngToFly]

Hmmm, that's a different version.

I got my blowout from here:

3 FINGERS' HALF LIFE TIMEDEMO BENCHMARK 1/30/99 http://www.ve3d.net/3Fingers/

I'll reboot (once Q3 test 1.08 finishes downloading) into Win98 and give that blowout demo a try!

[This message has been edited by LrngToFly (edited 09-03-1999).]

[LrngToFly]

Ah, that was a "blowup" demo, not "blowout".

It works, kinda.

It was very slow- fps of only 15 in OpenGL mode and 19 in Direct3D (640x480, 16 bit, vsync on, no 32 bit z buffer, G200, 400 MHz P2)

It was much slower than single play in either Direct3D or OpenGL or even multiplay- so there must be something else wrong.

It did give me some sort of dll error when starting the timedemo, but it started anyway.

I just finished downloading q3a test, so I'll do my benchmarking there...

[Nuno]

Ooops, my mistake... I couldn´t get the blowout working with HL 1.1.13, but this one works. I though everybody was refering to blowup

[troop]

TIMEREFRESH is the best fps counter--no
extra files needed. You don't like the spinning ?? Take a pill.
Go to the same spot
for each test and run it . Works as a perfect indicia of performance. I used it in the post above to show the relatively poor OGL and D3d drivers that Matrox has so far shipped for this game.