Saturday, August 15, 2009

HalfLife 2 Node graph out of date/ AI disabled

Howdy internet gamer kids. I don't know how many of you are into Half Life 2, I just started to play it again today on my newly installed Windows 7 x64 install and see this note in the upper right hand corner "64-bit mode active", reading this I was kind of excited, woo get to use the 64-bits to full effect, yes.

Anyways, my happiness was quickly replaced with annoyance. Each map start would have a message "Node graph data out of data" and something about recompiling or whatever...I thought fine, recompile I see no slow down or issue.

As I approached the doctors building I then see a statement "AI disabled" which stays on the screen in the lower right quadrant of the screen. Guess what all AI objects stopped working; pigeons sat around, and the swat like guys didn't attack me so that Alyx could come rescue me. Oh boy how can I play the game if the computer has been lobotomized?

I did a quick search for AI disabled what was returned was a console command to disable/re-enable the ai "ai_disable" which seems to be a Boolean variable. Pulling the console down "~" (remember that you must have enabled to console "developer access" in the Advanced keyboard settings) "ai_disable 0" allowed me at times to re-enable the AI and sometimes not.

With the AI re-enabled I was able to proceed past the attack and meet Alyx. Now Alyx calls the elevator to take us down to find the doctor, however, she cannot seem to see that the elevator is there or just doesn't know how to walk into the elevator. My hypothesis is that the rebuilt node graph is inaccurate or not working. With the help of some threads on steampowered forums I was able to add an automatically executed fixer to disable the node graph updates "ai_norebuildgraph "1"" with this in place I have not yet had another issue. I am midway through the lake map and hope that I see no further issues at all.

So in summary
1. Valve, please put someone on fixing the 64-bit build of HL2.
2. For anyone having trouble, I would recommend adding this auto command. or
3. You can also try running in 32-bit mode, add the -32bit launch option, in 32bit mode I had crash issues when at the doctors for teleporting so YMMV *Your Mileage May Vary".

Happy Gaming,
Craig

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