HL2 Pre-load starts tomorrow

[PacNW CE]

http://www.halflife2.net/

Save a horse, ride a cowboy:D

[RamonGTP]

what exactly is pre-load?

[MJCfromCT]

I believe it means that they put it up on their servers for you to download, but you can't play it just yet.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

The preload is a cahce file containg all the data (textures, models, sounds etc) that will not be changing between now and the final Release candidate. As this data isnt going to change, you might as well release it to the public, its essentially useless as is and not easily readable and will help to ease some of the initial strain on Steam when HL2 does finally launch

--Jakk:t

[RamonGTP]

What ever happened to going to the store and buying the game? Is that too low tech? lol

[stix_kua]

So if it is useless then what's the use?

[MJCfromCT]

It eases the strain on the steam servers.

[holoflux]

My understanding is that this is preparation for the Source Beta download for CS to ease loading on Steam (good idea, coz steam is so clunky). The Source is the engine that will be used by HL2 when it ships eventually, but this whole post relates to CS not HL2 directly. I may be stating the obvious, but there seems to be a bit of confusion - correct me if I'm wrong.

[RamonGTP]

Not so obvious to me anyway... That cleared up some points for me, thanks.

[cbh]

I just hope that Steam will resolve some of the 'lag' problems that have affecting CS 1.6 for quite some time. Then people will not have fears over more problems for Half-Life 2 when it is released.

It seems that the existence of Steam has advantages and disadvantages. So it must be refined thoroughly to satisfy all the users/players.

[stalkersoftware]

The preload has been pushed back until monday the main reason was to get out the release to the CS: Source Beta.