Half-Life 2, Source Engine, Source Dedicated Server Update Released

Half-Life 2, Source Engine and Source Dedicated Server updates are available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted. The changes include: Source Engine, Half-Life 2, Linux Server, Condition Zero

Source Engine

• Improved the performance of writing out save games. This will reduce the pause when you pass over an autosave trigger in Half-Life 2, or when you press the quicksave button
• Improved the performance of writing out the thumbnail image for save games. This will also reduce the pause when passing over an autosave trigger or pressing the quicksave button
• Increased cache memory usage for machines that have greater than 512MB of physical memory. This will reduce hitching due to cache thrashing.
• Optimized the sound cache manager, which will reduce hitching as a result of sound cache thrashing
• Minor optimization to the world renderer and world collision
• Minor optimization to the way that asynchronous sound files are loaded
• Optimized the way that sounds were loaded that are trigged by acting sequences
• Optimization to reduced the number of times model sequences are iterated on per frame
• Fixed rcon packet bug that was accepting negative packet lengths
• Fixed rcon server failing on server restart

Half-Life 2

• Weapon script files are preloaded at startup, instead of when they are accessed. This will reduce some hitches while playing Half-Life 2

Linux Server

• Added "-pidfile" command line argument to output a pid file on startup

Condition Zero

• Fixed "Your server is out of date Please update and restart" error