Valve releases 'Alien Swarm' for free

[Gben 20]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/630/

 

About the Game

Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community.

 

Available free of charge, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics. With your friends, form a squad of four distinct IAF Marine classes. Plan your attack using an unlockable arsenal of weapons with countless loadout configurations against a wide variety of aliens. Blaze your way through an overrun, off-world colony, eradicating the alien infestation in environments ranging from the icy planet's surface, to a subterranean lava-flooded mining facility.

 

Along with the game get the complete code base for Alien Swarm that features updates to the Source engine as well as the SDK. Alien Swarm adds 3rd person camera, depth of field, improved dynamic shadows and a wide variety of gameplay additions to the Source engine.

 

• Tactical, 4 player co-op action game with a top-down perspective
• Complete game code and mod tools
• Unlock persistent items by gaining levels
• Over 40 weapons and equipment with countless loadout configurations
• 4 unique classes and 8 unique characters
• Matchmaking, Steam Cloud, Steam Stats
• 64 achievements
• Tile-based map generation tool
• Powered by Source and Steam

 

[Nmenth 291]

Never heard of it, but free is good.

[Malevolence 6]

[PurpleGaga27 40]

I am quite stunned at what Valve has been doing all this time but just an add-on modifications. Portal 2 is next and HL3 or HL2: EP3 is nowhere to be seen for updates.

 

As for the free download, I rather hit the file sharing servers instead, not a ******* Steam download. And besides no Moddb links for this add-on from Valve.

 

Alien Swarm was previously released as a mod for UT2004! How did Valve got involved in this to remake it for HL2? Sorry but the Unreal Engine 3 looked quite much better than the recent Source engine, which is why Renegade-X shall rock its Unreal Engine 3.

 

Besides is the current Valve source engine source code DirectX 11 compatible?

[Gben 20]

Great vid... can't wait to play.. should get me in the mood for some zerg red carpet.

[BioBen 3]

Tried it. Great fun and runs on high no problem on my meh laptop.

[dbjs2009 25]

Good quality ..

[PurpleGaga27 40]

Even though this is free, is this mod fully multiplayer or is it similar to Left 4 Dead (SP, MP and Coop)? Because otherwise I wouldn't download it for 1.25GB, load it up via Steam and found out it's unplayable without AI bots. 99% of HL1 and HL2 multiplayer add-ons have no AI bots to play with for experimentation.

[BioBen 3]

There is a practice offline function, which plays through a few missions with you and 3 AI bots.

[PurpleGaga27 40]

Because of this release along with the SDK, some user named StickZero found some Half-Life 2: Episode Three references in the Alien Swarm Mod SDK!

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/show...d.php?t=1372475

 

I rather look forward to Half-Life 3, not an outdated development of another HL2 game. The game engine to that HL2 third expansion pack (or stand alone) needs to be better than Left 4 Dead 2 and Alien Swarm combined.

[Doctor Destiny 41]

The game engine to that HL2 third expansion pack (or stand alone) needs to be better than Left 4 Dead 2 and Alien Swarm combined.

Not as long as these people still exist.

[Guest Stevie_K]

Not as long as these people still exist.

 

I disagree. A group that small has no power what so ever to have impact on the future engines