Alien Swarm Catch All - Released free by Valve

Pages

IMAGE(http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/8874/alienswarmv.jpg)

I'm so excited, that I just have to share this news. After years of silence, Alien Swarm is being released on monday, and unexpectedly, it's free! This is a follow up to the amazing UT2K4 mod. From the steam page, it appears that the mod team was hired by Valve, which is a great result for them.

Alien Swarm is a wonderful top down cooperative game, and remains one of my favorite multiplayer experiences. I think that the coop of the original game has been unmatched thus far, and I'm very excited to see what they have done in the sequel. If you have any interest in coop at all, I highly recommend checking it out!

If you haven't had the pleasure of playing the original, This fantastic article on RPS gives a good feel for how the game plays. (Thanks Erik)

Valve Press Release[/url]]Two years ago Valve hired the talented team behind the popular top down co-op mod Alien Swarm. Since then they have been busy working on the Left 4 Dead Series, and now Portal 2. However, we never forgot about Alien Swarm and the team has spent a lot of time bringing the game to Source in between their contributions to the other Valve projects.

On Monday, July 19th Alien Swarm is going to be released for free via Steam.

In addition to the game, Valve will also release the complete code base for Alien Swarm. This includes updates to the Source engine SDK and full Steamworks integration. If you’ve ever thought about developing a mod on the Source engine with Steamworks, this release provides more insight and examples for using Steamworks in game production.


Match Making
The steam group is now too large to display all members in the friends window. Since this is a match made game and we don't have an official server, I thought I'd post a work around for joining games with people who are not already on your friends list.
  • If you are trying to organize a match, consider joining the group chat room by clicking the triangle next to the group name in the friends window. From here, you will be able to join the game of anyone else in the chat.
  • If someone has posted an announcement, another way to join is simply through the group members list on the group steam page. Anyone who is in a game will have a "Join" link next to their name.

I hope this helps!


Alien Swarm Classic
For those of you who miss the feel and difficulty of the first game, like I do, here are some console commands that return the game to 'classic.'
For me, the most important commands are:
asw_marine_ff_absorption 0
Disables the default friendly fire damage damping so that full friendly fire is always in effect.
asw_marine_collision 1
Gives marines a physical presence, so they don't pass through each other like ghosts.

The following make the alien spawns a little more dynamic:

asw_horde_override 1
Causes periodic L4D style hordes to spawn.
asw_wanderer_override 1
Allows aliens to spawn anywhere.

Atmosphere:

asw_realistic_death_chatter 1 + asw_hear_from_marine 1
Together these seem to activate periodic marine banter, such as Wildcat and Wolfe teasing each other about their kill counts.

I have the first two in my autoexec.cfg so they are enabled for all games that I host.

[size=11]Sorry about my terrible 'shop skills[/size]

Looks cool, and kinda like Shadowgrounds. I'll be checking it out for sure.

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

So this is what came of AS:Infected. Good move, I played many hours of the 2k4 mod, begging people not to take the flamer.

hmm, I played this a couple months ago...maybe it was a beta? It was kinda cool but the controls weren't so great, maybe I'll try it again.

Free things are quite awesome.

That is awesome! I had totally given up hope for that game.

Very smart move on Valves part. Give away a quality fun game and hook a bunch of new Steam users.

I may just have to get my steamid added to the relevant GWJ EU steam groups for this.

This looks amazing. I really wanted to play the original UT mod but i came to the party late :/

Also, i think the title should add "- free Valve game" or "released free by valve on monday".... just for more awesomeness!

Oh wow I had completely given up on ever seeing anything else from the Alien Swarm team. Let's organize some games. I call dibs on Sarge!

Also, here is the Steam Store page for the game. It has an additional gameplay video.

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

Free, eh? I think I can afford that.

I will definitely be playing this. Can someone set up a room in the vent server?

theditor wrote:

I will definitely be playing this. Can someone set up a room in the vent server?

Since it is a Source game we will probably be just fine using in-game voice.

I'm all over this!

theditor wrote:

I will definitely be playing this. Can someone set up a room in the vent server?

Oh come now, can't we just take over an existing vent channel?

I wonder if it'll have voice chat like the other source games?

Two things:

#1 Why release this on a Monday instead of over the weekend??

#2 No 8 player co-op?

Looks and sounds very much welcome. I'm currently playing Shadowgrounds + expansion and loving them, but certainly I won't mind more of good stuff, especially in co-op. I would've paid something for it as well, but of course free's always better.

Yay! I'm definitely up for a game or three.

EriktheRed wrote:

Two things:

#1 Why release this on a Monday instead of over the weekend??

#2 No 8 player co-op? :(

If it's Valve, a Monday release should be out late Thursday night.

I don't recognize the roster names in the screenshots, but I did hear both Sarge and Wildcat's voices...

Oooh, I loved Alien Swarm. I'm up for co-op. Maybe we need a Steam group too coordinate? I nominate Shea to run it

I'd be down for some co-op bug stomping.

There's noone online playing the original. And I got eaten on the first level with the bots.

Scratched wrote:

There's noone online playing the original. And I got eaten on the first level with the bots.

So you're saying the AI is on par with Left 4 Dead?

The AS2k4 AI is limited to moving and shooting, and it has issues getting 3 following AI through a tunnel wide enough for one.

Switchbreak wrote:

Free things are quite awesome.

Indeed. I can't turn down free.

Very cool. I remember the Thursday night crew playing this way back when. I was working evenings then and was always quite jealous of the stories that came out of those nights.

Wow, that looks amazingly hot! And releasing the full game source code is just icing.

The UT2K4 was awesome. I'm in.

Scratched wrote:

There's noone online playing the original. And I got eaten on the first level with the bots.

Don't feel bad. Many times you will get eaten on the first level in co-op too. The original mod was unforgiving. Part of its charm really.

Sweet. Count me in.

You enablers! My wallet can't ta .... what? Did you say free?

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Pages