Alien Swarm, update of UT2k4 mod by Valve releasing monday (free)

Page 5 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Dorkenstein

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2004
3,554
0
0
Have him right click the game in his library, then click Properties, select the Local Files tab in the properties window and choose to verify integrity of cache. Should be it.
 

quadomatic

Senior member
May 13, 2007
993
0
76
just spent like...2 1/2 hours playing Alien Swarm. That was probably more fun I've had online than I have in a very long time.

But yeah, optimization has definitely become an issue. There's a lot of unreasonable slowdown in some areas. Hopefully they iron that out in time.
 

Dorkenstein

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2004
3,554
0
0
Quad, glad to hear you're enjoying it. Try switching to Bilinear filtering from Trilinear filtering in the game video settings, in case you have it set to trilinear. I don't know if it's been patched but when the game first got released doing the above helped me with skipping.
 

PieIsAwesome

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2007
4,054
1
0
Gameplay is fun but a few things:

I don't like the in-game UI. I wish that reload bar thing would show up above the character so that I don't have to look all the way towards the bottom corner of my screen at the tiny little bar to reload correctly. And the one attached to the targeting reticule sucks.

Normal is too easy. It wasn't very fun at this setting. The only other difficulty setting I tried was "insane" and that seems about right. That should be "normal."

Too short and much of the game felt the same. Its free, so I guess I can't complain about that. Its obviously not complete, what with the many unlocks that remain locked after finishing all the missions.

The game randomly slowed down a lot in the mission with the retail center area. Don't know why, nothing there looked anymore stressful than other areas.
 

quadomatic

Senior member
May 13, 2007
993
0
76
Anybody here check the Steam forums? Everyone is moaning about how things need to be changed to balance the game out. Apparently they changed the tesla cannon for this reason...which is probably a good idea since it's wayyyy too easy to use.

Some people are complaining about parasites, which in my opinion are really, really terrible. The game tells you to heal to get rid of the parasites, but you end up using a LOT of ammo from the heal gun to get rid of the parasite, so healing becomes almost useless to get rid of them Residential took so many tries because of that.

On the other hand, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if parasites weren't so tough :D
 

l0cke

Diamond Member
Dec 12, 2005
3,790
0
0
Gameplay is fun but a few things:

I don't like the in-game UI. I wish that reload bar thing would show up above the character so that I don't have to look all the way towards the bottom corner of my screen at the tiny little bar to reload correctly. And the one attached to the targeting reticule sucks.

If you use the command

asw_fast_reload_under_marine 1

than the reload bar will appear under your character. Very helpful.

More commands here:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1371124
 

PieIsAwesome

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2007
4,054
1
0
Anybody here check the Steam forums? Everyone is moaning about how things need to be changed to balance the game out. Apparently they changed the tesla cannon for this reason...which is probably a good idea since it's wayyyy too easy to use.

Some people are complaining about parasites, which in my opinion are really, really terrible. The game tells you to heal to get rid of the parasites, but you end up using a LOT of ammo from the heal gun to get rid of the parasite, so healing becomes almost useless to get rid of them Residential took so many tries because of that.

On the other hand, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if parasites weren't so tough :D
Oh yes, I thought the parasites were pretty cheap. . .
Their damage rate should be reduced.

If you use the command

asw_fast_reload_under_marine 1

than the reload bar will appear under your character. Very helpful.

More commands here:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1371124

:)
 

M0oG0oGaiPan

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2000
7,858
2
0
digitalgamedeals.com
Anyone still playing this game? I started putting a lot of hours in this game recently. There are some pretty decent custom maps available. Survival mode can be reallly hard. There's a new brutal mode available which is damn brutal lol.
 

xCxStylex

Senior member
Apr 6, 2003
710
0
0
I didn't know there were custom maps :[ After my friends and i beat it on hard/expert whatever it was, we stopped playing. I'd be down to play though :)
 

M0oG0oGaiPan

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2000
7,858
2
0
digitalgamedeals.com
I didn't know there were custom maps :[ After my friends and i beat it on hard/expert whatever it was, we stopped playing. I'd be down to play though :)

I've tried a number and I recommend:
http://swarmarmory.com/maps?action=view&id=169-Lost+Cause (survival map)
http://swarmarmory.com/maps?action=view&id=280-Mid-August+Map+Pack (bunch of maps. There's one where you have to fight a "boss" character at the end. A giant queen that has like 4 life bars)
http://swarmarmory.com/maps?action=view&id=259-Arctic+Infiltration (really polished map. Standard mission map.)