Alien Swarm

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Postby Tanner » 2010.07.22 (15:35)

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

Alien Swarm is a free game from Valve in the style of L4D. I don't have a machine to play it on right now but everything I've read it quite positive.
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.07.22 (17:48)

hairscapades wrote:I've read it quite positive.
I've heard very positive things from the fraction of people who are able to play it without issues.

Alien Swarm has some feature in common with Assassin's Creed 2 in that it makes my computer spontaneously shut down.
I found that AC2 was making my CPU overheat somehow, despite the fact that I am still able to play Crysis on much more demanding settings without having my machine melt down on me. My desktop uses an NVIDIA card, so I was afraid that I had that version of drivers that made your video card melt (I don't game all that often), but updating my drivers didn't help, and neither did brutalizing the quality.
Alien Swarm does pretty much the same thing, even at 640x480 and graphics settings all minimized.
On my laptop, which has an integrated Intel graphics processor, those same shitty settings made it run at ~4 fps (although it didn't spontaneously crash; that must've been an NVIDIA thing).

I'd love to play this game. I've heard very good things about it. But the developers haven't really made that an option for me. :(
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
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Postby SlappyMcGee » 2010.07.22 (19:03)

I hate the lack of optimization in the PC world. :(
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Postby  yahoozy » 2010.07.22 (19:03)

Works miraculously fine for me. The game is absolutely great, and I've already logged 11 hours. Also, I just found another hat in TF2, just to make Tsukatu more jealous.

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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.07.22 (20:14)

Yahoozy wrote:Also, I just found another hat in TF2, just to make Tsukatu more jealous.
FFFFFUUUUUUUU-
I have 2 Refined Metals, so I'm making progress on making the fucking hat that the game is refusing to give me. But it's slow going when you only game casually instead of taking the Dave approach.
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
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Postby otters~1 » 2010.07.22 (21:31)

Tsukatu wrote:
hairscapades wrote:I've read it quite positive.
I've heard very positive things from the fraction of people who are able to play it without issues.

Alien Swarm has some feature in common with Assassin's Creed 2 in that it makes my computer spontaneously shut down.
I found that AC2 was making my CPU overheat somehow, despite the fact that I am still able to play Crysis on much more demanding settings without having my machine melt down on me. My desktop uses an NVIDIA card, so I was afraid that I had that version of drivers that made your video card melt (I don't game all that often), but updating my drivers didn't help, and neither did brutalizing the quality.
Alien Swarm does pretty much the same thing, even at 640x480 and graphics settings all minimized.
On my laptop, which has an integrated Intel graphics processor, those same shitty settings made it run at ~4 fps (although it didn't spontaneously crash; that must've been an NVIDIA thing).

I'd love to play this game. I've heard very good things about it. But the developers haven't really made that an option for me. :(
Sorry, I don't know much about drivers, gaming cards, etc. Will playing Alien Swarm still be a problem if I'm using an incredibly good, brand new computer? Because I'd love to dive in.
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Postby smartalco » 2010.07.22 (21:46)

SBD wrote:Sorry, I don't know much about drivers, gaming cards, etc. Will playing Alien Swarm still be a problem if I'm using an incredibly good, brand new computer? Because I'd love to dive in.
99% likely to work just fine. Source just seems to completely hate 1% of computers for no particular reason.

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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.07.22 (22:18)

smartalco wrote:99% likely to work just fine. Source just seems to completely hate 1% of computers for no particular reason.
But that's just it -- I play Source games all the time! Zero problems! Ever! ...before this!
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
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Postby Luminaflare » 2010.07.24 (10:37)

It's on the portal 2 version of source, it's being used as a testing ground most likely.

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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.07.24 (11:08)

Luminaflare wrote:It's on the portal 2 version of source, it's being used as a testing ground most likely.
Does... does this mean that I'll probably have the same kinds of problems with Portal 2? DD:
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
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Postby smartalco » 2010.07.24 (17:54)

Where did you see that LF? I read somewhere that it is actually an offshoot branch between TF2 and L4D. Mainly because a game like this doesn't need the little extra graphical features the L4D2 version provides.
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Postby SlappyMcGee » 2010.07.24 (20:18)

smartalco wrote:Where did you see that LF? I read somewhere that it is actually an offshoot branch between TF2 and L4D. Mainly because a game like this doesn't need the little extra graphical features the L4D2 version provides.
It's a modified version of the L4D2 engine with added functionality, leading for some to speculate that it will be the same or at least part of the Portal 2 engine.
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Postby Luminaflare » 2010.07.25 (12:39)

Aparrently that's what the developers said *shrug* I'll double check with who told me.

I'm not too sure though since Portal 2 in on source 2

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Postby otters~1 » 2010.07.30 (04:18)

It worked perfectly, but I didn't enjoy it all that much. Fun distraction for an hour or two.
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