Did Alien Swarm 'die'? - Games

Around the middle of last year, although I don't entirely remember when, everyone was hyped for Alien Swarm's release. I was one of the first to play it and post advice, and, using an early build of the same vein of the Source engine as Portal 2 (and the SDK released along with it), I had / have no doubt it could make stellar mods. The game itself was well-balanced and pretty fun, and I thought the community would keep it alive. A year later and the only time I see Alien Swarm be brought up when a new Alien Breed game comes out and people remark that AS is better. The SPUF forums are pretty much dead for it, I didn't see many people playing, and all the mods for it seemed to have gone silent. Was it the VPK system, was it the lack of content (only 1 campaign, although Valve later added an extra hard difficulty and the ability to toggle L4D2's AI Director to fuck you up), or what? Or is the game not dead and i'm just not noticing? To that matter; if it was the VPK system's limiting factors that killed Alien Swarm, what does that mean for modding communities with later Valve games? Left 4 Dead 2's modding had a few big things here and there but now it's almost silent as well.

I think everyone just got sick of replaying the same maps. [editline]23rd March 2011[/editline] I know I did

Yeah because Valve fucked it up bad. Not only is it like L4D in the VPK sense, it doesnt support game based mods as in custom VPKs in online play. Thats worse than L4D2. That takes away custom models and textures, custom maps have to be downloaded from thirdparty websites so no P2P sharing there. Oh and the released code is a bitch to work with, there is no first person code or viewmodel support so you have to code all that shit back in. The amount of work required to get a proper mod isnt worth it, especially since you need alien swarm installed to play it. So yeah in a sense its a dead game.

I just wish Valve would drop the entire VPK nonsense. It prevents (or tries to) people from being able to do one of the many things Valve games are known for, modding.

[quote]Oh and the released code is a bitch to work with, there is no first person code or viewmodel support so you have to code all that shit back in. The amount of work required to get a proper mod isnt worth it, especially since you need alien swarm installed to play it. So yeah in a sense its a dead game.[/quote] Alien Swarm IS free, however, so if you really wanted to play a released mod for it that bad, it's not too far out of bounds unless you don't have enough memory. v:v:v

Oh damn, I remeber when this came out. It was so promising. [del]Wasn't it/isn't it free?[/del]

[QUOTE=Keychain;28775427]I just wish Valve would drop the entire VPK nonsense. It prevents (or tries to) people from being able to do one of the many things Valve games are known for, modding.[/QUOTE] It doesnt make it more difficult or prevent modding. The VPK method is easier but the current use is terrible. It puts everything into 1 file which is easier than a bunch of files placed all over your game directory. The big issue is no good online support, no P2P sharing. The bad news is this is Valve's new system so expect it in Portal 2, DOTA 2, and possibly more new titles. The good news is if enough community members tell Valve what we would like to see Im sure they will fix it. They did after all update the system in L4D2 to support online use with custom textures and models. [QUOTE=RikohZX;28775433]Alien Swarm IS free, however, so if you really wanted to play a released mod for it that bad, it's not too far out of bounds unless you don't have enough memory. v:v:v[/QUOTE] Big game that not many people play is a waste of hard drive space. I have it installed because I still play it. Most people dont have TBs of drive space to waste.

It's been a [I]year[/I] since it came out? Fuck. Where have i been?

[QUOTE=MightyMax;28775538]It's been a [I]year[/I] since it came out? Fuck. Where have i been?[/QUOTE] Peru?

I wish valve would release more campaigns, I would definitely reinstall it.

Alien Swarm did effectively die. They released it, released a few patches, then dropped it. Because of a complete lack of updates and mods, people got sick of the only short campaign and stopped playing. It's still a fun game, but without any new campaigns at all it's just not worth re-downloading. Doesn't help in my case that one of the people I'd play with refuses to actually play on normal difficulty, he just runs around with the chainsaw and power fist ignoring the objectives and complains when we let him die.

[QUOTE=Lijitsu;28775737]Alien Swarm did effectively die. They released it, released a few patches, then dropped it. Because of a complete lack of updates and mods, people got sick of the only short campaign and stopped playing. It's still a fun game, but without any new campaigns at all it's just not worth re-downloading. Doesn't help in my case that one of the people I'd play with refuses to actually play on normal difficulty, he just runs around with the chainsaw and power fist ignoring the objectives and complains when we let him die.[/QUOTE] There are people who still play it. I still do, as do a few people on my friends list.

[QUOTE=Lijitsu;28775737]Alien Swarm did effectively die. They released it, released a few patches, then dropped it. Because of a complete lack of updates and mods, people got sick of the only short campaign and stopped playing. It's still a fun game, but without any new campaigns at all it's just not worth re-downloading. Doesn't help in my case that one of the people I'd play with refuses to actually play on normal difficulty, he just runs around with the chainsaw and power fist ignoring the objectives and complains when we let him die.[/QUOTE] I don't know how many games I played where I tried to be the competent little healer (medigun normally but healing beacons for parasite levels), and some little fucker would try to melee or chainsaw everything, even running into the parasites head-on. :saddowns:

[QUOTE=RikohZX;28775822]I don't know how many games I played where I tried to be the competent little healer (medigun normally but healing beacons for parasite levels), and some little fucker would try to melee or chainsaw everything, even running into the parasites head-on. :saddowns:[/QUOTE] Whoops. :v:

in my opinion they didnt do it right at all... gameplay was fine and whatever, but they only released 1 campaign and it didnt download custom maps from people who set up on matchmaking. and thats what killed it i think. but thats just my opinion.

They really should have started adding third party campaigns as official.

Wasnt it merely a tech demo for source engine 2?

It died because they just didn't support it, they barely bothered with it at all after it was released.

The hat was terrible too, the achievement for it should have been something better, like I dunno 3 missions completed (that'd make fucking sense it says hat trick)

The sad thing is it was made by Black Cat Studios, the modding team that made the original ASW mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 before getting hired by Valve. Essentially Alien Swarm is a Left 4 Dead 2 mod (from the AI director being present to even the same 'Game Instructor') made by a team that helped work on the game it's a mod of in question. I just find that weird irony.

[QUOTE=Empty_Shadow;28777168]The hat was terrible too[/QUOTE] Hey, the hat looked awesome on the medic!

[QUOTE=RikohZX;28777302]The sad thing is it was made by Black Cat Studios, the modding team that made the original ASW mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 before getting hired by Valve. Essentially Alien Swarm is a Left 4 Dead 2 mod (from the AI director being present to even the same 'Game Instructor') made by a team that helped work on the game it's a mod of in question. I just find that weird irony.[/QUOTE] What AI director? They were all triggers!

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;28777047]It died because they just didn't support it, they barely bothered with it at all after it was released.[/QUOTE] "Hey, here's this great game with lots of opportunity for modding! Let's only have one campaign, which will most definitely inspire the community to create more!" Valve's problem recently is that they're shedding too much responsibility on the community, and the community is ill-equipped to do anything with it. The community, no matter how hard they want to believe it, is [U][I][B]NOT[/B][/I][/U] Valve.

[QUOTE=gta-man12345;28777981]What AI director? They were all triggers![/QUOTE] After the game was released, people dived through the console commands and immediately found traces of the AI Director. A while later, an update was released for the game, allowing you to enable the AI Director officially. It spawns the enemies independently and a lot more fiercely (I was getting mauled by flying insects before I had even hacked the first door of the first map).

I stopped mainly becouse of my shitty computer. Not so fun playing with 10> fps. And I want those sexy dynamic shadows.

Really good game but no replayability.

[QUOTE=Empty_Shadow;28777168]The hat was terrible too, the achievement for it should have been something better, like I dunno 3 missions completed (that'd make fucking sense it says hat trick)[/QUOTE] Should have been an entire Campaign on Advanced or something.

I hated that you can't get XP on custom maps and playing the same campaign over and over is no no.

I bet it was just Valve testing things and the hat was just to lure people in to get feedback.

How hard is it to convert maps from UE2.5 to source? Even though things like doors, spawns, lighting and stuff like that would have to be redone by hand either way, there was a [B]preposterous[/B] amount of campaigns for the original UT2004 mod, which were all excellent. There were 2 official campaigns, Ortega campaign which was like half official, and then I think that at least 1 or 2 unofficial but fully blown ones, also a bunch of separate maps. Original Alien Swarm was truly awesome, and if somebody got arsed to port all the maps, it could get some life into present AS's veins. For some reason, I had more fun with the original mod anyway.