Valve releases UT2004 inspired bug hunting top-down shooter Alien Swarm for free
Alien Swarm has been released for free by Valve. The game has its roots in the Unreal Tournament 2004 mod of the same name, and was in fact developed for Valve by the original UT2004 mod team.
Alien Swarm is a top down tactical shooter in a Sci-Fi setting which supports up to 4 players working co-operatively.
Gamers will be hunting alien bugs with over 40 weapons, coupled with a huge selection of equipment, making for plenty of loadout possibilities. Don’t worry if you don’t have any friends – there is also a single player mode.
There are four classes of IAF marine – Medic; Tech; Officer/Explosive; Special Weapons – and eight unique characters to choose from. Being a Steam title, Matchmaking, Steam Cloud, Steam Stats and 64 achievements are all built into the game.
The title is a title built on the Source SDK, and as an added treat for the Alien Swarm community, an Alien Swarm SDK with buildable source code has been included with the title. This means that potential Alien Swarm modders can tinker with the nuts and bolts of the game without having purchased one of the mainstream Source games such as Half-Life 2.
It also means that total conversion mods based on the game can be made, without having to use official Valve content. A tile-based level design tool that procedurally generates rooms is also included with the package, which will undoubtedly make modders lives a little easier.
Of course this isn’t merely Valve being nice. Valve has often plucked promising modders from various communities and added them to their in-house development team. By releasing a free SDK with minimal restrictions, Valve will encourage people to familiarise themselves with developing on the Source engine. Modders in the community therefore have a great chance to practice and show off their skills, and Valve doesn’t have to invest as much time in training new developers.
Check out the system requirements below before you mosey on over to Steam to check out this great free title.
Recommended
OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP
Processor: Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz
Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with Shader model 3.0. NVidia 7600, ATI X1600 or better
Hard Drive: At least 2.5 GB of free space
Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
Minimum
OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP
Processor: Pentium 4 3.0GHz
Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with 128 MB, Shader model 2.0. ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better
Hard Drive: At least 2.5 GB of free space
Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
