Half-Life - Lost Coast

[Neophyte]

Downloaded and played through Half-Life 2's Lost Coast. Very impressive. Even if I'm 100 Mhz under their suggested system requirements. I didn't really notice any sort of slowdown that would effect gameplay.

The effects are a natural evolution of video games. The High Dynamic Range lighting looked fantastic and very natural. And the iris simulations are equally impressive and effective. The new model design is also impressive. I guess Valve wanted to be the first ones out with this tech demo. I hope other developers take note and become familiar with these techniques.

On a side note, I just read that Shiney Entertainment was developing a new Matrix game where you play as Neo. And we all know the part where Neo has to fight off hundreds of Agent Smith's. The question was asked, "How many agents can we render in PlayStation 2?" One guy took the question as a challenge and came up with 750 agents! His buddy took that as a challenge and nearly doubled his effors. Apparently, there is still some life left in that old PS2 game system even as the PS3 starts to dawn.

[Akira]

Ok, finished that level in under 30 minutes. Kinda neat. I need to go back in and attempt some exploration, large looking map, only 1/4 actually used for game play. Screen shots via links below (full res, taken in 1024x768). Notice the combine standing up like that, those guys were dead, I loaded a save game point, and the corpses were standing like that.

http://www.campquake.net/files/Half-Lif ... st0000.jpg
http://www.campquake.net/files/Half-Lif ... st0001.jpg
http://www.campquake.net/files/Half-Lif ... st0002.jpg
http://www.campquake.net/files/Half-Lif ... st0003.jpg
http://www.campquake.net/files/Half-Lif ... st0004.jpg
http://www.campquake.net/files/Half-Lif ... st0005.jpg
http://www.campquake.net/files/Half-Lif ... st0006.jpg


My system:

P3 700
GeForce Ti4200
560Mb RAM

Was a little stuttery here and there, but not too bad.

[Aide-de-Camp]

OK, what is Lost Coast? Clearly a HL2 extension?

[Akira]

Open up Steam (go into Steam's game list) and look for Lost Coast, which is not installed, choose to install it.

It is mainly just to show off HL 2 texture/detail/lighting, a big hit on a system to play this level. It is just a single player level.

[D.A.R.K.[CotC]]

Hmm... I'm not sure my computer can handle it. My ram's under by 256 MB, and my speed is under by.... 1.3 GHZ lol

Required - 2.9 GHZ

Mine - 1.6 GHZ

[Neophyte]

Hmm... I'm not sure my computer can handle it. My ram's under by 256 MB, and my speed is under by.... 1.3 GHZ lol

Required - 2.9 GHZ

Mine - 1.6 GHZ

Well Akira's system is a 700 Mhz?! So that means your Combine Soldiers will be bent half-over instead of standing up when you kill them!

Aide, Lost Coast is a tech demo/level for Valve. It's something of a business card for them to try and entice more people to pay the million dollars required to license their engine for a game. And a peek into the future of games for we gamers. If you turn on the commentary, they have like 14 audio playback prompts in-game that explains a bit about the new technology that they put in the game. It's worth the download, even if they only use 1/4 of th level.

[Serpent]

I have alright specs... p4 2.54mhz, 1gb ram, ati radeon 9600 with 128mb ram... and I noticed the combine soldiers standing still sometimes, when I would reload as well.. during actual play it was different... but when you load a saved game...they were like statues... unless/until a certain trigger would happen...like.. you start a commentary to play, etc.. and I was actually disappointed - big time - by the fact that the level was a huge copout.. or at least, to me, it was.. I was hoping and wanting badly to explore the whole village... after I saved it. hehe.. so I said.. screw this... went into no clipping mode and flew over there only to find out it was a huge facade.. heh.. nice little bit of fakery...