Apr 14, 2011
Alien Swarm: The Model Kit: The Game Looked Great!
Alien Swarm

Alien Swarm: The Model Kit: The Game Looked Great!Last year, Valve released - for free - a game called Alien Swarm, which ended up with a visual style somewhere between the original Alien and a 1980s action figure. This early concept, though, shows something a little more unique.


Drawn by Valve environmental artist Ivan Simoncini, it depicts an early test for a "diorama" style appearance for the game. Seeing as Alien Swarm shipped with a tile-based level creation suite, this "model kit" look seems a natural fit for the pre-fab nature of the title, and seeing how cool it is makes me wish Valve had actually gone down this path with the game.


Ah well. We can always hope a future Warhammer game might look like this!


Oct 11, 2010
Alien Swarm Update Released
Alien Swarm - Valve
Updates to Alien Swarm have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Alien Swarm
  • Added TTF font support
  • Fixed an engine exploit
Aug 23, 2010
Alien Swarm Adds AI Director, New Difficulty
Alien Swarm - Alden
Since release, we've received a ton of feedback and feature requests from the Alien Swarm community. The most requested additions are more variety and greater difficulty.

With that in mind, we've added "Onslaught" mode, which introduces an AI Director that dynamically generates swarms of aliens based on several factors, such as the squad's stress level. Onslaught works with any difficulty setting and ensures no mission plays the same way twice.

Speaking of difficulty, we've also added a "Brutal" difficulty level for those of you who told us "Insane" wasn't insane enough. How brutal is Brutal? Nobody on the Alien Swarm team has managed to complete a mission on it.

If for some crazy reason Brutal is still too easy for you, there's now a "Hardcore Friendly Fire" toggle. When enabled, friendly fire deals full damage immediately, flamethrowers set teammates on fire much faster, and turrets will hurt you if get caught in their crossfire. HCFF truly tests your team’s ability to work as a elite squad. Coordinating movement and firing lines become an even more integral part of the game.

Finally, to reward the most dedicated players, we've added 3 new IAF Promotion Ranks: Platinum Star, Osmium Star, and the coveted Iridium Medallion.
Aug 23, 2010
Alien Swarm Adds AI Director, New Difficulty
Alien Swarm - Alden
Since release, we've received a ton of feedback and feature requests from the Alien Swarm community. The most requested additions are more variety and greater difficulty.

With that in mind, we've added "Onslaught" mode, which introduces an AI Director that dynamically generates swarms of aliens based on several factors, such as the squad's stress level. Onslaught works with any difficulty setting and ensures no mission plays the same way twice.

Speaking of difficulty, we've also added a "Brutal" difficulty level for those of you who told us "Insane" wasn't insane enough. How brutal is Brutal? Nobody on the Alien Swarm team has managed to complete a mission on it.

If for some crazy reason Brutal is still too easy for you, there's now a "Hardcore Friendly Fire" toggle. When enabled, friendly fire deals full damage immediately, flamethrowers set teammates on fire much faster, and turrets will hurt you if get caught in their crossfire. HCFF truly tests your team’s ability to work as a elite squad. Coordinating movement and firing lines become an even more integral part of the game.

Finally, to reward the most dedicated players, we've added 3 new IAF Promotion Ranks: Platinum Star, Osmium Star, and the coveted Iridium Medallion.
Aug 23, 2010
Alien Swarm Adds AI Director, New Difficulty
Alien Swarm - Valve
Since release, we've received a ton of feedback and feature requests from the Alien Swarm community. The most requested additions are more variety and greater difficulty.

With that in mind, we've added "Onslaught" mode, which introduces an AI Director that dynamically generates swarms of aliens based on several factors, such as the squad's stress level. Onslaught works with any difficulty setting and ensures no mission plays the same way twice.

Speaking of difficulty, we've also added a "Brutal" difficulty level for those of you who told us "Insane" wasn't insane enough. How brutal is Brutal? Nobody on the Alien Swarm team has managed to complete a mission on it.

If for some crazy reason Brutal is still too easy for you, there's now a "Hardcore Friendly Fire" toggle. When enabled, friendly fire deals full damage immediately, flamethrowers set teammates on fire much faster, and turrets will hurt you if get caught in their crossfire. HCFF truly tests your team’s ability to work as a elite squad. Coordinating movement and firing lines become an even more integral part of the game.

Finally, to reward the most dedicated players, we've added 3 new IAF Promotion Ranks: Platinum Star, Osmium Star, and the coveted Iridium Medallion.

Aug 9, 2010
Alien Swarm SDK Update Released
Alien Swarm - Valve
Updates to Alien Swarm SDK have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Alien Swarm SDK
  • Alien Swarm Authoring Tools updated with support for mod configurations
Aug 5, 2010
Alien Swarm Update Released
Alien Swarm - Valve
Updates to Alien Swarm have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Alien Swarm
  • Fixed Assault Jets using up more than one charge when you have high ping
  • Fixed HLMV material loading when running a mod
  • Fixed a Steam cloud bug in the SDK source code
Jul 30, 2010
Alien Swarm Update Released
Alien Swarm - Valve
Updates to Alien Swarm have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Alien Swarm
  • Fixed XP/Level transferring to a new player using an old player’s PC
  • Addon VPKs get priority over base VPKs
  • Added -override_vpk command line option to make loose files have priority over VPKs
  • Stopped spawners shutting down completely when an alien is blocking the location for more than 5 ticks in a row.
Jul 26, 2010
Alien Swarm Update Released
Alien Swarm - Valve
Updates to Alien Swarm have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Alien Swarm
  • Fixed performance issues on SynTek Residential
  • Added Dedicated Server Browser to the main menu
  • Cheat protected marine skill values.
Jul 23, 2010
Alien Swarm Update Released
Alien Swarm - Valve
Updates to Alien Swarm have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Alien Swarm
  • The Vindicator’s grenade explosion effect should no longer crash users running a GTX260 graphics card.
  • Fixed a bug where marines would continue to be buffed by the Damage Amp if they were standing in it when it expired.
  • Fixed ammo usage on the Tesla Cannon to properly decrease 4 times a second instead of 2 (doubled clip size to account for this).
  • Rebalanced Tesla Cannon’s damage to encourage it to be used more as a support weapon.
  • Tesla Cannon will now use ammo slowly even when it isn’t damaging something.
  • Fixed Unicode text chat
...