Loast Coast Thoughts and Impressions?

Absolutely beautiful. I think my computer had more trouble with the higher res textures than it did the HDR effect. I did manage to grab this wonderful pic, which pretty much sums up the beauty of this lil demo.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v52/oneonima/hl2lostcoast.jpg

I added a HL2 stamp and made it my wallpaper. I also submitted it to POTD at filefront.com. Oooooh the beautiness!
 
Anybody else notice the retexturing on the leeches?

And megalomaniac, be quite. Gordon is NOT gman.
 
A lot of map bugs which surprised me, and the light comming through the windows wasnt as impressive as I once thought.
I blame the reviewers for making it sound real cool ;)
 
I got lost right away and ended up falling off the map :(
I still haven't gotten past the first scene...
 
I'm was surprised to be able to run it with full features on a computer thats nearly two years old. It only crashed once. Other than that there were a few graphical glitches and clipping errors but it was smooth as a baby's bottom for something this demanding.

That cliff took me forever to scale, I didn't know what to do at first and jumped off and swam to the town several times, only to discover that it wasn't nor never meant to be finished despite the easy acessibility. So I was just walking through all of the buildings and such. After that I was just mowing all those Combine down.

It's funny how long they took so long to release something so short. Valve takes their time tuning all the details here. I'm glad it's finally out.
 
WOW!! now that's next generation graphics if you ask me! Ram extremely well on my PC with everything basically maxed out. I hope they make this for the original Half-life 2 game.
 
If I have a really crappy graphics card, can I still play through it without the fancy HDR effects just for the hell of it?
 
Apocalypse89 said:
If I have a really crappy graphics card, can I still play through it without the fancy HDR effects just for the hell of it?
Click to expand...

Yes.

sixchar
 
i loved the headcrab pod gun lol, every time it fired it shook the ground =) Also when you destroyed the gun, that was truly good things, i thought you had to shooy a rocket into it lol, i used all of them up and had none to fight the chopper until the scaffolding lol
BRILLIANT LEVEL VALVE!
 
.........................

I was blown away. Literally. I had been expecting something cool...but this good? VALVe has managed to top themselves once again. That 20-30 minutes of playing was more fun than many recent FULL games I have played. Well, of course, I'm a huge HL fan...but still. The game ran beautifully, graphics and HDR maxed.

Did anyone else notice that the difficulty must of been upped? I died probably more times than I did in the entire HL2 game (both played on Hard). Combine had some great grenades and flanking manuevers (especially during the church raid). It was both satisfying and very challenging. Ammo and health was also pretty scarce, which I thought was really cool. That's what gets the adrenaline pumping...low ammo/health, Combine radio chatter in the background. And man, when they scaled those cliffs! Awesome. The cliff combat made it really hard to see who and where you were being fired at...very fun.

Now, I never noticed this in HL2 and it has been a long time since I've played it, but did the Combine always shoot at Headcrabs? During the Church Raid scene, I found this little nook where the Combine could not see me. When they busted in, there was still one of those poison headcrabs left (man those things are one of the scariest monsters in any game I have played...that sound they make....) and the Combine proceeded to shoot at it and kill it.

Now, quick question. Are Headcrabs Xenian creatures? Or are they just parasites that leech off a species...sort of like a fleas? I would think they would have a pack mentality, but Kleiner's pet headcrab contradicts this. It seemed attached (no pun intended) to Kleiner.

If these headcrabs are just sort of intergalatic (heroes) parasites, then I would see why the Combine would shoot at them. Whether or not they controlled Xen and thus Xenian creatures (one would assume) would not matter.

Anyway, what an awesome 20 minutes of gaming. I cannot wait for Aftermath and subsequent episodes. Oh, one more thing. When I was hiding in the church, it was really interesting to see the combine search for me. They didn't just wait for me to pop out, they actively checked corners and whatnot until they found me. Pretty sweet.
 
very nice to play some new hl2 stuff! it looks far better than I expected. BEAUTIFUL. this was FUN!

d2lostcoast00076vd.jpg
 
So will that HDR be implemented into new CSS maps and future HL games and Mods ya ?
 
OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How big a download is it? My computer isn't as old as some as your are saying yours are so I feel a bit confident. I'll probably download it when I get home(in a public place right now) and maybe Gmod 9 tomorrow.
 
Drackard said:
So will that HDR be implemented into new CSS maps and future HL games and Mods ya ?
Click to expand...

yes it is going to be integrated into CSS and future valve/source games. and may be a slight possibility that it will be put into the entire hl2. but this is far from certain or anything planned yet.
 
Barney_Calhoun said:
Bah, I can't even install it. Need AMD 2800+, got AMD 2600+... up yours Valve.
Click to expand...

u can still play it lol thats jsut a recommendation
 
So... there are some requirements before we can download? :|
 
Download's 381megs isn't it? Much less than i though- i thought it'd be around a gig. Shame i still have to wait till i get uncapped- poos.

So what's the ram performance like? I remember someone saying they ran it fine on 512mb- so 1gb 2700 will cut it ok? no?
 
I just finished the Lost Coast demo. Damn, it was really cool. I thought my 1,8 Ghz AMD Duron wouldn't run the demo at all, but it did, at 24 fps. ( Got a Radeon 9600 XT and 768 Megs of DDR400 ram)

What really impressed me was the church lightning. It looks tons better than the original HL2 ( which was not bad, either ) :D
 
Although it was short, it was non-stop action which I liked. The graphics were simply incredible. I did a quick run through of the level which is why it was short, but now I'm gonna really look at all aspects of the level and how gorgeous HDR is :). I love this game :)
 
But it will run like poop probably, even with everything low.. just out of interest, is it all one level, or does it have load screens?
 
just played it - it was nice graphically and ran smoother than hl2 for me!!!
and i was below spec on all counts
:E

however it really showed hl2 ai at its worst - charging enemies using narrow paths and what was the deal with their being so damn many combine

as a tech demo for graphics cards it was fine - water still sucks from distance valve could learn from dice's method in bf2
 
It is just a tech demo really (the fighting never was never that good in HL2 anyways)

It is stunning to look at though - i'd be happy with 2 or 3 years of games that look and run as good as this, rather than having to shell out for new components every 6 months to keep up.
 
water still sucks from distance valve could learn from dice's method in bf2
Click to expand...

I disagree there, i love hl2's water, although BF2's water is nice, it seems flat and plain when your in a boat or something.
 
Lost Coast lacked one thing... A G-man sighting...

I'd love to see G-man straightning his tie in full HDR graphics.. :D
 
I'll have to wait until tomorrow to download this baby and have a go. Should be good!
 
To be honest this LC is a huge disappointment. First of all, it adds some pretty useless HDR (I really think the game looks just as good without it), and it shows off the worst thing seen in HL2 : enemy AI. It's awful. After playing though this level what strikes my eyes is not the graphics, but the developer's inability and incompetence to make artificial intelligence work.

After playing FEAR, Quake 4 and SS2 I gotta say that the Source engine has faded with time, it does look like a 1 year old game, ans seriously Valve should stop lying to us about how it took more than 6 months to develop this 5 minute long level. That's just pathetic.
 
john3571000 said:
however it really showed hl2 ai at its worst - charging enemies using narrow paths and what was the deal with their being so damn many combine
Click to expand...

exactly
 
I think it looks far better than FEAR and Quake 4 (especially FEAR, which looks unbelievably drab).

I agree about the AI though, and also feel the lack of any hit animations makes the guns feel extremelely weak, and as a result the combat is unsatisfying. Golden Eye showed how much a flinch here, or a man limping away there, can add to the experience (it only took 10+ years for the pc to catch up with FEAR)

People were too amazed by the visuals, the cutscenes, and use of physics in HL2 to realise the fighting, and most of the arsenal, blows. Average, old generation gameplay in a new engine.

It does look great though :)
 
Warbie said:
the fighting never was never that good in HL2 anyways
.
Click to expand...

Oh I thought it was.

Wilka: Don't double post again. Theres an edit button, use it.
 
eurgh, according to Steam it's going to take an hour to download :(
 
Warbie said:
(the fighting never was never that good in HL2 anyways)
Click to expand...
I agree, the fighting sure never wasn't never not that good. Never. Never ever!
 
Oops :)

That's what no sleep and a diet of fig rolls does to you.
 
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