Sven Co-Op 3.0 Half-Life Mod Released

Thanks to the official Sven Co-Op page for their announcement that version 3.0 of their popular Half-Life modification has finally been released. According to the site: "Sporting over two hundred and fifty features and changes ranging from new physics and AI systems to the Improved Cockroach, 3.0 is the largest, most significant update in Sven Co-op's history." The mod is described as "a co-operative modification... you are not fighting against other players - they are your allies, and you need to work with them to overcome large numbers of AI-controlled enemies", and the download page includes multiple mirrors for the 127mb file, which will also "be officially available for download via the Steam network at a later date."

Comments

Steam sucks

[CAPSLOCK2000]

Now why are the releasing the .exe before they release it on Steam? The best reason I can think of is to protect the Steam network from overloading. As we see with pretty much any update to Half-Life or Counter-Strike. Steam was supposed to be resistent to slashdotting, but it clearly can't stand the stress. Valve should have made it a distributed network, so everybody can add their own mirrors, instead of relying on a few, frequently down dedicated servers.

Re:Steam sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh whatever. Steam has its issues from time to time but that has to do with the auth mechanism and chat servers. I typically pull updates down at >200K/s on my broadband connection.

Re:Steam sucks

[rufo]

I can't remember if Gabe Newell said this outright or if this came out of one of the leaked e-mails from the code heist, but I recall that Steam is/was going to have a P2P system, but they didn't release it with the initial release because it would take too long to implement.

Re:Steam sucks

[jpardey]

The reason is (supposidly) that Valve dosen't have enough time on their hands to make a steam version. Also, a new CS update would make a few more waves than all the sven coopers downloading it off of steam at once...

The changes list

[xQuarkDS9x]

I read the entire changes list for this version and it doesn't seem like much. Sven coop was always a CPU intensive mod, run on older servers where the ping was always constantly in the high ranges.

Plus, for some reason Sven seems to attract even worse llama's then CS! And that's saying something. I gave up on Sven a long time ago back in the 2.1 release days because of the lack of servers and lack of decent good ping servers.

Re:The changes list

[jpardey]

well, the servers are often poor, mainly because they are people's connections, rather than major clan servers (clan SC? against who? lol). There is still hellzkitchen, and a few other ones. This is definetly my favorite mod, except for the occasional lag of death, mainly in stadium3 when someone puts on water and many gargs. btw, this is llamatron

Re:The changes list

[Repugnant_Shit]

I've never played SC online, but SC always seemed a more LAN-friendly game anyways. Even with with headsets, Internet play is not as fun as yelling instructions at the people around you. Much like Timesplitters 2 on any given console, SC seems made for LAN.

Two Gargs up! ;-)

[FortranDragon]

This is a lovely update. SvenCoop and TFC are my favorite HL mods. There's just something simple, something _fun_ about hopping into a game with a few friends and having it be you & them vs everything else. (I wish all multiplayer capable games would include a coop mode.)

I played most of the day yesterday (the 24th) on both Steam and the regular servers. I found the Steam servers more robust and things like voice comm much clearer on Steam than the regular servers. There were some glitches (to be expected on the first day of a x.0 release) in the single player maps, but I tend to think fixing some of those might be something only Valve can do.

All in all it is well worth donating some money to support this mod. The electric crowbar and gilded uzi *will* get you noticed. ;-)

I'm really excited to see what Sven and Co will do with HL2...

Steam

[BrookHarty]

If anyone has seen Condition Zero or HalfLife2, both use steam now.

I do like steam, the recent server history and Buddy tracker really makes it fun. But 2 things that bothered me with Steam, is they removed Bots, they keep promising that there will be Mod's for download via Steam.

So they keep saying "Mods are coming to Steam" when will be able to subscribe (free) to mods? How about a date from valve.

Re:Steam

[Kelerain]

Things are a little complicated with steam, so give them time for things like full support and Natural-Selection 3.0. But the older, and likely current versions of Sven co-op can be made to work under the current steam architecture (google is your friend) we're just waiting for convinent cant-say-it-because-its-panted one click access. Give them time, I feel they are doing good things.