Slashdot Mirror
Alien Swarm Can Be Played As a Terrifying FPS
AndrewGOO9 writes "With a few simple commands from the developer console, Alien Swarm can go from being played as an isometric top-down shooter to a first-person perspective. Surprisingly easy, it does make the game, which was released for free via Steam earlier this week, a lot more terrifying. But, anyone who is at home playing games like Modern Warfare or Halo should have no problem slaughtering their way through wave after wave of creatures. In fact, it poses the potential to make the game easier for people who would've otherwise struggled with the overhead view."
Not everyone likes 3rd person view for all games. I think it sucks for when you control a walking/running character and need to aim. That's the job of 1st person view.
My son is playing AS right now with a few of his friends. I yelled over "hey did you know that AS can be...." "yeah yeah, played as a FPS.. it sucks"
All of which were 100 times more terrifying than what I saw in the video.
An inordinate amount of attention for simple game.
In other headline news, Starcraft 2 can be played as anything, thanks to a gnarly editor.
I doubt it, Aliens are constantly coming from all directions including from behind and catch up in seconds or even fractions of seconds, particularly in the harder difficulties.
also constantly maintaining the optimum strategic positions relative to your teammates is a necessarily in Insane mode, and it only takes running in front of your team mate while they file a few times to kill you.
That being said it would be easier to shoot in the z dimension, in the rare instances that it is necessary.
and their is nothing really nothing i have not mentioned about the game that makes FP view harder then top down.
So it would be more then possible, at least at easier difficulties, but I think that insane mode would be near impossible if not totally impossible.
But then some people could just be very stilled at FP squad based tactics and make it work perfectly fine, but then their are a lot more pope playing FPSes then top down shooters.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
...Space Invaders as a first person shooter. The original alien swarm.
(uncommonly referred to as isometric view)
Never try to sound smarter than you are, because someone who actually knows what they're talking about will show you up. Isometric view points in a game specifically refer to when the plane is tilted to a certain perspective, usually 45 degrees. It is possible to have 2D perspective that is not at all isometric, since to be isometric, it needs to be fixed that all along each axis, the scale is the same, meaning that there's no foreshortening or vanishing points.
Further, when it's actually applicable, isometric is commonly used. The only reason it would be uncommon is if it's not applicable.
Hey, man, those pinky demons can turn freaking invisible! It's scary! And don't get me started on what they did to those poor bunnies in the end...
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
This story has shown me a terrifying game.
But not the one it indicated.
http://thumb-culture.com/2010/07/22/xbla-review-limbo/
What the hell?
Yeah, it's true that 3rd person sucks for aiming, but this is only usually because you cannot zoom in 3rd person. Or for some other reason, like the crosshairs or ironsights being invisible. The camera distance increase only usually has a marginal penalty on accuracy.
For games with a visible crosshairs in 3rd, accuracy can sometimes approach even. It does take quite some getting used to. There are many games where the FoV change makes up-close combat more favorable to 3rd person, and as a result you see all skilled persons fighting in 3rd when close. These guys can turn and headshot another in .1 second when the opponent appears at 270 degrees left, while a person in 1st-person view would not have seen the enemy at all. It also makes rapidly switching between targets a lot easier.
It's easy to tell the difference between the styles of play. Someone in 1st-person might make one kill and take a small moment to locate another opponent that happened to move. A skilled person in 3rd-person will perform three near-simultaneous executions to kill off opponents on all sides. FoV increases really shouldn't be underestimated.
Plus, there is the obligatory "seeing around corners" benefit. It can help in multiplayer. A lot.
I think both of you just need to chill, take a hit or whatever will calm you down, and just let Mr. Taco run his blog however the fuck he wants to :)
...
And we all had to know this why?
1 Get your own blog ...
2 Whine on that
3 Leave this one alone
4
5 Forget profit, I would love it if I could read one thread without anyone having to be modded off-topic or troll.
...
Why not script it? I guess you just have to do everything yourself.
Just bind p for a handy point-of-view toggle.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
It is a rewrite and based on the Source engine, which has nothing to do with UT2004.
Ahh, yes. That's why they released the source code. To make sure that nobody could ever modify it. And that's why they added a developer's console along with a command to switch to first-person view. To make sure that nobody could ever possibly activate that. And that's why the first person perspective was implemented in the first place. Because developers have nothing better to do than waste their time on features they hate and never want anyone to use.
Yeah, it's true that 3rd person sucks for aiming, but this is only usually because you cannot zoom in 3rd person.
As long as laser precision at infinite range is the norm for FPSs, why wouldn't everything else suck?
These guys can turn and headshot another in .1 second when the opponent appears at 270 degrees left, while a person in 1st-person view would not have seen the enemy at all. It also makes rapidly switching between targets a lot easier.
*sigh* that's whats wrong with games these days. 270 degree .1 second headshot. How is that immersive? Shot to the head is "realistic" but foot, hand, arm, leg, abdomen etc, those are glancing blows. Twitch shooting is going to kill the FPS genre.
Wouldn't you all like games with real life tactics better? Not the aim for the head!, or finish the guy off with a pistol at 300 yds kind...
No, it's first person view that's completely unusable for any game. If I could do 1 thing to improve gaming, it would be to go back in time and murder the guy who created FPS before he was born. Gaming for the past decade would be orders of magnitude better.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Obviously. Good thing Steam isn't run by ol' Jobs so they have no problem letting the user decide. Gawd, I love console tweaks. Just wanna thank submitter for bringing this game (and the tweak) to my attention.
/rarely log on to Steam
There was a recent school shooting (in Germany I think it was) where there were 9 people killed, with nine shots fired, and 9 headshots.
No there wasn't...
Here's a nickel kid, go get yourself a real computer.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
FPS games tend to spawn most things in front of you.
Top-down games spawn all around you, because you can see behind you just as well as you can see in front of you.
Looking in only one direction at a time would be crippling.
My Journal
Left 4 Dead still isn't available as a Mac title...and now this. Which is completely bizarre, because Alien Swarm was originally available for the Mac; it's based on UT2004...available for, oh, you know, 6 years?
Buy a real computer and you can play games. Buy the $400 more expensive hipster "computer" and you can do what Jobs thinks you should be doing.
Valve never said that the game was "open source", just that the source code for the "game logic" is available, similar to how it is with HL2. At some point, people (and press?) got confused and keep calling it open source, despite that it's not really different from the other moddable Source engine games that you can use as base. The intent being opening up avenues of modding, but the game still depends on large binary blobs to compile and is releases under a restricted license.
Valve probably didn't intend to mislead people, unlike the whole "Shared source" crap by Microsoft.
Seriously? Could we get something remotely interesting for a change? I've not even downloaded the game and I could tell you exactly how to do this, its really, really not even remotely difficult or complicated in any way. I will very shortly be removing slashdot from my RSS feeds.
Your post is hilarious when read out in a posh and pretentious English schoolgirl's voice.
... and then they built the supercollider.
No, it's first person view that's completely unusable for any game. If I could do 1 thing to improve gaming, it would be to go back in time and murder the guy who created FPS before he was born. Gaming for the past decade would be orders of magnitude better.
Absolutely, I completely agree. The problem is that a first-person view has no connection with how I perceive things in reality.
See, I was born with no eyes, and at a very young age I was fitted with a shoulder-harness camera that sits about 30 feet over my head, as well as slightly behind (about 30 degrees) and to the right. This makes it virtually impossible for me to play a first-person game because I have never perceived the world this way, and it just looks strange and alien. I feel right at home playing a top-down isometric game, as I watch myself play the game from a top-down isometric view.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black