There You Are, Lost Coast!

[Liquidize105]

Word from steampowered.com (http://www.steampowered.com/?area=news) is that the "Lost Coast" tech demo has been released.

Sitting in at 318mb and 15 exaggerated minutes of gameplay, the system requirements for this little ray of sunshine are simply herculean.

Pentium 2.9ghz
1 gig ram
Directx9 video card
Here's a few screenshots. (http://storefront.steampowered.com/v2/index.php?area=game&AppId=340&l=english&s=0&i=&a=92,219#)

Well, I'm installing ANYWAY. With my system I get the coveted "extended" playtime! Eeepee! qxD

EASTER EGG: Shooting the seagulls at the beginning would prompt the fisherman's protest, from which he kinda sorta explains in-context why stepping into the water hurts Freeman.

[thecrazyd]

Wow, those system requirements are lower then I expected. Figured it might be too much for my humble vanilla 6800.

[The Iron Weasel]

They need to change the name, I fucking found it, I found it last year, what the hell is this shit?

[sTubbs]

They need to change the name, I fucking found it, I found it last year, what the hell is this shit?

Well, this shit's not about pants, And this shit's not about shirts, And this shit's definitely not about hair, This shit is bout having a good fucking time.

:p I simply could not resist, it just fit so well on so many levels. :D

[The Iron Weasel]

you've got me there fellow canadian......now i must kill you for there can only be so many of us here....

[Klade]

I have no idea what the hell the canadians are talking about.. My question though is when is lost coast coming out for real?

Edit: I feel silly.. apparently its out right now!

[Liquidize105]

I just tried it. For the non-combat scenes, my p1.8 runs fine, the combat scenes are tolerable. So go ahead and install it.

Have to go out now, will finish it later.

[The Iron Weasel]

I have no idea what the hell the canadians are talking about.. My question though is when is lost coast coming out for real?

Its a line from a song. AND he was saying that the name really doesn't mean anything (which is what the song is about). Now that he has shown me up, I must seek him out and murder him....duh....

[ezra]

Speaking of HL2, whats happening with that expansion? It seems like ages since there's been any news about it.

[The Iron Weasel]

Speaking of HL2, whats happening with that expansion? It seems like ages since there's been any news about it.

Their actualy not making it yet. They're just making people think they are.

[ezra]

Their actualy not making it yet. They're just making people think they are.


I presume this is because the HL2 team is busy renting themself out to help George Brussard get DNF out the door for the holiday season.

[The Iron Weasel]

I presume this is because the HL2 team is busy renting themself out to help George Brussard get DNF out the door for the holiday season, eh?

*Raises eyebrows and taps nose*

[Eric_T_Cheng]

Perhaps I should finish HL2 first...

[ElectricMonk]

well i'm just shy of the minimum requirements by 100 mhz, so hopefully it's fine. i'm anxious to see hdr in action.

[Dirty Harry]

*Raises eyebrows and taps nose*
geogre brussard actually coming through on his promises?, man that will be the day. My hope is that the game breaths some life back in the pc market.

[Captain Awesome]

Couldnt run it at full settings. But damn, that was amazingly cool (good action aswell) and monastery was jaw-dropping nice. The commentary feature is also a great plus to this release.

[The Iron Weasel]

Now if they just convert the HL2 assets to maket them look as good as Lost Coast.

[thecrazyd]

geogre brussard actually coming through on his promises?, man that will be the day. My hope is that the game breaths some life back in the pc market.
Breath new life? Man, at best DNF will be a well polished and very solid FPS that pushes no boundries. Do you honestly believe you will see something new?

[swiftdraw]

I've 2.20 GHz, fx5700, and 2GB of RAM... I'm going for it....

[MasterEvilAce]

I didnt' see anything godlike about that.. it was really short.. only reason it was close to 15minutes is because I didn't know what i was supposed to "do next".. but i figured it out soon enough.

Game ran horribly until i turned off HDR... then it ran like regular HL2, and looked exactly the same..

*shrugs*
1.8ghz, 1gb ram.. ati 9800 pro 128mb

[BabyJesus]

Anyone try it on 512MB system RAM?

[UnderHero5]

I just played through it twice. Once with Commentary, once without.
1280x1024, everything max including HDR.
It ran alright, looked alright (already saw and was unimpressed with HDR in DoD:S)... I really enjoyed the commentrary though.

The level itself really didn't look any better than the rest of HL2. Just looked like a part of the Coast... just less foggy than it was in HL2.
Gameplay (what little there was) was standard HL2 (not that I would expect anything else) which isn't a bad thing.

My overall impression is... Why did this take so long to come out exactly? And HDR is a pointless resource hog.

A64 3700+
2gb DDR400 ram
GF 6800 GT @ 420mhz/1100.

[MasterKwan]

It looked sweet. Was kind of buggy. I ended up with rooms full of crucified combine soldiers (the corpses were just standing there with arms outstretched). Wish it was longer. I wanted to visit the village. It's pretty much the benchmark for how I want my games to look in the future (that and Quake 4).

[Nameback]

My overall impression is... Why did this take so long to come out exactly? And HDR is a pointless resource hog.

I would wager to guess that its got something to do with ATi's severly delayed X1000 series.

[vladthedog]

It was good.. I played through it twice as well (first w/o commentary). I maxed everything on 1280 on got decent frames (amd64 3400 w/ 1g ram and a 6800 ultra). I was actually surprised I was able to run it like that and still be pretty playable (hit low 20's on intense scenes.. wouldn't wanna play through the whole game like that, but for a tech demo it was fine). After being totally screwed on F.E.A.R. (not being able to really max things out w/o tremendous slowdown) I was expecting the same from this.

On a side note, I found the combat a bit "boring"... I know a big part of that has to do with the fact that I'm having great fun w/ FEAR's combat :) but the enemies just seem so boring.. stand there and shoot... heh

EDIT: wanted to add... i can't believe this took so friggin long to release.. i was expecting "short" not "miniscule"... :) when they say "level" they mean "loading zone"... for how long it took i wish it were "bigger" .... like they enabled HDR throughout all of hl2 or something.

[goc_sin]

I thought it looked pretty freakin nice on my machine... I had everything on High though.

[The Iron Weasel]

Yeah F.E.A.R. almost ruined other games for me, seriously, when I'm done a gunfight I just think. Wheres the nice blood splatter, limbs torn off, and particles. Seriously I couldn't play any other game while I was playing that because it just felt so wrong. I hope its not long till a game matchs the viceral gunfights of that game.

[Ernst_Jager]

The controls in FEAR are no where near as precise as HL2. Almost all the weapons in FEAR fee sluggish to me. I also hate that most of them have burst fire instead of semiauto or auto.

[Phades]

Technology seems pretty cool but it seems odd for it to have taken so long. Guess it was probably more getting the lighting technology working right than building that level. I thought the eye adjustment thing is a cool idea but didn't seem quite right. It was just too easy to see happening.

[Dirty Harry]

Breath new life? Man, at best DNF will be a well polished and very solid FPS that pushes no boundries. Do you honestly believe you will see something new?
its my belief that this game with push some conventional gameplay concepts such as enviroment interaction.

[Captain Awesome]

geogre brussard actually coming through on his promises?, man that will be the day. My hope is that the game breaths some life back in the pc market.


For a game now having reached a full decade of development. It better invert my penis and molest me. Somehow I think we'll see a nice solid FPS with alot of the T n' A we expect from Duke. At this stage it better be bug-free and have the smoothest game design known to man. Who knows I could be wrong, but I can also care less.

3dr's problem is they allowed the nastiest case of feature creep known to man to over take that companies project. On a professional stand-point this is just poor on their part as a company. I understand good art takes time, but no game should take this long to develop. Christ, i'd hate to see this company create an expansion pack or just one level-add on for a game.

[thecrazyd]

its my belief that this game with push some conventional gameplay concepts such as enviroment interaction.
And it is my belief that anything that would turn the world of FPSs upside down in 1998 has already been done to death.

[Draft]

The Lost Coast was really awesome back when it was called the Far Cry demo.

[Furtive]

Just finished with my 2 playthroughs as well. It made for a decent tech demo but i can't figure why they didnt release this before DoD:S. It was prettier than DoD:S but not by much and would have been much more impressive if we hadn't all been playing DoD for the past few weeks. I'm actually surprised it had combat at all. It really felt tacked on and uninspired if you ask me. Of course that could be the F.E.A.R. talking.

Also I liked comment 4 or 5 i think it was, when he talked about how this level used to have a puzzle where you interact with the fisherman but then they took it out. Couldnt let us have 16 minutes of "gameplay" could ya?

[Averic]

I loved every bit of it. I think it looked beautiful. Probably because I have the rig to view it at 1600x 1200 high everything and 4x AA and 8x Anis filtering without a hicup.
That cathedral was jaw dropping.

Fx-55
7800 GTX
2gigs of ram

[feeble]

hahaha, that was sweet.
commentary great
harpoon was fantastic, nailed to combine to the wall. good times, good times.
that wood bridge.

bit unsure when i was playig it, for somereason i was given god mode, not to sure why.

but this realy makes me want to play hl2 again, and i cant wait for the expansion pack.

[Schnoogs]

The HDR looks great in this and DoD. Definitly a very exciting technology...

[agentgray]

Haha. I thought the title of the post was a reference to a movie quote:

"There you are, Peter"

Kudos if you can nail it.

[ÜberJumper]

Peter Pan.

So yeah, this technology's cool.

[sTubbs]

you've got me there fellow canadian......now i must kill you for there can only be so many of us here....

OH NOES!!!!!!!! I have been out for hours...little did I know that you could have been lurking in the shadows waiting for the right time to strike! I must take comfort in the fact that you are all the way across the country. Surely you would not travel all the way to Vancouver to exact revenge...or would you? Around the house I go...all of the windows and doors are locked...tonight I sleep with the lights on.

[Knightsaber]

It's kick-ass. Now they just need an option to play all of Half-Life 2 with this lighting available. Then you're damn right I'd play through it again.

[kizke]

Wow, those system requirements are lower then I expected. Figured it might be too much for my humble vanilla 6800.

A 6800 is "humble vanilla"?

;_;

Does that make my 5700 a turd sandwich?

*weeps quietly*

[Fyd]

I dont want this, i want they, release TF2 :)

[Kefkataran]

Downloaded! Sure, it's not much, but more HL2? Any day.

[KarmaGhost]

Wow, I have to say; for such a short tech demo, it sure took long enough to release it. I'm not so sure I like this HDR lighting so much. I think it may make the game more difficult than it needs to be. I never experienced it in any other game, so this is my first run.

Not very impressed (and I'm a big Valve fan, so that's saying a lot).

[eatme]

Really fucking pretty, and I was just on a Radeon 9800 Pro. Good framerate, though I'm sure not at the res some of you are running it at.

They seem to still be getting the hang of how to tune the effects and make the art for this new tech-- makes sense that this is basically the tech demo, and a full game would hopefully use the lessons learned here to more perfectly integrate the tech and content. Definitely some weird rubber-banding issues with exposure adjustment, some "too wet" surfaces, and so on. Overall, though, very good.

[Varsity]

I'm suprised at the number of bugs present in something that released 10 months later than it was supposed to. It's damn good looking though, and I love the commentary system.

[earthworm48]

It runs perfectly on my system with everything at the absolute max. I thought with those specs my RAM would slow things down in places but it hasn't. (3500+, 1GB ballistix PC3200, 7800 GTX 256MB)

[Liquidize105]

Yeah, bugs aplenty.

There's the reload bug with the models.

And if you set the game to quick-weapon change, the grav gun's cursor gets a nice long streak down the screen.

HDR is very cool though. I prefer this kind of graphic enhancement to UE3's upping the poly "zombie march."

[bapenguin]

The controls in FEAR are no where near as precise as HL2. Almost all the weapons in FEAR fee sluggish to me. I also hate that most of them have burst fire instead of semiauto or auto.

Weird, I found the controls in this demo to feel really "laggy" like I was constantly pushing my weapon through water. It sort of feels like it in FEAR, but this seemed more extreme to me.

[Qoz]

3Drealms are not a victim of featurecreep. Well.. perhaps a little.
The main problem they faced several times was the tech not being ready or impossible to finish properly.

After Duke3D they did not have 3D engine talent and decided to license.
This seemed like a good idea (Raven did great with Quake-tech), but Quake2 soon looked dated and Unreal-tech was adopted. The change was to take only a few weeks, but everything had to be redone.
They have ambition and wouldn't release something inferior to Duke3D (I respect that).
But they seriously messed up in management - they needed to make their own tech and hire enough people to do what they wanted. They failed at both.
Prey was cancelled because of tech not "coming together" and the same happened to Duke4ever twice!
2-3 years ago they remade all components of the Unreal tech (renderer etc). All that is left in some form, is the unreal-scripting engine. They have Meqon physics, HDR lighting, normal mapping etc. The game is probably gonna look very good.

What they should have done was make their own tech from scratch (like Valve did with HL2) and resurface when the game was about finished. They learned their lesson the hard way. I still have faith in 3Drealms to deliver an entertaining product.. it WILL be innovative Im sure. They had some fantastic ideas in Duke3D and Shadow Warrior, and I hope they have more for Duke4ever.

Some years ago I found some voice-work being made for Duk4Ever by John St. John. It was sooo funny and 100 times better than Sam the Serious. 3Dreamls have always been masters of polishing games.. thats why Max Payne and Prey developers give their money to them. They know they can help them make the games better.

All this is speculation though. Based on production values many years ago. When the game is out we will see if they lost the magic during the hard times.

[Varsity]

And if you set the game to quick-weapon change, the grav gun's cursor gets a nice long streak down the screen.
You get the same thing if you enable quick info.

Weird, I found the controls in this demo to feel really "laggy" like I was constantly pushing my weapon through water. It sort of feels like it in FEAR, but this seemed more extreme to me.
I get that when I look at lots of water shaders or when I shine my flashlight on one that fills the screen. Definitely a graphics issue.

[Qoz]

What Im trying to say is - you cannot look back and say "they spent 10 years! of my g0d! The game must be really great looking and inventing my penis!"

They wasted 6 years.
They started over 2 times. Some would say 3.

The current status is "tech nearly complete. creating content, level polish".
They have never stated anything like this in the past and it is a 99% certainty that this time the game is actually getting finished.
They have hired alot more developers to create content.

I think the game will be out in 1 year.
We will probably see some media at E3 2006 or sooner.

[Ernst_Jager]

Weird, I didn't see any graphic issues unless I moved boxes around and went places they really didn't design for players to go.

[ÜberJumper]

When I died (by jumping off the last ledge) and re-loaded, I was treated to all the combine soldiers that I'd killed hanging around in the default T modelling pose.

[Commissar Rob]

Runs like a dream! A few dialogue scenes where the imfamous (infamous?) stuttering briefly showed up...but otherwise ran great!

Yea for me new PC!

[TheKeck]

I can't BELIEVE I forgot to check this out yesterday!!

(Well, I suppose it had something to do with the 3 hour "Kama Sutra Game" with my wife. :eek: )

[Kefkataran]

Just finished running through it twice (once without commentary, once with). I loved it! Beautiful level design, as to be expected, fun gameplay, and the commentary was totally worth going through again. I plan to send Gabey an e-mail and let him know I'd love to see more like this!

(Also, huge props to him for inviting people to give their opinions.)

[51|RandoM]

Runs great for me, the commentary was very nicely done, especially that first bit of split screen to show you on the beach exactly what HDR was doing for the scene.

If you don't like HDR, you're just not interested in getting any experience out of the environment, just in counting your FPS and your score.

[Pluvious]

Regarding how long it took a 15 min demo to be released, its obvious to me that they where holding on to the Lost Coast to steal some attention away from FEAR and QUAKE4 this week.

[Kefkataran]

Regarding how long it took a 15 min demo to be released, its obvious to me that they where holding on to the Lost Coast to steal some attention away from FEAR and QUAKE4 this week.

Quite possible. Also worth noting that they obviously did a lot of work to implement the commentary nicely, and it does work quite smooth, albeit with a few bugs (such as everything stopping while commentary is on, allowing you to down enemies pretty easily).

[Bone]

Not to mention if you listen to the commentary, creating this level required rebuilding all game assets with the new rendering in mind- redoing models and textures as well as shaders and any code that has to do with lighting effects.

This 15 minute demo is actually a showcase for a significant change in the engine. I'm glad the tech demo was a free short level rather than a lackluster retail game like some companies put out whenever they make an iteration of their engine...

[Bone]

a few bugs (such as everything stopping while commentary is on, allowing you to down enemies pretty easily).
I don't think that's a bug. I actually liked being able to ignore the enemies while listening to the developers talk.

[Kefkataran]

I don't think that's a bug. I actually liked being able to ignore the enemies while listening to the developers talk.

Fair enough. I just started the commentary and then proceeded to slaughter enemies. :)