Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

[Mr March]

Valve Software released the Lost Coast this past Thursday and I've only had a chance to play a little bit of the game. So far, it's really good, playing exactly like a "lost" level from the game. I won't really have the opportunity to test the new dynamic lighting effects until I get my new system up and running, but I was curious if anyone else here is playing the game.

[ComicKaze]

Lost Coast is consistently crashing on me.

My setup and overclock has been running everything I throw at it stable for months. Played through HL2, FEAR, Quake4, and spent several hours in COD2 last night.

But when I start Lost Coast, I'll get the sound-stuttering HL2 used to give me, and while I can stare straight ahead in the game with no issues, as soon as I start looking around, or go closer up to something, the game will freeze everytime after a few seconds.

I've gone and underclocked my components, turned off CPC on my ram, gave my ram more juice, underclocked and reduced voltage to CPU, and tried various clocks on my X800.

No dice. Everytime I run Lost Coast, it just crashes very quickly as soon as I move the mouse and walk around for a bit. I don't know what's going on.

[Shmitty]

Lost Coast is consistently crashing on me.

My setup and overclock has been running everything I throw at it stable for months. Played through HL2, FEAR, Quake4, and spent several hours in COD2 last night.

But when I start Lost Coast, I'll get the sound-stuttering HL2 used to give me, and while I can stare straight ahead in the game with no issues, as soon as I start looking around, or go closer up to something, the game will freeze everytime after a few seconds.

I've gone and underclocked my components, turned off CPC on my ram, gave my ram more juice, underclocked and reduced voltage to CPU, and tried various clocks on my X800.

No dice. Everytime I run Lost Coast, it just crashes very quickly as soon as I move the mouse and walk around for a bit. I don't know what's going on.

340943[/snapback]

I played it with all settings full except the FSAA, it was at 2x, mine's usually at 6x, at 1152x864.The HDR was too much i guess. I had the same crashing problem too. My X800 was OC'ed and was playing everything fine except Lost Coast. I un-OC'ed it and it ran with the FSAA turned down. Owell, it was pretty fun. I had fun knocking the combine all the way down the cliff.

Edited October 31, 2005 by Shmitty

[JsARCLIGHT]

I Dl'ed it on Saturday and played through it. My rig ran it like budda. 1680 x 1050 full on everything. No crashes at all... a tad of slowdown when tons of stuff is going on onscreen but outside of that no issues.

I thought it was decent as sort of a video game "bonus features" sort of thing. I played it with the commentary on and found it more educational than entertaining... the level itself is pretty bland outside of all the shiny pretty things in it.

I wish they would repackage and re-release the normal HL2 game with full HDR support so EVERY level looks that good, sort of like what they did with HL1 and that "detail up" package they released with Blue Shift.

Edited October 31, 2005 by JsARCLIGHT

[ComicKaze]

Lost Coast is consistently crashing on me.

My setup and overclock has been running everything I throw at it stable for months. Played through HL2, FEAR, Quake4, and spent several hours in COD2 last night.

But when I start Lost Coast, I'll get the sound-stuttering HL2 used to give me, and while I can stare straight ahead in the game with no issues, as soon as I start looking around, or go closer up to something, the game will freeze everytime after a few seconds.

I've gone and underclocked my components, turned off CPC on my ram, gave my ram more juice, underclocked and reduced voltage to CPU, and tried various clocks on my X800.

No dice. Everytime I run Lost Coast, it just crashes very quickly as soon as I move the mouse and walk around for a bit. I don't know what's going on.

340943[/snapback]

I played it with all settings full except the FSAA, it was at 2x, mine's usually at 6x, at 1152x864.The HDR was too much i guess. I had the same crashing problem too. My X800 was OC'ed and was playing everything fine except Lost Coast. I un-OC'ed it and it ran with the FSAA turned down. Owell, it was pretty fun. I had fun knocking the combine all the way down the cliff.

340949[/snapback]

I'm running an X800 too, but flashed to XT-PE. Maybe I'll downclock it but my pipes are unlocked. I tried turning down the AA too, oh well, I'll try really knocking all the settings down but that doesn't make sense that the HDR is caushing actual crashes, it gets 24FPS at 1280x768 for the short time I am able to play before it starts freezing my computer.

[Ed.Coli]

I wish they would repackage and re-release the normal HL2 game with full HDR support so EVERY level looks that good, sort of like what they did with HL1 and that "detail up" package they released with Blue Shift.

340951[/snapback]

I think the problem with this is that they'd have to rewrite every shader in the game to support HDR.

As a visual addon, I thought it was incredibly neat, and it ran relatively well on my rig, but my AGP 6800GT is really starting to show its age.

[JsARCLIGHT]

Seeing as they are being pretty pokey about releasing an actual single player mission pack for HL2 I'd like to see them rewrite the shaders in the meantime.

I mean, Lost Coast to me is Valve saying "Nyaaa nyaaa this is what we COULD have made the game look like but we had to make it run on everyone's systems so we kneecapped it".

For those of us with atomic systems I'd at least like the option of having the whole game in HDR. Heck, I'd pay for it again for that option.

[promethuem5]

My friend described it as 'Like 3 minutes long'.... wether it was a good 3 minutes or bad, I cannot say.

Slightly OT, anyone know if you can buy just DoD as a standalone game? I really want it, but don't want HL2 at all.... far too gorey and zombiefull for my wussness.

[Panon]

Slightly OT, anyone know if you can buy just DoD as a standalone game?  I really want it, but don't want HL2 at all.... far too gorey and zombiefull for my wussness.

Yes you can, if you buy it online via Steam.

[Skippy438]

There's really only one part where you run into alot of zombies in HL2, most of the game is killing Combine soldiers. What I want to know is, if your computer doesn't meet minimum specs (I have a 3200 Athlon 64 and a GeForce 6600GT) is Lost Coast worth it? Is there any story or is it purely tech demo esque with a few baddies thrown in for show?

[ComicKaze]

There's really only one part where you run into alot of zombies in HL2, most of the game is killing Combine soldiers. What I want to know is, if your computer doesn't meet minimum specs (I have a 3200 Athlon 64 and a GeForce 6600GT) is Lost Coast worth it? Is there any story or is it purely tech demo esque with a few baddies thrown in for show?

341028[/snapback]

Okay, I got Lost Coast fixed, seems like drivers were conflicting, had to run driver cleaner twice. Anyway, a 3200+ A64 and a 6600GT DOESN'T MEET MINIMUM SPECS? That sounds pretty fishy.

I'm running a 2500+ Athlon XP (well overclocked to 3500+ for XP's scheme), and an X800 XT-PE AGP and I'm getting 25-35 FPS with 2xAA (Adaptive AA registry hack on), 4xAA 1280x1024. It works great.

And the only real story is that your mission is to disable a Combine Artillery weapon that's firing into the town. You never get into the town or anything, you only get to explore a bit of the cliff-face, a church, that's about it. It's a very small level. Longer than 3 minutes but not very long. It's fun though, I missed playing with all the physics in HL2 and you actually use the physics to jam up the gun which is fun.

Basically just a tech demo afterall but looks nice.

[bsu legato]

Steam laughed at my system when I asked it to download, so I haven't bothered just yet. It seems my processor isn't quite fast enough to satisfy it. I'll give it a try anyway, just because I'm stubborn.

[JsARCLIGHT]

So will the download alert you if your specs are not up to par? I know all I did was say "gimme" and it downloaded without a peep... but at the end it asked me to take a survey about my system compared to other people's. Mine ranked pretty darn high from what I could tell. I was also suprised that so many people had such low RAM in their systems.

[bsu legato]

So will the download alert you if your specs are not up to par? I know all I did was say "gimme" and it downloaded without a peep... but at the end it asked me to take a survey about my system compared to other people's. Mine ranked pretty darn high from what I could tell. I was also suprised that so many people had such low RAM in their systems.

341091[/snapback]

Yup. I got a popup that compared the recommended specs vs my system's specs, with my "slow" processor highlighted in red. I guess if your system can handle it, it doesn't say anything at all.

[B-52 GUNNER]

It is too short in my opinion.

[JsARCLIGHT]

Just a question... but what where people expecting from the Lost Coast?

All I was expecting was a simple, short demo level showing us what "could have been"... seems a lot of people I talk to and have read on the internet seem to think this was some expansive mission pack or something.

Quite frankly it was a lot longer and more complex than I was expecting. I had images of a simple "arena" area in which all you did was wander about and look at the pretty things... as soon as I saw I could use the weapons and actually "play" the level I was thrilled.

Then again now that I've seen those HDR rendered weapons, objects and water effects playing the street HL2 is almost a letdown.

[bsu legato]

I think Valve is banking on selling the Source engine, and all its potential, to others in the industry who'd rather licence it than build their own engine. The same goes for CryEngine, the engine that Far Cry ran on. Neither of these games lived up to the fullest potential of their engines, and quite frankly most consumers couldn't have run them at the time. Both game with all the bells and whistels turned on really stretch what most high end systems are capapble of rendering. It's a cool yet expensive time to be a PC gamer.

[vfxraven19]

Lost Coast ran fine when I was using the Omega 5.9's, and noticed it crashing when I upgraded to the Omega 5.10a's... I might try the official Catalyst drivers instead...

[Majestic]

*Spoilers*

I was disappointed by the "gun" used to fire the headcrab casings/shells.

I expected a really huge, awesome long-range gun, somewhat similar to the big guns used by the Nazis on rail cars. The massive gun could have been a level unto itself.

Such a waste that all it turned out to be was an "elevator"....