HL2: Lost Coast Available for Download!

[trowand]

Hey, if you own Half-Life 2 then you can download The Lost Coast for free from valve. It's a playable tech demo that shows off HDR High Dynamic Range Lighting. I'm downloading it now as I type. You need a pretty serious machine in order to play it because the graphics are very demanding. Finding it to download was actually difficult. You have to open Steam on your PC, choose games, click Lost Coast, then click download. I'll try to post some pics.

[David M]

Nice find trow...thanks. I'm going there right now. HL2 is my favorite game ever. I will see if I can post some screenshots as well showing the shading from my system.

[Hi Ho]

I have played through it. It is impressive. Though, they are already showing off HDR in DOD:Source. It gave me the warning that my PC was too slow. I cranked it up anyway and it ran perfectly smooth.

[tomster2300]

Yeah, they told me my processor wasn't good enough, but it ran great on the highest settings. I think it's good looking, though I don't see much besides everything being brighter, better reflections, and the light brightening and dimming when your eyesight contrasts between lighter and darker spots. It didn't impress me too much (and yes, I have the hardware to see it at its full potential). Oh well.

[David M]

I just finished playing it. The lighting, shadows are noticably improved. It is more of a system hog though. I ran it at 1600x1200 with FRAPS on and I saw a few times the framerate droppng below 60 which I have not seen on my computer. It mostly happens when panning across the water.

The demo was pretty fun, you start out with a gravity gun and lots of weapons. There is nothing noticably different from HL2. It took me about an hour to play through the whole game. Taking out the chopper was pretty fun.

The easy level is much too easy. I would start out on the intermediate level.

It's definately worth downloading and playing.

[trowand]

Originally Posted by tomster2300 I think it's good looking, though I don't see much besides everything being brighter, better reflections, and the light brightening and dimming when your eyesight contrasts between lighter and darker spots. It didn't impress me too much (and yes, I have the hardware to see it at its full potential). Oh well.

I totally agree 100%! I don't see that much of a difference. I'm using an X800XT PE. Am I missing something because my GPU doesn't support PS 3.0? I had all game settings stock (all high).

[DragonNOA1]

HL2 for teh w1n !!1

It looks great. Short, but great.

[David M]

I noticed quite a difference with the light especially in the church and how the sun came in through the windows and the shadows that were cast. I'm trying to figure out why some of you did not see this and I am guessing it's the graphics cards.

[tomster2300]

Originally Posted by David M I noticed quite a difference with the light especially in the church and how the sun came in through the windows and the shadows that were cast. I'm trying to figure out why some of you did not see this and I am guessing it's the graphics cards.

Could be - is there that much difference between a 6800 GT and a 7800 GTX?

[Two|Bit]

I saw a difference... look at the water man... it looks SWEET. Look inside the church, outside of its windows. Look at you gun and ammo boxes in the light. Look at the fishermans face, very realistic. How can you not notice anything?

[DragonNOA1]

Originally Posted by tomster2300 Could be - is there that much difference between a 6800 GT and a 7800 GTX?

Yeah quality wise I wouldn't expect there to be any differences, unless you're looking at a lot of fences in the game.

[TwoRails]

What's a good d/l link?

[DragonNOA1]

You download it through steam from their servers. Should be an option in your steam game browser.

[tomster2300]

Originally Posted by DragonNOA1 You download it through steam from their servers. Should be an option in your steam game browser.

Yep.

[trowand]

Originally Posted by Two|Bit I saw a difference... look at the water man... it looks SWEET. Look inside the church, outside of its windows. Look at you gun and ammo boxes in the light. Look at the fishermans face, very realistic. How can you not notice anything?

Yes, I thought the fisherman's face was amazing. The most realistic ever in any game. And yes, I thought the light coming in through the church window looked better a little bit but it didn't blow me away. AGAIN, is it that my X800XT PE only has Shader Model 2.0 and doesn't support Shader Model 3.0?

[DragonNOA1]

NO, shader model 3 brings no quality improvements and only helps performance. The fisherman's face looks so well because the texture resolutions have been upped since HL2.

[Hi Ho]

The main difference is dynamic lighting. To me it looks a lot nicer. To others, maybe not. I wish more games had really nice dynamic lighting.

[tomster2300]

I did believe it was nice, and I did see an improvement over the reg. HL2, yet I didn't see that much of a difference to truely impress me. That's all.

[DragonNOA1]

I think that you're just hard to impress Tom. It's a great level to demo the new HDR in the source engine.

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by DragonNOA1 You download it through steam from their servers. Should be an option in your steam game browser.

Since I only do single player, I have Steam blocked in my firewall. I might do a backup and give'r a try (unless it's something I can d/l somewhere else??...).

[DragonNOA1]

^Let Steam update. It's not that bad to let it through every once in awhile.

[tomster2300]

Don't think you can legally obtain it from anywhere else - Valve is kind of picky about that for some reason or another...

I actually like Steam - I bought HL2 about 2 - 3 weeks ago and and have had no problem connecting to any online server for any of the multiplayer games (including CS:S). I'm a huge Battlefield junky and although I never found downloading the occasional patch or Punkbuster update a problem, I've enjoyed the simplicity that Steam uses in automatically updating and applying the most current and pertinent files in one quick sweep.

Never really had a problem connecting and playing online with either Battlefield game, but I like the streamlined aspect of Steam.

Just my two cents.

[Hi Ho]

Since I only do single player, I have Steam blocked in my firewall. I might do a backup and give'r a try (unless it's something I can d/l somewhere else??...).

Why block Steam? It's not doing anything malicious. I leave it running all the time and it keeps my games up to date. Steam is a better place to download from anyway since their servers are lightning fast, much faster than any download site.

[TwoRails]

I might give it a try, as I'm due for a backup anyway. It's nice to hear a few positive things about Steam, as all I've heard was just the opposite. As to the "why?," I have a habit of blocking *all* automatic updates. I like to control it as if you have a problem, then you can more easily trace it to the most recent update. I also like to be able to rollback updates. For example, I'll download new versions / updates (like Firefox) and install them manually. That way, if things don't go well I can always reinstall the last working version.

Hmmm.. makes me wonder: can you d/l from Steam and do it manually? or go back to the last update?

[Hi Ho]

Where have you heard negative things about Steam? What were the negative things? I have read nothing but positive things about it and personally love it.

I don't believe you can install the updates manually.

[TwoRails]

Can't remember where, off hand. The kinds of things I was hearing was that after updates, there were more problems then before the updates, like the sound stuttering problem. I also heard that a lot of folks had to update vid card drivers and the like after Steam updates. Seeing as the 9800 Pro I was running back then and the 3.10 drivers were working just fine, I didn't want to mess with it. From what I see above, it must have been bad rumors. I now have more confidence in giving it a shot

[tomster2300]

Well I did experience one problem, and it was in the multiplayer games (Deathmatch and CS:S). After playing for awhile (hour or so) the sound would mess up. When a flashbang hits nearby your sight and hearing will go out and turn into a whine, then gradually come back - that's normal. The problem I experienced (and this happened a couple of times) was after it went to a whine, it would never come back...it just stayed a constant whine until I quit the game and came back into the server.

This wouldn't be a steam problem I don't believe, just an odd bug in the games. Your comment about audio problems reminded me of this. It wasn't that big of a problem, I just put up with it then turned my sound off (and oddly did better) before finally exiting back to the main menu.

I remember hearing a lot of negative stuff about Steam when the first Half-Life came out, but I haven't heard as much since HL2's release. Like I said before, from a first hand experience, overall Steam works quite well.

[David M]

I agree that you need to let Steam update. How else are they supposed to correct problems?

[TwoRails]

Sadly, I didn't get the chance to do the Steam update this weekend. I wanted to "play" but there was too much work 'round here that took over priority...

[swp]

I just finished playing it with my 7800GT.. it looks so nice. water = amazinggg