"Lost Coast" released Created 18 years ago2005-10-28 00:58:53 UTC by satchmo

I just played it, and it's quite impressive.

The point of "Lost Coast" isn't the gameplay. It's a technological demo that happens to have some combat. In fact, I wasn't expecting any fighting at all. I was just interested in the scenary and checking out the new engine. To be honest, I was a bit annoyed by the combine.

I very much enjoy the commentary. I found them very informative, and they really enhance my appreciation for the technical aspect of the rendering process.

I took some screenshots. As far as the aesthetics, I was actually expecting a bit more from Valve. The water looks even more gorgeous, but I think some textures do not work well with HDR. And the distant fog effect is not perfected yet.

Overall, I was quite thrilled. I am just glad that my machine could handle the engine. I was given a warning that my specs weren't up to par, but luckily the game ran without a hitch.

w00t!

I was given a warning that my specs weren't up to par, but luckily the game ran without a hitch.

Same. Silly Intel fanboys. Ah well, I can clock m'CPU up if it goes awry.

I'm still downloading it.

To be honest, I was a bit annoyed by the combine.

Yeah, it was notably evil they kept coming out of nowhere.

I'm with you visually. The level design was interesting but they had some parts with very low detail levels that could have easily had more added in to make it look better (Square broken walls!? wtf!?)

It runs about 30fps for me, same with a friend on a 7800 or something. Kind of dissappointed with that, but then again I insist on 1280x full specs.

Thirty? I got down to about six in the church with the windows blasted out. Was kinda surreal, trying to shoot at six combine with all the smoothness of a dancing Jesus. 1280x1024, everything but AA/AF on High, on me ol' 2400+ with a 9800 Pro.

im not even gonna ATTEMPT download
P4 1.8ghz
Gforce Fx5500 128mb PCI
512 RAM

it barely runs HL2 on full settings

Would be a complete waste of time. You might as well download a brick.

Could someone take some screenies, please?
I can't run it on my computer, to good graphics

you whiny bastards! 1280x1024 and your complaining about performance!!! I run it on 1024x768 and it runs choppy (i got a radeon 9800 and 2.4Ghz processor)!

I was given a warning that my specs weren't up to par

me2, downloading right now..

8 minutes

I can run it but without HDR, which is the whole point of The Lost Coast.
Apparently my directx 9 card doesn't support directx 9.

Valve are very Intel/ATI focused.
Why can't they see AMD/NVidia is the way forth!

Hmm, runned pretty well (30-40fps~)
Everything HIGH @ 1024x768 (No AA)

Specs:
xp2700+ 2,2ghz
1024ram
6600GT @ 560/1000

'Ran', not 'runned' ;). Nice specs, though.

im not even gonna ATTEMPT download wink-wink -
P4 1.8ghz
Gforce Fx5500 128mb PCI
512 RAM

HA pwned hl2 runs fine on my machine i almost have the same spec's. Everything on hight exept for those 'x' (4x, 8x...) thingys

Well after 5 crashes I managed to get through it. It was stunning, it had eye candy!

Scripts were quite good but they didn't amaze me like the Canals scripting!
There were a few bugs but I can ignore them because they did work hard on it.
I decided to take pics for those who can't play it yet...I will zip it because some people don't want to spoil it.

www.websamba.com/habboi/lostcoast.zip

(Uploading it now so wait a while)

I had to delete dedication and de_boshi to save room but here are shots of pretty much everything on full graphics.
People said it was too short but I found it quite entertaining and lasted me 30 mins, they just rush things like this and expect more...

All in all it was beautiful, entertaining and I hope they make more...Maps like these make me realise why I map, cause you can make eye candy like that if you try hard enough. Just looking at it again makes me want to map something spectacular.

You can ignore the required specs.

I'm running at 1999 Mhz, 512 MB of RAM and a geforce4 ti 4200. (It's the system I bought 3 years ago and there are no upgrades yet)
I'm running Lost Coast with the exact same settings as I had while playing HL2 (everthing at highest except anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering).

I suspect it will slow down when Combine troops show up, and of course I dont get to see the HDR effects, but I have no problem playing. It's still nice. So dont get discouraged by those numbers. Those are the specs to see it in its full beauty, not the specs to play it.

I will be annoyed not being able to see the HDR goodness, but I may download it just to see what it's like.

It's rather short for the MBytes that Steam had to download... Maybe textures have a lot to do with that.
I think it's an ok map. Like habboi said, there are some bugs, the most important being the problems with the sea. The playable area has green water, and the skybox sea is white-blue like the sky. There's a horrible difference and contrast once you look down at the scenery from above. They should talk with Far Cry's team to solve this blending problem. (does anyone know if this has improved in dod?)
It also amazes me why they took so long to release this, since its just like the video I downloaded long ago. I suspect that they had to do more entity work.

Playtesting probably took some time too.

The most impressive thing about HDR is the effect of the sun on water and other reflective surfaces. However, the wet rocks near the spawn point looked strange when it's all glowing. I am not talking about the pebbles on the ground, but the vertical boulders.

the effect when you shot the windows in the church. beautiful lighting

Abysmal performance.

Nice 'shots, 'abbo'.

This thread from the IGN board has some pretty good screenshots with thumbs.

Check it out for a quick glance.

What really amazed me as I walked through a tunnel bit, as I walked out into the open, my screen was really bright, like in real life!
It's amazing

I was running this on my brothers PC.
My PC can run the level but no HDR, so it's a bit pointless.
Listerning to the commentry was instresting to

-DrMapper

I haven't tried it yet, I will download it later. Will full HDR run on unsupported cards? I'm still on this old 9800XT until I can be bothered to get my X850.

Looking at those screenshots, It seems some of the bugs I mentioned appear to be fixed with full settings. And the lighting is better with HDR. Not THAT much better though. I definately not going to buy a new gfx card anytime soon to play with HDR. To be honest, my PC is lasting much longer than I expected. It might be due to the fact that I dont play online anymore, and I dont need as many fps for singleplayer.
But who knows, maybe the next Unreal Engine will spawn a series of nice games that my geforce4 wont handle...

As long as the card supports Direct X 9.x, LC should run on it.

Well finally tried it, it was allright..

http://img496.imageshack.us/img496/7047/d2lostcoast00009lu.jpg

http://img496.imageshack.us/img496/1373/d2lostcoast00138kh.jpg

Some nice pics I took

My system doesn't support HDR, but it was a good play. I liked this commentary system, it's nice to get some insight in Valve's depelopment process.

Will full HDR run on unsupported cards? I'm still on this old 9800XT...

Yes. If you read my post, I'd already said so :P.

Interestingly enough, there's a real-life "Lost Coast". It's quite beautiful.

But read the photogallery comment, especially the one about the shotgun shell. It's too funny to think that the Combines have been there already.

Bah just played it, too short. Now, if they had used HDR on HL2, that would've been nice. Still, it had some pretty graphics.

Just to clarify;

If you have an AMD CPU then don't look at it's actual CPU speed but look at its notation. (E.g.: 3200.) This notation says that your AMD operates as efficient as a Intel 3.2GHz CPU, only at a lower clockspeed. Effectively this means that if you have an AMD 2400, you meet the system specs, even if the Steam thingy says otherwise. (Since that one's programmed to look at clock speed and clock speed alone. It doesn't for efficiency.)

As for me: I have the following:
1GB RAM (333MHz DDR, for ye wizzes)
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (256 bit memory, for ye wizzes)
Intel Pentium 4, 1.5 GHz.

Seeing my slow CPU and the ridiculiously high system specs, it ran pretty well on my system. On the heavy bits I had a fps in between 3 and 20 and at all the other bits it varied in between 30 and 45. I even had a spike of 70, but that was when facing a wall in a hallway.. All my specs are on high, excluding AA and AF and shadows.

(Yes, high.. I also played through HL2 with those specs. Ran pretty sweet.. :P)

I normally run on 1024x768, but a broken down monitor forced me to play this on 800x600. Therefor, one may assume I had a slight performance boost due to the lower resolution.

On a 4.5GHz P4EE, 1GB of Winbond BH-5 (rare and very fast DRAM), and a 9800XT at stock, it averaged at 30fps with these settings:

1024x768 32bit
Textures, models, shaders, shadows all on High
Reflect all
2x Full-screen Anti-Aliasing
2x Anisiotropic Filtering
Full HDR

Just to clarify, if your card is hw dx9 then you can run it. I dont think HDR will run properly on pre-DX9HW cards.

Can always play without it though.

It'd be a pity if you have to play without it when the point of the level is to showcase it...

It runs great on my 9600XT with everything on high except AA and AF. The level looks awesome but it did crash a few times.

And a bunch of assholes from another forum said that HDR wouldnt run on a 9600 cause it was only "software DX9". What a bunch of noobs.

After a 40 minute download, I didn't get any warnings about my machine so I thought it might be okay.

However.. what a waste. Took me 3 microsoft escapes (alt-ctrl-del) and 2 full machine power-offs to get up the first steps to the first crates. Then it hung up again when I tried to change weapons, for cryin' out loud.

Locked up twice during quick-saves. After a quickload, all the combines I'd shot were ragdolls, playing "I'm an airplane."

Graphics aren't any better than regular HL2.

I give it a 3 out of 10, only because it was free. Nah, make it a 2.

I can't believe Valve actually released it in that condition.

It's VALVe's fault that your PC is shit?

Actually I heard thats been happening to alot of people. Some major bug in the game.

That's a load of bullshit.

It's crashed ONCE for me. ONCE. It's not VALVE's fault that your PC is a cased turdburger.

After a 40 minute download, I didn't get any warnings about my machine so I thought it might be okay...

PC specs?

<manner="weary">Trapt, it's locking up loads of peoples' PCs. That doesn't mean that your PC is the only good one.</manner>

It happened for me a few times too, and while my computer isn't some uber gaming PC, it is a pretty powerful box. It shouldnt happen in any case if I can run DOD properly.

After a quickload, all the combines I'd shot were ragdolls, playing "I'm an airplane."

Heh same for me :> i didn't noticed much of the new things in there for my video card is crap. Played everything on high exept for Anti-Aliasing and Filtering. Wasn't very laggy

The bugs must be related to the new effects. The game didnt lock up a single time on my old PC (yes, yesterday I learned the awful truth; my computer is getting old)

I'd also like to add a comment on how this was made. I havent played it yet with the developers comments, so I dont know if they explained why only 10% of the polygons of the map when you are in the beach are real world brushes. If you look around with "mat_wireframe 1", you can see that everything around you is either made with props or displacement surfaces.
(just in case some people dont know,
red wireframe=world brush
blue wireframe=model brush
white wireframe=displacement brush)

And yes, that includes the church on top. I found this strange since there wasnt any level changes during play. Maybe what we saw was only the skybox, and the real map was still invisible?

After a quickload, all the combines I'd shot were ragdolls, playing "I'm an airplane."

Hey, the same. I'd forgotten that.

Aeroplane, dammit :P.

Tssss

Yes habboi, but dont forget this map is for show caseing HDR only...

Aftermath and all the other games will not have problems like this.

This map was not made only for HDR. It's something more like a lost level. A map that didnt make it into the final game, just like other things like the hydra, the ship, dried up ocean etc.

wtf i saw habboi post a link i refreshed and the link disappeared :/ thats weird.. habboi you didn't edit your post?

I did have one visual anomaly. I've had a brush that was spread out infiitely. Saving and loading again fixed this. It's a very rare that I've had with multiple games. Probably caused by either a stressed videocard or a miscalculation by my GPU. (Or VPU, whatever ATi calls 'em.)

Overall; though I've heard about this bug before, I haven't experienced it even though, by today's gaming standards, I've got a pretty weak computer. (But I still wub it anyway! hugs 'puter) I believe having a clean and proper set-up should prevent a lot of bugs for a lot of games. So, in my view, it's not that the people who encounter that bug might've crappy computers, but I do think having a clean and proper set-up computer will help in reducing the amount of bugs. Whether their computers are clean and properly set-up, is to be explained by the people who are experiencing the bug.

My computer's very tidy, and I was having lots of problems with BF2 (graphical). HL2DM locks my PC up dead whenever I try and load a level. I suspect my crappy motherboard chipset, though.