Aliens vs Predator PC Dedicated Server Q&A

Post by Dan @ 04:53pm 18/02/10 | 46 Comments

After what has been a turbulent few months with classification drama and a disappointing demo SEGA and Rebellion's Alien vs Predator found its way to Australian store shelves today for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC (although Steam pre-orders still aren't unlocked until Feb 20th).

A couple of weeks ago, after all the feedback from AusGamers readers about the poor peer to peer multiplayer in the PC demo, we compiled a list of questions to send over to Rebellion with the hopes of finding out more about the game's promised dedicated server support.

Questions like:

Is Steam registration and activation mandatory, even for owners of boxed retail copies of the game?
Will there be a standalone dedicated server distribution, or will a full retail copy of the game be required to run one?
Will ranked play only be available over the peer to peer matchmaking method

Unfortunately due to some email woes, we were unable to have these answered before the game shipped. Now that the game is available, and we have a PC retail copy for review, we decided that the first order of business should be to jump in and find out our own answers to these questions. Read on to find out our results.

Stay tuned for our full review of the PC version in the coming days.

aliens vs predator Q&A dedicated server

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Latest Comments

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eightyeight
Posted 05:04pm 18/2/10

not buying this game. talk about fail launch.

id rather torrent it in spite of letting me down so much.

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alandalf
Posted 05:08pm 18/2/10

Is ausgamers tossing up a single player review? Tis the only reason to buy it anymore i think

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DM
Posted 05:25pm 18/2/10

To everyone wanting to buy this for single player, don't. I played it on 2nd hardest difficulty and was able to finish predator, marine and part of the alien campaign in under 5 hours. The length is f*****g pathetic. Save your money and go buy something else.

EDIT - Just to elaborate a bit more, the marine story is the longest coming in around 2 1/2 hours. It looks pretty, Plays bloody great and has the marine feel to it all over. Quite awesome s***. Everything else is a big let down single player wise. Alien and Predator modes turn into "sneak up behind enemy and push E" fests. Not to mention melee sucks in this game. How this game is 16.6gb IDK. Not even ME2 was that big and it lasted like 10x the length easy

last edited by DM at 17:25:18 18/Feb/10

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Viper
Posted 06:18pm 18/2/10

Actually with regards to steam it did say they were going to be locked until the 20th however I did check my list and it changed from "Not released" to "Not installed" so installing now, I am thinking that maybe they broke their release and have made it available now.

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Kimbo
Posted 06:55pm 18/2/10

On back order. Looking forward to it

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Trauma
Posted 07:47pm 18/2/10

Q1: Why did the PC demo only include peer to peer multiplayer if the retail version will support dedicated servers?

A: Because the dedicated server software wasn't finished yet! A post by Rebellion over on the Steam Forums explained: "We hope to have a beta release with reduced functionality out in the next few days and further updates to improve functionality and fix bugs over the next few weeks."

Q2: Then why the f*** was the game released?

not buying this game. talk about fail launch.

id rather torrent it in spite of letting me down so much.

It sux that it comes to this, but it's true, that's how you feel about these releases... the reason they don't give a f*** is piracy, these actions just encourage it.

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reLapse
Posted 08:26pm 18/2/10

I canceled my preorder the day before release and preordered Battlefield Bad Company 2.

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Trauma
Posted 10:24pm 18/2/10

I never had it on pre-order, but did cancel my Bad Company 2 pre-order after trying the beta, pre-ordered Just Cause 2 instead :D

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Viper
Posted 10:41pm 18/2/10

I really enjoyed BC2 apart from useless teammates and sniper spams but that was in bf2 anyway so kinda used to it.

I don't see what was wrong with it just needed some bug fixes.

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kirkoswald
Posted 12:31am 19/2/10

Well the fact that you cant go prone doesnt help'. I dont really care that much about it , its more the principal that my soldier i'm playing has a bad back and cant go prone otherwise he might pull a disc...

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Viper
Posted 12:39am 19/2/10

haha yea prone would make it more interesting, I mean if everyone can do it then its balanced and there may well be a mod or even an update to include prone support for it if there is enough of an outcry. For me though AvP will tie me over for a little while but BC2 is pretty much the only decent FPS that will be on the market for awhile. Not interested in console shooters and MW2 is just a giant turd sandwich.

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Trauma
Posted 01:02am 19/2/10

No prone, no lean, no strafe while sprinting. Console port, pass.

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Methz
Posted 03:52am 19/2/10

I'm suprised your all into the prone thing. f*****g s**** me,and everyone else i play with.
although the lack of lean kinda sucks.

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Mephz
Posted 09:49am 19/2/10

No prone is fantastic.
I'm sorry, but nothing s**** me more than dolphin diving.
And if you add huge delays to entering/exiting prone, then people set up base camp and don't move.

Lean could be implemented, but by all means, as long as you can't lean and shoot at the same time as this just creates more camping problems, or at severe accuracy penalties.
If you've fired anything more than a .22 cap gun from the shoulder, and not benched or prone, then you'd know how hard it is to steady the recoil of a large caliber rifle as the bullet exits the barrel so as not to wind up pigeon shooting, let alone while leaning around a corner.

In the end, if they added weapon stability to be the same crouched as it would be prone, then the only thing you are missing out on is a bit of reduced visibility and reduced movement.
All that says to me is you lack the ability to move around the map and use cover and timing to do so.

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Twinsen
Posted 10:07am 19/2/10

I've played it for about 30 minutes on the Marine campain, it defiently feels wrong and somehow a let down, but the sound is pretty dam amazing so is the atmosphere.

Movement just feels wrong too, the level layout in parts is mirrored and makes you feel was I not just here 10 mins ago.

Story wise it seems bogus, but the graphics are pretty good and maxed is pushing my 8800 GTS.

Defiently going on the end of the list, I still need to beat Dragon Age, ME2 and Bioshock 2, lol.

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reLapse
Posted 10:07am 19/2/10

Prone is gone from BC2 because it was needed, running around jump+prone+iron sights is terrible and lacks skills.

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reLapse
Posted 10:09am 19/2/10

Same goes for strafe while printing.

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trog
Posted 11:09am 19/2/10

Prone is gone from BC2 because it was needed, running around jump+prone+iron sights is terrible and lacks skills.

what? why? I remember it was s*** in previous BF games because the developers were total nubcakes and made the game mechanics sucked so people were just dolphin diving everywhere. That problem should be utterly trivial to solve with some better game design and a penalty on going prone, like there is in real life

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reLapse
Posted 11:35am 19/2/10

It should be utterly trivial to fix but here with are on the verge of BC2 release and the game has no prone.

Either they chose to keep it out due to community opinion or were too lazy to put the time and effort in to make sure prone couldn't be used for some lame ass scrub move that has no place in competition let alone anywhere else.

Prone is out and I'm happy, I couldn't continue to play BF2 with how bad things where and their so called fixes in later patches didn't really do anything to help.

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reLapse
Posted 11:36am 19/2/10

here we* are

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re so
Posted 11:39am 19/2/10

I'm mainly against prone simply because no developers seem to be able to get the hitbox right for it. Usually the hitbox for the head ends up in their belly or underground.

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DM
Posted 11:40am 19/2/10

Hey trauma have you seen this trailer for JC2? Talk about epic s***. Having a garry's mod style tool to hook people up to random objects seems like bloody great fun

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reLapse
Posted 11:41am 19/2/10

My typos are so bad today, sigh.

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Douche
Posted 11:44am 19/2/10

ahaha where is fpot he should be here for this with his precious goty ramblings

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Python
Posted 11:45am 19/2/10

Does this game have co-op at all?

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reLapse
Posted 12:15pm 19/2/10

JC2 looks awesome, might have to preorder this too.

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kirkoswald
Posted 12:22pm 19/2/10

Whats this talk of dolphin diving?? that s*** was fixed aaaages ago. If COD4 can have prone then BATTLEFIELD can have prone. End of story

OR

atleast have a server option -----> Prone on/off (pretty simple huh)

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Mephz
Posted 12:27pm 19/2/10

No, prone is stupid and done poorly even in MW/MW2.
You can still dolphin dive in it or in the middle of a firefight just hit prone and the time it takes to actually drop to the ground and be able to shoot again, is still less than the average players reaction times...

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kirkoswald
Posted 12:41pm 19/2/10

No prone should be left to cs type games.

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Scooter
Posted 01:11pm 19/2/10

I never really had a problem with Prone. It was more a problem with the Hitboxes on people not updating until 1/2 a second after the prone animation had finished. I never understood why they could make it fine if a guy was sprinting accross the map, but as soon as he takes a knee to lay down the Hitbox stops moving for 2-3 seconds.
So you think you're following his head, but really your hitting his feet, No 'Ping' for you :(

As others have said, acc penalties while the proner is in the animation too.

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reLapse
Posted 01:27pm 19/2/10

I'd be fine with prone if you could only do it if you were already crouched and there was a lengthy delay so you couldn't macro it up and instantly prone, but we know that isn't going to happen.

It seems quite obvious to me that EA/DICE have left prone out of BC2 due to the abuse in BF2, which is a fair enough call seeing that it was a major concern of the community for such a long time and they never really fixed it.

Leave it out, get used to it and stop thinking that only cs type games don't have prone.

Gameplay has a part in games just as much as realism.

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trog
Posted 02:10pm 19/2/10

It should be utterly trivial to fix but here with are on the verge of BC2 release and the game has no prone.

Yeh I don't mind at all BC2 not having prone - from what I can tell they were always pretty clear about the game not having it, and I don't think they should hack it in now just for whiny gamers.

It just used to bug the s*** out of me how poorly it was implemented. Seemed to always work absolutely perfectly in Enemy Territory - there were strong penalties for prone at the expense of awesome firepower w/ the MG42 (man, the memories)

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Methz
Posted 02:17pm 19/2/10

^^ win.

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reLapse
Posted 03:10pm 19/2/10

[quote]Yeh I don't mind at all BC2 not having prone - from what I can tell they were always pretty clear about the game not having it, and I don't think they should hack it in now just for whiny gamers.[/quote]

Agree but it surprises me how much people arte complaining about not having prone when they complained about how much prone was abused in BF2.

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reLapse
Posted 03:10pm 19/2/10

lol I guess it's [ code ], my bad.

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Scooter
Posted 03:12pm 19/2/10

< and >

It's ther other side of the fence (the ones that did abuse prone) that are complaining about not having it.

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reLapse
Posted 04:07pm 19/2/10

Makes sense, let them keep playing BF2 or MW2.

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trog
Posted 04:31pm 19/2/10

Agree but it surprises me how much people arte complaining about not having prone when they complained about how much prone was abused in BF2.

See below image for explanation:

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Viper
Posted 10:06pm 19/2/10

Yea its a tough call, I think most of the time the devs do the right thing with sticking with how it was designed simply because no matter what they do there would be those for and those against so even if you changed something you haven't really changed the way people think of it, just changed the people who now like it and the people who now dont.

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Viper
Posted 12:39pm 20/2/10

Back on topic if anyone is interested the dedicated server support is up but its only for non ranker matchs and it is very L4D style in which you have a server browser for a lobby. Either way there is hardly anyone playing it on pc and you would be lucky to get a full 8 player game and hell would freeze over before you got a full 18 player game.

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reLapse
Posted 09:09am 21/2/10

@ Viper

Makes me glad that I cancelled the preorder.

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Viper
Posted 01:28pm 21/2/10

I had a mate who picked it up on 360 he said there was heaps of people playing and personally I think the melee combat would work much better on a controller so maybe x360 is the way to go with this one (not sure how well its doing on ps3).

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HurricaneJim
Posted 03:39pm 21/2/10

I think the only FPS game that has been released that wasn't a console port was Shattered Horizon. It does seem that Wolfenstein, OFP:DR, MW2, AvP and BC2 are just ports.

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Viper
Posted 04:11pm 21/2/10

Its ok though as with most console generations the consoles play a huge part for a few years and then as the technology improves and the difference becomes bigger and bigger between the kinds of things the new tech can do and the limitations of the old tech PC will start to come back and rise from the ashes again.

Personally for me that day can't come too soon.

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Hardvark
Posted 08:42pm 21/2/10

I have no issues with lack of prone or crouching, or even leaning in this game. Its fast paced action and doesn't lend itself to these stealthier tactics. People have called the controls cumbersome, difficult to deal with - but stick with it for 20 minutes and you'll be leaping off walls, jumping from tree to tree and slaughtering your enemies in no time.

I would say the biggest let down in the campaign is the length - the campaign for each species is no more than 3 hours of play...and thats on hard settings, and pushing it as is.

I hear people play online on consoles - but for PC, you'll never find a game available online. It's a fun game, but extremely disappointing and will be shelved within the next week.

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Viper
Posted 12:34am 22/2/10

controls for humans and preds are fine but for aliens they are just horrible, its fine in single player when dealing with stupid as s*** ai but for multiplayer its horrible its so disorienting like i can deal with running on the roof and the walls and stuff but they made it so your so close to the ground that any slight bumb shifts your whole camera and pretty much all of the walls on every map are bumpy as s*** so your camera quite often in fast paced combat just becomes a constant blur.

The heavy attack becomes pointless because most times if someone sees an alien coming the first thing they do is block and as soon as they see you doing a heavy attack they just quick attack and you take damage.

Also with the certain surfaces that aliens auto transition on like a tree branch, this means that if a pred is on a tree branch which for him is a flat surface for you is a rounded one means you cant really attack him because of the angle and also means you cant grab for a stealth kill. On top of that both classes have ranged weapons for the marine they have the shotgun which if it hits you at point blank range its 1 hit kill and off course for alien you need to be a point blank and for preds all their weapons are 1 hit kill so if an alien is attacking a pred using light atttacks because I covered earlier why heavys are useless the pred has ample time to just turn around and 1 hit kill the alien with their weapon.

So this isnt so bad when there are lots of players in a game and you have a team mate alien who you can work with but seeming that almost never happens on PC and its almost always small games usually around 3-6 and you get stuck playing the only alien while the others run around playing marine and pred.

Now I still top the server quite often even apart from my gripes with the alien but its one of those things of fine I may still be going really well for kills but its all the other 30 or so opportunities for kills that I would of got if it hadn't been for the s***** controls.

/rant

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