Aliens vs Predator Update Improves Dedicated Server Support

Post by trog @ 02:07pm 23/03/10 | 6 Comments

An extensive update for Aliens vs Predator landed today, offering a bunch of changes and balance tweaks for multiplayer. Most notably (to me, anyway) are some excellent changes made to the dedicated server structure - here are some of the highlights:

- Dedicated server no longer needs the Steam client to be running.
- Dedicated server can use DLC maps.
- The dedicated server now installs to a standalone directory, and the install size is now ~2.2GB instead of 15GB
- The dedicated server will now also be available via the HLDSupdate tool.
- Improvements to the networking code used in dedicated server games to increase stability and reduce pings.

The full list of changes is available on the Steam patch notes page.

While these changes are excellent, not having them available at release (or in the demo) has no doubt cost this game serious street cred amongst the PC gaming community. Even with the problems plaguing Bad Company 2, it is undeniable that its popularity is in no small part to the known track record Dice have of releasing dedicated server-based games. Hopefully more developers will take note of the lessons learned around both of these titles.

aliens vs predator

Buy now from Green Man Gaming Only GBP£2.97!

(compare all prices)

Latest Comments

Link

Trauma
Posted 02:16pm 23/3/10

Too little, too late.

Link

trog
Posted 02:19pm 23/3/10

Too little, too late.

Yep. This is something I've said for years - if it isn't awesome out of the box, it will fail to attain critical mass and just dwindle to nothingness. Soooooo many people (myself included) were excited about the AVP demo, but almost everyone I know lost interest after it came out and looked just like a regular console port instead of a proper PC game.

Personally I think they should give up patching AvP for PC - it'll almost certainly be wasted effort. They are, I assume, already planning "AvP 2" (although what they're going to call it is going to be hilarious, namefail), and should be taking lessons learned from this and figuring out how to apply them there.

They should re-release the demo with all these changes if they want people to take it seriously.

Link

Dan
Posted 02:28pm 23/3/10

Even after all of those much needed changes, there's still two major issues:

1. No ranked play on dedicated servers - so you still have to choose between a fun playable game, or earning player stats and achievements.

2. No mod support at all, which means no user maps (somewhat understandable where DLC is concerned) but also means no community created tournament tweaks or any of the other longevity that modding gives a game.

I agree with the sentiment that they should just give up now because any extra work they do from this point will have a negligible affect on sales.

Link

Viper
Posted 02:31pm 23/3/10

Well, I was gonna say something but everyone beat me to it :(

Link

ctd
Posted 02:33pm 23/3/10

I remember watching this video of 'journalists' coming out from a session of multiplayer on AVP. They all were pretty excited about it so they are either retards or walked out with some heavy pockets.

Even if they fixed all the support flaws the gameplay was still sucks.

Link

Methz
Posted 03:30pm 23/3/10

"Hopefully more developers will take note of the lessons learned around both of these titles. "

The sad thing is that most Dev's probably won't.

Commenting has been locked for this item.

6 Comments

Show

Features

Reviews

ASUS ROG Rapture GT6 WiFi 6 Mesh System

User:
Pass: