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Alien Swarm engine branch

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Alien Swarm engine branch
In-game screenshot of Alien Swarm, running on Alien Swarm engine branch. The screenshot demonstrates the new "depth of field" effect.
In-game screenshot of Alien Swarm, running on Alien Swarm engine branch. The screenshot demonstrates the new "depth of field" effect.
Developer(s)
Release date(s)
July 19, 2010
Latest release(s)
September 24, 2020
Platform(s)
The TileGen mapping tool in Alien Swarm.

The Alien Swarm engine branch Alien Swarm engine branch was released in 2010 with Alien Swarm Alien Swarm. It succeeds the Left 4 Dead engine branch Left 4 Dead engine branch and precedes the Portal 2 engine branch Portal 2 engine branch.[1] This branch is the only Source engine branches (post-Orange Box) that have officially available source code, with all the new features introduced in Left 4 Dead engine branch Left 4 Dead engine branch (BSP 21, Swaying trees, VScript, Water flow maps), aswell as VTF 7.5 and other mentioned below which are later used in Portal 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Some of these features however, are later backported to Orange Box-derived branch, under Team Fortress 2 branch Team Fortress 2 branch.

Features

New since Left 4 Dead engine branch Left 4 Dead engine branch is:

TileGen
A new quick-build mapping tool. Level designers create connectible rooms and corridors which can be arranged either by hand or programmatically. TileGen maps can be played in-editor, and/or can be exported to Hammer for further refinement.illuminate an entire scene.
VTF version 7.5 and PCF version Binary 5 PCF 2
The latest versions of Source's texture and particle formats.
Depth of field
A real-time depth of field shader blurs backdrop scenery.
Vertex animation
The ability to animate vertexes directly is now supported.
Various entity improvements
Numerous entities have been improved and have new features, such as env_fire and env_projectedtexture.
Water debris flow
Water now supports the ability to use a base texture layer that is flowed using a flow map. This implemention is less advanced than Portal 2 Portal 2's, however.
Lightmap influence on cubemapped materials
Lightmaps can now tint cubemap reflections in the LightmappedGeneric shader.

Availability and usage

Gamecode for this branch is included in the Alien Swarm - SDK.

References

  1. Alien Swarm FAQ
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