Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community.

Alien Swarm is an overhead view tactical squad-based shooter for UT2K4. Set in the the distant future, the players take the role of a Commander in the Interstellar Armed Forces. They must guide their squad of marines through Swarm infested colonies, overrun bases and outposts, to achieve a variety of objectives. Featuring Assault Rifles, Heat Tracking Guns, Sentry Guns, Flamethrowers and more. Supports co-operative multiplayer.

Alien Swarm is a top-down shoot-em-up set at a 60-degree angle. Four players can join a single co-operative game, the aim of which is to progress through science fiction-themed levels while eliminating waves of aliens. Players can choose from 40 different pieces of equipment. The game includes persistent statistics, unlockable equipment, and achievements.


Classes.

The game is class-based, with players choosing from the roles of Officer, Special Weapons, Medic, and Tech. Each class has two selectable characters, with differences in abilities.

Officer 

Grants a passive bonus to damage and damage resistance to nearby allies. He has access to the Vindicator, a class-restricted shotgun with an incendiary grenade launcher and has general all-around abilities. They are also capable of throwing extra amounts of explosive ordnance, and may find class-restricted ammo caches on the field for his Vindicator shotgun. The two playable characters are Sarge and Jaeger.

Special Weapons 

Brings raw damage to the table and starts out with a customized autogun with superior parameters, high magazine capacity, and auto-aiming ability. The Special Weapons gains access to a powerful minigun at a high enough level, and can pick up class-restricted ammo caches on the field. The two playable characters are Wildcat and Wolfe.

Medic 

Is the only class able to equip and deploy temporary healing beacons, and at a high enough level can use a medigun to selectively heal teammates and themselves. The two playable characters are Faith and Bastille.

Tech 

Carries a motion sensor, sets up sentry guns faster, welds doors faster, and is the only class capable of unlocking certain door panels or completing certain objectives by means of a hacking minigame. They also have access to a prototype assault rifle with auto-aiming capabilities and the ability to fire stun grenades. The two playable characters are Crash and Vegas.

Install.

• Make sure you have Unreal Tournament 2004 installed. Doesn't matter where. (It resides in /opt/ut2004 for me.)

• Then make sure you download and install patch 3204 .

• If you downloaded the non-umod file, then unzip the contens of the zip package to the /ut2004/ directory so Alien Swarm will be in it's on directory, /ut2004/AlienSwarm and run the executable script which is described a little more down below.

• If you downloaded the umod version of the file, unzip the contents to a temporary directory and copy the AlienSwarm_v1.ut4mod and as-linux-installer.sh files to /ut2004/System/ then open a terminal and type sh ./as-linux-installer.sh in the directory /ut2004/System/ and the installer will unpack Alien Swarm.

• You can also download a graphical installer for Linux which is made by Loki Installers for Linux Gamers. To run it, just type sh alien.swarm_1.0-english.run.

• (Note: This installer comes with a different executable, you need to type ./alienswarm instead of the command below to run AS.)

• To run Alien Swarm, execute the Swarm Linux executable by typing sh ./Alien-Swarm-Linux when you are in the /ut2004/System/ directory.

Screenshots.

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