Alien Arena 2008: (188Mb) (the latest version 2009 is 200.02Mb)
I nearly didn’t bother posting this FPS game because it’s billed as a multiplayer game. But I remember playing an earlier version and was sure there was a single player campaign. I decided to check it out and discovered that there is, so thought it would be a great addition to the free games of the week project. If you like the unreal tournament series you'll love this game.
There is an automatic installer, but you can decide to choose where to install the game yourself. Please take note that during the installation process the installer asks if you want a crawler toolbar added. This is ticked by default, so make sure you uncheck it , unless you want a crawler toolbar in your browser. Once the game has been installed you’ll find two shortcuts on your desktop. Use the one that says “Alien Arena Quick Play”. You can access the single player game via the other shortcut, but it’s the long way around. Once you get to the main menu first select options and max out the graphics settings as it looks much better. You do require an internet connection to play this game despite there being an internet connection, When you first start the game up you will be asked to create a name to use while playing.
Do you like fast paced deathmatch? How about...retro Sci Fi? Then you're going to love what Alien Arena 2008 has in store for you! This game combines some of the very best aspects of such games as Quake III and Unreal Tournament and wraps them up with a retro alien theme, while adding tons of original ideas to make the game quite unique.
Alien Arena 2008 also offers a change to it's overall theme, moving towards a slightly darker, more serious tone, while still retaining a good bit of it's retro style, creating an interesting marriage between classic and modern sci-fi. This resulted in completely new player models, many new weapon models and textures, and seventeen new levels.
There are major improvements in weapon effects, per-pixel lighting, texture resolution, and resource usage, as well as the addition of a cross platform server browser, FUSE. Weapons have been tweaked for better balance, and movement has been enhanced with the addition of dodging abilities.
Some of the new features include:
* Seven new/revamped maps
* Improved lighting and visibility
* Map voting option
* Galaxy browser improvements
* Renderer optimizations
* Various bugfixesAlien Arena 2008 v7.20
1. Added Invisibility powerup
2. Added reward system.
3. Reduced power of vaporizer, and increased spawn time of vaporizer to twice of other weapons.
4. Added weapon inventory display in HUD.
5. Shockwave weapon effects. Increased efficiency of several weapon effects.
6. New CTF flag effects.
7. Added rotating particle effects.
8. Fixed buffer overrun with ps.stats
9. Bots now use alt-fire in vehicles.
10. Haste and sproing greatly improved.
11. New death effects.
12. Bot node files only load at start of level, rather than previously when a player joins.
13. Noshadows option for static map meshes.
14. Fixed "disappearing ctf flag" bug!
15. Added tangent light space vector normalization to per-pixel mesh rendering.
16. Added level of detail system for player models.
17. Bounding boxes calc'ed at load time, performance increase.
18. Occulusion culling of entites, huge performance increase.
19. Added GLSL program management.
20. Added parallax mapping.
21. Added glsl normal/specular mapping for dynamic lighting.
22. Added glsl specular lighting.
23. Removed old fixed functions for dynamic and specular lighting on normalmaps. (some where broken anyway).
24. Changed some skin colors of players and weapons to be more visible(and eye pleasing).
25. Added new water shaders, so that mappers can fake reflections.
26. Added distortion shader to basic water(disabled due to some bugginess).
27. Vertex lerping no longer batched in separate loop, now done inside of texture mapping loop, nice peformance increase.
28. Anti-lag added, backwards reconciliation portion. More to follow.
29. Fixed a few video menu bugs.
30. New weapon icons.
31. Cvar's added to specify log and motd files.
32. Heartbeat's now only re-resolve master if it cannot reach it.
33. Faster image filtering.
34. Rscript optimizations using hash keys.
35. Removed flashlight code.
36. Added support for Linux/X11 clipboard.
37. Linux directory support.
38. Linux windowed mouse fixes.
39. Netname string made larger.
40. Fixed escape character removal in death messages.
41. Names no longer cut off in team scoreboard.
42. New glass effects, now uses a semi-true reflection.
43. Option to place player id's over players, as well as identify flags.
44. Rcon password changes - can now have spaces, and protection against overflows.
45. Fixed bug with random() that caused some dedicated servers to segfault in linux.
46. Rscript optimization - removed redundant loading in meshes.
47. New bloodstain effects using decals. Removed old stain code. Looks cooler, and performs better.
48. Added 3 new maps: Dm-liberation, Ctf-cryogenic, Tca-cryogenic.
49. Better bullethole effects.
50. Fixed fov bug.
Reference: http://www.fileplanet.com/172083/170000/fileinfo/Alien-Arena-2008-Version-7.20-Client-(Free-Game) accessed 25th Oct 08
Alien Arena 2008 is a multiplayer online deathmatch game based on the GPL id source code. Powered by version 7.2 of the CRX engine, this game features incredibly smooth and fast game play with next-generation engine features such as shaders, real-time per-pixel and per-vertex lighting and shadows, lensflares, light bloom, weather, and reflective water. The game includes over 40 levels, nine weapons (with alt-fire modes), five player characters, mutaters, six game play modes, and an in-game server browser. With modes like Team Core Assault, Cattle Prod, Duel, Deathball, Capture the Flag, and All Out Assault, Alien Arena has an endless replayability factor. Version 7.2 includes new maps, new models, new textures, and major engine enhancements.
Note: For compatibility, the default graphic settings are set to a low level. Use the video options menu to increase settings. This is a large (196MB) file and may take several hours to download via dial-up modem.
Download Link:
http://www.download.com/Alien-Arena-2008/3000-7453_4-10447379.html
Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Arena_2007
images:
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=Alien+Arena+2008&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
video:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YW27tsUU7n8 (poor quality)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ9__NmTb6o
To all dial up users. I would say that this game is worth the effort at downloading, especilly if you like run and gun FPS games.
