the cutting room mirror

Alien Swarm

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This needs some investigation.
Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.
Specifically: Investigate the game's SDK and source code for a Development page.

Alien Swarm is an update of an old Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, made by the original developers in their spare time during the development of Left 4 Dead and Portal 2. Much like the original mod itself, it's not a first-person shooter!

Unused Maps#

There is a map for the lobby, however it is never seen due to the lobby UI overlay. In GMod it can be played, however it is just a hollowed out black block.

Unused NPCs#

Classic Aliens#

For some reason, rougher versions of the Aliens from before Valve hired the dev team are present and working in the game, including an Alien Queen boss. What's interesting is that these old aliens look significantly different to the ones in the final game. These can be found at swarm\(alien name), while the final game's aliens are found in aliens\(alien name).

The old Drone.
The old Drone.
The old Shieldbug.
The old Shieldbug.
The old Parasite.
The old Parasite.
The old Ranger, known as Mortar Bug.
The old Ranger, known as Mortar Bug.

Male Colonist#

An ordinary civilian, possibly intended for the Landing Bay level. This guy uses the HL2 citizen mesh, and as a result, has all the citizen animations. Despite the name, there aren't any models for a female variant. He also has 2 "bloody" skins.

Zombie#

Full sourcecode and sound definitions for a zombie enemy (described in the source code as a "Swarm Civilian corrupted by SynTek chemicals into being a crazed zombie like thing") exist in the game. Unfortunately, there are no models or sounds, and it can't be spawned in-game. The code can be found in steamapps\common\alien swarm\sdk_src\game\client\swarm\asw_zombie.cpp and steamapps\common\alien swarm\sdk_src\game\server\swarm\asw_zombie.cpp once you've installed the mod SDK.

Heaven only knows how or why this wasn't used in the game. Everybody knows that Valve loves their zombies.

Unused Weapons#

Bayonet#

A very, very rough model of a bayonet, which was to be the melee attack instead of punching and kicking aliens to death.

Leftover Text#

Pretty much all the UI strings from Left 4 Dead 2 are present, with a find/replace to replace all instances of Left 4 Dead with Alien Swarm. This leads to some amusing unused strings...

"L4D2_Game_left4dead1"                     "Alien Swarm 1"
"L4D2_GamePlaying_left4dead1"               "Playing Alien Swarm 1"


"L4D2360_NotJoinable_OtherTitle_left4dead1" "Playing Alien Swarm 1"
"L4D2360_JoinError_OtherTitle_left4dead1"   "Your friend needs Alien Swarm\nso that you could play together\n"