Community Map - Back to School - I - Forest

Forest (by Fake100) is the first map in the Back to School Campaign.

- Forest (by fake100)
- Train station (by romasm)
- Town (by romasm)
- Road to school
- Escape

Download the map from here: http://www.l4dmaps.com/details.php?file=76

Extract the files and copy them to: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead\maps

open the Console and type:

map:l4d_backtoschool01_forest.bsp

Nicely designed map, great start to the campaign!

Commnity Map - Red Sea - I - The Roofs - Beta 3.5

The Roofs is the first map in the Red Sea Campaign by SilverRagout:

*The Roofs
*The Metro, school, theater
*Port
*The ship
*Finale on deck

Download the map from here:http://www.l4dmaps.com/details.php?file=342

Extract the files and copy them to: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead\maps

open the Console and type:

map l4d_redsea01_roofs

This looks like a promising start to the campaign with a versus map also available!

L4D - Matchmaking Changes - Coming Soon

The SDK is currently in closed beta and will be released after the fairly imminent Survival Pack. Along with the SDK the matchmaking process is being extended to:

* allow for 3rd party campaigns

Valve then plans to add extra features such as:

* find servers running the campaigns that you have installed
* see friends playing on 3rd party campaigns and download those campaigns

An interesting planned feature is to enable team based matchmaking:

* two teams of four players join up to compete in a Versus game.

Skill based matchmaking is also being refined to better try and match players of similar skill who have good pings together.

The blog post detailing these changes is here: http://www.l4d.com/blog/post.php?id=2390