10 Ways to Annoy in Left 4 Dead

This should probably be renamed how to get kicked in less than 10 seconds ... some of these are funny to watch on youtube, but annoying as hell when some lame griefer ruins the game ...

Still if you have four more minutes of your life to waste ... here it is:

Resident Evil - Last Escape (Beta 1.0)

Outatime has obviously been working hard on recreating Resident Evil's Racoon City for Left 4 Dead - and it clearly shows in this Beta 1.0 release of this map.

This map is a complete rebuild of an earlier map and was started 6 months ago ... it's in Beta, so it's not perfect, and players with lower end PCs will likely experience lower frame-rates.

Having said that this map looks really good and will only improve with further development. I quite liked the early "hastily" thrown together version that this grew out of - and as you can see that this version has been nicely crafted and put together so far ... great work Outatime!

I am sure that there will be many people keen to watch the development and completion of this campaign.

You can download the map from here: http://re3.ninthworld.net/?p=64

This youtube video shows the Beta release off in third person view:

Unrest Mod - 8 v 8 Versus!

Unrest looks like an interesting Mod, not just because 16 players can play 8 v 8 in Versus mode, but also because the abilities of the special infected have been tweaked to make it harder for the survivors to get to the safe house.

Unrest was created by EVOL, the creator of the Hunter Games mod.

Here's what you need to know:

* Zombie hordes are 50 in size instead of 30.

* Smoker tongue range increased 25%

* Smoker pull is almost instantaneous

* Survivors being dragged accelerate much faster (other survivors cannot catch up to them, but are instead forced to attack the smoker)

* Better chance of pulling a survivor who is running around a corner

* Incapped survivors can crawl

* Hunter claw does 8 instead of 6

* Max hunter pounce damage is 50 instead of 25. This scales correctly, so what is normally a 20 damage pounce is still a 20 damage pounce, not 40. For more than 25, you'll have to go pretty high.

* You can have to up 3 smokers and 2 boomers. This way, the survivors never know what they are up against. And, in 8v8 games, this equates to pure chaos.

* Tanks are 7% faster.

* When there are more than 6 survivors, when a tank comes, a second one will immediately spawn. Both will be controlled by human players (no AI).

The combination of these changes should give a faster paced and shorter game for the survivors - which should be a lot of fun playing in Versus mode. So if you get beaten to a pulp as the survivors just make sure that you return the favour when you are playing as the infected ...

There is a Steam Group to advertise Unrest games to get groups of 16 players together here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/UNREST?

In the meantime check out the Unrest gameplay below:





You can get the latest release from the Steam Group page - the current link is here: http://huntergames.org/phocadownload/unrest-1.0.3.zip

Community Map - Death Aboard IV - The Ship

This, the 4th map the campaign (by Ditpus) takes place on a ship.

The angle that the boat is resting on gives this map a disorienting feel, and again this looks like another great map in this campaign ...

This just leaves The Lighthouse as the finale.



Download: http://l4dmapdb.com/campaign:death-aboard

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

Open the Console and type:

map:l4d_deathaboard04_ship

Links:
Death Aboard III - Docks
Death Aboard II - PrisonYard
Death Aboard I - Prison

Video by Zilla422.

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

Crawl While Incapped / Down - L4D Hidden Feature

This video shows survivor behaviour modified to crawl when down / incapped by use of the following commands:

sv_cheats 1
sm_cvar survivor_allow_crawling 1
survivor_crawl_speed 15

The speed can be set to what you want but anything above 25 is not recommended as the animation gets flakey.

You will need to have SourceMod installed to be able to use the sm_cvar command.

If you want this running all the time you can add the commands to server.cfg.



All credit goes to Apex: http://www.apex-games.net/?page_id=145

Permission to post this video is here.

Community Map - L4D Death Aboard III - Docks

Docks is the 3rd installment of the Death Aboard campaign, which is coming together quite nicely now.

The Survivors have a fair amount of ground to cover with a single crescendo event towards the end of the map.

Known bugs:
* All ladders have been changed to fit with L4D's proper settings now. But they are still confusing bots and npcs sometimes.
* The bulletproof glass in the prison is still not blocking bullets
* Water in docks level still not final
* Saferooms might spawn too many healthkits in campaign mode
* Tanks and witches don't spawn in campaign mode.

I'm going to try and see if I can find some servers hosting the Versus map soon - it should be a blast!

Links:
Death Aboard II - PrisonYard
Death Aboard I - Prison

Download: http://l4dmapdb.com/campaign:death-aboard

Left 4 Dead Update - Wednesday March 25th

Well, there are no doubt a few welcome changes in this update. I am most happy to see melee fatigue, Boomer vomit passing through common infected, and server fixes. I have never been able to get the sv_search_key (now just "key") to work ...

Game and client changes:

• Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down
  
• Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected
  
• Addressed some surround sound detection issues
  
• Fixed a rare crash when exiting Left4Dead on Windows Vista
  
• Fixed a case where the complete all expert campaigns achievement was not being rewarded

Dedicated server changes:

• Corrected an issue where Windows based dedicated were sending spurious shutdown notifications to the master causing them to delist temporarily
  
• Fixed dedicated servers not resetting the versus team swap correctly--you could join a dedicated server that had a previous game that was swapped and arrive on the other team than what was selected in the lobby
  
• Renamed the tags for sv_search_key to use "key:" in the server tags instead of "sv_search_key." This should help with issues of the 63 character limit of server tags
  
• Fixed an occasional server crash related to voting

No Mercy 5 - Versus - Molotovs

On the finale of No Mercy when the survivors are faced with Hunters, a Boomer and a Smoker at the top of the final ladder on to the roof it is common practise to throw a molotov onto the roof to try and snag one of these bosses.

But, if the bosses are all standing on vents (and the Smoker is over by the radar station) you will need to be much more precise with your molotov aim to catch them on fire.

Wbokunic's video shows you how ...

Left4Dead Update - Thursday, March 12th

It looks like the problems with last nights update have been resolved with this next update earlier this today.

• Fixed sv_search_key appearing in server browser
  
• Fixed issue where changing the sv_search_key did not update the master correctly
  
• Fixed master server issue with Linux fork mode that affected availability of Valve dedicated servers
  
• Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
  
• Missed from the previous list changes: Fixed acheivements to match stats. Past achievements not previously awarded will be shown in the game UI
  

Left4Dead Update - Wednesday, March 11th

Yesterday's update brought a lot of fixes that will be a definite improvement to the game balance on Versus mode. The tank and smoker changes will be particularly welcome in my opinion ...

Versus Mode Changes

• Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
  
• Fixed Tank punch being able to hit targets behind walls
  
• Fixes to 'Tank parking'. The Tank will now run back and attack the Survivors if he becomes AI due to two players expiring the frustration meter
  
• Fixed a case where a Tank frustration meter could run out right as he was in his death animation and he would come back to life
  
• Fixed a case where the Tank was moving too slowly while crouching and being shot
  
• Tanks now have the possibility of spawning in a slightly different position for the first and second teams
  
• The order that the teams play as Survivors is now determined by which team has the higher overall score. The winning team will play as Survivors first
  
• The Smoker tongue can now target and grab victims through common infected
  
• Increased the cone in which a Smoker can grab a target
  
• The Witch no longer cuts Smoker tongues in a radius around her
  
• Boomers that explode in mid-air will now hit Survivors directly below them with Bile
  
• Reduced the damage that burning Hunters do to pounced victims
  
• Adjusted the time at which players take over from bots to avoid 5 seconds of the bot standing idle while the player finishes connecting.
  
• Fixed some cases where versus score was not being recalculated properly. It is no longer beneficial to pass pills between players at the end of the round or heal other players and then shoot them
  
• Fixed a case where it was possible to spectate an AI infected and hit +use to take them over
  

Server Changes

• Added convar sv_gametype that allows server operators to limit the types of games that will start on their server. Default value is 'coop,versus'. Can be changed to just 'coop' or just 'versus' to limit to those game types
  

General changes

• Fixed a case where players would join as a dead Survivor when a living Survivor was still available
  
• Fixed a case where restarting a level due to the team dying would give more than the max primary ammo on restart
  
• Fixed the speaking icon showing up on the local player during level transition if voice_vox was set to 1
  
• The scoreboard now shows the numeric value of a player's ping
  

GameUI

• Quick match will now try to match to any campaign. Removed the preference to match to games according to the player progressing through all campaigns
  
• Games in a finale are now joinable via the Friends and Steam Group games list
  

Dead Before Dawn - ModDB Best Upcoming Mod 2008

Darth Brush's Dead Before Dawn wins the ModDB Players' Choice: Best Upcoming Mod for 2008.

Originally created for the Half Life 2 Mod "No More Room in Hell" it is now being customized and ported to Left 4 Dead.

Dead Before Dawn contains replica locations from the movie Dawn of the Dead, so far including:


* Crossroads Mall
* Anna's House
* The Park

Soon you will be able to see Andy's Gunshop.

This campaign also promises Easter eggs from the movie and a 100% custom soundtrack.

At the moment, this Campaign looks like it will set the bar for the L4D mapping community ...

Left 4 Dead tutorials - from valve!

This is a great guide that will help a lot of people out until the official SDK for L4D comes out.

Apparently it is an archive of tutorials for the dev Wiki for the L4D SDK (when it comes out).

Download.

















This is the listing of the tutorials:

* Getting Started
* Your First L4D Level
* Ladders
* Visibility
* Nav Meshes
* Checkpoints
* Checkpoint Rooms
* Outdoor Levels
* Level Organization
* Level Standards
* Clip Brushes
* Elevators
* Panic Events
* Breakable Walls
* Finale Events Part 1
* Finale Events Part 2
* Finale Events Part 3
* Additional Finale Components
* Nav Flow
* Advanced Nav Editing
* Versus Maps

The original thread is here, man this makes me wish I had time to make a map ...