But the games yesterday were cool. First time I actually got through a finale on advanced. GG Biff, Preach and Pushplay (and ijed earlier). Always seems to be somewhat luck-based, dependend on where the items, especially ammo, spawn. At least as long as the necessary skills are still lacking.

Also played some L4D1 again. Could it be the score system is kind of strange? I got like some 2500 points as infected but only 100 or so as survivor - relation? 

Until my ISP disconnected me - happened 2-3 times in about half an hour.

The ping wasn't helping us cross that bloody bridge though. 

I dont get to play this game until 25th December - my fiance bought me it for �19.99 in a shop, but i got to wait for this one lol :D

But Im a good ally, i stay out of the obvious line of fire and use proper tactics etc - looking forwards to playing with some of you guys hopefully! 

Was on wifi and my stepsister was using the PC - my whole internet connection bottomed out; everyone in the house was disconnected. Wasn't a problem with others using the line either since my machine opens 6 connections, using them in tandem.

I'm on dual core and never saw the multicore bug, although my laptop isn't good enough to actually see the rain in Hard Rain and run with a decent FPS. Should give it another try though, since theres an overheat issue. 

Interesting L4D1 campaign, looks pretty

http://www.ihatemountains.com/screenshots.php 

I played two custom campaigns once. Dead City - which I found too large and repetitive as you often pass through areas you've been in before and every other zombie encounter is a horde event - and Vienna Calling - which was pretty long too, but looked good. Haven't tried Dead before Dawn yet, even though it seems to be the top scorer so far (in terms of build quality).


Lol?: L4D in 2D: http://sites.google.com/site/ericdavidruth/game-left4dead 

 

http://www.l4dmaps.com/

Is the site you want.

Dead city is very repetitive, yeah, not recommended.

I would recommend Coal'd Blood, Death Row and Death Aboard, in that order.

Night Terror is an odditity and quite fun - haunted house, Tin-Tin and Lord of the Rings themes. Hard as a coffin nail though. 

So I spent about a week before christmas hacking up the l4d2 maps with a hex editor to see if I could create a scavenge map using the original l4d SDK. I went off for christmas and spent the time forming an idea for a map, so I could come back and be ahead of the curve making it.

Of course, on christmas eve, unbeknownst to me, they released the official SDK, so all that effort turned out to be a bit of a waste. What's more, I'm thinking of scrapping what I have with the map anyway.

The idea was to make the map initially cyclic, by having the generator on the roof, and the cans inside the bulding. There would be a fire escape on one side which allowed you to climb up, but the fire doors leading to the escape would be locked from the inside. So you'd have to drop down through broken ceilings to get to the cans in the building, but then to get back out you'd have to take the fire escape. Opening the doors from the inside means repeated trips to that floor can then take the short route down the fire escape and through that door.

It sounded like a nice plan, but there's one flaw. On that basis, you're going to end up spending a lot of game time on the fire escape. But actual combat on the fire escape is REALLY boring, particularly for the special infected who would be mostly useless. Unless you got rid of all the side railings, at which point it's going to be lethal for the survivors.

It doesn't mean I'm giving up on the cyclic route completely, but what I've made so far will go on the scrap heap. Perhaps a more conventional courtyard with three or four surrounding buildings, each with ground level "fire door" style entrances would work better. The first trip into each building requires you to navigate round and climb up a scaffold / take the unlocked back door / break and enter through a window. Then once inside you can open that building's door out into the courtyard, and subsequent trips to cans in that building can be quicker.

I also want to find out if going into overtime in scavenge mode triggers some kind of event you can hook into - it'd be really cool if all the lights the generator is powering cut out if the timer expires but you're still carrying a can, then come back on if you manage to fill it up during overtime. 

One setup I was planning in the map was to make the first can / 2 cans potentially quick for the survivors if they were willing to take a gamble. The can would be found immediately on dropping down a hole, so it could be thrown right back up a level. If you did that and then tried to run back round via the fire escape, a spitter would probably destroy it before you returned.

Instead, if you sent one or two survivors down for it, and they tossed it up to the rest of the team, they could put it in the generator, then drop down to reunite the team. Of course, the risk is that while you're filling it up, it would be very easy for the infected to capitalise on the separation. Particularly given how the first attack always has good coordination - everyone is in ghost mode at once.

I'm trying to think how I could return that idea to this new plan for the map, now that the generator is starting in a courtyard and so presumably on the ground floor. Perhaps I could add a cellar or something, any suggestions accepted! 

What you describe the first thing that occurs is to limit the time spent on ladders. A good (but time-consuming) way to do this would be to have the fire escapes either collapse while the players are on them, coming to lean on adjacent buildings, or have the other buildings do the same.

So you could have a suspnded motorway, partially collapses, leaning into the power station. Why it fell . . . boomer flatulence?

What I mean is limiting the power station sections - not because it's not a cool setting, but because it's very repetative and if you weren't having to put the players on ladders alot of the time it'd be in long horizontal corridors.

Another option might be to make it a hydroelectric dam, though you'd probably lose alot of the verticality. Unless they had to climb the thing - but that'd probably become an entire episode :)

Reading the second post properly, it's scavenge and I'm proposing at least a full map . . . freestylin level design. 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/screen_shots/defib.jpg

Didn't need to use it though, not enough zombies...

(P.S. Sorry for the cheeky quaketastic upload but it's only 150k and is kinda gaming...) 

Sorry I couldn't play. 

You can't swear particularly well either 

I struggle along in the languages I have. The above would make more sense in a yorkshire accent. 

Why aren't you on the server, gobshite? 

Yeah sorry ijed, sometimes these things are tough to work out okay. 

I'd like to beat a L4D campaign on expert at least once (yes, that is L4D1). Anyone care to help me? 

Could be, but am away for a bit soon. Maybe in Feb... 

I'd be up for helping with that. 

http://forums.l4dmaps.net/thread-1162.html 

 

given the mapping slump i'm in at the moment, it's pretty depressing to see someone else plow through a level so efficiently.

On the other hand, I have found that professional mapping pretty much flows like this -- when you have a really short schedule, you generally go with your first good idea and start running with it rather than spending an extra week casting about for "something better." And after you polish it up, usually that first idea turns out to have been just fine. 

Sad but true, ideas are worth thin air, only done stuff counts. And since mapping is a process not a state even bad ideas can produce good maps from a competant mapper.

Negke -

I think the problem will always be there (one side having bad ping) playing across the equator.

They may have won numerically, but at least we didn't rage quit.

Playing L4D with someone who's deaf (Crissama) can be frustrating until you learn to work as a team.

Also, L4D2 takes ages to load on my work rig and I don't know why - the game before they reached the finale in Carnival and flipped the switch before I'd even entered playing as Infected. 

Woah fucking hell that looks cool.

Wasn't convinced at first as it looked like a fairly standard city scene with a bridge added, but with the dirty snow and water around, it looks great.