The making of: Left 4 Dead

[Blink]

Edge magazine have written up a nice article on the making of Left 4 Dead:

It’s hard to believe, then, that L4D only ever has 30 zombies in the world at any one time. The game’s procedural population system constantly adds and removes them behind your back to give the illusion of thousands of living dead. Pulling the strings behind the scenes is the AI Director, an artificial intelligence system that’s responsible for creating the highs and lows of the in-game drama. By controlling where and when zombies, mobs and special infected spawn, and by guiding the audio cues and weapon/item drops, the AI Director can modulate how the game responds to players’ actions and abilities.

Be sure to give it a read!

[Plague]

Then there was the time when four newbies spawned on the rooftop at the beginning of the No Mercy map and turned into lemmings.

“The first one just jumps off the roof and ledge hangs,” remembers Faliszek. “The other three just inexplicably followed him. Why they would do that, I don’t know. I think they thought the first one knew what they were doing so they followed. We decided to call that an outlying data point and just hoped it never happened again!”

Where does Valve find these people?

[Kosire]

Then there was the time when four newbies spawned on the rooftop at the beginning of the No Mercy map and turned into lemmings.

“The first one just jumps off the roof and ledge hangs,” remembers Faliszek. “The other three just inexplicably followed him. Why they would do that, I don’t know. I think they thought the first one knew what they were doing so they followed. We decided to call that an outlying data point and just hoped it never happened again!”

Where does Valve find these people?

from the street, not everyone is a pro gamer or understand how a game works and/or whats behind it.

[Plague]

Even the mental process behind that situation, but I guess if they really had no clue at all.

[zombie@computer]

probably the same people that playtested portal 2..
Hey look, they are trying to find their way through the level. Let's add a subtle clues, it takes them too long!

[joe_rogers_11155]

Here's my dream. I want to make a completely single-player map for Left 4 Dead. No AI teammates. Then I want to take out the Special Infected's ability to "pin" the player (this allows the player to proceed without requiring teammates). Then I just want to make a single-player experience with all the common infected zombies.

Basically a Half-Life 2 mission with all the common infected zombies in it. That would be sooooo cool.

Why won't they just release the code base???

[Armageddon]

Well, there is sort of a way to do that. Just put three spawns in a black room away from the map and put a trigger_hurt in there to kill all the bot players. And put one normal spawn in the map. I believe there is a way to turn off the special infected.

[LordDz]

sv_special_infected 0
or whatever. Just use those.

[source-maps]

Here's my dream. I want to make a completely single-player map for Left 4 Dead. No AI teammates. Then I want to take out the Special Infected's ability to "pin" the player (this allows the player to proceed without requiring teammates). Then I just want to make a single-player experience with all the common infected zombies.

Basically a Half-Life 2 mission with all the common infected zombies in it. That would be sooooo cool.

Why won't they just release the code base???

there is already a mutation for that.. it was either lonegun man or some other mutation


also, Valve play testers fucking suck.. they completely ruined competitive side of l4d2
12 medkits in the Parish map 2 and a bunch of defibs for example is fucking retarded D:

[joe_rogers_11155]

thanks for the tips on making the l4d map single-player friendly. i will try those out. i admit that i have never done a map for l4d...so i think i will start experimenting with it now. is there a way to outright kill the player without having him sit there waiting to bleed out by himself?

[Black_Stormy]

Sucks that the l4d servers are pretty much empty already. I have l4d2 but, call me a nostalgic whore, I prefer l4d. It just seems more solid and I'm a firm believer that too much choice (weapon range, new specials etc.) waters down the experience. L4d was a perfect trifecta in every facet of design, and I had many, many long drunken nights destroying hordes. Actually, my first ever source model was an ammo cache for l4d. So you could say that l4d got me into source modding. You could definitely say that L4D is my favourite valve game. Sucks bag to see it slide into disuse while bf2 enters its 25th year of full servers.

[Dives]

Not really. In L4D the auto shotgun was always the best choice, the correct solution during a panic event was to sit in a corner and hold the shove button, and the narrow map design made the best tactic a full out sprint to the end. L4D was poorly balanced for anyone who knew what they were doing.

[joe_rogers_11155]

I heard that BF3 will have a multiplayer mode called "Zombie Apocolypse" where you play a normal game of BF3 but the whole entire map is populated with zombies that move around in small mobs.

Wouldn't it be so awesome if that were true? Imagine a multiplayer game where you are trying to kill other people but there are also a bunch of zombies running around trying to kill anyone nearby.