L4D

This is pretty damn impressive use of Source trickery

http://store.steampowered.com/app/5141/

Sadly if the game itself is even half that my machine will melt I am sure. So I think I may actually try this out on the 360 to check out the eye candy. But I am curious of course about the multiplayer and mapping for it. I know it's really early but if anybody's on the ball about the PC stuff some screens and comments would be awesome

I was playing a ZM server for the first time last night, lol the frame rates @ 4-10 and the enemies are stupid. L4D has got to be an improvement on that.

The intro looks nice, but the game doesn't excite me at all. The only feature I like about L4D is that if you're good at it then it gets harder; and that's not really original.. but new to Source. What really turns me off from this game is the fact that I can tell where most of the models and textures are taken from. It doesn't really seem like they added any new visual content into the game besides skins for enemies and characters, and MAYBE the guns. I haven't really looked at anything in depth for L4D since shortly after the announcement of it because it just didn't appeal to me.

Apologies.
Had to get that out somewhere.

Sorry to hear that. I hope you get the chance to play it though; I think your impressions of it will change once ya do that.

---

Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I probably will pick it up so that I have a game to play with a few friends of mine. I can't say for sure that I won't like the gameplay since I haven't played it, I'm sure that it will be fun.. I just can't get past seeing old stuff... from four years ago.

The one thing I don't like about L4D is the price! It's making tough choices what with all the other great games being released currently and me being as poor as an Icelandic bank.

"haymaker" said:
I was playing a ZM server for the first time last night, lol the frame rates @ 4-10 and the enemies are stupid. L4D has got to be an improvement on that.

Forgot to mention this in the first reply I had made: I never played ZM because my old computer couldn't run it. However, my friend played it all the time and he was always downloading custom maps made for it. From what I can tell, the game doesn't run very well because of poorly designed maps. I haven't seen all of them so I can't say that's true for every one of them, but all the ones I saw weren't constructed very well and I bet they weren't optimized for performance.

Gwil, how much is L4D, anyway?

45 dollars (about 20+ quid over here). Admittedly it's not massively expensive but when I have massive outgoings on books and keeping my university life buoyant, it's a fair bit to shell out. In the age of digital delivery you'd hope they could knock off even more $$$ for the removal of CD/box/manual/POS displays.

Does it have single player?? Otherwise, $45 is a bit much for a multiplayer only game.

amanderino said:
Does it have single player??

No, its strictly a multiplayer, or "co-operative" as the folks like to say.

As for the game, I'm sure it will be good but its not exactly at the top of my list either. I'm sure where going to hear about Episode 3 after Valve releases this thing, there probably focusing all their efforts on Left 4 Dead.

As for using content from Half-life 2, I don't think its a problem for me, I mean Half-life 2 Episode 2 used tons of content from the original Half-life 2 and that wasn't a bother.

You should probably check this out. Look at the0rthopaedicsurgeon's post about in the middle, looks pretty original to me .

---

Aaron's Stuff

The steam page says it single player, multi-player and co-op.

---

Reality has become a commodity.

yea, It has singleplayer. The singleplayer is the same campaign but with bots instead of other players. Not as fun, but same gameplay as the co-op mode. The game was built for co-op though.

---

Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

If it has single player.. I'm buyin' it! lol, even with multiplayer.. I could play with my bro. I like the horror theme very much so, and I've remained loyal to Valve ever since HL1. Having said that, is this the first game other than the Half-Life franchise that Valve has made?

Other than that, can't WAIT for news about episode three. Truly the best game ever made, Half-Life!

Oh, my bad, I thought the game was multiplayer only.

**Dedi** said:
Having said that, is this the first game other than the Half-Life franchise that Valve has made?

No, a list of games Valve has made can be found here. Alot of the non Half-life series games (with the exception of Portal) that Valve makes started off as mods made by the community. So if one day you make a really good mod, you could probably bet to hear from Valve.

---

Aaron's Stuff

Aaron,
L4D_Yama looks nice.
I like that there's a map for Duke Nukem on that same page; I didn't know people still played that.

"aaron_da_killa" said:
Oh, my bad, I thought the game was multiplayer only.

**Dedi** said:
Having said that, is this the first game other than the Half-Life franchise that Valve has made?

No, a list of games Valve has made can be found here. Alot of the non Half-life series games (with the exception of Portal) that Valve makes started off as mods made by the community. So if one day you make a really good mod, you could probably bet to hear from Valve.

OOh thanks aaron!! I was looking for Valve's web site.. always came across insignificant sites.. but this is the one I want.. with all the news and stuff. Thanks.

Oh and yeah, I know that Valve takes in mods of people and develops them.. but aren't all of those games branches of Half-Life? Even Portal?

Portal does fit in the Half-Life story line, but really; have you ever played Counter-Strike? -Nothing to do with half-life. Team Fortress -nuth'n whatsoeva (doesn't even look like it). Day of Defeat -doesn't the picture give it away???

I'm glad you like Valve, but they're more than just Half-Life...

---

Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Riven said:
Portal does fit in the Half-Life story line

Yeah, I know. What I said was that "alot of non Half-life series games with the exception of Portal (because portal isn't a non Half-life game)" .

---

Aaron's Stuff

It's using the Source engine. They wouldn't develop a brand new engine for one game; the purpose of writing an engine is to be able to use it again for multiple games that aren't necessarily even the same genre. For example: Source could be used in a third person adventure game, and that would only require adding code onto the engine, not modifying, or rewriting, it entirely.

BTW, is anyone else having problems quoting in this thread? Every time I quote and submit I get an error saying something like, "Oops, post could not be found." or something like that.

aaron_da_killa said:

Riven said:
Portal does fit in the Half-Life story line

Yeah, I know. What I said was that "alot of non Half-life series games with the exception of Portal (because portal isn't a non Half-life game)" .

Yea, I understood what you said aaron, but I was replying to what Dedi had to say:

**Dedi** said:
but aren't all of those games branches of Half-Life? Even Portal?

@Dedi- I tried to delete your first DB post as moderator, but it doesn't want to delete for some reason :/

-and yea, amanderino is right. They're still using the Source engine, just manipulating it to do what they want depending on the title.

@amanderino- I haven't had a problem quoting yet...

---

Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I must be taking out some of the code on accident. I'll have to pay more attention next time.. unless Firefox has problems with the new Snarkpit.
Thanks, Riven.

No, I had trouble quoting before too, and I figured out the problem. If you press quote, and then write a message after that, there's a problem. However, if you press 'post reply' and THEN press quote, all seems fine. Hope that helps.

"**Dedi**" said:
No, I had trouble quoting before too, and I figured out the problem. If you press quote, and then write a message after that, there's a problem. However, if you press 'post reply' and THEN press quote, all seems fine. Hope that helps.

Yeah, that fixes it. Thanks, Dedi.

Well, I wanted to give my feedback about the game in this thread...

I had pre-ordered the game and because of that I get the chance to play the demo early before anyone else. The early demo opened up for everyone on PC @ 7:00 am PST Thursday morning. That's when I got the chance to play it. The demo becomes open to the public for free on Nov. 11th. And the game doesn't come out until Nov. 18th.

Soooo, I've been playing the demo and I have to say,.. I've fallen in love with this game! It had me at the title screen. The zombies are gorgeous and act like what I would think zombies would act like. The gameplay is tremendously awesome and the effects make tie it up in a little bow and place it under the tree for ya. I mean, this game is everything I was hoping it would be plus more!

-Enough rambling, let me get into the specifics of the game for those of you who are unsure whether they should waste their HDD space for the demo...

If you're a fan of zombies and FPSs, then I HIGHLY recommend this game. If you have that in common, I'm almost 99% sure you'll like this game.

The game is built like a movie. With the 'Director' in charge of everything. The Director is a chunk of AI that controls the visuals, sounds, monsters, overall 'flow' of your gameplay. It is constantly evaluating how fast or slow you're moving through the level, what items you may or may not have; which weapons you've picked up, how low your health may be,(and the health of everyone else in the party) and what difficulty you're playing on. It uses all this info to keep you in that 'sweet spot' of gaming. Basically it compensates on how well you're playing to give you the most enjoyable experience. And based on my playtime so far (over 18 hours) it works! BEAUTIFULLY!

The higher the difficulty IMO the more fun it is. Now even though the director tries to give you fun experiences, it by no means makes it easy. If you fail, it feels completely fair and not by the game's fault -which was a pretty big deal when making the game (you never want to blame the design of a game for why you died!) Instead, It happens because YOU did something not well enough, or made a bad decision.

Things I liked (a lot)
The zombies. It's all about the zombies; The move like zombies, and they act like zombies (if they were real) Now you may not be used to zombies running, but this game makes it feel natural. What do they do when not running after you? Perfect question: They do what zombies do.. You'll stumble upon them while they're just lumbering around, or puking, or hitting on something making all kinds of gurgling noises and growling. You can shine a light in their eyes and they won't do anything about it. They're completely oblivious to one another and they have no mercy on you; they will do everything in their power to get to you if it's the last thing they do! (once they notice you) And get this, the higher the difficulty the more zombies! -thus the greater strain on your computer (it's noticeable).

The animations are seamless. You can push zombies out of the way and they will fall face flat based on how you pushed them and from where (the hip, face...) and without a hitch or glitch, they will push themselves back up to run after you, it flows very nicely. -Just one of those details that I liked...

The guns feel very real with the sounds being very nice. The characters get to say their witty comments in just the right moments and they have facial expressions just like in TF2. So when you just got through killing a horde of zombies, Louis' face will be either pretty relieved or downright scared looking.

The re playability...IS AWESOME. I don't know how many times I've played through this game with each experience being completely different from the last. I'm still finding new places from zombies to come from. There's a different amount showing up each time and in different locations, so that I may be fighting them out in the streets, down a cramped hall, or in a parking garage, whereas before I wasn't and it stays entertaining because I may or may not have the same items I had before.

Your pistol has unlimited ammo...

What I Didn't Like
Well, some people may not have a problem with this, but in a game like this (where there is a lot of frantic shooting going on) you may accidentally hit your teammates because there is friendly fire on. I have not found a way to turn it off, but it does get annoying when a teammate moves right in front of you before your shotgun goes off only for them to get knocked down in the process. Now the FF isn't completely realistic. There is a little leeway. For example. if a hunter tackles someone, the only way to get it off of them is to shoot it (which means aiming your gun at your friend) however, it will only hurt the hunter and save your friend -no worries, that's fine. But also, when you may be clipped inside one of you friends (no player collision boxes -like teammates in TF2; you can move through your friends). You can shoot and it doesn't hurt them because you may get pushed back by a zombie or something. There are some other leeways, but I'll leave that for you to discover.

-And that's the only thing I kinda don't like about the game, other than that, the execution is near perfecting in my book. The music plays at the right time, the color correction at the right moments is perfect, and the timing of the zombies is just icing on the cake.

That's all I have to say for now, so I hope you enjoy it when the free demo comes out on the 11th, and remember, Don't disturb the Witch!

/2 and-a-half Cents

---

Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Riven said:
Well, some people may not have a problem with this, but in a game like this (where there is a lot of frantic shooting going on) you may accidentally hit your teammates because there is friendly fire on. I have not found a way to turn it off, but it does get annoying when a teammate moves right in front of you before your shotgun goes off only for them to get knocked down in the process.

I had read that there is no way to turn off the FF. I have also read that if someone steps into your line of fire and gets hit it will count agance his points. I don't know how they would calculate that (and i imagine that it would be harder to do with a shotgun). Just thought u would like to know.

---

Reality has become a commodity.

Christ I love this game, nothing bad about it so far. I did had an unfortunate encounter with a which on my first try, where I happened to join an expert group, and me being a noob ran up and shot the which in the face. But we made it anyway, can't wait for the final game to be released.

Friendly fire is a good thing in this game, it encourages people to think about what they do and where they position themselves, I'd much rather have people come up with formations instead of running in front of me and blocking my fire with no consequences whatsoever.

Anyone want to team up and play a bit later today?

I'm game! I will be able to play after about 10 hours from now :P (busy atm). I live in (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada). So, it's 10:30 am here, and I won't be able to play until 8:30 pm. Message me over steam. I'll add ya as a friend.

---

Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

The game is awesome!!

Play it a few times on normal, then quickly jump to advanced or expert - that's where it shines. Friendly Fire is good - forces people to pay attention and form themselves as a unit. The replayability of these maps is amazing - I've been playing this demo for days and haven't tired of it; it's all about taking a group of strangers and turning them into an elite zombie killing force, through the course of 1 campaign. It's a great feeling to come together as a team and beat a map after failing a few times.

The A.I. director is genius - You really never know what's coming your way, but you can be assured that if you stray from the pack or mindlessley run around one of the bosses will eat your lunch, separate you from the pack, and quickly cause all hell to break loose.

This is THE mod to map for. All you do is create the environment and the AI director fills in the gameplay. ** of course I assume you will have to place the appropriate clues, nodes, spawn points, and have a well designed enviroment that caters to the games strenghts.

This could be a great mod for a Snarkpit group map, 3 or 4 maps that create a whole campaign.

Everyone should play this game!

"Finger" said:
This could be a great mod for a Snarkpit group map, 3 or 4 maps that create a whole campaign.

I'm down with that. I'm thinking about buying this game as soon as I get some cash. I'm about to download the demo to try it out.. I'd love to play it with someone from the Snarkpit. I live on the East coast but I'm available all throughout the week at any time, just let me know in advance when you'd want to play so I can make sure I'm caught up on sleep or have time to brew some coffee.

Finger said:
This is THE mod to map for.

I wholeheartedly agree. This game will give any custom map tons of re-playability. I mean, Imaging all the different experiences people will be coming out with (let alone the rest of the actual game when it comes out!) that you'll be able to waste your time on! I can't wait!

amanderino said:
I'd love to play it with someone from the Snarkpit.

Well, fear not! I'd like to play it as much as I can, and with people I know makes it that much more fun!

Yea, Natus, an acquaintance of mine, a friend of that acquaintance and I all played the other night together. It was loads of fun. We played on advanced and got our butts kicked in the last part. It just kept getting tougher and tougher to try and get through the last tid-bit. One time we were just about to press the button for the gate to go up when I was laying out some gas cartons to shoot at when the zombies would come. well, stupid me thought I had a gas carton in my hand (that I actually threw to the floor already), and you have to press left mouse button to throw em. Well, I had my shotgun equipped instead and clicking made me shoot the gas carton (already on the ground in front of me) which went up in flames killing all of us :P But it was soo funny

-Can't wait to play it again!

---

Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Well, I've played it twice so far. Once with AI party, and the second time with some random people online.
Playing online is definitely a lot more fun, which is weird.. I've never had so much fun losing a game with my team.

hahahaha nice..

Yeah I played the game last night, then I played it this morning, then I'm going to play it as soon as I write this post. It's simply brilliant. Valve has done it again, I'm so proud of them. Gotta start saving up to get the game, because it's a must have. Forget about Call of Duty 5, forget about Red Alert 3(which I hear is a dissapointment), Left 4 Dead goes in front. I'd talk about my experiences, but the guys have already summed it up in detail. Very nice game!

Well, off to play it now.. lol

Ahh... having played this awesome game time after time, I've finally come across a downside. Something that I don't find as... realistic(even though it's a zombie game lol).

When you play and one of the characters dies,a couple of minutes later they will appear again stuck behind some doorway and you have to rescue them. I don't know, some folk may like this, but I find it the only thing in the game that I dislike. Destroys realism. The friendly fire leeway is ok I guess, but dead characters re-appearing.. just doesn't appeal to me. I don't know, what do you guys think?

I think that the idea of rescuing teammates is a cool idea, but I think it'd go over smoother if you had more than 4 characters to play as. It would give you more of a "realistic" feeling if the person came back as someone new.

This game is awesome on the xbox 360 if u can get 4 friends playing together in close proximity. Other than that, I don't see how it could be too much fun.

Get this; It totally works; I've already played with several friends with it. But the PC version has split screen support! That's right, you and a friend can play on the same PC screen one one controls a player with a 360 controller, while the other uses a mouse and keyboard, or you can both use a 360 controller. If you're going to use a wireless one, you'll need to buy the wireless receiver for windows to pick up a wireless 360 controller. But wired ones work fine too, just plug 'em in and you're good to go!

P.S. I've even heard it works with a ps2 & ps3 controllers too! You'll have to copy a different .cfg file

Here's the link to instructions on how to do it; it's real easy, just replacing a .cfg file and entering a few console commands. If you keep reading in that thread, there's more info about using other controllers and such.

And here's a link to a wireless receiver for the PC.

Here is the official quote from Valve:

Yahn Bernier said:
Hi folks,

So splitscreen was always something we only wanted to officially support on the x360 due to the controller issues. However, we are planning on making some of the functionality work on the PC as an "unsupported" bonus feature. We turned it off for the demo because we didn't want to have to deal with any additional bug reports etc. about it interfering with the demo experience, but the current plan is to re-enable it after we launch the full product.

There are a number of tuning variables, the but tricky thing will be the controller. When testing, the best setup on the PC is to have two joystick/x360 style USB controllers. I think it will also be possible to have one keyboard/mouse and one joystick player.

I haven't looked into supporting two keyboards/mice, as I'm not even sure PC's can deal with that and I doubt we're talking about lots and lots of possible users for such a config.

Anyway, feel free to post this information around as appropriate.

Yahn

Here's a link to that original post the quote is taken from: here

-So as you can see, it's not gonna break your game or anything. If you have two controllers to spare, then try it out!

---

Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Whoa, that's interesting, split screen on a PC? I wish I could configure my Xbox 360 controller for Half-Life 2, that'd be pretty fun.

---

Aaron's Stuff