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I couldn't say how much inspiration the mod took from L4D2 but it has a hybrid feeling of both games. It certainly feels ahead of the original L4D1 campaigns in terms of detail and game mechanics... —Glenn (www.halflife2.net)
Oct4

Fresh news from the front

Posted by Geoffroy in Media, Progress

Tags: , , ,

It’s been a while since we last gave you some real news about the content of the campaign itself and most of you had been pretty patient until now. We never stopped working on the campaign, but we’re not working on it full-time either, so it takes some time. You already know that the first, second and third maps are finished ; it still need a few tweaks here and there, but nothing really hard to do. Lately, there was some huge progress on the fourth and fifth levels too.

For the moment Geoffroy and Marc are working hard on these fourth and fifth levels while Nicolas is waiting for them to finish in order to create the navigation meshes and link everything together. These last two maps are almost finished, we’re probably somewhere around 85 or 90% of completion. In this article, we’ll focus a bit more on the Lumberyard level, right after Underground, where survivors are back to fresh air. We could also talk about the final Lakeside level but… we kinda want to keep some mystery around this one in order to avoid spoiling too much.

As we said in previous articles, we try to care a lot about details and background while building the campaign. It gives a better credibility and allows a better immersion in the apocalyptic Left 4 Dead universe (that’s probably why it takes time to build). Until now, Lumberyard‘s pictures showed a massive exodus, a mountain road and… contaminated people finding their way through the exodus and starting a panic event. Where were these people headed ? That was the mistery. They were trying to reach a lumberyard, transformed in a heavily defended, mobile, state-of-the-art evacuation and decontamination center by the military.

When survivors finally reach the lumberyard, everyone’s already gone through the backyard’s road and all is left are the remaining people that thought they could find their salute here too… but were a bit too late. Geoffroy tried to give all these building a realistic touch, trying to build what could look like a real lumberyard. Honestly, we don’t really know how a lumberyard is supposed to work, probably like 95% of our future players, but still. We think it’s important to add some credibility.

This map is also a huge optimisation challenge, since it’s completely open and offers a lot of paths to the end. For the moment, everything’s still going fine and we can finally see the end of the tunnel. So, stay tuned for more developer stuff until the release that we hope will occur before Left 4 Dead 2. If that’s not the case, we don’t know what we’ll do and it will only depend on how much of that promised inter-operability Valve managed to built in before the launch.

 

27 Responses to “Fresh news from the front”

  1. 5 fucking stars for you!

    That looks pretty good! maybe too dark but hey, crash course has the same ambient and it looks fine! ;)

  2. Anonymous says:

    Everything looks amazing!

  3. defrisselle says:

    As long as it is better than Crash Course, which this looks like it easily is. Just keep plugging along on it. We need quality campaigns.

  4. DEFme says:

    The progress looks fantastic, well done. I got psyched when I opened this page to see what was up. Keep plugging away, you've got support coming in from all over the place. Go team IH8M! LOL!

  5. Anonymous says:

    Been waiting so long, can't wait for this campaign! ^_^

  6. Anonymous says:

    Super ! Ça a l'air d'être du très bon boulot ! Espérons que tout cela soit en place avant la sortie de Left 2. Merci pour vos efforts ! Can't see to play !

  7. Anonymous says:

    can't wait*

  8. Anonymous says:

    Fantastic news! Keep up the good work.

    -DZJB

  9. Karl says:

    Even if it will be released AFTER the release of L4D2, I'd vote for getting it done for L4D, not considering interoperability with L4D2 for the moment. So people can play it with L4D, too. Only after that, and if it doesn't affect compatibility with L4D, I'd try to add some L4D2 entities and stuff like melee weapons that come with L4D2.
    Whatever, this thing here rocks.

  10. William says:

    Great news! The campaign looks amazing!

  11. Slade says:

    I Hate Mountains serait un beau cadeau de Noël !
    Bon courage les gars !

  12. sebh says:

    Wouhaou! These pictures look very sweet and level design seems awesome! :D

    Can't wait to play it! And I hope it will be compatible for versus some day after the release! (can't find this information in your previous posts&comments;)

    Bon courage! ;)

  13. ErroR says:

    Looks EPIC! amazing work guys, can't wait.

  14. smokeyoliv says:

    I'm so Happy and my team too that your work is closed to the end.

    We hope to Apologize soon for this (seems to be) amazing campains.

    I must sais that after one year of playing this Game, the campaign mod, still remain the best one for me for the real thrill it represent.

    See U soon Guy, et merci pour tout

  15. Daniel says:

    Hopefully, you guys get this thing done as soon as possible (and as bugfree as possible, more important!)

    But didn't you wanted to give some infos about the changed poster in an older news?
    (http://www.ihatemountains.com/2009/07/hang-on-tight.php second paragraph)
    Or do you keep the old poster now? o0

  16. Nicolas says:

    @Daniel:
    I see you're carefully following what we say. We did had a deal with an artist for a new poster, but it seems that he gave up, since he never gave any news.

  17. stocker says:

    This campaign is still coming out right?

  18. Nicolas says:

    @stocker:
    Of course it is.

  19. stocker says:

    I mean for L4d1. nicolas you are one of the people working on it correct?

  20. Nicolas says:

    @stocker:
    We acquired Left 4 Dead 2 recently through a friend in the UK (70% less expensive) and we thinking about moving to Left 4 Dead 2 or staying on Left 4 Dead 1. We have a plan that could please everyone, but we need to sort a few things out before.

  21. stocker says:

    I for one am not moving on to left 4 dead 2 until its 20-25 dollars. maybe others will move on but i paid 50 dollars for l4d1 so please keep that in mind. i have a question for ya… wouldnt it be not that much more work to release a left 4 dead 1 version and update it for left 4 dead 2? i mean left 4 dead 2 i would assume would require more work anyway.

  22. Don't worry ;-) As Nicolas said, we should have a good solution for everyone! Trust us ;-)

  23. doktor10 says:

    thanks for your effort! we (l4d.es) are following your effort from the neighbour country.

  24. stocker says:

    sweet! this will be awesome. im already sick of the new "campaign" thats only 2 levels long and full of glitches. i look forward to enjoying your hard work. lol!

  25. stocker says:

    How much of the textures are custom? just curious…