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This may be a fan-made project, but it's a must-play if you are looking for a reason to revisit Left 4 Dead. —Ben Kuchera (arstechnica.com)
Mar28

The light at the end of the tunnel was a lie

Posted by Nicolas in Lamentation

Tags: , , , ,

Hey everyone, I hope you’re not too desperate by our silence and that you still have some faith in our project. We don’t have a lot to say and most of our babbling occured on Twitter recently. Sorry if you don’t like it, but it’s far more convenient when you just have a few words to say.

Over the course of the last month, we managed to find solutions for all of the major problems that were getting in the way of the release since half a year (which is a little miracle in itself). The problem is that “finding the solution” doesn’t exactly mean “knowing how to fix it” and eventually, it took time. Last week, we found the solution to our well-known lobby connection failure that prevented any player from hosting a dedicated server on our campaign (which is kind of a deal breaker). I talked about it with people on the Left 4 Dead mailing-list, I talked about it with people at Valve, I talked about it with the team and believe me, this is not what you could call a minor problem.

Basically, the campaign is now finished (with escape vehicle and everything working) but you can only play it with bots or using console commands to control the server you’re playing on because the matchmaking system is giving up before servers hosting our campaign can reply. The solution to this problem is fairly simple: there’s no solution. The only way we can fix this is by making huge changes in the way three of our levels work. At first I seriously considered giving up and calling it a day. It’s been 14 months, we’re tired, we’re sick of working on this campaign, this was the most annoying thing that ever happened to us and it’s happening only a few days before the release… but eventually, we found some motivation to try to fix it.

We don’t know how many time it will take us, we don’t even know if it will fix the problem for good, but it’s still worth a try anyway. The release was supposed to occur next week but this won’t be the case anymore, sorry. Thankfully enough, Valve is supposed to release the Left 4 Dead 2 DLC soon and it will probably help everyone waiting.

 

42 Responses to “The light at the end of the tunnel was a lie”

  1. Geoffroy says:

    ahahhah

    This is funny. This will laugh Marc and Nyko I guess ! :)

  2. Nicolas says:

    @iCasta:
    Hehe, kinda cool ;p

  3. People, thanks for your effort and for your persistence.

    Hope all this is fixed soon.

  4. Anonymous says:

    I'll gladly play it solo to give it a run.
    I say release it after all the hard work, let us enjoy it nonetheless. :).

  5. Anonymous says:

    its almost REEAAADDDDYYYYY

  6. Anonymous says:

    just release it already!
    who plays versus anyway the game is all about coop (there aren't far enough coopgames out there).

  7. Nicolas says:

    @Anynymous:
    Hmm, that's what we're doing, working on the coop. The problem we're fixing for weeks affect both.

  8. Anonymous says:

    THEY ARE PLAYY TESSSTTTTINNNGG IIIIIITTTT!!!!!!!

    friend me on steam rike889

  9. Andre says:

    So the "I Hate Mountains" will fly for true…. Awesome, just Awesome.

    I wonder what had gone wrong with

    Dead Before Dawn, they have good ideas, good skills and, yet, after releasing the beta, they didn´t fix the problems that would make the campaign the better custom campaign made and apparently, it is dead… what a fate.

  10. Quai_43_UCBL says:

    Playtest OK !
    Now release \o/

  11. Anonymous says:

    Yeehaa! Go! Go! Go!

    Best wishes from Russia!

  12. Anonymous says:

    im curious if this is an attempt tp piss off valve by people not playing the passing because they will play this instead. or an attempt to be hired by valve and leave EA.

  13. RTFrisk says:

    I'm on the mailing list, but I do not frequent it as much as I would like; still, if I can help with this problem at all I would be glad to!

    RTFrisk
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/tsr23
    http://www.suicideblitz.info

    Can be contacted at either one.

  14. DEFme says:

    Ahhh, the reason I will be re-installing L4D1.
    Best of luck guys, hope to see this soon.

  15. Andre says:

    I remenber of only two other custom campaigns worth playing.

    Thowe were "Death Aboard" and
    "Suicide Blitz"

    Now we will have "I Hate Mountains"

    If wasn´t for L4d2, maybe a lot of good campaigns would had been finished for l4d.
    Well, kudos for the "I Hate Mountains" team.
    Waiting eagerly for your game.

    yuhaaaaaaaaaaa :ppp

  16. Anonymous says:

    maybe its a language thing but it seems as though your saying the campaign is released.

    it is not.

  17. Daniel says:

    For the lines you got from Valve I got two questions:
    1. WHICH ones? Francis "I hate mountains" is obvious, but what other lines?

    2. Am I right when I gonna say, you will include the lines in the .vpk? Because for people, who own L4D2, it might be easier just to copy and paste the lines by themselfes – that even would ignore the problem of wrong dubbing and prevent the "mixed language" for the survivors. (well, as soon as the dubbed lines for Passing are released, of course)