Thursday, October 22, 2009
Could someone fix Left 4 Dead please?
Posted by Nicolas
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As you may already know it, we're almost done with the big stuff (ie: level-design and gameplay). What's left is mostly bugfixes, sound effects and little details here and there, which will still take some time. But I'd like to point a few things I'm not really happy with recently and that most people don't understand when they contact us.
I'm not gonna make a pamphlet about Valve, but the situation around Left 4 Dead custom campaigns is seriously fucked up. Sorry for the harsh words but, it's been nearly one year since the game was released and six months since the SDK was added to the game, and still... half of the features are still bugged out or simply not supported. That's something people heavily discuss on the Left 4 Dead Mailing List, but nothing seems to move on Valve's side. What's still impossible to do, you ask?
- You can't embed custom music in your campaign VPK.
- You can't embed custom sounds in your campaign VPK at all because players would have to rebuild the whole Left 4 Dead sound cache each time they install a new campaign, and when it doesn't simply mess up everything, it takes almost 10 minutes to complete.
- Custom models are crashing the game randomly when embedded in the campaign VPK.
- You still can't embed custom particle effects, in the maps or in the VPK.
- The sound system is ruined and plays random sounds at random events, like an alarm sound when you set zombies on fire and such...
- We can't make custom game instructor messages and as we can't record survivor voices ourselves, there's mostly nothing we can to to help players understand what to do.
And believe me, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Basically, what I'm saying is that more than 11 months after the release of the game, we still can't make elaborated custom campaigns. Should we see a deliberate method of pushing players and modders to Left 4 Dead 2, I don't think so ; but there's something seriously wrong in there. So, if you're waiting for our campaign, you might as well wait for the next bugfixes. Until then, here's a few widescreen action screenshots of the first three maps!
Sorry for the quality of the darkest ones, the JPEG format doesn't like big dark areas. And by the way, what I said in this article is my own opinion, and not the team's one (even if I know they agree with my opinion) and I know there's some campaign out there that do have custom sound/music/models, but it mostly relies on hacks and exponentially increase the campaign size. And our campaign contains a hell of a lot of custom content.
Labels: difficulty, forest, manor, problem, source sdk, underground, valve
Monday, July 6, 2009
Hang on tight!
Posted by Nicolas
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We know it's been seriously quiet there since mid-may regarding new materials, but don't panic! We'll have plenty of new things to announce in the upcoming weeks. No, not a release date unfortunately, but some crusty details about the manor (exterior detailling stuff), the lumberyard (progress stuff), the lakeside (progress stuff), the forest (gameplay stuff) and the underground (ambience stuff).
And if you're patient enough, we might even release some details about the music and a super-secret-new-poster-because-the-current-is-not-cool-enough. But shhht! Nothing's really fixed for the moment. If you're really patient, we might even whine and lament on one or two things (one of them beeing Valve, of course)!
Stay tuned for more developer banter coming soon!
Edit: As you may have noticed it, there's still no news for the moment. The reason is simple, I suffered a very bad lungs accident a few weeks ago and had to be hospitalized for a while. I'm now in the process of cancelling my trip to USA next month because of the damn utterly expensive american medical system :D
I can't take the risk of beeing indebted for the rest of my life for the moment.
Labels: forest, gameplay, lakeside, lumberyard, manor, maps, underground, valve
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Flat period...
Posted by Nicolas
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A quick message to tell you that we're not dead yet. It's just a flat period... I am working for my master of engineering final exams, Geoffroy is working for his end of the year exams, and Marc is still working hard at Ubisoft while doing his best to focus on the campaign each evening.
We don't have any release date for the moment, we'd like to focus a bit more on levels and finish this up before we can think of an approximative date. But this will definitely be somewhere this summer (most likely july). Here is an approximative completion percentage for each level of the campaign.
- Forest: 95%
- Manor: 85%
- Underground: 99%
- Lumberyard: 65%
- Lakeside: 30%
Stay tuned for more developer banter until the release.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Left 4 Dead hates open spaces!
Posted by Marc / Moroes
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A few days ago, we unveiled our new project I Hate Mountains and this website was already visited by more than 3,000 people. This is quite impressive and it motivates us for the next part of the development. We'd like to thank you all for your support and your confidence. It's now our job to try not to disappoint you, and believe us, it will not be the case.
Talking about the campaign, here's some fresh news.
In our first level, the forest, a big part had to be reviewed and redone after the release of Left 4 Dead. At the beginning, it was quite an impressive and vast open-space: fun to play, hard to optimize and finally... it had some problems to fit in the Left 4 Dead gameplay.
Making a Left 4 Dead level is not only a question of level-design and geometry. You can't build it and play it straight out of the box like most of Valve's games. You have to complete another important task, the nav mesh creation. The goal is to mark the paths for the game, these nav meshes contains a lot of informations for the artificial intelligence. Where can survivors and infected walk ? Where is the event ? Where can they respawn ? and stuff. The Director also needs it to build the gameplay during the game.
Problem is, when we got our first playable version of the level and tried to build the nav meshes, the process took three hours to reach 1%. Finally, we never managed to get a fully working version of the level. The game didn't knew how to compute the path from the spawn point to the first safe room because there was way too many combinations in this vast open-space.
Conclusion ?
We found out that Left 4 Dead was not really suitable for open and vast environments. Something had to be done. This is why I spent the last weeks trying to transform this open-space level in a corridor-like version. This is not something we wanted to do, but we had to resign, and after a lot of talking and babbling with the team members, we found several ways to transform the level without loosing this precious open-space feeling.
Today, this first level is mostly finished and we believe the creation process recently reached 75% (unless the late release of the SDK messes everything up, wouldnt be such a surprise).
Concerning the other levels of this campaign, our progress is constant. The third level is already beeing tested right now. We're trying to push the director to the limits, forcing him to make mistakes and telling us what's wrong with the level and the nav meshes.
Stay tuned for more developer banter until the release.
PS: The screenshots page is now open.
Labels: forest, gameplay, maps, problem, underground
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
What the hell is this all about ? (bis)
Posted by Nicolas
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Here we are. Almost half a year passed since we began communicating on our previous project Portal: Prelude, and we believe it's time to unveil our next plans. Welcome to IHateMountains.com!
Beware, the following is a shameless copy of the about page.
What? You hate mountains?
No, it's not a joke, and no, we don't really hate mountains (only Francis does).
"I Hate Mountains" is the name of a brand new Left 4 Dead campaign made by three french friends. This campaign is built the Valve way, we are not trying to revolutionize anything, we just want to provide more content to this awesome game.
Read ahead to learn more about it.
Why are we doing it?
Because we friggin' love this game.
We are playing Left 4 Dead together since the early days, during the Festival du Jeu-Vidéo in Paris, in 2008 (before the release). We played this game so much and always on the same campaigns that we believe it needs fresh new content, quickly.
More details on the campaign
The I Hate Mountains campaign is divided into 5 different maps, just like Valve did with their own campaigns.
 | Forest Our survivors crashed their bus in an utility pole of this dark mountain forest while fleeing. They must now find their way through the trees. |
 | Manor Now that the survivors managed to get out of the forest, they must reach the highest point of this manor and try to launch a distress call from the radio. |
 | Underground Escaped from the manor, the survivors are now fleeing though an old system of caves and tunnels running through the mountain. |
 | Lumberyard Freshly escaped of this oppressing cave system, our survivors are now looking for help and rescue in the lumberyard nearby. |
 | Lakeside Fleeing the now infected and deserted lumberyard, the survivors are now stuck and eagerly waiting to be rescued by whoever could see their signal. |
Who are we?
Mostly people from the Portal: Prelude team.
We are three friends with a professional, a student and an amateur background of the videogame industry. Check out the Meet the team page for more details.
Labels: forest, lakeside, lumberyard, manor, maps, underground
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