Thursday, December 24, 2009
Clarification, campaign overview, screenshots and merry Christmas!
Posted by Nicolas
(permalink)
Okay, I don't know for you and your country, but in France, we just entered Christmas Eve day. For a few days (probably more than two weeks), we'll keep silent and take a break with family. But before we leave, we wanted to say a few last things about the campaign.
We know it's taking a bit longer than expected to get this campaign done. In fact, this is taking way longer than expected. At first, we thought we could have a release for the end of the summer, eventually it didn't happen. Then, we thought we could do it for November, and we worked at a fairly sustained pace to keep up, but eventually it didn't happen either. Finally, we thought we could finally have a release for Christmas (that would have been awesome), but you guess it, it still won't happen for a number of reasons.
There was the great debacle of the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools, that didn't helped us as soon and as much as expected since most (if not all) of the components Valve initially promised never showed up. But that's OK, we didn't really care anyway. Then, each one of us got back to work or school after summer, and as we're all at the beginning of our professional life or at the end of our scholar life, it consumes a lot of our time. But that's OK, we could bare with it. Finally, there was the big disappointment and excitation around the release of Left 4 Dead 2, which sucked up a lot of our time and motivation and brings us to the second point.
To be honest, at that point, we really thought it was time for us to give up. Until a week ago, as a leader I wasn't really sure if we were still headed somewhere at all. We saw the numbers, we saw Left 4 Dead 1 leaking players faster than ever, we saw it fall behind Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, the Garry's Mod, and even regularly Day of Defeat: Source, which hasn't even been supported for years (July 2008). Even us weren't playing Left 4 Dead 1 anymore, that really frightened us to hell to think that our project was already obsolete before its completion. Valve really didn't left us enough time to build something serious.
For your information, on the official Left 4 Dead Mailing List a few beta-testers are talking about the upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 SDK. Let's be honest, for the moment it looks particularly promising, but then again, if we really want to be honest, the SDK of the first one looked promising too and nothing happened. For a while, we considered switching to Left 4 Dead 2, finish our campaign and wait for the SDK to be released (OK damn, the SDK was released while I was writing this news, so... everything might change again, except the following statement). Don't freak out though, because we made our decision. I Hate Mountains will be released on Left 4 Dead 1 or won't be.
Okay, now that things are getting clearer, here's a bit of information about our progress. Basically, it's finished. Now, when I say "it's finished" I mean that the whole campaign is complete and playable. That doesn't mean the campaign is ready to be released, it means that we're entering the polishing stage. We have this huge folder full of bugshots (screenshots of bugs) to fix, we need to tweak the navigation of bots and infected, we need to throw a few animations here and there, and more importantly, we need to test it full-scale. We know for sure that the gameplay works quite well, but it won't hurt anyone.
Wooo, that was quite a long news. Now that you're all bored, you may need some new materials to cheer you up. So here's one overview and 20 new action screenshots of the last two maps, taken from of our last playtest.
I Hate Mountains Complete Campaign Overview (spoilers ahead, 875 KB). Now you can see how much work has gone into building different paths and ensure good re-playability.
20 brand new action screenshots taken from the Lumberyard and Lakeside level during our last playtest (no spoilers here, don't worry).
Until next time, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the I Hate Mountains Team!
Labels: gameplay, lakeside, lumberyard, maps, source sdk, valve
Monday, November 23, 2009
Lies and concerns
Posted by Nicolas
(permalink)
Since the release of Left 4 Dead 2 a week ago, we received a few emails asking us if it was going to have any consequences on our I Hate Mountains campaign. I thought it could be good to clear up the situation for everyone at the same time. So here's our thoughts on the current situation.
- First, there's still no SDK for Left 4 Dead 2 and something tells us that we might not see it before a long time. So we can't port our campaign to Left 4 Dead 2 if we wanted to.
- Second, even if we could, we won't be able to port our campaign to Left 4 Dead 2 because Valve lied about their so-called interoperability between Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. There is no such thing and all the content we used from the first game (textures, models, sounds, etc.) isn't available in the second for the moment.
- Left 4 Dead 1 is still crippled with bugs and it's still rather impossible to create a serious campaign using custom everything (models, particles, music, sounds, etc.) that doesn't rely on dirty and risky hacks. We might finally use these, but we'd really like to avoid it.
- Most people are starting to move on from Left 4 Dead 1 to Left 4 Dead 2 and even us are seeing Left 4 Dead 1 as a serious regression over Left 4 Dead 2. It frighten us a bit because, now that the community is splitted (thanks Valve), we don't really know were our potential players are.
Finally, I guess nothing really changed for the moment. We're still working on the campaign, but we've been quite depressed by the quality and the originality of the new Left 4 Dead 2 campaigns. It's really hard to focus on your own campaign when you perfectly know you'll never be able to reach this kind of result. But still... we're working on it.
Labels: problem, source sdk, valve
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Could someone fix Left 4 Dead please?
Posted by Nicolas
(permalink)
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
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Back on the rails
Posted by Marc / Moroes
(permalink)
It's been a while since we last updated this blog with real content about the campaign and not just some random banter. It's been a while but that's it, the campaign is back on the rails. Geoffroy and Nicolas just finished their school year and I'm back from a little mapping rest. We're getting back to work, even if Valve seems to hate us, poor Left 4 Dead mappers, since they broke the SDK (again) and left the model browser lying in pieces since the last update (using the regular SDK).
During the last week, each one of us worked hard. The forest (first map) is finished, the manor (second map) is nearly finished, we're currently editing its navigation mesh. The third map is finished, the fourth is progressing quickly and the fifth too.
That's all for the moment. And if you think this news is a bit poor, head over to the Bioh4zard 2 website. These folks are building a promising campaign around the Resident Evil universe and they seem to know what they're doing. Check out their trailer.
EDIT 8:30pm
We found a fix for the model browser bug, see the comments if you want to know what to do, since ydna summed it up for us.
Labels: maps, problem, source sdk, valve
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Left 4 Dead, Left 2 Die ?
Posted by Nicolas
(permalink)
Face it, everytime you're beginning to get "famous" in a way or another, everyone starts to ask you what's your opinion on everything. I'm not too fond on giving personal opinions in public, but hey... this is a blog after all. So, stop sending us e-mails, here's our opinion.
With the recent announcement that Valve would be releasing Left 4 Dead 2 just one year after the first one, we've all been a bit shocked. Frankly, I was the first to shout a big "WTF" and call it a prank when Geoffroy told me about it. We honestly thought that people at Valve had lost their mind, changed their business strategy and just realized there was tons of money to make there and that they just had to jump on the occasion, vomiting at the face of early adopters, all-time fans and modders just like a boomer would do.
Honestly, I felt betrayed by this announce for a few reasons.
- First, Left 4 Dead was sold for a ridiculously high price for what it was. I mean, 50€ makes $70 for a barely polished and unfinished mod where Team Fortress 2 cost a third of this price and is supported for free since its release. It seems like Valve forgot the reason why the TF2 model works so well, which has nearly quadrupled in size since it was launched (It started with 6 maps, it's now on 24). They mention that 20 new weapons is too much for a free DLC, but that’s exactly what the TF2 team has done, and it wasn't only re-skins.
- Second, there was only four campaigns with only two of them available in versus mode, that was pretty cheap for 70 bucks, even if I almost played it a million hours since it came out.
- Then, I thought about all the quality custom content that would be released a few months after, that same content WE are trying to add to the game but for which we're still all waiting for an official support 7 months later (matchmaking anyone?).
- But more importantly, what about their constant preaching about what is a real customer service and how you should make games? Isn't it Gabe Newell himself who declared this:
"So we'll do the same thing with Left 4 Dead where we'll have the initial release and then we'll release more movies, more characters, more weapons, unlockables, achievements, because that's the way you continue to grow a community over time."
Gabe Newell on VideoGamer.com a few months ago.
Now, what's the situation? We got this barely interesting survival mode that basically makes a whole game mode with the worst parts of the original game (personal opinion). Well, sure it was free, but that was just the right price for what it was. Then we got 7 achievements linked with it, which are totally impossible to unlock for me because the game keeps resetting my medals count. And we got the two missing campaigns in versus mode. Now where are the new campaigns? Weapons? Unlockables? Survivors? Zombies?
Most people feel betrayed because they already felt that they paid largely enough money for a game that was half-finished, or even because they payed for it while keeping in mind that there was going to be a TF2-like support behind the price, and that's my case. Trying to gather people into a community is a good thing, but making them pay the full price again for something you said was going to be free while preventing everyone from making their own custom content is really shooting yourself in the foot. I looks like Valve is preventing people to make user-content hopping that more people would buy their own.
Now, let's face it again, we're all going to buy this Left 4 Dead 2 (well, I guess), but Valve's reputation is still going down again and again after each of their recent moves. First there was this HUGE price increase with the stupid 1€ = $1 conversion on Steam (remember kids, it's still 1€ = $1.41 today), then Left 4 Dead came out half-finished, and now they're lying to customers luring them to buy their stuff. What's next? We're still not hating them, since we're all day-one fans of their work, but this really feels wrong. As Doug Lombardi said on Rock Paper Shotgun, we should just trust them a little bit... but with this full price tag coming along with just a few minor changes to the game (honestly, who cares about adding a frying pan as a weapon), this is not going to be easy. Let's just wait and see how it turns out.
P.S.: No one's against a Left 4 Dead 2 by the way, as long as they finish the first one. On the other hand, everyone knows they're not a charity company, but when you make promises, you should try to respect it.
Labels: misc, problem, source sdk, valve
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools
Posted by Nicolas
(permalink)
All right, you can stop sending us e-mails to say that the Left 4 Dead SDK was released yesterday, we already know it. We're actively following what's going on in Valve's universe day after day and downloaded it as soon as it came out.
Unfortunately, it doesn't add anything useful to us for the moment, simply because we made our own SDK during this 6 month wait and because the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools doesn't provide anything more for the moment. Basically, it's just a renamed Source SDK. For the moment, we didn't investigate much, but it looks like all the changes are more or less to make the old tools compatible with the new Left 4 Dead Source engine, to release the same old particle editor and to copy/paste the Valve Developer Community's tutorials into the Left 4 Dead folder.
We'll see how it goes, but as far as I can tell, we'll only use one file from the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools, the editor's official entity list configuration file: left4dead.fgd. The Sketchup plugin looks cool too, but we'd really prefer a plugin that would allow us to export Sketchup models directly into Source models using a GUI, because Sketchup always allowed us to export in a random format (well, the professional version does it) and then convert it into an SMD file using XSI Mod Tools.
Anyway, there is no revolution for the moment. We are more eager for them to update the matchmaking system and I bet this release won't change much for us. At least until the SDK is fully finished and polished. Then we may see tools like the ones everyone thought they would add. But I'm getting a bit bitchy there :D
Labels: problem, source sdk, valve
Friday, April 17, 2009
Unfortunate SDK Accident (fixed)
Posted by Nicolas
(permalink)
Believe me, we'd really like to add some news on this front page, but I got an unfortunate accident with my Source SDK. Today, without any warning, it just stopped working. When opening up the Source SDK Launcher, there's nothing I can do anymore. It opens correctly, but I can't click anymore on the tools. If I try to double-click on Hammer Editor, Model Viewer or Face Poser, the SDK Launcher just stops itself without any error message and without launching the corresponding application.
This is not the first time the Source SDK stops working... but this is the first time it does not display any error message. I tried the usual stuff: Refresh SDK Content, Reset Game Configurations, Defragment Cache Files, Verify Integrity of Tool Cache, Restart Steam, Reboot Windows, Delete the ClientRegistry.blob, uninstall and reinstall the Source SDK GCFs, delete everything SDK-related in Steam and reinstall everything from scratch... I even deleted the whole Valve preferences from the registry. So far no change.
I used the SDK for a few hours and it stopped working when I tried to relaunch Hammer using a different game configuration. The only thing I did before it stopped working is install the Dawn of War II Demo (but I doubt this was related, I uninstalled it just to be sure). There was also a Steam update released at the same time... I really don't know what to do, if some of you already faced the same problem someday and know what to do, please post in the comments or send an email to nicolas@ihatemountains.com, I really need it to finish the fifth map of the campaign...
Edit April 18:
I just entirely uninstalled Steam and reinstalled it only with Source SDK to witness that it doesn't change anything. I'm now completely stuck.
Edit April 19:
Mokay, I uninstalled Steam again, trashed ALL the GCFs (sigh), deleted the whole Valve registry key, cleaned the computer with TuneUp, and installed everything back from scratch (40 GB of GCFs to download, sigh) and things seems to be working again. Thanks to the people who tried to help there and via e-mail, much appreciated.
Labels: lakeside, problem, source sdk
Friday, April 10, 2009
Early Left 4 Dead SDK access?
Posted by Nicolas
(permalink)
Yesterday, we learnt that some people managed to get their hands on some private-exclusive-early access to the Left 4 Dead SDK. Which means a few things :
- First, that there is a SDK. That's not as bad as some people thought after all. Even if it's five months late, it's still better than never.
- Second, that Valve is testing it. Therefore, we can assume that they got it right this time. Hopefully, when the "new" SDK comes out, it shouldn't screw everything during several weeks this time. But seriously, we're not really this confident, and chose to prevent the automatic SDK update in Steam anyway.
- Third, we know that someone at Valve's headquarters is reading this blog, Google Analytics is tracking you! What are you waiting for to offer us an early access to this SDK? Come on! Mail us at team@ihatemountains.com, dont be shy!
Anyway, since I developed a little tool to handle the custom content, sort it between Left 4 Dead content and external stuff and embed it automatically in the map files, it's not much of a problem anymore. BUT STILL, we'd really like to see the new functionalities, if any.
Labels: source sdk, valve
© 2008-2010 www.ihatemountains.com, all rights reserved.Design by Nicolas "NykO18" Grevet & Marc "Moroes" Bidoul (from the work of Adam "Supernorn" Riches). Logo inspired by Geoffroy "Kane" Espinasse.
Half-Life and Left 4 Dead are trademarks of Valve Corporation. Copyright © 1996-2009