Subscribe (rss)
We've seen the Left 4 Dead SDK be used to create some truly impressive, zombie-infested levels, but this one might just take the cake. —Griffin McElroy (www.joystiq.com)

Posts Tagged ‘forest’

May27

Flat period…

Posted by Nicolas in Media, Progress

Tags: , ,

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.

Louis fears the dark

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.

Mar31

Left 4 Dead hates open spaces!

Posted by Marc in Development, Media, Progress

Tags: , , , ,

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.

Francis hates fire

Stay tuned for more developer banter until the release.
PS: The screenshots page is now open.

Mar24

What the hell is this all about ? (bis)

Posted by Nicolas in General

Tags: , , , , ,

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?

I Hate MountainsNo, 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 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 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 Underground
Escaped from the manor, the survivors are now fleeing though an old system of caves and tunnels running through the mountain.
Lumberyard Lumberyard
Freshly escaped of this oppressing cave system, our survivors are now looking for help and rescue in the lumberyard nearby.
Lakeside 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.

how to record directv to pcFive years from now his bust will be readied for display in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Young will be remembered as a two time NFL most valuable player, a seven time Pro Bowl selection and a left handed passer with the legs to get him into the end zone if there were no passing lanes.I needed bigger wheels on my cooler to be able to use it on the beach and carry some extra stuff on top of it for camping (Hammock’s Beach, NC). I considered making a beach cart, but this was a cheaper option for me and hopefully will take up less space in my car. I hope someone can give me some ideas on how cheap nfl jerseys to make an even fake oakleys outlet better version in the future. I already have http://www.bestfakesales.com/sale/ some ideas.In the pre dawn light, other ships in the area sounded their sirens in warning but she was soon grounded, her welded plates cracking and buckling with a loud bang as the tide dragged her to and fro. The 81 crew members were evacuated to nearby Southend and salvage work began to save the bombs which were needed for the war effort, rather than the ship herself.The tattoo, located on his neck and partly obscured by the former player’s shit, included the word “lifetime”. But reports say that it is a violation of Massachusetts prison regulations to get a tattoo, to tattoo someone else or to possess tattoo paraphernalia while incarcerated.The Associated Press said that possible sanctions include disciplinary detention for up to 10 days and loss of a privilege such as television or radio for up to 60 days. The Department of Correction did not respond to calls on Friday morning.Hernandez was convicted last month in Fall River in the 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd, who was in a relationship with Hernandez’s fiancee’s sister.The former New England Patriots player was in a Boston courtroom Thursday to be fornally booked on a witness intimidation charge, relating to a another incident the shooting of his former friend Alexander Bradley.Click the Adblock/Adblock Plus icon, which is to the right of your address bar.On Adblock click “Don’t run on pages on this domain”.If you are cheap china jerseys Private Browsing in Firefox, “Tracking Protection” may cause the adblock notice to show. It can be temporarily disabled by cheap jerseys clicking the “shield” icon in the address bar.When the first laser discs were introduced, they offered essentially the same exact thing as VHS http://www.wholesale-cheap-nfl-jerseys.com tapes. But with prices reaching almost $150 per disc, no amount of improved picture quality could engorge the consumer’s hot, throbbing interest. Then along came DVDs. By making heavy use of their additional content capabilities, like multiple camera angles and deleted scenes, the porn industry helped keep the DVD alive until the prices dropped and the general public could afford to adopt the format. First among them was Polaroid with their early digital cameras. The digital camera had a lot of advantages, Cheap mlb Jerseys but the improved picture quality, editorial control, easily adjustable settings and reduced film costs all paled in comparison to digital’s best selling point: Now you could point a camera at your genitals and not have to run it through a gauntlet of snickering Walgreen’s employees to enjoy the fruits of your sexy labors. And the camera companies .