Left 4 Dead

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

L4D Blog

We recently updated the PC version of Left 4 Dead with some exploit fixes and Versus balancing. We are going to be releasing another small update later today that contains some server issue fixes and one small, but very large, gameplay adjustment. We have made a change to the melee mechanic in Versus and the soon-to-be-released Survival Mode.

Xbox 360 users will see these same gameplay changes in an update coming out with the DLC — which, in case you missed the announcement, will be coming out April 21st.

As we continue to work on Left 4 Dead, our plan is to release more frequently on the PC, and then group those updates for the 360.

With the upcoming release of the SDK, and the community servers already available on the PC, matchmaking is one place where the two platforms will diverge. A future blog post will detail our roadmap for PC matchmaking.

Game statistics help us evaluate the success of the changes we've made to the game. In Versus, for example, we flipped the order in which teams play the next round based on who was winning the round before it. We were confident this would help to better balance the game and give neither team a lasting advantage. That would, in turn, translate into more people playing through the final maps. Since making that change, we've noticed the percentage of games being played to the end jump 5%. It is a small increase, but a step in the right direction.

But statistics are only part of the picture. We also use direct feedback from players themselves. One of the questions people ask is if we read the forums: the answer is yes. So please post your feedback on the melee and other changes as we make them. We promise to keep listening to your feedback, making changes and improving the gameplay experience of Left 4 Dead. Remember: If you don't see an issue addressed with this update, that doesn't mean it isn't coming.

Left 4 Dead Update Released (PC)

Game and client changes

• Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down
• Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected
• Addressed some surround sound detection issues
• Fixed a rare crash when exiting Left4Dead on Windows Vista
• Fixed a case where the complete all expert campaigns achievement was not being rewarded

Dedicated server changes

• Corrected an issue where Windows based dedicated were sending spurious shutdown notifications to the master causing them to delist temporarily
• Fixed dedicated servers not resetting the versus team swap correctly--you could join a dedicated server that had a previous game that was swapped and arrive on the other team than what was selected in the lobby
• Renamed the tags for sv_search_key to use "key:" in the server tags instead of "sv_search_key." This should help with issues of the 63 character limit of server tags
• Fixed an occasional server crash related to voting

[Brandwin]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down

YES! The melee attack is too effective.

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Valve Just Wants Us All To Get Along

You're halfway through Blood Harvest, and Zooey is badly hurt. The infected mob was impossibly strong, and she went down hard in the chaos. Francis was able to fight them off and pull her back to her feet, but it cost him, too. Now they're both limping along at a snail's pace, and the team ran out of first aid a long time ago. Time to regroup and think things through. It's quiet, but for how much longer?

If you've played Valve Software's cooperative shooter Left 4 Dead, you've experienced that scenario multiple times, each with a slightly different outcome. The game's ability to give people unique experiences each time they play is its biggest strength and one of the major reasons it has sold 2.5 million copies to date. During a speech at the Game Developers Conference this week, Valve developer Michael Booth drew attention to replayability and cooperation as two pillars of Left 4 Dead's design, shedding some light on why the game works as well as it does.

Like most games, first-person shooters especially, Left 4 Dead is essentially the same scenario over and over again. Four survivors are trapped in an area full of infected monsters, and the group must work together to make it out alive. But thanks to an artificial intelligence "director" that switches things up on the fly, no playthrough is exactly the same. Valve's goal with L4D was to create a game where cooperation is not just optimal for gameplay but absolutely essential.

"The game is not really about zombies," Booth says. "It's about your teammates."

Working backward from that idea, Valve created mechanisms that would force players to work together, punishing gung-ho loners and even dropping chaos into the midst of well-disciplined teams. Those tools to push cooperation became the Special Infected – the Hunter, Smoker and Boomer. In essence, these three recurring minibosses are Valve's way of messing with you, purposely poking and prodding at you and your team in order to force each member to trust, support and look out for one another.

The Hunter, for example, was specifically designed to kill lone wolves and stragglers, as anyone who's ever lagged behind in a L4D game can attest to. One minute you're picking up some pain pills (without communicating with your teammates first), and the next you're on your back getting the life beat out of you. The Smoker, by contrast, was created to pull apart tightly coordinated teams and create utter chaos.

Booth says the Boomer was originally created as a walking bomb that would deal massive damage to anyone in the vicinity when it was shot. It was designed to combat the "shoot-anything-that-moves" mentality that they found quickly set in among gamers during play testing. But that same testing also showed that, inevitably, a new player who wasn't up to speed with the rules would shoot the Boomer and kill his entire team. Maximum four-letter words followed.

The idea of the Boomer was eventually merged with a Special Infected called the Screamer (cut from the final game), whose job was to draw the zombie mob to the survivors. Now, if you shoot a Boomer, he covers you in bile that attracts his fellow undead.

Throughout the design process for Left 4 Dead, Valve focused on "structured unpredictability." That meant making sure things felt fresh and new with each play session without making the dramatic moments feel cheap or punitive. Valve's experiment to make a multiplatform, multiplayer shooter built around cooperation was clearly a success (Left 4 Dead remains the No. 1 new intellectual property on Xbox 360), and even created a new genre in the process.

"Left 4 Dead is more of a survival thriller than a survival horror game," Booth says.

2.5 million sold (not counting Steam sales). Very nice to hear.

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Okay, now this is crazy.


Why Are Valve's Games So Polished?

Physiological measurements are yet another type of evaluation, which is Valve's way of testing or quantifying testers' emotional states, seeing how they're reacting to the events onscreen.

Then there's the skin conductance level, where a current is passed through the skin to test how much the tester is sweating.

Eyetracking, still another method, involves focusing a camera on the eyes, which provides real-time insight into what players are thinking, determine where the eyes are looking, as well as checking on the blink rate and pupil dilation.

Face recording, which just records the player's face to see how they react in real-time to gameplay.

[mgoblue]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Okay, now this is crazy.


Why Are Valve's Games So Polished?

I can see the Penny Arcade comic now...

Gabe holding up an electrode, moving towards Tycho, with Tycho saying "You're not putting anything on my f'n balls"

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead? More like Left 12 Dead. Stick around for the dance party at the end.

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[bkfount]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Valve Just Wants Us All To Get Along

2.5 million sold (not counting Steam sales). Very nice to hear.

but it's also near the bottom of Major Nelson's top ten activity list for the past few weeks. This game needs more DLC.

[MachoMyers]

Re: Left 4 Dead

That mod would be great if there were 1 hit kills or something to add to it. Maybe once you are killed you respawn as a regular infected?

[Brandwin]

Re: Left 4 Dead

That mod would be great if there were 1 hit kills or something to add to it. Maybe once you are killed you respawn as a regular infected?

That would be great. In mulitplayer, you die, you respawn as an infected.

[ExtremeGamer]

Re: Left 4 Dead

AWESOME!

http://www.l4d.com/blog/post.php?id=2417

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Definitely will be returning to Left 4 Dead next week.

[mgoblue]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Definitely will be returning to Left 4 Dead next week.

Yeah, it's been nice to have a mini-break, so it'll seem fresh and new to me again.

[Brandwin]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Yeah, I haven't played it in about 3 weeks or so. Looking forward to turning the 360 back on.

[bkfount]

Re: Left 4 Dead

AWESOME!

http://www.l4d.com/blog/post.php?id=2417

damn, that graph...

tanks spawn almost instantly after 13 minutes. Sounds like a challenge. It should be fun having like 3 tanks on screen at once, or not even being able to reload before the next one comes.

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Videos: Survival Mode and Versus Mode on Dead Air

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