The Most Innovative Left 4 Dead 2 Map

Comments · 519

• IM

  @im2much4ux · 1 year ago

  Fun fact it was a roblox map before it was a L4D2 Map

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• AR

  @Aric_EPU · 1 year ago

  This map created a whole ass brand new NPC, that’s fucking sick. I have never seen that before.

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• HI

  @Hi_imKittyCAT · 1 year ago

  I love the fact that the first map is based after a roblox l4d2 clone

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• KE

  @Keppi05 · 1 year ago

  another fun detail, this map was also made for versus. There's various VERY obvious death charges in this game, especially during the mall. Not only that, Mike will already be dead by the time you reach him in versus, forcing you to activate the terminals

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• JA

  @JAiZYouTube · 1 year ago (edited)

  COLD FRONT MENTIONED<br>RAMBLING MODE ENGAGED <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=156">2:36</a> - I wanted to ensure as much mod compatibility as possible with the campaign, but unfortuntately game limitations did not allow for it. It was either adding them that way, or not at all. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=191">3:11</a> - I was actually the sole level designer and environment artist for the campaign (Although other level designers like Roku, Simplex, and Tamari did pitch in advice and feedback to help me learn, as this was my first campaign), with Lt. Rocky, Skessler, and SirWololo pitching in models, and Smoak, Sergi, Skessler, SirWololo, and Stizzix also making textures for the campaign. Overall, it took me about 4000 hours in total to fully complete the level design side of the campaign, with easily a bunch more time invested by the others. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=211">3:31</a> - Optimizing the maps was HELL. I often spent multiple <i>weeks</i> doing the tiniest of tweaks just to squeeze out a few extra frames per second. As tedious as that was, all those small improvements (As well as the more novel methods of optimization, like offloading some of the performance to the CPU rather than entirely relying on the GPU), paid off in the end. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=255">4:15</a> - The lofi room includes a bunch of personal eastereggs from contributors, such as the Jaiz plushie (which you can beat up), posters for Callie Mae (One of the project&apos;s musicians), a Rocket Racoon painting (Nescius&apos; favorite racoon), a picture of Smoak&apos;s cat BooBoo, and more. It was originally developer-only as a little bonus for playing with one of the many developers, but due to people&apos;s interest in it, I added the key to let people access it as a general easteregg. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=384">6:24</a> - You may find the tanktrap obvious, but I can count the amount of people who anticipated it on one hand. I actually did everything I could to try and make it obvious; The blood on the floor, the survivors saying &quot;Oh man a tank right now would be bad&quot;, the clear visual of the entire rest of the level just moments before... 99% of players still get surprised by a saferoom door to the face. <br>It is pretty entertaining to see the reactions though, so I&apos;m pretty happy with it. It&apos;s not really intended to fool the player, after all, but rather make for a cool moment that changes up the pacing. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=471">7:51</a> - On a technical level, Hard Rain&apos;s storm also doesn&apos;t summon a horde. The way it actually works is the opposite way around: The natural horde spawns that occur every 1-2 minutes are what trigger the storms (Both in Hard Rain and Cold Front), they&apos;re just set up with a slight pre-delay to make the hordes accompany them. The director just sometimes changes his mind and decides to not actually spawn a natural horde, usually if in an area that disables them, or if a boomer recently spawned a horde. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=530">8:50</a> - The event dynamically changing to become harder is actually a neat idea. I kinda wish I had thought of that now. Maybe a player would have to manually use the desk, reducing the team&apos;s firepower by 25%, and then having to run back to the little blue overseer room to hit a switch before being able to open it. Too late to change that now, but it&apos;s definitely something other people can experiment with. <br>Also, that softlock is gonna be fixed asap. Shadowysn already admitted his guilt in a court of law and I have thoroughly chased him with a pitchfork to make a failsafe/fix. Just gotta actually update the map when I have the time.<br>EDIT: The softlock has been fixed. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=714">11:54</a> - Salad (Mike&apos;s voice actor) knew what he was getting into /s <br>Honestly, Mike only had about half his voicelines when the campaign first released, and he was intended to be more of a tech demo for advanced NPC implementation, since I expected people to be <i>annoyed</i> with having an additional bot around (given how hated the bot AI is), but when I saw how much people actually liked him, I added the easteregg to keep him around and asked Salad to record more lines for him, which were then added in an update. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=812">13:32</a> - Map 4 actually did originally have an event, but giving every single map an event felt like too much during early playtests and actually made players feel quite exhausted. The official 5-map campaigns also always have at least 1 map where there&apos;s no event (Hard Rain literally has only 1 event in the <i>entire</i> campaign), so I just decided to follow Valve&apos;s design style on that, especially since it&apos;s right before a gauntlet finale. <br>I did also consider giving Mike some unique lines (Notable when crossing into Canada), but unfortunately that was once again foiled by some annoying game limitations. <br>Map 4 also features a pretty significant dynamic path, which is something I find very underutilized even in the official campaigns. <br> <br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQCb1MDiAw&amp;t=944">15:44</a> - This will probably come as a surprise, but most players actually take too long and get the holdout finale. I was pretty worried that the 5-minute timer was too lenient, but playtesting did show that it&apos;s a pretty good threshold. <br> <br>Overall though, I&apos;m glad you liked it - and thanks for finding that softlock. I&apos;ll get a fix for it added asap, since Shadowysn already seems to have updated Mike&apos;s script. (Let this serve as an example of just how important playtesting is: Even with an army of playtesters, some bugs <i>still</i> slipped through the cracks.)<br>I also want to briefly shout out the credits section on the workshop page: <i>Lots</i> of people worked on CF, from hands-on contributions like models, textures, and music, to more abstract nd creative work like storyboarding, writing, and creative input. Without everyone pitching in their respective skills, the campaign couldn&apos;t have been half as good as it is.<br>The campaign&apos;s original files are also all public, including beta assets, unused content, and cut content, so anyone who wants to see how something was done (or implement a design into their own map) is free to do so.

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• JO

  @jordanbuhler9442 · 1 year ago

  Love it &quot;i personally soft locked myself on the map due to an addon i have so Because of that the map gets a 9/10 instead of a 10/10&quot;

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• BO

  @bohdansidletskyi8922 · 1 year ago

  Thanks for the review, NasCoz, I needed it. I thought it was the official campaign because Francis has the voice line &quot;I hate snow&quot; but nope, it is custom.

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• IS

  @Ishui_Kamakura00 · 1 year ago

  You forgot one more: It RESPECTS the player

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• SH

  @shadowysn · 1 year ago (edited)

  ARGH! Implementing the cola functionality for Mike joining the group BROKE the mission fail for when he dies.<br>Damn it, how could I have not tested that entirely?! I think I tunnel-visioned into supporting the other things too much that I neglected that.<br>Good job, me<br>EDIT: Yeah it&apos;s definitely not the fault of any bot addon but my goofy ass fumbling the cola easter egg. Small things ended up breaking each time I fixed something and I had to play whack-a-mole repeatedly on fixing small bugs that arose from Mike joining the crew.

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• TH

  @thatterrariaguidenpc8054 · 1 year ago

  as a child I always had the thought of like a 5th custom survivor also acting as an escort for the campaign, imagine how surprised and how much &nbsp;i smiled to see my imagination finally come true. Workshop has really come a long way

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• RT

  @RTheStoryteller7 · 1 year ago (edited)

  it&apos;s quite insane that Mike actually work perfectly with L4D1 Survivor addons, especially that Mike obviously took Bill&apos;s spot on the roster (his subtitle are using Bill&apos;s and Bill have Mike&apos;s voice lines)<br><br>but the fact that you can have 9 Survivors there is insane<br><br>(also that entire softlock thing is your own intentional doing, with an addon that modify the AI that the devs doesn&apos;t have in mind, so it&apos;s kinda unfair to keep bringing down a point because the dev doesn&apos;t expect you to have a mod that modified the AIs)

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• SP

  @spamhands6993 · 1 year ago

  Left 4 Dead 2 probably only crashes if you reach 20 or so survivors, as WaifuRuns found, where he did Hard 8 by himself, and added another bot everytime he died.

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