The Workshop is Live!

January 17, 2013 - L4D Team

Today we are moving the Left 4 Dead 2 Workshop out of beta! So right now with a click of a button, you can add campaigns, items, clothing, weapons and more.

Content creators have been hard at work creating content for L4D2 but they have just gotten access to the new Workshop, so give them some time to upload their work. But with over 1,000 community campaigns and thousands more items and skins already created for the game, we should see many of these pop up in the Left 4 Dead 2 Workshop in the coming days and weeks (Note: Please don’t upload other people’s work. If a campaign you like isn’t in the Workshop, please nicely ask the creator to post it). You can start browsing the Workshop now.

To help other players find the coolest content, make sure to rate and discuss the submissions. We will also be featuring submissions on l4d.com

To add content to L4D2:
Load up Left 4 Dead 2 (or browse to it here). In game, click on the add-ons section from the main menu. There you can see add-ons once they are downloaded or choose browse the Workshop. Go into the Workshop, find a something you like – let’s say a skin for Francis where he is in a cop outfit. Click the subscribe button and it will automatically download and appear in the list. If you are doing this through the web browser, it will appear next time you start the game.

Please note – the Workshop has increased its file size limit to 200MB. But this still means some of the larger campaigns will be broken up into sub-200mb chunks. Those campaigns will be in collections and you will need to subscribe to the collection to get all the files.

To create and share content in L4D2:
You will need to update your Authoring Tools and run the Workshop Manager in the tools to upload your content to the Workshop.

A great tip from GShock:
If your campaign is over 200MB you will need to split your vpk into parts with content in each part.

This will also allow you to update your content a lot faster and in turn users do not have to download a much larger file when you release an update to a part.

*Example:
Part 1 Sounds and Scripts
Part 2 Map 1
Part 3 Map 2
Part 4 Materials
Part 5 Models
*Include your missions folder in each part along with your addoninfo.txt file

Once this is done add all your items into a collection and mark it as a "items that work together (will show a 'subscribe to all' button)"

For both consumers and developers, there is a new forum – the Workshop discussion forum. Here you can discuss using the Workshop and report any bugs you are encountering. Each item in the Workshop has its own area to discuss that item.