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December 10th - Around the World of Left 4 Dead
December 10, 2010 - Chet
No Mutation or poll update today but plenty going on.
First up the new featured campaign for Left 4 Dead 2 is Darth Brush’s Dead Before Dawn Too. Download the campaign here and jump in! If it is your first time installing an addon, here are the instructions. Congratulations to the team that has put this together as they have been nominated to the Moddb top 100 mods of 2010.
We would like to congratulate the I hate mountains team for also being nominated this year for their Left 4 Dead 1 mod. Speaking of Left 4 Dead 1, have you played Luke’s Apocalypse mod? It’s not for the timid but if you are up for a challenge - give it a try. It is a server side mod so nothing to download just visit the Steam group to find a server.
Have you checked out our Facebook pages for Left 4 Dead 2 recently? They are worth visiting for the image galleries alone. There are mashups with Plants vs Zombies, The Christmas Witch meets The Red Engineer, some hunter hunting, and one prepared Survivor.
Are you following us on Twitter? Yeah, we know… tweeting? But come on… it’s where we got sent the Dead Reckoning Trailer. If you have a cool in-game shot, art, cosplay/costume, movie clip whatever - make sure to post it up on the Facebook pages, Steam forums or even on Twitter by doing whatever it is called when you message us.
Cevo is having a Left 4 Dead 1 Throwback Tournament - with $1500 in prize pool. Sign up by this Tuesday so you can win big and finally afford that Christmas gift you always wanted to get mom. Please! Make sure to let me know when you are having a tournament so we can post it here.
Don’t forget next week will be our first user created Mutation. Have you played any community Mutations? Which ones are your favorites? Let us know in the Steam forums or on Facebook.
How to install custom campaigns and content (addons)
December 10, 2010 - L4D Team
All Left 4 Dead 2 custom content is delivered in VPKs. Content not in VPKs may alter your main content and prevent you from playing on Valve Official dedicated servers.
First exit the game and then you need to download the content. Many providers will place the vpk in a zip file. If that is the case, you will need to open up that file first and copy the vpk from there.
Double clicking on the .vpk file will automatically install that addon. If instead of installing, you are prompted to select what program to open the file with select the addoninstaller commonly found here \steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead 2\bin\addoninstaller
If that does not work or you prefer to do it manually, you can just copy the file directly into the addons directory loacated here \steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead 2\ left 4 dead 2\addons
Start your game and now that content will be available for you.
You can disable the addons by either deleting them from the folder or going into the extras -> addons menu in game.
December 3rd Update
December 3, 2010 - L4D Team
Hard Eight, Do you compete? Mutation Madness, The Road Ahead
Hard Eight!!
Double the specials, quadruple the fun!
Face eight Special Infected at one time, this is double the standard number! And if that wasn’t trouble enough, we also increase the spawning frequency so it is raining Specials.
Why aren’t you going to give it a try? Scared?
Do You Compete?
We asked if you competed in Left 4 Dead 1 or 2 Tournaments. That both platforms tied with Play competitive games but not in tourneys and where am I? is a little scary. Here are the numbers by platform:
Xbox 360
30% Play competitive games but not in tourneys
30% Where am I?
15% No, But I do compete in other games
13% Played in tourneys
12% Don’t play competitive modes
PC
26% Play competitive games but not in tourneys
26% Where am I?
19% Don’t play competitive modes
17% Played in tourneys
12% No, But I do compete in other games
With 13-17% of you responding you do play in Tourneys – which ones? Where? Because that response rate dwarfs the numbers I see in online Tourneys. Do you have a tournament you are running or do you know about one? Let us know! We have been known to kick in prizes and who doesn't want to win one of these?
Mutation Madness!
The next Mutation will be a community created Mutation. We have been talking with Raymond Nondorf about his Mutation mod that he posted in the forums. We are going to be pulling the next Mutation from his mod and then after that the question becomes – can you create a better Mutation? Raymond, not content with just releasing his own Mutations, has also created a tutorial for others to create their own. You can check it out here. Nice work Raymond!
As we continue to update bi-weekly, we will be incorporating some of these community Mutations. To make a Mutation, you will need to build and test your mutation on the PC but we will release them on both PC and Xbox 360. So user created content is beginning to see itself on the Xbox 360!
The Walking Dead
This season's final episode of The Walking Dead is this Sunday. Have you been watching it? Use the in-game poll to let us know.
The Road Ahead
First up, Realism Versus. While the really short respawn interval was interesting, it removed our ability to increase difficulty in other ways. Today's update includes one of those other ways, the uncrownable Witch. Not only is she deadly in Realism but now she is also uncrownable. Good luck with that.
We will have more gameplay changes and bug fixes coming and not just in Realism Versus and Versus.
What else can you expect? We have some longer term projects that we are working on that have been taking our time. The biggest project is working custom content back into the core game on our official dedicated servers. There are complications to how that works and how we insure against cheating, so you will not see the results instantly but we are working on it.
Past that, we should have some news for you early next year (it really isn't that far away) on any new content we might have in the works.
November 19th Update
November 19, 2010 - L4D Team
Gib Fest and…, You are Glowing, Do you compete?
Gib Fest
M60s and buckets of blood.
For our coop mutation this week we return to everyone’s favorite Gib Fest. Simple, go play.
Realism Versus
We are also “featuring” Realism Versus. This week we added quicker spawns for the infected. If you haven’t played recently, you are missing out on one of the most intense Left 4 Dead 2 competitive experiences. It is like regular Versus but no health kits in the world, no glows on fellow survivors, harder to kill commons and now faster Special Infected spawns (coming soon to the 360).
Give it a try this week, it's what all the cool kids will be playing.
You are glowing
You liked the idea of changing the Survivor’s glow. The breakdown was roughly 50% for, 30% against, 20% no opinion but I just like to vote. So this week we are changing the glow and also incorporating a suggestion from the forums. The glow color will now correspond to the run speed of the Survivors. This should help tanks know who they can catch.
While we were at it, we added a glow to the Witch for the Infected team.
Sometimes poll results can be incorporated quickly into the game, sometimes they take a bit longer – just a warning for past and future polls. Just because we don’t make a change that week doesn’t mean the results are being ignored. XBOX 360 users will see these changes in future title update.
Do you compete?
Have you ever played in an L4D1 or L4D2 tournament? Let us know in this week's in-game poll.
Happy Birthday 2 Us
November 17, 2010 - L4D Team
On this date last year, we released Left 4 Dead 2. The year before Left 4 Dead debuted. The team would like to thank the over 9 million people who have taken the time to prepare for the upcoming zombie apocalypse.
While we continue to update – new stuff coming Friday – we wanted to take a quick look back at the creation of Left 4 Dead 2’s new Special Infected.