Steady Mapping, Waiting for L4D Update, and Dead Frontier.

So, for about four days, I was really productive in Hammer and then I took three days off. But things are still coming along great. The first map of my new campaign ,entitled Pier Pressure, is coming along very nice.  I finally finished all the terrain. With it being a predominately outdoor level there were a lot of displacements to do and in the process I learned a ton about them and how much they aggravate me. Here are a couple screens from the hilltop of the railroad bridges…

 

…I know they’re a little dark and I apologize as I haven’t  placed any of the lights yet. By the way, the bridges (yes there are two) are all brush work and you will have to climb up on one of them and it’s pretty sweet. I have put in all the player clips and fences, basically cut out the survivors path. Next I am going to place all the plants and trees and then start building the panic events. I have a semi working Nav and it is already looking like it will be a really fun map. I have a nice little poster made up but I’m gonna make you go to L4DMaps.com or L4DMap Database to see it. Gotta give it up for all those kids, not just L4DMaps.com but everyone on the links list. You are all doing a great job and make our community possible.

Moving on to my impatience toward official support for custom maps and campaigns. Seriously. Outraged.

And last but not least. The coolest flash game I have ever played is Dead Frontier. It’s a zombie apocalypse MMO that’s surprisingly deep for being so simple and satisfying. It’s top-down perspective recalls the first Grand Theft Auto or Smash TV. It’s got a great stat/skill system, a huge city to run around in, and a level cap of 200. It also has a great community of players with an active (in-game) Forum and Wiki. Basically it’s really fucking cool. Tons of love and respect to Neil and the people at Jagged Blade Games.

Well that’s it for now. Stay tuned for more info on Pier Pressure and other projects.

<3 Torpedo Vegas

L4D2, Custom GUI, and how (pak01_dir.vpk)+(Notebook++) = I broke my L4D.

So Valve has announced that Left 4 Dead 2 (Official Valve Left 4 Dead 2 Announcement) will be arriving in November and I’m sure we are all pretty excited. The trailer dropped at E3 yesterday and you can watch it in low-res here or in HD here. From what I can tell it’s appears to be much brighter and a lot more colorful than the first, like TF2 meets L4D style, that I think will appeal to a much wider audience. We also, finally, get to see the  implementation of real melee weapons, something I myself have been wanting since i first played L4d. Last, but not least, is the updated AI Director. From what I understand, it can now affect weather, world objects, and pathways, adding a new dimension to it’s variety and replay index. Stay tuned for more info as it comes.

In the meantime, I have been hard at work dismantling L4D and figuring out how to change more stuff. I have been working on a couple GUI’s and Loading Screen (not Movie Poster) replacements. Here’s an example of my Static GUI…

…which I use while doing dev work. A portion of music from the 28 Days Later soundtrack is used for background music, but, as I have learned, the Source engine treats that gamestartup1.mp3 like a red headed step child. I have also made a GUI with a looping video for the background. The video is an edit of Dead Set footage put to the song Train to Miami by Steel Pole Bath Tub, most of you will know it as “the song from the L4D commercial”. They should both be available for download soon, pending final adjustments.

So ya…I have been learning how to install new skins and textures and other stuff to Left 4 Dead and, per the usual, I decided to go the hard route and learn all about editing my pak01_dir.vpk. After dicking around with XVI32(hex editor) for a while my Windows Vista decided that it no longer wanted to associate .vpk files with XVI32 so I switched to Notepad++. Everything seemed fine until I loaded up L4D and it crashed, and crashed, and crashed again. So I replaced my custom pak01_dir with an unedited one and it was still broken. After talking with a friend for a while he advised me to stay away from Notepad++ (as it can “cause issues”) and stick with XVI32. So I fixed up L4D using the Steam repair, cleaned out all my custom content from my L4D directory, BACKED UP ALL MY L4D FILES, and used XVI32 to edit the pak01_dir and bam…now it’s all good. Now the point/moral of this story is…

BACK UP ALL YOUR FUCKING FILES BEFORE YOU START EDITING THEM!!!!!

<3 Torpedo Vegas