[CAT] Scratching Post

Will add you guys when I get back home, not that Im playing much L4D atm.

Nearly done with my 2nd map. This one is a bit more sophisticated though it is still a relatively simple survival map.

Set in a road tunnel with a small (ie. 3 rooms) office complex off to one side. Battle takes place on the roadway with the zombies pouring over a traffic jam of stalled cars. Lighting is a bit more complex in this one. Found a model for a generator and floodlights and stole the light info from one of the Valve maps. Did the same at the other side to have 2 policecars with their headlights on.

It's pretty cool that you can easily go in to the Valve maps and steal things or see how they are done. I even picked out my fog_controller from one of the Valve maps. Just had to tweak it slightly rather than starting from scratch.

2nd map has been released. I'll see if I can't get it uploaded somewhere. You won't be able to play it online cos no servers will be running it but you can play in SP or even join our local game if you can stand the ping.

Need ideas for my next map now. I'm thinking of doing a single level campaign so I need a setting including a crescendo in the middle and a finale.

http://rapidshare.com/files/298239191/tunnel.rar.html

^ The link for my map.

As I said, you won't be able to play online with it unless somone locally hosts but in case you're interested. I'm not expecting too much interest, RS will only allow 10 downloads anyway!

Screenies from my map. Not got it online but had 2 mates play it on our network and they had a blast. Lots of shouting and laughing. If anything it's a bit easy though.

Trying to work out how to make a vid.

Reminds me of the tunnel scene in 28 days later. Nice work.

Yeah I was kinda going for that claustrophobic kinda feel but it was far too dark at first - Looked cool but wasn't much fun to play so I had to lighten it up a lot. The original idea was to have a small clearing in the broken down cars and have to defend that but it didn't play too well either so I opened it up and built the fortification type thing out of some parked up buses. Again, it lost some of the feel but improved the gameplay a lot.

It's actually really fun making these things. They're never gonna be good enough to release to the general public but I'm getting a real kick out of seeing mates play them. It's also actually rather easy. I've followed 2 or 3 tutorials and done the rest by breaking open the Valve maps and seeing how they have done them. Things like the floodlights and parked police cars are pretty much copied directly from Valve maps and just tweaked slightly. The basics of the map, the tunnel and the ajoining office and storeroom I built in a few hours. The rest was then just slapping in prefab's and tweaking the map so it played properly. You then have to do the nav_mesh so the AI knows what it's doing. That's only about an hours worth of work though.

Nice looking map.

Alrighty, who here actually pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2? I'm curious about the demo.

I did but not off Steam so I don't get the demo until tomorrow or Tuesday.

Tried the demo. Graphics are improved, you've got a lot more variety in terms of the types of zombies you see. I do also like the New Orleans atmosphere. Nice variety of weapons this time around too.

Not quite worth the full $50 price tag though. $30 I could see, for current owners of L4D, but the experience is essentially the same.

Sgt. Sweaty Sac wrote:

Not quite worth the full $50 price tag though. $30 I could see, for current owners of L4D, but the experience is essentially the same.

I was chatting with pure last night as he watched his son playing the demo. I think it took him a while to realize it was L4D2 and not L4D. I feel bad for the people paying for that.

Yeah it's a bit of a poor show but in their defence it's no worse than many other "sequels" out there. Anyone who knows the game would spot which one is being played almost immediately.

As for the demo... I dunno. The new physics are really nice. Blew the arm off a zombie and she kept coming. Took her head off with the next round. The spatter and gore are tremendous. The new SI (boss zombies) are also pretty cool. Make for some hilarious moments. The new weapons are also badass. The melee stuff adds a new dimension and the variety in guns is a lot better. What has me worried is that a lot of the feel has gone. I love L4D cos it's kinda like playing through a creepy zombie movie with your pals. It feels like a movie where the world is zombiefied. The demo of L4D2 feels like a shooty game. I think some of the other maps may be better. I HOPE they're better. Playing in daylight doesn't feel right.

Overall it feels more like an expansion or some heavy duty DLC. A new game it aint.

Just earned the achievement "Zombie Genocidest".

You have to kill 53,595 zombies. Less than 5% of L4D players have earned it according to Steam. Got it less than a week before L4D2 comes out...

Enlighten me as to where that number comes from?