Played a bunch of times with various pcounters this weekend. Damn this is a great demo. My favorite moment was when I was on the top deck of the last level, about 100ft from the safehouse door. Right when I was almost safe I got plucked from the balcony by a smoker! Scared the piss outta me! haha.
Can't wait for the full game. 20 more maps and 10 more weps? hells yeah!
Just got it/played it and it rocks. It's kind of short but it has a high replay value. The second time I played it wasn't comparable to the first (higher dificulty setting and a witch appeared!).
I shouldn't buy games and save some more money but this game is forcefully opening my wallet right now and I'm not sure if I want to stop it.
importing models into source is by far one of the most difficult things ive had to learn n my life :P
It's difficult to find a well written tutorial that covers everything useful...but once you've figured it out once, and have all the files prepared for future projects...it's incredibly easy. I've written a tutorial for this. The first part is XSI, but should be able to follow using any tool that exports to SMD.
The Source Engine really is amazing, and can do some great things. The lighting is beautiful, and the I/O system powerful. Plus the other tools like color correction, physics, etc. I believe much of the reason as to why Source engine games don't compare visually to more current games, is simply a direction Valve takes. It depends on the artists and their direction. Their games run on a wide range of system, many very low end. I play Valve games on my new Quad Core desktop, and my 5 year old laptop. It doesn't affect my experience.
So, does Left 4 Dead offer a lot of content to keep people playing for months to come? I haven't had the chance to get the demo, or watch many videos.
i played the demo several time now and so far its quite impressive as i expected it to be. the ai director does a great job, teh zombie animations are absolutely great and the 4 main characters are so far the best character work i have seen from valve yet.
i do hope there are more zombie types in the full game. either way the game is pretty fun even if i play it for the 10th time and not to mention playing co-operative is awesome.
ElysiumGX: That sounds awfully like defending a horribly outdated import/export system
In this day and age there is really no excuse for processes which involve arbitrary text file editing, 3 different formats to align and keep up to date, and various other things which make the process far from efficient. It should be a one-click thing with all the options either stored in XSI, or with all the setup done in a custom in-game/in-editor tool.
Doom 3 and related games suffer from this sort of workflow too - artists should never have to edit text files, and I'm amazed that Valve haven't improved on this system in, what is it now, 6 years? It's even nearly the same process that they used for the first Half Life game 10 years ago, just with some additions bolted on.
Anyway, back on topic, Left 4 Dead is great fun with some friends or colleagues on a LAN, it's really frantic and the way the director changes stuff each time makes for really interesting games and evolution of player tactics.
I totally agree with MM too, the zombie animations (especially recoils after being hit, staggering etc) are some of the best I've seen.
I also love the mechanic of being able to fire while knocked down, and being able to fire while being revived too. Again it all just adds to the frantic-ness.
I'm surprised artists need a GUI for everything... ZING!
Relax MoP I agree with you, just couldn't resist. =P
Having worked on my own TF2 map, it was a bitch to set up and figure out but after that, it was very simple to create a batch file that created a default .qc file. So all I had to do was export, drag and drop and the model was in the editor/game.
Same goes for VMT and VTF files.
Also, Valve could have some swanky in house tools that aren't released in the SDK...
There are GUI's for all of that, but its not quite as automated, but it does make it so that artists never have to touch ichy text files... It just goes to show that if artists learn a little code it helps the whole process out. Same goes for code.
jeezuz just played it there. damn that was awesome, even with 3 complete strangers
oh man im almost looking forward to the end of my holidays so I can play it during lunch at work
Played the demo with a few coworkers this evening, they loved it, I thought it was weak. At best this game feels like the less entertaining of the 'fast zombie' bits from Ravenholm in HL2 cobbled together into a game.
Finally played the demo, but in single-player. And that was good. So I'm sure online is better. I played through the apartment level twice...the subway level several times. It is a different experience each time. That damn witch. Can't wait to play the full game with friends.
I played it (at a job-interview, heh) today, and it was fantastic. Great atmosphere, and it just feels so right.
We did get our asses handed to us, playing on Expert without any previous experience, but it felt great. I think lower difficulties might not encourage frantic teamplay as much.
I completely agree MightyPea, playing it on any other difficulty setting besides expert is too easy, and you don't feel that frantic need to stay with your teammates.
playing with strangers is still frustrating with them continuing to shoot me in the back when I'm crouching to get out of their way. and I find too many folks like to get right in front of my shotgun when I'm shooting
I've been having trouble getting online to play. I haven't been able to yet. It either says disconnected from server after 10 tries, or lost connection to steam, or I start my own server and the people in my lobby don't appear when the game starts. Possibly Valve is doing lots of server maintenance to prepare for the full release. But so far I'm finding it frustrating not being able to play with real people. Still, great. The demo is short, leaving me begging for more. But I finally killed a witch.
I couldn't get the online stuff to work right off the bat. It turned out windows firewall had it blocked and it didn't tell me. Dunno whether that's a common issue, but might be worth checking.
As far as the demo goes. Expert is the way to go, but this was insanely fun. It's too easy otherwise, but it is definitely a challenge on expert. I love Co-Op games. Not enough people make them, it's always deathmatch-deathmatch-deathmatch.
Had a few runs with the demo with coworkers in the office. Higher difficulty level is definitely the way to go. I'm looking forward to this one a lot, been great fun so far, but I am a bit bored of those two levels now though.
Had a blast playing through this on the highest difficulty, amazed at how good the game looks and how smoothly it runs maxed out. The animation of the zombies is so fantastic, seeing them run, climb and get knocked back so believably. I was also impressed at the character models.
makes me think... whoever modeled zoey, should go and remodel alyx for hl2 ep 3
Oh man, compare their hands!
yea... because the same person couldn't possibly have improved in 4+ years?
I remember when the same comparison was made between mitten hands and the separate fingers in HL2.
Surprising what you can do with a few more polys, bigger texture sheets, improved shaders and some time.
Oops, I didn't mean to imply that they were made by different artists because of the quality difference.
I was just comparing how much valves character models have improved, as you say 4+ years does make a huge difference. Seeing what they can do now with the l4d player models just makes me want updated character models for HL2 episode 3.
They probably won't remake Alyx for technical reasons...and because it would break some consistency in the story. I like her the way she is. And you could have found a better picture. JUST LEAVE HER ALONE! CAN'T YOU SEE WHAT SHE'S BEEN THROUGH!!! SHE LOVES HER GRANDMOTHER!
Valve's characters have improved. When HL2 was released, their big achievement was facial animation. With the Orange Box release, they greatly improved rendering and added new commands for skeletal rigs to allow dynamic movement for things such as hair and cloth.
One thing about the Alyx character, is they put a lot of thought into her personality. She is an intelligent and resourceful character in the series. Zoey, while being very well modeled and rendered to display an attractive woman, just comes off as GenericFemale in comparison. But it's ok for a multiplayer game. All the characters in L4D look awesome. The average gaming PC has improved over the years, allowing the improvements.
i tried the demo, it was pretty neat but really didnt blow me away as i was expecting. I guess its hard to impress after the fun/visuals of horde on gears 2.
I played thru the demo single player on regular mode, beat it easily.
Then played expert difficulty with other players, goddamn if you coordinate well you can mow throw waves easily, but as soon as people fuck up, the shit hits the fan quick! And the Tank is just fuckin insanity, a player told me Tanks are 8000 hit points!? One hit and he'll knock you down, then another to kill you. How the fuck do you survive that!?!
And I never thought I'd see zombies kicking someone when they're down, gang beatdown style, hilarious!
And the Tank is just fuckin insanity, a player told me Tanks are 8000 hit points!? One hit and he'll knock you down, then another to kill you. How the fuck do you survive that!?!
We were just about to the last area yesterday (the place with the mounted gun) and 2 were dead from the tank that just spawned. Me and my friend were on our last hits (before we couldn't get up anymore) and we took the tank down, limping and all, with the assault rifles (m16's?). Didn't even half to move, we just unloaded on him. It was weird considering every other time we ran into the bastard he killed us all in 20 seconds
When we find a Tank, I try to run to an area with many structures to run behind, so it can't get to me. The AI isn't smart enough to chase around. It's usually still trying to find the shortest path based on where you are. I guess he's so big, they made him dumb.
So far, I've found a way to basically bypass the Apartment level. For fun, I locked one guy out of the safe room while an entire horde surrounded him. He survived, but it was fun to watch. To be fair, I healed him. With a good group of players, you can plow through on expert, if you're lucky. Can't wait for more levels.
Tonight, I heard a witch near the very end. So I ran to the minigun. She was sitting behind the gun. Damn you, Director! Pre-purchasing now.
The wife and I played it last night for the first time and we loved it. Thanks to all of you who joined in and helped us get through it. Hopefully next time Layne won't go to bed so early and we can hop on the mic and chat.
Can't wait to see what other kinds of stuff they throw at us in the full game. One of the best co-op experiences I've had.
Favorite moments:
"Do I look like one of them!?" "Well you are limping..." "Thanks to who?"
"Ok its clear enough lets make a break for it"
"Wait, where are we going? Look out ZOMBIE!"
BLAM
(car alarm)
BLAM BLAM click click...
"Did you not see the warning that said 'Don't shoot at the car?'
"Its cool we've got it"
"I've got boomer vomit on me"
Vote: Reset Y[] N[]
(Zombies curb stomp all 4 players)
The wife and I played it last night for the first time and we loved it. Thanks to all of you who joined in and helped us get through it.
That was fun. Although, the game becomes easier, even with one AI controlled player. One moment that stood out: When we got to the end of the subway, your wife was waiting to be respawned. I backtracked to her, and the moment I opened the door, a Smoker grabbed and killed me, and horde attacked her.
I've seen it before. One guy is left standing. He hides and waits for the others to be respawned. And right when he reaches the door to let them...bam, Smoker. Restart. This game really knows how to fool you.
Replies
importing models into source is by far one of the most difficult things ive had to learn n my life :P
i have been trying to do that but cant find enough resources. do u know of any place where i can learn more about this ?
Can't wait for the full game. 20 more maps and 10 more weps? hells yeah!
moddb has a bunch of tutorials like this:
http://www.moddb.com/games/half-life-2/tutorials/importing-static-props-into-half-life-2-3ds-max-9
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Exporting_a_model
Maybe this will help? Hopefully, as I am about to get to importing myself
Once again, great job Valve/all those that worked on it.
I shouldn't buy games and save some more money but this game is forcefully opening my wallet right now and I'm not sure if I want to stop it.
It's difficult to find a well written tutorial that covers everything useful...but once you've figured it out once, and have all the files prepared for future projects...it's incredibly easy. I've written a tutorial for this. The first part is XSI, but should be able to follow using any tool that exports to SMD.
http://willc3d.com/tutorials/xsi2source.html
The Source Engine really is amazing, and can do some great things. The lighting is beautiful, and the I/O system powerful. Plus the other tools like color correction, physics, etc. I believe much of the reason as to why Source engine games don't compare visually to more current games, is simply a direction Valve takes. It depends on the artists and their direction. Their games run on a wide range of system, many very low end. I play Valve games on my new Quad Core desktop, and my 5 year old laptop. It doesn't affect my experience.
So, does Left 4 Dead offer a lot of content to keep people playing for months to come? I haven't had the chance to get the demo, or watch many videos.
i played the demo several time now and so far its quite impressive as i expected it to be. the ai director does a great job, teh zombie animations are absolutely great and the 4 main characters are so far the best character work i have seen from valve yet.
i do hope there are more zombie types in the full game. either way the game is pretty fun even if i play it for the 10th time and not to mention playing co-operative is awesome.
Shooting zombies is always a good time, and the co-op is handled very well with the respawning and helping each other up.
I had no intentions of buying the game, but after our zombie adventure today I'm going to have to pick it up on the 18th.
Erik! or fathom9 if anyone wants a go!
In this day and age there is really no excuse for processes which involve arbitrary text file editing, 3 different formats to align and keep up to date, and various other things which make the process far from efficient. It should be a one-click thing with all the options either stored in XSI, or with all the setup done in a custom in-game/in-editor tool.
Doom 3 and related games suffer from this sort of workflow too - artists should never have to edit text files, and I'm amazed that Valve haven't improved on this system in, what is it now, 6 years? It's even nearly the same process that they used for the first Half Life game 10 years ago, just with some additions bolted on.
Anyway, back on topic, Left 4 Dead is great fun with some friends or colleagues on a LAN, it's really frantic and the way the director changes stuff each time makes for really interesting games and evolution of player tactics.
I totally agree with MM too, the zombie animations (especially recoils after being hit, staggering etc) are some of the best I've seen.
I also love the mechanic of being able to fire while knocked down, and being able to fire while being revived too. Again it all just adds to the frantic-ness.
Relax MoP I agree with you, just couldn't resist. =P
Having worked on my own TF2 map, it was a bitch to set up and figure out but after that, it was very simple to create a batch file that created a default .qc file. So all I had to do was export, drag and drop and the model was in the editor/game.
Same goes for VMT and VTF files.
Also, Valve could have some swanky in house tools that aren't released in the SDK...
There are GUI's for all of that, but its not quite as automated, but it does make it so that artists never have to touch ichy text files... It just goes to show that if artists learn a little code it helps the whole process out. Same goes for code.
oh man im almost looking forward to the end of my holidays so I can play it during lunch at work
We did get our asses handed to us, playing on Expert without any previous experience, but it felt great. I think lower difficulties might not encourage frantic teamplay as much.
I couldn't get the online stuff to work right off the bat. It turned out windows firewall had it blocked and it didn't tell me. Dunno whether that's a common issue, but might be worth checking.
As far as the demo goes. Expert is the way to go, but this was insanely fun. It's too easy otherwise, but it is definitely a challenge on expert. I love Co-Op games. Not enough people make them, it's always deathmatch-deathmatch-deathmatch.
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/2162/l4dtank1sas5.jpg
makes me think... whoever modeled zoey, should go and remodel alyx for hl2 ep 3
Oh man, compare their hands!
I remember when the same comparison was made between mitten hands and the separate fingers in HL2.
Surprising what you can do with a few more polys, bigger texture sheets, improved shaders and some time.
I was just comparing how much valves character models have improved, as you say 4+ years does make a huge difference. Seeing what they can do now with the l4d player models just makes me want updated character models for HL2 episode 3.
Valve's characters have improved. When HL2 was released, their big achievement was facial animation. With the Orange Box release, they greatly improved rendering and added new commands for skeletal rigs to allow dynamic movement for things such as hair and cloth.
One thing about the Alyx character, is they put a lot of thought into her personality. She is an intelligent and resourceful character in the series. Zoey, while being very well modeled and rendered to display an attractive woman, just comes off as GenericFemale in comparison. But it's ok for a multiplayer game. All the characters in L4D look awesome. The average gaming PC has improved over the years, allowing the improvements.
I imagine if Alyx was remade to the same standards, she'd look very much like this:
[ame]
Then played expert difficulty with other players, goddamn if you coordinate well you can mow throw waves easily, but as soon as people fuck up, the shit hits the fan quick! And the Tank is just fuckin insanity, a player told me Tanks are 8000 hit points!? One hit and he'll knock you down, then another to kill you. How the fuck do you survive that!?!
And I never thought I'd see zombies kicking someone when they're down, gang beatdown style, hilarious!
We were just about to the last area yesterday (the place with the mounted gun) and 2 were dead from the tank that just spawned. Me and my friend were on our last hits (before we couldn't get up anymore) and we took the tank down, limping and all, with the assault rifles (m16's?). Didn't even half to move, we just unloaded on him. It was weird considering every other time we ran into the bastard he killed us all in 20 seconds
So far, I've found a way to basically bypass the Apartment level. For fun, I locked one guy out of the safe room while an entire horde surrounded him. He survived, but it was fun to watch. To be fair, I healed him. With a good group of players, you can plow through on expert, if you're lucky. Can't wait for more levels.
Tonight, I heard a witch near the very end. So I ran to the minigun. She was sitting behind the gun. Damn you, Director! Pre-purchasing now.
For those of you that aren't in the group... figured I'd post the url again.
Can't wait to see what other kinds of stuff they throw at us in the full game. One of the best co-op experiences I've had.
Favorite moments:
"Do I look like one of them!?" "Well you are limping..." "Thanks to who?"
"Ok its clear enough lets make a break for it"
"Wait, where are we going? Look out ZOMBIE!"
BLAM
(car alarm)
BLAM BLAM click click...
"Did you not see the warning that said 'Don't shoot at the car?'
"Its cool we've got it"
"I've got boomer vomit on me"
Vote: Reset Y[] N[]
(Zombies curb stomp all 4 players)
That was fun. Although, the game becomes easier, even with one AI controlled player. One moment that stood out: When we got to the end of the subway, your wife was waiting to be respawned. I backtracked to her, and the moment I opened the door, a Smoker grabbed and killed me, and horde attacked her.
I've seen it before. One guy is left standing. He hides and waits for the others to be respawned. And right when he reaches the door to let them...bam, Smoker. Restart. This game really knows how to fool you.