Exciting, New L4D Mod in Production

Hello fellow modders!

My name's O'Malley and I'm a concept mapper and level designer for DEADLOCK, a Left4Dead Multiplayer modification. In DEADLOCK, two teams of survivors are pitted against one another and endless waves of zombies. The mod stresses team play, resource management, and massive amounts of zombie kills. On top of this, our mod boasts over 30 weapons, a large array of usable items (and drugs!), new characters complete with player models, dynamic environments, and a new and more realistic health system.

Right now we are in our fourth week of production (after two months of pre-production) and are looking for a few more team members. Our current staff is composed of motivated individuals with industry experience who are working day and night to move the project forward.

Mods get a bad rap because a high percentage of them die young and abruptly (we've got a high infant mortality rate I guess), but Deadlock is different. We're not here for money, but it's not amateur hour either. Our team is established and things have been running smoothly for three months. Now we're trying to build a community to get feedback from as we develop. If you're interested in the mod, please track us on ModDB, Facebook, Twitter, Steam, or our Forums.

As stated above, we are currently looking for similarly motivated individuals to join our team and help make our mod a success, while also furthering their career in the gaming industry. Our most immediate need is for a Character Concept Artist. If you are interested in joining the team, check out the Application Section of our forums.

Thank you very much for your time, if you have any questions, please post them in this thread and I will be happy to answer them!

-O'Malley

News time!

The mod is undergoing steady production. We've added three artists to our ranks: Stefan our Character Concept artist, Matt our 2D General Artist, and Hannah our Zombie Artist. They're all working diligently and we should have media to display shortly. Stefan has already drawn several of our characters in black and white and fleshed one out entirely in color (see below).

Also, we're now hosting biweekly Left4Dead parties for our community. Our last party was a full Versus game that ended up being VERY close! To play with us all you have to do is be a member of our Steam Group. The games are Tuesdays and Fridays at 3PM PST.

Finally, the volume of media we've had has easily doubled, and our forums have jumped massively in postings per day. We've released more images of models (made by our 3D Artists, Michael and Benoit), some modder tutorials, and a full color character concept. Most of the content can be found on our ModDB Page. I've also posted some images below (click image for a high res version).

-O'Malley

[Blocked Image: http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f331/ajman098/farmercolorsmall.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f331/ajman098/Antibiotic02small.jpg]

Hey peeps,

We greatly appreciate those of you who have supported our mod! Last weekend our Steam Group hit 50 members. On top of that, we are consistently ranked among the top tenth percentile on ModDB.

Our team has gotten larger once again, with the addition of our new animator, Gregory. His voluminous amount of industry experience is a great asset for our mod. We're currently looking for another coder - particularly one with Source experience. Several of us have coding chops but we need a dedicated member to take the reins here. If anyone is interested, fill out an application.

We've released more media as well. Hannah's "Female Zombie" concept art and Benoit's "Road Flare" model (see below) top the list. To get the latest materials we release, when we release them, consider tracking us on ModDB. I am also now working on a few mapping tutorials and survival-style maps that will be hosted on L4Dmods.

Finally, do you use Twitter? If so, follow us! We try to update it 3-4 times a week, and with our expanding team size that number should grow.

-O'Malley

(click for hi-res image)

[Blocked Image: http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f331/ajman098/z_woman1xsmall.jpg] [Blocked Image: http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f331/ajman098/RoadFlarexsmall.jpg]

It's been a while since my last release, so this has a double dose of updates.

To start off, our team has gotten much larger! We've added three more 3D Artists: Bojin, Paul, and Alex. They are diligently working on the models and characters that will bring the DEADLOCK world to life.

Our new Audio Director Tony, with the help of Andy (our audio technician) is tackling the gargantuan task of recording and perfecting every sound we plan on using in the mod.

Though it was a slow week for 3D Non-Character development, we have had some major strides in Zombie Art development, thanks to the lovely/grotesque work of Hannah. We've posted the bulk of her work on our ModDB Page. Here's a snippet for you:

[Blocked Image: http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f331/ajman098/zomb1_side_small.jpg]

From this, Alex and Bojin have begun working on models for the zombies, and some early stills of these will be released soon on our website. Starting this week, all 3D promo materials will be released a week early on our forums before they are released on forums like this one. So, if you want to get the most up-to-date info on the mod, please join us at DEADLOCKmod.com!

We're working hard to keep our community entertained between updates. We've added a Zombie Apocalypse Role-Play section to our forums and our L4D Parties have also been growing. We're currently looking into getting a couple dedicated servers up to make hosting the games easier for our staff, as well as a means for trying out some custom gameplay.

Thank you all for the continuing questions and support.

-O'Malley

Hey Everybody,

As some of you may know it was recently finals for most college students, Deadlock developers included. Good news is, (at least for the northern hemisphere) it's summer!

Though sporadically, work has continued through this dry spell. Some of you may have noticed our ModDB exclusive releases of our 12 characters in black and white. If not, I recommend checking them out now. Stefan did a wonderful job on them!

Stef is now busy on coloring them as well as working on a 3d version of his suburban male for animation purposes. On that subject, our animation department has started gearing up for the large number of models they will be animating soon. Keep an eye out for some videos we plan to release concerning this.

Speaking of movies, we're very excited to release our first official video, our Repathing Demo! This video explains our plans to make all of our levels dynamic and more replayable. If you have any questions about the video, please forward them to the modDB page, where you will get the quickest response.

Finally, we're announcing our opening of auditions for Voice Acting for the Deadlock cast! Not only are you able to easily submit audio for review by our team, but you can come up with your own lines of dialogue too. If you're interested in becoming a voice actor (or possibly a writer) for Deadlock, check out the new site.

-O'Malley