[l4d2] drop dead gorges beta

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    after having tested privately (4v4) every night, twice a night, for 3 months straight, this campaign is being released for public

    consumption based upon my personal satisfaction with the quality of its versus game-play. future versions will address remaining bugs,

    as well as take a few more passes at the environment and atmosphere, which can be a bit schematic at times. i think i'd like to find a

    few places in the campaign to set up some scavenge gameplay,too.

    please be aware that this campaign was designed for versus play. while single-player and coop are functional (with the exception of

    rescue closets!) and encouraged for learning the layout, there is just far too much built into these maps for human special infected, that

    playing in any mode other than versus sells them short.

    this campaign tips much of its geometry heavily in the special infected's favor. bad things can happen fast and happen often if the

    survivors aren't well coordinated. inevitably, this alone is going to piss a survivor team off, so from the outset i've set about the delicate

    task of keeping the patient alive, so to speak. this heightened assault from the special infected is buffered by a careful and varied

    rhythm of dangerous to safe spaces, and a well-tested and selective placement of items that seems to keep everyone happy.

    edit:

    it's understood that this campaign may induce a little more disorientation than the usual l4d fare. i believe that the payoff for this yields more when weighed against the investment of time that learning the map may incur. in essence, you can basically follow the lights through the maps to find your way, but there will admittedly be times when the pathways diverge and you find yourself a little confused. choices you make as a survivor, once you know what's being offered, will depend on the condition of your team (particularly true in vs.). a typical mechanic embedded in these choices would be that one route offers quick passage, with little to no item placement, at the risk of very concentrated and high damage, and the other route offers more items, in comparatively safe areas, at the cost of team speed (and in turn, distance).


    in the intense testing that i've done of the campaign, teams have become acutely aware of the above distinctions when faced with multiple routes, and it seems to produce meaningful choices, and sometimes hilarious results.


    other examples of situations that may initially confuse people are places where the maps fold back onto themselves. in approaching many passages in the campaign as a sort of game of chutes and ladders, there are many opportunities for the infected to pull, or charge, or ride (or scare!) survivors backward in time.


    so, my apologies if you find yourself a little frustrated. i can only encourage you to keep playing, and urge you to eventually play it in versus to reap these benefits.

    the campaign contains 3 large maps: ddg1_tower, ddg2_gristmill, and ddg3_bluff. in this format, game length is varied

    enough that you're not pushing 90 minutes every time you play a match, but there is the potential to cover as much ground as an entire

    five map campaign.

    download the campaign from drop-dead-gorges.net.

    visit the ddg moddb page for more information, video, and screenshots.

    join the ddg steam group so that, given enough activity, you can easily access linked servers through the lobby system.

    i look forward to making the best of these upcoming versions through feedback and bug reporting. enjoy!

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    unending thanks to all the [cC] guys who have poured an excessive amount of time into testing this.

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    I often found myself lost

    ...this reminds me to edit my descriptions with an important caveat (which i did above), which i will now have to spam forums with, or suffer the wrath...

    I gave it a run through on single player as well, here's my thoughts;

    Stuff I liked -

    Unique setting, haven't seen anything even close to resembling this in any other map out there. Huge plus, imo, since playing mod after mod that feels similar just tends to make them blend into each other, if that makes sense...

    The flow seemed really good. It had a good mix of all the elements in the stock maps. Fish-in-barrel setups, tight areas, open areas, etc

    The lighting, aesthetically, was great. Another huge plus, since lighting is like half of the level and so many people seem to neglect good lighting.

    Item placement was good. Varied weapons and items in exploration pockets with a spattering of interactables like propane tanks n such.

    Your custom help decals. It felt a bit like the light sensitive decals in the new(ish) Splinter Cell game. I liked that, even if it broke the fourth wall.

    Architecture of the buildings. Very... different.

    Stuff I didn't like -

    I got hella lost... In the first two maps, I spent, at least, 50% of the time trying to find the 'right' way to go as I did killing stuff.

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    In fact, in map 2, when the level folds onto itself and you have to jump onto the roadway, I didn't think I was supposed to do that.

    Dunno why, but it didn't feel intuitively correct. No zombies were on the road, there were lights in the distance, but nothing close by to let me know that's the correct way to go. In map 1, there is a decal telling you about the locked door at the top of the stairs, and that leads back to the very beginning of the level.

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    But there's a doorway off to the side, easily missed, that is the way to the rest of the level.

    I didn't feel like I was being led through the map. This mostly ties in with getting lost, but it felt like I was just stumbling around instead of determinedly saying "we go THAT way!"

    Huuuuuuuge maps. Maybe they don't feel so big if people already know the map, but man... I started to feel a little fatigued through the first two maps.

    All those long handrails without vertical posts. Not a deal breaker, just it scratched at my consciousness the whole time playing.

    Seemed to be a lot of light props that had fadeout distances that were really small. Had a bunch of areas that were lit with invisible props until I was right up on top of it. Very minor, but whatever.

    The finale setup. This is a personal issue, not at all one with the map, but I'm not a fan of the typical panic-tank-panic-tank-rescue finales since they play out the same exact way, flow wise, anyway.

    That's pretty much it. I have my own opinions on the other stuff, like branched paths that offer variation of difficulty (difficult w/ items, vs easy without, etc) mainly being, it didn't feel like I was actually making a choice between those at any point. If the level was arted in a way that said, you know, armory to the right, safehouse to the left, with more items in the right path, then it may have felt like I was actively making the choice to get the items along the difficult path. But, possibly due to perpetually being lost, I never got that feeling. Although, that seems likely to not be the case for people who play this multiple times, especially in a VS setting, and have learned the different paths.

    One last question, for the alarm rolling panic event (I forget which map it's in...) any reason you broke valve convention and used trigger planes to start/end it instead of interaction objects? Was curious about it, since I spent a little bit looking around for a blue glowy object and almost missed the laser beam or whatever it was that triggered the end.

    good points, valid criticism. thanks for taking the time.

    easy question first: i used the trigger in the tower simply in the interest of expedience (not sure if i want to mess around with i/o much more than that). i built the setup there as a placeholder, but given i don't have a lot of time, and that i continued using those text hints, they might just stay.

    i understand what you're saying about wayfinding, and it was my biggest concern in releasing this publicly. i'll certainly continue to look at ways to make it more obvious, but in a lot of cases i'm going to bet that it's just best solved in getting familiar with the map, which is something i hope people do. i'm not much of an sp or coop player. i love versus, and i love the idea that maps have a learning curve. i think this will work if it catches on in versus, because i assume that versus = replay.

    you're right about choices being somewhat inconsequential in sp...or even coop...these choices don't get very meaningful until you're pitted against human tactics. you'll just have to trust me for now when i say that the choices DO matter in versus. i've been in the middle of quite a few team arguments about the pros and cons of different routes in different situations.

    these last couple paragraphs really underscore something that i can't stress enough: this map gets exponentially better when you realize all the possibilities that versus presents. versus. versus. versus.

    again, thanks for the feedback!

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