Three days ago, Chet Faliszek (one of the project leads on Left 4 Dead at Valve) posted on the Left 4 Dead mailing-list to announce something that they never really did until then. I don’t think it’s our role to relay this information, but I also think this is too important to confidentially stay on the mailing-list. Here’s an extract from the message he posted:
On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Chet Faliszek <chetf@valvesoftware.com> wrote:
With “The Passing” just released, I just want to cover a few things coming up in the near future directly affecting the mod community. […]
We are going to start including community content on our dedicated servers. We have our first test up in our data centers. For this test, each data center has 40 instances dedicated to community content. What this means. If the custom campaign is on our servers, while players will still need to download it from one of the other sites (l4dmaps.com etc), they will be able to play on dedicated servers. This should improve the experience for most players. We will also be making posts and promoting the campaigns on our blog in the coming weeks.
I currently have 2 campaigns up for testing. You can mail me a link to your campaign if you would like to be included. We do ask that your campaigns only include work that you have the legal right to use and for the start, we are only looking for finished campaigns (we will update them at your request of course but looking for campaigns with a lower churn rate at first because I am doing this by hand for now). We also always reserve the right to not host any Campaign.
The first two up for playing are Dead City 2 and City 17. Make sure to give feedback to the designers, be it on this list, in forums, or on sites. Please try and connect and play on our dedicated servers, let me know how it is.
[…]
While this sounds like really good news, I can also remember they promised a Q/A session in January and that it never happened. I can also remember them saying “we’re going to fix it this month” a dozen times and it never happened either. I know they can’t do everything, but I’m pretty confident that they’ll keep their promises this time. I just want to make sure not only mappers and modders know about this, so that the decision can have a little bit more attention from everyone and hopefully prevent them from ditching u.
We’re actually discussing if we want to send them the final version of I Hate Mountains before it goes live for real. On one hand, it couldn’t really hurt anyone but on the other hand, that would potentially delay the release by several weeks… and we sure don’t want to wait for it. What do you think about this? I’m pretty confident we can obtain a quite good coverage via gaming websites and partners we gathered from the Portal: Prelude era, but official support from Valve would officially be kick-ass.
Official support from Valve would be worth waiting a little bit longer in my opinion. We’ve already waited this long, a little bit more won’t hurt, and it would do wonders for your campaign’s publicity and credibility.
I think you made the right choice in publicising this too and I hope Chet is a man of his words. Fingers crossed.
please don’t make me wait any longer =((
why don’t you guys realease your campaign at your own time and then you send it to valve?
that way, players that are following your work can play it already!
and players that are not aware will have valve’s merchandise to get to know I Hate Mountais.
(sorry for misspellings, i’m brazilian)
other subject:
pls don’t wait for l4d2 version to be complete, release l4d1 first as soon as it’s ready!
i hate mountais = francis, l4d1 l4d1 l4d1! ^^
If it is popular enough, it will get official support. Finish it and release it to the wild.
We are as one for the upcoming release! Don’t want to wait any longer…
Il est vrai que, envoyer votre campagne I hate moutains à valve pour qu’il a mette sur server dédiée officiels est une trés bonne idées .Cependant je voit pas trop non plus le temp de nous faire attendre plus longtemp alors que la version final est fini si j’ai bien compris .
Cela fait 1 ans et demis maintenant que je regarde votre campagne que niveau designe vous avait fait une chose remarquable , cependant j’espere ne pas etre déçu tel que dead before dawn ,avec tout c’est bug et leurs event ,script trop compliqué .
Car au fond les meilleur campagnes jusqu’a ce jours c’est les campagne qu’on a entendu le moin parler avant leur sortit ,mais j’ai toujours une petite confiance chez vous et je suis toujours impatient de jouer avec mes amis en versus sur cette campagne
Valve is good at promising things… IMO you should release the campaign as soon as possible. Because:
a) look @ Valve time —> http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time
b) the community is just to excited to wait another 3 months
c) you could give the campaign for testing when you finish the L4D2 version – this way you would waste less time on dealing with Valve
Quoique vous choisissiez de faire, je suis avec vous. Votre map a l’air tellement excellente, que le choix vous appartient.
Maintenant, je ne serai pas contre d’y jouer maintenant, et de la faire partager à mes potes.
Courage, pour la suite !
That’s good to hear. Let’s hope they follow through.
As you said, Valve Official Support would be kick-ass, and they would offer solutions to the minor bugs that you can’t solve without their help, i think that it’s worth waiting (we’ve waited for a long so waiting a little bit more won’t hurt) but the decision is up to you. I hope we can get more news soon from IHM. Good Luck!
Well, I am split in oppinion.
For L4D1, I would say “Release it”, after all, it was planned as a L4D1-Campaign and that’s what we’re mainly waiting for. And even more weeks to wait for this awesome beast? No, thanks.
In case of L4D2, send it to Valve, this version can wait a bit longer, imo. (Not to mention I always made the experience, that L4D1-Campaigns just became worse when they were ported to L4D2.)
Hey guys! Some newz???
Honestly, if you are going to wait for Valve support, to allow for more people to play it, so it would be better to make the
L4DII version of I hate mountains campaign (including the new special infected, weapons and items), since most of the people that play l4d2 already own the l4d1 version.
So that, also, the campaign will attract the 15.000 – l4d2 players playing the game at any time instead of the 2.000 – l4d1 players at the same time.
If you are not releasing it for L4d2, with the new features, that will bring a real bigger player base, i don´t see the value of waiting anymore.
But i know that it´s your decision and your campaign. So i wait for your deciosion.
Good Luck to you.
Give us some stuff about the test-play plzzzz, i’ve changed my mind, now i’m anxious to play it on l4d1 muajajaja
When we will be able to download and play?
Soon :)
My friends and me are waiting to taste this.
Best wishes from russian fans! :-)
I can wait.
The main thing is an awesome mod without any problems. So I can wait to get a better mod.
Meanwhile, I’ll listen some music: “Time goes by, so slowly…”
The reason why i loved valve games was because of the awesome community and modding support.
I am still wondering why they left that path as the modding community has led to so many great inventions.
I hope this is going to change soon. This news gave me hope that they will change their mind.
I still think it is horrible that dead before dawn died so quickly after so much effort.
So release when its finished and please no “workaround” releases with extra console commands or file replacements to get the map running.
It will just hinder some people from plying the map and the rest will lose interest as only 10% of the playerbase will be able or have the patience to get this map to work.
Sorry to say that but, there’s no such thing as “no “workaround” releases” until Valve fixes the game that was released 18 months ago. You can play the thing without typing anything, but you won’t enjoy it at it’s best for sure.
camon guys, time to release it!!! ^^
to Isabelle :
dead before dawn is not die, it was just bêta version, read this then… :
” http://www.l4dmods.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=325:dead-before-dawn&catid=2:news&Itemid=13 ”
to the team :
we are waiting for you dudes, please tell me you will release it this weekend.
pleeeeeeeeeeease!!! :p
hum, it all depends what’s your expectations for your campaign.
i hope the best for you.
btw, deadcity campaign 2 sucks, i really don’t know why they wanan support this…
Finally, some people with reason : Dead City just sucks. I wonder why everybody is so excited about it. I Hate Mountains will be the best campaign ever. Let’s kick Valve’s asses. A l’équipe, merci pour votre travail. Avec l’espoir que les contraintes qui vous ont été infligées n’ont pas détruit votre campagne initiale.