I Hate Mountains Forums

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

During the development, there's a few things we had to accept and among these is the fact that not everything is possible in a Left 4 Dead campaign. Because of this, there's a few problems we are aware of but can't fix or didn't had the time to fix before release. Here's a little list just so you guys know what's going on.

BEWARE, THIS LIST CONTAINS SPOILERS REVEALING PART OF WHAT HAPPENS DURING THE I HATE MOUNTAINS CAMPAIGN. YOU SHOULD NOT READ IT IF YOU DON'T WANT MOST OF THE ACTION SPOILED.

GENERIC ISSUES

THE SOUND SYSTEM NIGHTMARE
The Left 4 Dead sound system is rubbish and even if Valve is aware of this problem since over a year, they don't seem to plan on fixing it so custom campaigns have to suffer from incomprehensible issues that can't be fixed. Hopefully, we're only using ambient sounds and not hearing them will only impact the atmosphere. This includes:

• Custom sounds won't play until you type the snd_rebuildaudiocache command in the game console after the installation of any campaign.

• Ambient sounds may or may not play depending on random factors because their support is broken in the engine.

• Infected set on fire could trigger a klaxon-like sound or other similar strange behavior...

THE PARTICLE SYSTEM NIGHTMARE
Unlike Team Fortress 2 (for example), Left 4 Dead is not able to read custom particle systems embedded in custom campaigns. To make it work, we have to overwrite all the particles of the original game and add our own particles. Only problem is, if everyone does this, everyone's particles are conflicting with everyone's. If you can't see waterfalls (for example) in our campaign, this is because another of your installed custom campaigns overwrites them. Temporary disable any installed custom campaign in Menu > Extra > Add-ons.

THIS IS TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE FOR YOUR RIG
For a reason we were not able to identify, some of our levels will just make the game crash if you go into noclip or the free-roaming spectator mode and try to leave the playing area to go into the void. It does this rarely on the 'Climbing the Manor' level, extremely often on the 'The Underground Way' level and rarely on the 'Lumberyard Evacuation' level.

BILL IS A SLOOOOW SPEAKER
We tried to do our best by reusing Left 4 Dead sentences between survivors but we had to do with what was provided to us. Unfortunately, Bill's sentences are bugged out and he makes huge pauses (5 sec) after each sentence. It kinda kills the atmosphere, but there's nothing we can do about it.

THE ROCKY TRAPS
Believe us, this campaign is huge and very detailed, we did our best to check for every place where you can stuck yourself in a rock or something, but this is just impossible to check everything, there's probably more than a thousand rocks in the campaign. If you try hard, you may stuck yourself in the environment, it should not happen to survivors but could happen to infected in versus. In this case, take a picture of it, and post it here.

FRAMERATE ISSUES
We put an incredible amount of time trying to optimize the levels and approximately reach the same framerate than official campaigns but there's some locations where it was just impossible. This includes:

• When you look at the entire manor from the saferoom of the 'Climbing the Manor' Level

• When you look at the lumberyard from the coast road in the 'Lumberyard Evacuation' level

• When you look at the coast road from the location where the event takes place in the 'Lumberyard Evacuation' level

• During the finale, when you're on the docks looking at the whole peninsula in the 'Lakeside Finale' level.

Please note that these are relatively gentle framerate drops of 10 to 20 FPS compared to the rest of the campaign. It should not impair the gameplay but if it does, please adjust the graphic settings accordingly.

UNRELATED GAME INSTRUCTOR MESSAGES
Due to the fact that we can't create customized game instructor messages to guide the players, we had to rely on default options provided with the game. This is why some of the hints may sometime seem a bit unrelated, like when it talks about closing the floodgate to make a bridge when it's actually a real bridge. Hopefully, it's still easily understood.

LEVEL 2: CLIMBING THE MANOR

THE TALKING SMOKE FLARE
In the 'Climbing the Manor' level, someone's constantly calling for survivors on the radio and it's your goal to try and reach this radio. Only problem is, when you reach it, you actually light a smoke flare instead on replying to the radio. This is because we lacked the power to record our own voices. The radio should have made clear it was a tape loop and that survivors should just make some smoke/light for someone to come and rescue them.

STUPID BOTS CAN'T PROPERLY CLIMB (PARTIALLY FIXED IN v1.2)
Because of the way the Left 4 Dead navigation flow works, it's impossible to tell AI bots to go reach the manor's tower and go back to the start to finish the level. The bots want to go straight to the church on the beginning of the level. Because of this limitation, the bots tend to be very stupid on this level. This include them running away to the top of the attic without waiting for you or refusing to climb to the top of the tower and its contrary, refusing to climb down. In either way, just shoot them in the face, this is all they deserve for being this stupid.

INVISIBLE HELIPAD COLLISION BOX IS INVISIBLE
On the 'Climbing the Manor' level, there's an invisible block standing in the middle of the helipad before the helicopter arrives. That shouldn't be much of a problem because you don't need to run on the helipad before the helicopter arrives, but it can prove itself a bit strange for infected in versus trying to attack from the helipad. Don't worry, the collision box is only like 20 inch wide.

WRONG SURVIVOR NAME DISPLAYED ON EVENT
When you launch the event from the top of the tower and have the game instructor turned on, the name of the survivor that triggers the event could be different from the one that really triggered the thing due to technical reasons.

FLICKERY TEXTURES IN THE MANOR'S ATTIC (FIXED IN v1.2)
When you fire your weapon in the attic, some of the textures just flicker without any particular reason. While this is not a very disturbing issue, be advised that it can cause quite a headache if you keep doing it for minutes without stopping... but well...

LEVEL 3: THE UNDERGROUND WAY

INFECTED CAN'T CLIMB A PRECISE LADDER (FIXED IN 1.2)
In the 'The Underground Way' level, when you're in the second main room with the balcony at the beginning and the arches on the ceiling, the infected should be allowed to climb from the bottom of the room to the balcony, but they don't because the in-game navigation mesh editor wouldn't let us told them to do so. Instead, they climb and fall back to the ground at mid-height.

SIR, THIS CEILING IS TOO LOW
In the 'The Underground Way' level, when you walk on the train cars just before the end, the ceiling is very low because obviously, it was not intended for people to stand on top of running trains. Because of this, there's a few spots where you can be stuck against the ceiling while climbing on the train cars. We're sorry, but we did everything we can, we just can't make more space.

WATCH FOR THE CHASM
In the 'The Underground Way' level, when you play in versus and you're in infected ghost mode waiting to spawn, try not to fall in the ending chasm. The fall would normally kill you, but it doesn't work with ghosts obviously and there's no way to climb out of the chasm. You'd just have to spawn there and die immediately or wait for the game to allow you to return next to the survivors (if it isn't the case already).

LEVEL 4: LUMBERYARD EVACUATION

INVISIBLE RAIN?
When you take the coast road path and get into the first shack on the right of the first barricade, you might hear a raining sound when you're inside even if it's not raining on the outside. This is a perfectly logical condition that we cannot easily fix with the little amount of resources left on this level. If you can't see the rain at all, check your display settings, one of the advanced options controls the display of the rain.

IT MIGHT LOOK A BIT BLAND AT SOME POINT (FIXED IN 1.2)
Due to the extreme complexity of this level, we had to remove at least two or three hundred of objects, ropes, details, particle effects and such to make it a bit more stable. It's not the most stable level yet, but it sure helped. While we concentrated on removing particularly unnecessary details, it's little details like those that add up to the atmosphere. Thus, some places might look a bit bland to you. Or it could look perfectly normal, but we were quite used to the fully detailed version that it might just be us.

FLOATING DEBRIS
When you smash the house at the end of the 'Lumberyard Evacuation' level, some of the debris falling to the ground are floating between 5 to 20 inches from the ground. This is a limitation of the model we used and the organization of the area around the house, nothing we can do something about. Hopefully, the debris are not solid and should not impair the gameplay.

LEVEL 5: LAKESIDE FINALE

THE TWILIGHT ZONE
On the 'Lakeside Finale' level, there's a zone expending from the cottage to the airport building where infected played by humans are unable to break objects. This is the most incomprehensible issue we ever had with the campaign, there's absolutely no logic behind this problem. AI infected and survivors are not affected, only infected played by humans in versus. This prevents them from breaking some of the windows and walls that would have helped them to enter the buildings. You should wait for custom infected to break them instead.

PITCH BLACK CABLES (PARTIALLY FIXED IN 1.2)
Due to the way the engine handles lighting, most if not all of the cables, wires, police ribbons and such, of the campaign are rendered pitch black. Several people reported the issue on Valve's mailing-list, but it didn't help.

CosmicD

Member

Registered: 2010-05-23

Re: THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

lol that falling in the chasm thing in versus is going to be a "nice" griefing spot for teams

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

lol that falling in the chasm thing in versus is going to be a "nice" griefing spot for teams

Not really, you can't really fall in the chasm because survivors hang to the edge of the bridge when you try to.

CosmicD

Member

Registered: 2010-05-23

Re: THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

but as you explain that you can do it as ghost infected , it would result in killing everyone alive ? (or am I misunderstanding something).

I understand it like if i'm a jerk and I play as ghost infected, i fall in that chasm on purpose to end the match ^^

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

but as you explain that you can do it as ghost infected , it would result in killing everyone alive ? (or am I misunderstanding something).

I understand it like if i'm a jerk and I play as ghost infected, i fall in that chasm on purpose to end the match ^^

No no no, you're just killing yourself.
I reworded that part to make things clearer.

krateos_29

Member

Registered: 2010-05-27

Re: THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

That's strange, because on the No Mercy finale if you fall as a ghost yes you die.

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

That's strange, because on the No Mercy finale if you fall as a ghost yes you die.

I never said it was impossible.
Just that we didn't fixed this.

MAGEman

Member

Registered: 2010-06-05

Re: THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

Little help.
If you hit E as a ghost it will teleport you to the survivors.

slake_jones

Member

Registered: 2010-09-27

Re: THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

I just noticed that Left 4 Dead 2 now supports separate sound cache files for mods (http://store.steampowered.com/news/4235/) its a shame this update doesn't apply to left 4 dead 1.

Last edited by slake_jones (2010-09-27 08:50:35)

slake_jones

Member

Registered: 2010-09-27

Re: THINGS WE WON'T OR CAN'T FIX

According to the latest update (http://store.steampowered.com/news/4436/) there is now audio cash support in vpk file in L4D1.