Load add-ons before game launch?

[Chase Omega]

Is there any way to have it load my mods in when I start the game, *before* the game itself actually launches? It's annoy to have to wait in the main menu before everything's ready... Especially with menu mods cuz those can have audio bugs until the song loops, which wouldn't be a problem if the add-ons were loaded in before the game was.

[Xaviruso]

Originally posted by Chase Omega:

Is there any way to have it load my mods in when I start the game, *before* the game itself actually launches? It's annoy to have to wait in the main menu before everything's ready... Especially with menu mods cuz those can have audio bugs until the song loops, which wouldn't be a problem if the add-ons were loaded in before the game was.

Yes, but it will mean that you will have to manually update the addons instead of them automatically updating.

There's 2 ways to do this... one that will take a while to load them but will not update them and one that will preload them, but it is considered "a cheat" since it allows you to run mods in versus.

To actually load them as the game launches instead of after the game launches, you need to use the second way.

Btw, if you did not understand any of the steps by the time you finish reading this, i can make a video to try to explain this better.

For the first way, you need to open the location of your l4d2 files. Go to "\steamapps\common\Left 4 Dead 2\left4dead2\addons" and you just need to move the addons (which are the vpk files named with a string of numbers) from the workshop folder in your l4d2 files to your addons folder and thats it. Now it will take a while to load them but will not update them, so it will be faster. But that's still loading them after the game launches.

The second way requires you to copy the addon files that you want. Go to "\steamapps\common\Left 4 Dead 2\" and make a new folder, name it however you want, for example "MODS". And paste the files inside. You'll need to rename them in a special way. The best way to avoid problems is to edit the mods manually and package them all into a single .vpk file, but you can skip this step. All you need to do is rename one of the addons as "pak01_dir.vpk", and the rest of them as "pak01_000.vpk", "pak01_001.vpk", "pak01_002.vpk", etc... And that way, it will load the vpk files from the addons as if they were part from the base l4d2 files. This sometimes doesnt work properly btw, hence why you might need to modify the mods and make a single mod with all of them together and name it "pak01_dir.vpk", or make different folders for each mod, and just have a single vpk per folder and name all the vpks "pak01_dir.vpk".
Now, you need to tell l4d2 to load that folder and its contents when it launches the game.
Go to "\steamapps\common\Left 4 Dead 2\left4dead2" and open the file "gameinfo.txt". Go to the part that says "SearchPaths". You will see a list with different things there. Where it says "Game update", add below it a line with the name of the folder you had created for your mods, which in our example we had named "MODS". This new entry should look like "Game MODS". This line must always be introduced below the "Game update" line and on top of every single other "Game ...." line, because that way, the mods will override everything from the base game, but will not stop the game from updating.

Each time the game is updated or an addon is updated, it is up to you to do manual maintenance to keep things working.

Hope this helps you.

Ofc i will add another warning yet again, the second method allows you to run mods in versus. This will work perfectly fine in official vanilla servers, but some community servers will detect your gameinfo.txt is modified and kick you automatically to prevent cheat mods from running in versus.

[Chase Omega]

thanks. seems like a lot tho.

[marv]

There's no need to create folders or rename stuff.

For the workshop items do the following.
Go in:
steam/steamapps/common/left4dead2/addons/workshop
Select all the files inside the folder (jpg and vpk) and move them in:
steam/steamapps/common/left4dead2/addons/

Then go in steam and unsubscribe from all the l4d2 items. Launch the game and if you have it installed in a SSD the addons wil be loaded instantly, without checking if they have been updated.

There's no need to put in the folder only the addons that you plan to use in game. You can keep there all the addons that you want and you will be able to select what you want to use from the game addons menu. Just like what was like before moving the files.