In 2017, a new face made way onto Left 4 Dead 2's workshop. He went by the name of Deprive3D at the time, later becoming known as Empty, and very quickly gained a following for his impressive ability to produce weapon sets that were all hand-animated at an admirable quality. He had a brief stint where he went by the name HKG41 on a secondary account, and would upload many other mods there. Animation was his flame, and he aspired to become a professional in the field. However, in late 2021 he would clear out his workshop for personal reasons. Dozens of mods vanished from the workshop, many never having been publicly seen in any capacity since. The secondary account thankfully never had it's inventory wiped, and you can still enjoy the inventory there.

Empty would pass away on the 23th of April, 2023. Modder or not, he was also my friend - I got in touch with him in the middle of 2021, intrigued at his prowess as an animator. Initially the tone was awkward, he was very shy, later revealing to me that he was more in admiration of me for some reason, but I was able to break the ice when I deduced that he and HKG41 were the same person, which at the time no one had known. After that we would become chums, and would regularly exchange tech and tact with each other - I would share with him the rigs I would create for re-targeting skeletons such as Killing Floor and Insurgency animations onto fully-featured IK edit rigs, and he would share with me the means to making complete IK-FK switch rigs for characters, as well as techniques for rendering in Blender Cycles and Eevee. Despite being cut from very different cloths and having vastly different tastes, we were good friends.

I alas was never able to convince him to re-upload all his work after he had taken it down, but I was able to convince him to provide me with the source files to all the projects he had kept. He gave me permission to re-upload them, and if possible, tweak and adjust them. I admit that initially I had kept putting it off, my studio work and life events had kept taking me away from the project, but after his passing it's given me the resolve needed to keep going at this. I can't guarantee I'd be able to re-upload everything, some of these sources are incomplete and none of them included the source textures, but I will do everything within my power.

I want this made absolutely clear: I take no pleasure in doing this, try as I might. I am not doing this to seek glory, recognition or even gratitude from the community, I'm doing this simply because it has to be done. He deserves a legacy.

Header art is by the artist daliyang.[www.pixiv.net]