Hey Ænima²

My playgroup and I just played this the last two nights in versus and we have some feedback. First off, let me start off by saying this is one of the most fun, creative left 4 dead 2 campaigns that we've played in a long time. The setting is unique and cool looking. The events and the finale are all clever twists on the typical stuff that I haven't really seen done in other campaigns before. There are a few unexpected surprises with the hazards, particularly the van in the finale was a huge favorite. We all had a blast with it and will be adding it to our regular rotation.

A few things that could really help out things in versus in particular:

These are the things that often get overlooked the most in custom campaigns, and while we were happy to see a decent amount, there are definitely a number of ladders that are awkwardly placed against displacements on the first two maps, sometimes making them un-climbable.

A few recommendations: you can use multiple brushes and tie them together into the same infected ladder so that it hugs the geometry of the displacement a little tighter, particularly at the top. Commons wont climb multi-brush infected ladders but they are very useful for player controlled specials.

There are a few ladders that have the displacement sticking through them on the first map in particular.

On map 2 there is either some clip or skybox that is making it difficult to traverse the top of the cliffs, and sometimes there is a gap between the top of the infected ladder and the displacement that could use a clip brush in between.

It's tedious work, trust me I know, but it makes a big difference for versus play.


There are many places where special infected can walk off the edge of displacements and end up underneath the map or somewhere they are stuck until they are slayed by admin or are able to respawn. Make sure out-of-bounds areas are clipped off.

The third map has a lot of nodraw-textured roofs that are difficult to traverse for specials since its all invisible and its easy to fall off somewhere inaccessible, or try to spit and hit the roof on accident since its hard to see where the roof ends when you are standing on the top.

From an optimization standpoint it makes sense to nodraw areas that neither teams will see, but these roofs could use a simple texture on them (maybe the stone wall texture set to a high scale like 1 or 2 rather than 0.25) just to aid that, and again make sure inaccessible areas are clipped off.


I like the idea of the burning doors on map 4, but they are a little inconsistent with how random the way fire distributes itself from a gas can or Molotov. Sometimes it takes one can, sometimes it takes a bunch. I think this is in part because some of the wood pieces have a significant amount of health (over 300) which takes quite a bit of fire to burn down, and so if the fire isnt damaging specific planks nothing happens. I'd recommend scaling those down below 300.

Alternatively, rather than relying on damage reaching a particular value, you could just script a burning sequence once the func_breakable takes any damage, use a particle system to light the whole wood door up in flames that then is forcibly broken after a given amount of time. Kind of like how they do barricade events like on Dead Air construction site. Even if you want to stick with the damage iinput you have, you could still use the particle systems to add a bit more visual cue that they are actually taking damage as intended.

Does the finale score advance based on how many cans have been collected? Right now it seems to be functioning more like a hold out. Which is fine, obviously you still need to get the cans at some point, but in versus that means that you can potentially score more by not going for the cans if the other team dies trying to get them.

You could have a set of math_counters tell the trigger_finale to AdvanceFinaleState and use advance through tank stages as well as onslaughts that dont advance until they are told to.


Not sure how much additional updates you were planning for this but I thought I would provide our group's feedback on it. We'd definitely be looking forward to an update but if not we'll be having a lot of fun playing it as is. Thanks for your hard work on this! If you have any questions about any of the above I sent you a friend request.