Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools released to undead masses

by Griffin McElroy on May 16th 2009 5:30PM

"Sure, the rooftop portion of No Mercy is intense," you often explained to your Left 4 Dead-playing cohorts, "but you know what it needs? More Tanks. Eight or nine more, at least." Your friends attempt to dissuade your mad-eyed vision, but ultimately find it futile -- after all, it's not like you have the ability to summon these hulking meatwalls from the ether, right? ... right?

Tremble in fear, zombocalypse Survivors -- Valve just released the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools it used to create the core campaigns to the general public. Using these grim mechanisms, players are able to "create your own campaign maps, character skins, 3D models, sound effects, and music and load them into the game." Best of all, Valve will be updating the matchmaking system to include player-made levels in the coming weeks. If your interest in L4D is waning, brace yourself -- the game's getting a huge booster shot.

[Thanks, Dan!]

Source

Tags: authoring-tools, left-4-dead, level-editor, valve, zombies

Reader Comments (66)

i cant wait to see what the community will make. im usually not good at these things, but i know a lot of people are.

tbh, i hope this gives me the same sort of enjoyment i got from playing Starcraft UMS maps back in the day.

aah, the good ol days.

I love downloading User Maps. On FC2 on the 360, I can't use the map editor at all, and the best I ever come up with comes from the Wilderness Generator.
I recommend you download one called Rally Course. It's in the top rated/most downloaded section... I can't remember what.

This is what kept TF2 alive for over a year for me. I hope the L4D campaigns are of a similar quality.

@DWells55: You might as well blame sony also, because the PS3 doesnt exactly support user mods either, nor has any console ever, so dont just blame microsoft.

@NaeemTHM: Dont most devs release the devkits anyway, nt just valve, bethesda did.

@ Damian look up Unreal Tournament 3 mods for the PS3

damian, unreal tournament 3 on ps3 supports user mods. so... ?

I was going to cite UT3 as well, but I've been beat to the punch.

C'mon lads be fair - UT3 for PS3 is hardly a great example of a console utilizing mods. There was only a handful, because mods made for the PC had to be "cooked" for the console version. Oh that and i do believe the online community for the PS3 resembles a desert.

While UT3's mod support isn't exactly the best it could be, that's hardly the point. The point is that Sony allowed user modifications to be played on their console. Microsoft on the other hand, repeatedly denies any developer requests for anything like this. Why allow free user content when Microsoft can continue to reap huge licensing fees from microtransactions and other DLC?

And thanks to Microsoft's absurd policies on user content and anything they dub a potential security risk, chances are that the Xbox 360 will be seeing none of this. And since this is user content, Valve would have to license it from them to release it as Xbox 360 DLC, so that isn't happening either.

Sigh. Time to talk my XBL friends into selling their Xbox 360 copies of Left 4 Dead and putting their money towards the PC version.

Perhaps your friends are like me, they have weak ass PC's. Personally I use a Mac at home so PC gaming is more or less out of the question.

Well, there's always a chance that Valve will do the 'TF2 Trick' again aka turn superior custom maps into official ones, but by the time that happens, no one will be playing L4D on 360 as every console gamer will migrate onto the 'next big thing'.

That's why Xbox Live gaming suffers a lot imho. On PC even the most obscure games will have their own tight-knit communities and ten year old games may still be played on a worldwide scale(CS,Starcraft) while on 360 you're either Halo/CoD or only last a few months.

@NaeemTHM:
Left 4 Dead and pretty much all the source games run pretty well on anything. Hell, Counter Strike: Source works just fine virtualized inside VMWare Fusion on my MacBook Pro. If your Mac is at all recent, dualboot it with Windows and you should be able to run Left 4 Dead smoothly, albeit at reduced settings.

That's why you spend 100$ on a GPU, and then you can easily play L4D.
If anyone actually cares plop this into your system. If you have anything over a Pentium 4 (lolz), you should be able to play L4D on all high.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131155
Pc gaming isn't expensive, it's just gamers being lazy.

@Sir Buzz Killington( The Artist formerly known as Jakka):

Halo and cod have lasted more than a few months.

@Brian

Buzz Killington was saying that the only games that have an online following past the few months after release are Halo and Call of Duty games, which is partially true. There's also GTA and I can usually get a full game started in Rainbow Six: Vegas 1.

Is it me or does Valve seem like the only video game company out there that actually run by gamers? They know EXACTLY how to please the fans.

Could you imagine how cool it would be if Nintendo release a level editor for Mario Galaxy?

if killzone 2 had a user map editor + support for the maps in ranked matches, i would be in heaven.

If Nintendo was made up of gamers exactly like everyone else in the western world than Mario would've turned into an italian mob boss with an extreme addiction to psilocybin a looooooooooooooooonng time ago. And we never would've gotten Mario Galaxy. Because he's a plumber in that game, not a mob boss.

LOL WUT?!?!?

Epic has a pretty good mod community for the Unreal Engine as well. A few of their designers/develops make frequent visits to their modding forums to help people out. They also have some great documentation for people who've never used it before.

They sure took their sweet time...I was half-expecting my map-making-obsessed friend to jizz himself given how much he complained about how long it took...

and this is why PC gamers RULE!

Dawn of The Dead mall please!

Waaay ahead of ya, Obie :)

http://www.l4dmods.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12:crossroadsmall&catid=2:news

My thoughts exactly! Get to it nerds!

i second that

Thanks Buzz, after seeing that and a handful of other Left 4 Dead mods (which I've been trying to ignore since i own the 360 version), now I have to go buy it for PC too.

Ah, if only L4D were on PS3, Sony would be all over this!

i downvoted you because of peer pressure. everyone was doing it.

Also, because what you said means you probably have to wear a helmet whenever you get off the short bus and go out into public.

i upvoted you because you added "Sony" to your sentence and you got downvoted

I didn't do anything because I CAN'T SEE SHIT!

Um, why did I get downvoted? I was simply referring to how open Sony was with Unreal Tournament 3's custom maps, and that they would most likely allow this if the game were on PS3.

I didn't vote you up or down. I'm not into politics.

There was no reason to vote you down, 360 fanboys just don't want any of their exclusives to come to the PS3, whereas they want all the PS3's exclusives to come to the 360. : /

I agree with you too, actually, b3ast. This would pretty much be LittleBigPlanet but with L4D content, which would be HOT.

But I guess I'll have to finally get this on PC and maybe use a 360 controller (sorry, just used to that more than m&k).

@NobleDevil

Well good luck because everyone on your team is going to hate you when you don't turn around fast enough to kill anything.

a mod that makes every zombie a tank? Yes please

So, does this allow you to place zombies? Or do you just design the map, and then the "AI director" takes care of the rest?

I haven't gotten my hands on it yet, but I am sure that there are ways to control and fine-tune the a.i. and enemy/item spawns.

See, I always knew L4D was a good game, but it never really felt like a true Valve title for some reason...

This is more like it.

God dammit Valve is GREAT....Do they ever do anything wrong....(Assuming you don't own a playstation)

Xen says hi

So is this an in-game map maker they are making available, or is it just like a dev kit thing they are giving to you if you're a PC nerd who knows how (and have the time to) reprogram textures and AI mods only to show other few nerds who like (and have the time to) give a shit.

cause if its the former, my amature map making self is all over that.

Considering your description of the latter, it's neither.

Yes, it's a dev kit available to anyone who owns the game. You can make your own maps using their Hammer world editor. But you don't need to know how to make your own textures or anything else to be able to make your own basic maps. You can make extra maps for L4D, or you can really dig into it and modify how the game is played.

If you make something good, a few people will be interested. If by "few" you mean all the players who are remotely interested in custom content. Which there are _plenty_ of.

But is it editable on the 360 (like farcry 2)? Or do I have to have fancy pant-cy computer?

(patent pending on "Fancy Pant-cy Computers")

No, it's not an in-game editor. You have to access it through the tools section on Steam. The trade off is that it's way more powerful and offers a wide range of modding abilities.

You don't need an impressive computer to run it either. Obviously, it can limit the scope of your maps, but you can still play around with it.

Little console dude, contrary to popular belief, you don't need a super powerful and expensive PC to play PC games

I stopped taking him seriously as soon as he said "reprogram textures and AI mods".

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Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools released to undead masses

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