Left 4 Dead | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Valve South[1] |
Publisher(s) | Valve Corporation |
Designer(s) | Mike Booth |
Writer(s) | Chet Faliszek |
Composer(s) | Mike Morasky |
Series | Left 4 Dead |
Engine | Source |
Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, OS X |
Release |
|
Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
“ | Even though we obviously pushed well beyond the realm of believability with many of our 'boss' infected, the core idea of a mind-destroying, civilization-collapsing pathogen is more horrifying to me than magically animated corpses, precisely because it is plausible. Rabies is a good example of a pathogen that can turn a loyal, friendly, protective family pet into a slavering attack machine. It is a virus that reprograms the behaviors of a complex animal – a mammal, in fact. What if something similar happened to humans? Left 4 Dead is one possible answer.[2] | ” |
Reception | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Elan Ruskin: Each survivor has a large database of lines to choose from based on their present activity and a variety of factors, such as their health, stress level, kind of special infected seen so far, and many others.
The things that are happening, all the shit that is hitting the fan and turning everyone into mutant zombies, has gone much bigger than just Pennsylvania, which is where the original game was loosely set.
Left 4 Dead is a game that venerates zombie movies throughout the ages, from George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later
The events are trying to give them a sense of narrative. We look at sequences of events and try to take what their actions are to generate new sequences. If they've been particularly challenged by one kind of creature then we can use that information to make decisions about how we use that creature in subsequent encounters. This is what makes procedural narrative more of a story-telling device than, say, a simple difficulty mechanism.
Tim Larkin: We took several steps to keep the music interesting enough that the players would be inclined to keep it on as they play. We keep it changing so it won't become tedious; to this end, we created a music director that runs alongside the AI director, tracking the player's experience rather than their emotional state. We keep the music appropriate to each player's situation and highly personalized. The music engine in Left 4 Dead has a complete client-side, multi-track system per player that is completely unique to that player and can even be monitored by the spectators. Since some of the fun of Left 4 Dead is watching your friends when you're dead, we thought it was important to hear their personal soundtrack as well. This feature is unique to Left 4 Dead.
The AI director—I don't want to say it fell out of Half-Life 2, but it was definitely a jumping-off point of stuff we did in Half-Life 2, particularly Episode 2. There are a couple of key battles where the number of Combine, and where they come at you from, uses something like that. It's much cruder than what we accomplished with Left 4 Dead, but there was some of that there
Miles Estes: Since killing zombies is such a big part of this game, we invested a lot of time into making their death animations more dramatic than simple ragdolls. We had a professional stuntman on the motion capture stage perform about a hundred different dying animations from different kinds of weapons and hit from different directions, like from the front or behind. We then combined these mo-cap animations with the physics-driven ragdolls.
Phil Robb: We treat the infected horde as a major character in Left 4 Dead, and spend a lot of effort in making their movements believable. This includes hundreds of motion-captured animations that are algorithmically blended with the physics system to create characters that realistically interact with their environment and each other. .. When they see a survivor, they become enraged, taking off at a full sprint, leaning into their turns, jumping and climbing over everything in their way, trying to get to their victim. We wanted to express this rage in their faces as well, so we found efficient ways for each member of the horde to make intense facial expressions.
Matt Campbell: Although it sounds ridiculous to talk about advanced zombie AI, we spent a great deal of time on the AI systems for the common horde. First and foremost is their ability to navigate. The environments in Left 4 Dead are geometrically complex, and littered with breakable and movable objects such as doors or cars. One of the design goals for the zombie horde was that there can never be a place where a survivor can stand that a zombie cannot navigate to. To make this happen required not only robust path-finding code, but also path-following algorithms as well. These path followers have to continuously evaluate the local geometry around them, and decide whether to crouch, stand, jump, climb over, and otherwise navigate nearly arbitrary environmental obstacles.
Jaime Sue: The screamer was a boss zombie who didn't have any actual attacks; he was bound in a straitjacket. You knew when he was around because of his crazed, maniacal cackling. The trick to the Screamer was that if he saw you, you had a moment to kill him before he ran away, and once the screamer got away from the survivors to a hiding place, he would emit a loud, howling scream that would cause a huge mob of zombies to attack the survivors. While there were several exciting moments of knowing you had to chase him down to shoot him before he screamed, dodging zombies all the way, ultimately it proved too confusing for the survivors to discover how he worked or even to reliably notice him in the crowd. He was cut, and his horde-drawing attack eventually evolved into the boomer attack.
Doug Wood: We experimented with a variety of different introductions for each campaign. For 'No Mercy', we tried a 40-second fly-in of the helicopter to give the player a more movie-like introduction to the game. Ultimately, we found that such elaborate cut scenes are hard to watch over and over in a game that's built for replayability. Playtesters wanted to get into the game and start playing right away, so we ended up going with a much more streamlined game intro.
We actually started out with a single, huge city design with a great many routes for the survivors to take to reach the extraction point. As we began to playtest in this zombie city, we immediately discovered that having that much choice combined with the chaos of zombie hordes made for frustrated and paralyzed survivor teams
We're currently hosting about 5,000 game servers for Left 4 Dead on the PC.(archives are members only to view. Log in with [email protected] and password xetafoki)
|title=
(help)The motion-capture animation that makes up the varied zombie behavior is incredibly good, with the visuals peaking when a rushing gray-black mass of zombies are climbing up, over and through the terrain to get at you(..) On the other hand, it's irritating when you come into a room and see an enraged zombie clipping through from the other side of a wall or door
First and foremost, it's probably the most faithful video incarnation of the zombie genre that fans have ever been treated to. Yes, even better than Resident Evil 4
The amazing level designs will remind you of every zombie movie ever made
Over breakfast yesterday – before playing – we were talking about different takes on the zombie game that we'd like to see. One which didn't come up is one which Left 4 Dead grasps completely – its inherent perverseness. Now, it's a constant internet thing to discuss what you'd do in a Zombie Invasion, the implication being that you're smarter than anyone else. Which is fine.. but that's not how the genre works
As with the best horror flicks, the back-story is left deliberately ambiguous
Yet it also features four distinct survivors who convey an incredible amount of emotion through their facial animations and the rich amount of voice acting. There's Bill, the grizzled old veteran; Francis, the tough biker; Louis, the everyday dude; and Zoey, the college girl. They're so memorable that you can hear their voices in your mind as clear as day
There are games everyone can play—maybe calling them 'kids' games' would be inappropriate—but there's also a deep base of core titles made with movie-industry people that explore the depths of hi-def. I'm addicted to Left 4 Dead right now, but people say to me that that game would never work in Japan.
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Left 4 Dead |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Left 4 Dead. |