L4D Update/Patch Info

April 30, 2009



Survival Mode
* Removed an exploit from The Construction Site
* Fixed issues with Survival Mode medals not being awarded properly in rare cases
* Times will no longer be awarded when joining mid-round and cheats had been active during that round

Servers
* Server will now reset correctly after all players leave a Versus game

Match Making
* Fixed a mismatch between lobbies and servers that will remove the "Server is full" errors when quickmatching
* Fixed match making issue affecting Vista64 users

The software development kit for Left 4 Dead were released to open beta on the 15th May.

The SDK mod tools are now freely available to all owners of the game through Steam. Valve has also released SketchUp Source tools, which allows modders to create content for the Source engine using Google SketchUp.

The full list of kit features follows:

* Updated Hammer, the Source level editor
* Suite of command line compiling utilities, such as studiomdl and map compiling tools
* Updated Particle editor
* Updated Faceposer
* Example maps
* Example models: common Infected, a breakable prop, and explosives
* A set of example particle effects

June 25, 2009. I like the molotovs bug they found, shame it is now fixed.



Client

* Removed an infinite ammo exploit for molotovs
* The team swapping issue in Versus has been fixed

Add-on Campaign Support

* Players download third party campaigns as single .VPK file
* Players can manage and select add-on maps and campaigns via game UI
* Added matchmaking support and download/update prompt for add-on campaigns
* Custom campaign support in Leader boards
* If not already registered, left4dead.exe registers .VPK extension to allow automatic install of add-ons
* Servers and the steam API have been extended to allow servers to send up a list of keys for matchmaking up to 1200 bytes in size

Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools

* Fixed missing fgd error
* Added vpk.exe command line tool for extracting, creating, and appending .VPK files
* Removed info_versus (not used)
* Added info_gamemode which fires outputs for Coop, Versus or Survival depending on what game mode the map is loaded in
* Updated tutorial_standards example map, repackaged as 'Dead Line' campaign example add-on
* Sample content now includes source files for official maps

Nothing major, but it's nice to see the ability to vote for a new campaign in Versus mode has been restored.

* Removed the "Are you ready to play Versus?" confirmation
* Fixed a crash when using mouse wheel or keyboard to select Campaign chapters
* Fixed sv_steamgroup_exclusive servers advertising for public lobbies
* Restored the ability to vote for a new campaign in Versus mode

July 16, 2009

Left 4 Dead has been updated to include a lobby browser, (ABOUT BLOODY TIME!).

The lobby browser (under Play Online) will show you a list of optimal games available for you to join. The browser pares down the thousands of lobbies and games currently being played to show you the best list of games available to you. This list includes official and add-on campaigns, including add-on campaigns you have not yet installed. You can filter by difficulty, official and/or add-on campaigns and by lobbies and/or games in progress. The specific changes include:



Left 4 Dead

* The Play on Steam Group Server screen now displays which Steam group it's searching while updating the list

* After calling a vote to change difficulty in game it is now correctly updated in matchmaking


Add-on Campaigns

* When downloading a new version of an add-on and installing it (by double clicking the .VPK file), it will now correctly overwrite the previous version, even while Left 4 Dead is currently running

* Addressed a crash when two mission files with the same name are installed

* Steam Group Servers now will now correctly offer download links when running add-on campaigns


Server

* The server will now warn if the public or private tags exceed their limits. Public tags are limited to 63 characters. Private tags used for matchmaking are now limited to 1024 characters. Note that the private tags include the name of each add-on campaign installed on the server, so an excessive number of add-on campaigns can hit this limit


SDK

* The VPK tool should be able to handle campaigns larger than 500MB now

* You can now drag and drop or pass a VPK file to the vpk.exe tool to have it extract the contents of the add-on to a folder. This mirrors the functionality of passing a folder and having it create a VPK file

* Detail.vbsp and lights.rad have been added to the distribution

I know I'm a bit late with these, but the last few updates haven't been really major, just correcting stuff from previous updates. (The image in this post was one of the many designs Valve when through designing the box cover. You can download as a wallpaper (up to 22" Wide-screen) for your desktop)

July 21, 2009 Update

* Lobbies and games you've recently joined and left will be ignored for two minutes. This will prevent a player from ending up in the same lobby or game when quickly searching for another

* Restored Find a Game Lobby/Find a Game in Progress to the Create Lobby screen available from the Lobby Browser

* Updated localization text

* Fixed an issue where VPK.EXE would not extract all files



July 31, 2009 Update

* Fixed problem with add-on installer failing to install add-ons properly on some versions of Windows

* Transition screen now shows campaign and map names for add-on campaigns

* Bug fixes and enhancements for Novint Falcon controller


August 3, 2009 Update

* Added packet limit to help users with AT&T Speedstream routers sometimes getting disconnected

* Added mm_server_search_inet_ping_window convar, which can be used to further reduce packet burst when contacting Left 4 Dead servers

August 21, 2009

Engine

* Fixed an exploit that allowed files to be uploaded to the server at arbitrary locations in the file system

* Fixed a server crash caused by a client packet claiming to be an HLTV client when HLTV is disabled on the server

* Fixed a server crash caused by spoofing a client disconnect message

* Fixed a server crash caused by sending malformed reliable subchannel data

Left 4 Dead

Novint Falcon support is now enabled by default

September 29, 2009




The campaign is now available to play. Even though not much is listed in the update notes, this is a massive update and taken the best part of a hour for me to download.

* A new campaign, "Crash Course", is now available for play in Campaign, Versus and Survival modes

* In Versus mode, all weapons, pills, health packs, molotovs, pipe bombs and other items will now be identical for the second round of a chapter

* Matchmaking has had several improvements to make finding and joining games even faster

* Ten all new "Crash Course" achievements have been added

Well as always Valve has managed to mess up another major update, even though they have spent months working on it! I tried 15-20 attempt last night to play 'Crash Course' and I got no farther than the second stage.

This update was release a 5-6 hours after the main update and unlike the other one only took a minute to download.

* Made the variable "mp_gamemode" available again. Note that you can also load maps directly with different game modes by specifying it in the map command. For example, "map l4d_garage01_alleys versus" will set mp_gamemode versus for you automatically and load the first map of Crash Course

* Added "mm_dedicated_force_servers" to allow specification of a list of dedicated server addresses manually used for searching (ms_force_dedicated_server is depreciated)

* Updated shared libraries and DLLs preventing dedicated servers listing correctly, appearing on Steam groups, and being found via sv_search_key

More problems being detected and mended due to the 'Crash Course' update. I suspect there will be more updates in the next few days.



* Item density calculation corrected for Versus games

* Fixed weapon density in Crash Course

* mp_gamemode now a valid command

* New localized audio for Crash Course now available

* Fixed achievement issues in Crash Course

* Fixed dedicated servers not updating correctly to master server

* Increased the timeout to fallback to listen server when searching for a dedicated server to 45 seconds