Foiled Again! Pun Not Originally Intended

Studies show, the greater the commitment to providing blog content, the less likely I am to follow through. Rather than giving an excuse, here is a rundown of the past months: Eternal Silence, Lord of the Rings Online, Supreme Commander, Age of Empires 3, Company of Heroes, and Red Alert 3. Also: friend had baby, love interest found other love interest, general instances of being a good samaritan.

And now for the pun: Started fencing lessons, having fun, living out childish Zorro fantasies. L4D is not yet forgotten, more after the break.

The Office Park - Known Bugs

With the release of the map, the true experiment begins: Public playtesting. While I hope for a considerable amount of positive feedback, it's really the criticism that makes the map better, and I expect a good amount of it. Provided below is a current list of known bugs in Concrete Bayou 01 - The Office Park. If anyone sees anything that's not on this list, please comment here or otherwise let me know so that I can add it and get to work.

Known Bugs/Issues - Updated 2/13/09
-Displacement edges render incorrectly (seen in several locations, let me know if you see others: ledge outside of first office, room with broken wall dividing offices)
-Purple haze on higher graphics settings (Caused by advanced shaders, cannot be fixed until the launch of the official SDK. To work around, turn your shaders down to medium or low. Note that this disables normal mapping)
-Warehouse crescendo can be skipped *FIXED*
-Vents in administration building DONT spawn zombies *FIXED*
-Some textures for flourescent lights that are OFF are wrong.
-Lighting in general is off. Light sources are missing in places where lighting exists (mainly the admin building).
-Fire doesn't generate light. *FIXED*
-Zombies don't spawn in one of the side rooms on the lower floor. *FIXED*
-Weapon spawns need balancing. *FIXED*
-Ammo piles don't spawn correctly.
-Washing machine boxes blocking the path past the warehouse entrance are clipping into the wall. *FIXED*
-Fire at crescendo event takes up larger area than intended.

Life in the Concrete Bayou

Tonight is the night, the release of my beta version of the first map in my Left 4 Dead campaign, Concrete Bayou.

Some background: The survivors find themselves holed up in an infested Office Park when the military begins bombing runs in an attempt to curb the spreading infection. Left with no other options, players must escape their hideout and work their way to the distant city of Palm Island where it is rumoured a survivor's outpost has taken hold. The campaign consists of five maps which span a variety of locales, from a small town Office Park through a backwoods swamp and into the commercial delta of the Palm Island city limits, where players fight their way through a department store and finally to the gates of the Palm Island Civilian Outpost itself.

The campaign is planned as follows (All links will lead to L4DMapDatabase campaign pages):
Concrete Bayou (Working Title)
01 - The Office Park
02 - Rural Route 305
03 - City Limits
04 - Bullseye
05 - Drawbridge

Seeing as how this project has taken up a large portion of my free time, I believe it is fitting to include my progress here, both as a resource for anyone interested, as well as a contribution to a rather stagnant portfolio. As of this post, Automated Sweet Talk has taken on the additional function of Concrete Bayou Developer's Log, and I will provide campaign progress, development milestones and hurdles, L4D Mapping tutorials, and "exclusive" screenshots for those interested.

But enough of that, the Demo build of The Office Park is compiling now and will be live in approximately two hours. Take care, and remember:

No zombie is safe from Chicago Ted.