First Left 4 Dead Level 'Zombie Farmers Must Die!'

So I'm just posting an overview of my Summer 1 final class project. We had 23 days to learn the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools and then develop a small L4D campaign. This was pretty intense as I only had a little over 2 weeks to apply what I had learned and build.

Student work I know, but I did mention that I'm a 'Wannabe' designer right?

Our Back story:

In the not so distant future, online video games have warped and saturated the minds of virtually the entire population. You and your friends are the last holdouts from 'Farmertown', a game who's phenomenal popularity has reduced the world's entire population to mindless zombies.



This wouldn't be so bad if FarmerTown's poorly optimized code wasn't hogging virtually all of your bandwidth and you are continually harrassed by maurading zombies which will not accept that you have refused their Spacebook 'friend' request.
Your mission.. destroy the internet.


The plan is to infiltrate one of the physical site locations of a DNS backbone server and poison the server, disabling the world wide web. Theoretically it will domino, taking down every website while leaving the global network intact.
Unfortunately, the only other thing the zombies have time for besides fertilizing crops and trying to friend you is protecting the servers! It will be a hard fight and you will have to flee for your lives should you succeed.

The mission begins outside of the Intertrode company's headquarters. This place was mostly empty long ago as all the workers 'maintaining' the servers are residents of a small island who believe that we are gods and who are compensated with a weekly allowance of sea shells. The servers pretty much are running themselves at this point.

Welcome to Intertrode!

Basically, I knew I would be doing 'corporate' stuff that most people see everyday. But I thought some buildings have nice architecture.. and mine should be inviting. I actually used a great deal of real estate making the lobby area and trying to draw the player in from the start.
The inside Lobby

Here again, I'm trying to convey that feeling of inviting the player. At the same time I don't want them to rush through. Using few working light sources and low lights I think helped alot because you are forced to use the flashlight and it kind of makes sense as this place would be relatively abandoned by normal people.

I spent a decent deal of time on the kiosk and the skylights. There is actually a trigger on opening the door where a hunter zombie leaps through a skylight onto the players below. I didn't manage to get the screen cap of this however.

The reception desk was fun, but in retrospect I probably should have used a modeling app like softimage and just made an mdl file as all those cylinders created really long build times.




I felt like I had to address the 'elevator' issue of an office building to help to create atmosphere. In the absence of a great deal of time to build lots of props, I think this helps a little and gives the players alternate pathways to reach the 2nd floor. While I'm trying to guide the players by things such as locking the doors to the cube farm area on the 1st floor, I don't want players to feel their hand is 'forced' to go a certain way.


I'm pretty proud of the elevator actually for a first L4D project. It has interior and exterior sliding doors and can move between the two levels at the touch of a button.

I had added a custom sound file here but for whatever reason, the tutorial seems to be missing some information here. Basically I packed the file but it won't play. Will work on this. Was hoping to have an 'intermission' feel as you move between levels while listening to a midi version of 'Stayin Alive', complete with a midi flute ensemble.

The important thing here, is L4D uses what it calls a 'nav mesh'. This is a mesh that you can't see in game, but that must be tweaked and given instructions on how the AIs can interact with the map. Largely for AI pathing and spawning. So in this case, the AIs can and will follow you into and out of the elevator.

The other route up to the top floor is the Stairwell. Here again I tried to apply the philosophy that I should make the environment interesting to look at.

While the set in L4d is generally pretty mundane stuff we see everyday (except for zombies of course), I think that's no reason the spaces can't be interesting. So I created some nice crawlspaces under the stairs as well as a full wall window to open up the area visually and some ability to overlook and have gunplay between floors.

Here I had alot of fun, basically this is a large balcony on the top floor overlooking the lobby. It has alot of potential for gunplay as well as you can see the main hallways from either the north and south side of the building, you can shoot at windows looking into the south side of the lobby from the top floor and of course you can overlook the lobby to the west and the elevators to the right.





This brings us to the server room, Lots of zombies protecting their precious :). Basically this room triggers lots of boss spawns and a panic event when you poison the server. A panic event is basically a mass of zombies that more or less bum rush the players.





Now the players are ready to make their escape and must get back downstairs and across the building to the rear parking area.



The cubefarm area was fun because I got to take something that most of us hate seeing and then turn it into a destructive playground. The cubes are sprinkled with zombies who will attack as players move through the area.

For an added touch I decided to make the cubes destructible. Basically if you open up with the auto-shotgun here you will be showered with exploding shards of cubicles mixed with zombie blood spray.

The finale is admittedly a little underwhelming. Basically I was running out of time and I had to get the triggers working here. The finale can't be triggered until after the server is poisoned and the players make their way out the fire exit to the back alley next to the parking lot.



First I really like the dark here because when you trigger the radio to call for rescue.. lots of zombies come in the dark. Except its probably a little too dark. During reload times you have no flashlight so you have no visibility at all. I think at least one good flood here would have been nice.

Another thing I did was setup the area so that the infected can come from two general directions.. they will charge you in waves from the fire exit alley and from the far end of the dark parking garage.

Additionally, I threw in some nav areas on the top of the garage where they can pour off the side onto the unsuspecting players.

This finale has no minigun and is actually relatively hard compared to other L4D finales I have seen with the dark and the lack of high ground for the players. In fact, its just the opposite, the high ground is controlled by the horde.

The good news is they are still moving through relative choke points so the players have ample opportunity to thin them out until help arrives and the final credits roll.

Since I ran out of time, I really wasn't happy with just rolling the credits. Honestly I would have liked to have had an A-Team like van come busting through the gates but thats also more custom content and I feel pretty good about completing this first L4D level in a little over 2 weeks.