Left 4 Dead Patch Adds Lobby Browser

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Valve released a Left 4 Dead patch today, adding a lobby browser to the multiplayer-focused co-op shooter.

"The lobby browser (under Play Online) will show you a list of optimal games available for you to join," writes Valve. "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, making it a great way to discover them. You can filter by difficulty, official and/or add-on campaigns and by lobbies and/or games in progress."

The full patch notes follow:

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 pervious 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.
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From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 16, 2009 5:34 PM

    Still no fix for the mouse issues introduced by the Falcon patch they released. Whatever they did in the Falcon patch, it changed the way the game handles latency and aiming, so whenever your ping spikes, aiming becomes pretty much impossible because it looks and feels like your mouse is suddenly working like shit.

    This didn't happen before they introduced that Falcon shit.

    • reply
      July 16, 2009 5:37 PM

      I havent played since the lighthouse pack, but boy do I love to get on mouse-latency-hate bandwagons!

      SO RAWR DAMN U VALVE

    • reply
      July 16, 2009 5:48 PM

      I was noticing problems with hit detection lately and I thought it was just me being used to the uber hit detection of the Unreal Engine from playing KF, then moving back to the Source Engine. I hadn't noticed problems going from CS:S to L4D, but from KF to L4D I definitely noticed a lot more of my shots not counting.

      You say this might be from the Falcon patch?

      • reply
        July 16, 2009 5:49 PM

        Before the Falcon patch I never experienced this and it's not just me. Pretty much everybody I've played with since the Falcon patch landed has had the same thing happen, regardless of the server.

    • reply
      July 16, 2009 5:50 PM

      i wonder how many people actually use that thing... if i had to guess id say, i dunno... two? or it is super-popular and i just live in a hole?

      • reply
        July 16, 2009 5:57 PM

        You're probably not far off. In my opinion, it's a device that caters to an incredibly small niche. I think they added support more for marketing and/or "Hey, our games support something your games don't!" reasons.

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