Left 4 Dead 'Dawn of the Dead'-Inspired Custom Campaign Released

Didn't make it to the mall. The first map was so buggy and uninspiring it made me uninstall L4D.

No installation instructions included in the ZIP file. A corrupted file in the original, uploaded archive. And the part that brings tears to my eyes, the inclusion of source-control .SVN folders. And I haven't even loaded up the map yet. Release dates aren't worth hitting if it means you can't put your best foot forward.

Were can I get single files from the pack? I downloaded the zip two times and always get this when unpacking:

deadbeforedawn.zip: CRC-Error in DeadBeforeDawn\sound\dbd_music\witch\WitchRoast.wav. The data is incomplete.

Thx

Finally!!!
I was weighting for this for a while now.

This will work with L4D2, right?

This will work with L4D2, right?

It doesn't include a finale map! I never should have downloaded it. I should have just waited until a version hit that was close to final. Too many bugs and frustration.

Remember guys, this is a 1.1gb file that will have to be downloaded again, in its entirety, if you want to install the newest version. Of course, by the time this campaign becomes unbuggy and complete, L4D2 will be out and L4D1 will have been but a (pleasant) dream.

They rushed this out just to reach the Halloween release date. It's extremely bug filled and still needs a lot of work done.

Well, they put a LOT of work into this map; more custom textures and scenery than any other campaign I've seen as well as plenty of custom voice work. Very pretty and aside from the relative lack of cues for actions you need to take to, you know, actually progress through each level, the design is pretty darned good.

There are some serious bugs, like when we died while closing the doors to the mall and it respawned us in the END safe room with a tank literally staring us in the face. Made me jump out of my chair.

But yeah, there either needs to be a LOT more direction on what to do (or just more CLEAR directions) or they need to cut out some of the more complicated events.

I mean really, what is the purpose behind making you flip two switches in two server rooms far away from each other AT THE SAME TIME besides just making it impossible to play on single player? What possible rationale could have been behind that? Make one of the switches turn the lights on and spawn a horde and be done with it, for God's sake. And then there's the air conditioning repair sequence... I half expected them to make us load a dishwasher next.

Bu seriously, I have no doubt that it's going to be a great campaign sometime in the future; maybe even the best custom campaign so far. Bugs I can handle and I even expect from a beta, but they NEED to re-think some of the major design choices they made in forcing team mates to jump through hoops to trigger panic events, especially when they seem to hide the hoops just to make it that more frustrating.

There's a difference between creating frustration and creating apprehension. They need to cut out the former and Keep It Simple, Stupid.

I will say that it's better than I expected at this point, though. I hate to see a LOT of really, really, really hard work spoiled by a few bad decisions. But this just isn't really playable in its current form. I'd wait 'til the next release, at the very least.

Halen, TheMonkeyWench, and I tried this campaign last night. There's some promise and serious gameplay issues, like holding a button for 5 minutes to move the AC unit into place. I know what they were trying but in practice it's just not very fun to hold a button. The Air Strike effect is cool, except that it wiped us out because we have no clear idea where to go.

Instant death without warning to creep an inch outside the mall when you have to close the doors was another unpleasant surprise. Instant death because you didn't reach where you needed to in an air strike. Instant death from not knowing what the security door timer countdown objective clearly since it only plays on the radio one time which can easily be drowned out. All the ways to die without feedback makes the first play plenty painful and not in a good way.

1.1gb for 5 maps? blimey. Still, it looks fairly decent and I love playing in unfamiliar environments.

Got stuck in the bank area of the Mall. Think something didn't get triggered that should have. Oh well.

Weird, I keep getting an "invalid compressed data to inflate" error during the unzip and it asks me if I want to skip to the next file. I'm hesitant to run a mod without all the data. I downloaded from both East and West coast servers and have the same issue on both files.