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The Official Left 4 Dead Thread

Haden

Banned
ZombieSupaStar said:
well it looks like im stuck on the fucking 178.24 nvidia drivers forever, just tried the 181.22 ones and left 4 dead sound hitches every 10 seconds.... what the fuck its been doing that since fucking november, do something valve?

Try turning down sound quality to low and turn off multicore rendering worked for me.
 

rezuth

Member
Hotsuma said:
How exactly does Steam work? (Not A PC gamer)

If you download it from that service, can you only use it on that PC? Is this something you can burn to a disc and play at a friends (His PC is better suited for gaming)? Does the PC version have split screen play?

We both have the game for 360, but I would get the PC version so we could try the user made things. Is the user content really worth it at this point or should I wait?

Thanks.
You can just download Steam, log into your account. Download and play the game at his house.

PC version has split-screen.
 

Pikelet

Member
How exactly does Steam work? (Not A PC gamer)

If you download it from that service, can you only use it on that PC? Is this something you can burn to a disc and play at a friends (His PC is better suited for gaming)? Does the PC version have split screen play?

We both have the game for 360, but I would get the PC version so we could try the user made things. Is the user content really worth it at this point or should I wait?

Thanks.

If you buy stuff on steam, it is linked to your steam account so you can re-download it as many times as you want on as many pc's as you want as long as you are logged in. No split screen play (maybe with mods or something? not out of the box in any case)

Basically if you wanna play on your friends pc you just have to log into steam on that pc and download the game/copy the l4d files

There is some user created content atm, but most people are waiting for the sdk which comes out soon.

Imo, the controls alone make it worth the purchase if you are really into it.
 

epmode

Member
Hotsuma said:
How exactly does Steam work? (Not A PC gamer)

If you download it from that service, can you only use it on that PC? Is this something you can burn to a disc and play at a friends (His PC is better suited for gaming)? Does the PC version have split screen play?
Yeah, you can burn any of your Steam games to CD/DVD/removable storage then install it on another computer. All you need is an internet connection so you can log into your Steam account.

And I'm pretty sure the PC version supports split-screen.
Haden said:
Try turning down sound quality to low and turn off multicore rendering worked for me.
Disabling multicore rendering did it for me, didn't have to touch sound quality.
 

MNC

Member
ThaiGrocer said:
PC split screen guide

remember: split-screen is not officially supported on the pc and it takes a bit of effort relative to x360 split screen, which is officially supported.

edit: here's another guide of a different color google!

edit, again: works with my logitech rumblepad 2, but you need to put some love in care into the .cfg file.
Yeah, this is awesome. I played with my sister through half a campaign once with a PS3 controller, works great.
 

neight

Banned
Why are people always getting kicked in Versus mode? First game I tried to join I was immediately kicked before I could even do anything. Second game I didn't get kicked but I must've seen at least a dozen others get kicked during my session. Versus mode seems to have a lot of sour people in general in one game someone kept screaming at me through his mike that I wasn't doing anything. Is this what Xbox Live is like?

Main campaign online has been fine though.
 

Sibylus

Banned
So I fixed my audio stuttering problem. Turns out the Multicore Rendering setting got turned on again somehow, maybe with a patch or something. Turning it off fixed all of the stuttering, am happeh again :D
 

firex

Member
I still want a special infected preference flag ability for vs. I actually want to play smoker and hate playing hunter, would rather see more skilled players play boomer, etc.
 

Ventrue

Member
neight said:
Yup they were using the n***er racial slur.
It's funny, I've got probably about 400 hours between TF2 and L4D and the only time I can remember being insulted is one time in TF2 when someone said I had down's syndrome but that got a big WTF reaction from everyone else on voice chat.
 
firex said:
I still want a special infected preference flag ability for vs. I actually want to play smoker and hate playing hunter, would rather see more skilled players play boomer, etc.
There can only be one Smoker or Boomer at a time. What do you do when two people want to be one of them?

Also, it would kill the whole rhythm of how it plays. A great team masters the timing of respawns on all of these.

Ventrue said:
It's funny, I've got probably about 400 hours between TF2 and L4D and the only time I can remember being insulted is one time in TF2 when someone said I had down's syndrome but that got a big WTF reaction from everyone else on voice chat.
Part of what I think makes PC gaming generally nicer is that the people playing on it run the server, especially in TF2. Most servers are clan servers, and at least one person from the clan will always be around to make sure the game stays nice and fun.
 

firex

Member
They'd switch every other spawn. The idea behind it is just that it'd weight your spawns more heavily for one over the other anyway. then your team can get more points/have a better chance of killing them as infected. I just think it's lame (or beyond lame and into stupid) that you can't choose, at all, which infected you want to play. it makes learning one of them tough unless you just poopsock it and play 18 hours/day.
 
firex said:
I still want a special infected preference flag ability for vs. I actually want to play smoker and hate playing hunter, would rather see more skilled players play boomer, etc.
I don't see how this would mean more skilled players play certain classes. You could easily have a bunch of people who think they're good at a certain class but really suck who are hogging up a certain class. I like the system the way it is right now. Also, the current system seems to take into account how well you do with certain classes. For example, I know that if I manage to barf on people as a boomer, I end up spawning as him more often.
 

Salmonax

Member
neight said:
Yup they were using the n***er racial slur.
Sounds like they did you a favor by kicking you. It's not worth the headache of playing with morons. I'd recommend joining or starting a lobby rather than joining a game in progress, because you're less likely to encounter a group of friends bullying a server. Or, worst case, they'll kick you from the lobby, which is less of a pain. In the long term, building up your Friends list is key.

I've met mostly perfectly reasonable people in L4D, but I've also encountered more griefers, racists, and jerks than any other PC game I've played. I think the forced FF, inability to mute, random matchmaking, and lack of server admins make it sort of a paradise for lowlifes.

And yes, that's what Xbox Live is like.
 

Red

Member
Salmonax said:
I've met mostly perfectly reasonable people in L4D, but I've also encountered more griefers, racists, and jerks than any other PC game I've played. I think the forced FF, inability to mute, random matchmaking, and lack of server admins make it sort of a paradise for lowlifes.

And yes, that's what Xbox Live is like.
I've run into more normal people in L4D than any other game on Live. I'd say I've run into maybe a handful of griefers, nearly all of whom were swiftly kicked.

Halo and Gears of War are like sponges; they soak up the dirt and leave the rest pretty clean.
 

firex

Member
CrookedRain said:
I don't see how this would mean more skilled players play certain classes. You could easily have a bunch of people who think they're good at a certain class but really suck who are hogging up a certain class. I like the system the way it is right now. Also, the current system seems to take into account how well you do with certain classes. For example, I know that if I manage to barf on people as a boomer, I end up spawning as him more often.
In my case it seems like it's totally random. I do way better as a smoker than a hunter, but I'll get each one just about equally. I had one good string last night of 3-4 smoker spawns in a row, but I think that's just because other people got to respawn as hunters first. I'm not even calling my idea flawless, but I would much, much rather be playing smoker the entire time as infected, or a vast majority of the time, than have to play whatever the game assigns me.
 

Bogus

Member
I play on PC, and I hear people on Infected teams refer to Louis as "the nigger" all the time. Other than that, most folks I've met in-game have been pretty cool.

YMMV of course. Due to the small team sizes in L4D, there's a much higher chance of someone being a jerk to you directly than in, say, TF2. Of course, since both games emphasize teamwork to such a degree, you're always going to run into the occasional douchbag who flips out whenever you don't play perfectly. So it goes.
 

Salmonax

Member
Bogus said:
I play on PC, and I hear people on Infected teams refer to Louis as "the nigger" all the time.
My greatest regret is that I didn't start keeping a running tally the first time I heard someone say "the black guy dies first!"
 

FightyF

Banned
Got L4D in the deal, but my PC has issues running it and I'm pretty sure it's my CPU.

When I turn all the effects/high detail/etc off, I get the same FPS as when they are on! I can run 1920 by 1200 with everything on high, and I get the EXACT fps as when I run 720 by 485 (or whatever it is) with everything off!

The game runs around 20-40 fps. Slower when there are tons of zombies.

Vid Card: Radeon 4850 1Gb
CPU: Athlon 64 3000+ :lol

The problem is that I've got a Socket 939 MB...so I can't upgrade the processor as they've discontinued that. I'll need a new MB/Processor combo. I would do that but I don't think the new MBs are compatible with my RAM (Dual Channel DDR) as everything is DDR2.

I'm still playing around with the console commands though and having fun tweaking the game. You could control a lot of little neat details. From pupil size of characters to the radius of your flashlight. Pretty neat.
 

Fireblend

Banned
My online experience (PC) has actually been pretty great; my friend list has grown a lot and other than one time my teammates decided to kill me before leaving the saferoom :)lol ), I've had a pleasant experience overall. By now I have enough friends as to not need the match making feature, but I have no reason not to use it either.
 

Majora

Member
neight said:
Why are people always getting kicked in Versus mode? First game I tried to join I was immediately kicked before I could even do anything. Second game I didn't get kicked but I must've seen at least a dozen others get kicked during my session. Versus mode seems to have a lot of sour people in general in one game someone kept screaming at me through his mike that I wasn't doing anything. Is this what Xbox Live is like?

Main campaign online has been fine though.

I sometimes get kicked when joining in the middle of a game as well. I think that something people don't realise is that, when you're taking over control of a previously AI survivor, the AI survivor switches to your control while you're still waiting for the session to load. So this usually leads to your character standing still for about 10-15 seconds, making you a prime target for being left behind by the group or getting smokered/pounced. Other people in your team can mistake this as you lagging behind or not playing, hence them kicking you. That's why you should always stay near a character when the game says someone has just joined as them, because I guarantee they'll be stood there helpless for a while.

Some people are just dicks of course. I was kicked the other night for getting boomered on and getting stuck in the middle of a huge hoard of zombies I couldn't melee my way out of and my teammates, who hadn't been boomered on, didn't lift a finger to help. When I finally got free my health was about 50% and they decided to kick me. I've also been kicked when first entering a game for no apparent reason, then I joined the same game on the opposite team and I noticed they kept kicking everyone who joined. I assume it was because they wanted to keep an AI on the team, who have irritatingly good vision and shooting ability at times.
 

firex

Member
FightyF said:
Got L4D in the deal, but my PC has issues running it and I'm pretty sure it's my CPU.

When I turn all the effects/high detail/etc off, I get the same FPS as when they are on! I can run 1920 by 1200 with everything on high, and I get the EXACT fps as when I run 720 by 485 (or whatever it is) with everything off!

The game runs around 20-40 fps. Slower when there are tons of zombies.

Vid Card: Radeon 4850 1Gb
CPU: Athlon 64 3000+ :lol

The problem is that I've got a Socket 939 MB...so I can't upgrade the processor as they've discontinued that. I'll need a new MB/Processor combo. I would do that but I don't think the new MBs are compatible with my RAM (Dual Channel DDR) as everything is DDR2.

I'm still playing around with the console commands though and having fun tweaking the game. You could control a lot of little neat details. From pupil size of characters to the radius of your flashlight. Pretty neat.
You could add about $40 on to a processor/mobo order and get 2gb of DDR2 if you really want to upgrade.
 
Majora said:
I was kicked the other night for getting boomered on and getting stuck in the middle of a huge hoard of zombies I couldn't melee my way out of and my teammates, who hadn't been boomered on, didn't lift a finger to help. When I finally got free my health was about 50% and they decided to kick me.
Posted by me a few weeks ago:
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
One day, you'll be kicked for playing as a tank and dying because the other team was all in green health and running away and none of your teammates helped so you could never hit anyone. Or because you messed up as a Boomer once at a critical moment even though you have the highest score of anyone. Or you didn't follow the orders of the alpha-male self-appointed leader one time. Or you get caught in a giant mob of zombies and you're kicked for not magically turning into a unicorn and leaping your way out of it instead of dying because your teammates didn't try to help at all.

Really, if you're playing well but your teammates don't help you in a particular situation at all, expect to be kicked and blamed for what happens.
i-called-it.gif
 

Sibylus

Banned
FightyF said:
Got L4D in the deal, but my PC has issues running it and I'm pretty sure it's my CPU.

When I turn all the effects/high detail/etc off, I get the same FPS as when they are on! I can run 1920 by 1200 with everything on high, and I get the EXACT fps as when I run 720 by 485 (or whatever it is) with everything off!

The game runs around 20-40 fps. Slower when there are tons of zombies.

Vid Card: Radeon 4850 1Gb
CPU: Athlon 64 3000+ :lol

The problem is that I've got a Socket 939 MB...so I can't upgrade the processor as they've discontinued that. I'll need a new MB/Processor combo. I would do that but I don't think the new MBs are compatible with my RAM (Dual Channel DDR) as everything is DDR2.

I'm still playing around with the console commands though and having fun tweaking the game. You could control a lot of little neat details. From pupil size of characters to the radius of your flashlight. Pretty neat.
Turn off Multicore Rendering in graphics settings to see if that helps.
 
My 4870x2 just bit the dust (heat) and I am surprised at how nice the Source engine is treating me. I pulled out a 7600 that I use for testing motherboards/CPUs and, with the effects dragged down, can still play at 720p with 2xFSAA @ 30fps+. That should make the RMA wait much less painfull.
 

maladroid

Member
Salmonax said:
My greatest regret is that I didn't start keeping a running tally the first time I heard someone say "the black guy dies first!"
It's only happened to me once, but it was so weird. There were a bunch of people on one team with the tag [OzFTW] in their names. When they played infected they'd only go for Louis. They'd yell out things like 'THE N-WORD DIES FIRST!' Obviously with all of them going after him, he did die first. After that, they'd spend their time talking about how it was some kind of law that black people die first or something. What I didn't get was why they hated Africans, since they aren't even the prevalent minority here.

My online experience has been pretty mixed. The most fun I had was when I was on a team where we only looked after ourselves. It was basically just a sprint to see who could make it the farthest. Despite that, we still won (I managed to get on the helicopter at the end, while we managed to kill all of them in the finale). The most civil kicking I got was when I ended up on a German server. My lag was something in the 300s and one of the guys on the infected actually stopped to type out a reason and I left by myself. Most of the people who kick me either are rude, or take this game too seriously, though. Most of the people I know in person are either handheld or console gamers, so playing with randoms is all I've got unfortunately.
 
The amount of racism I see in L4D is pretty appalling, but I guess that's the nature of online games. Tons of people saying, "Aw, I'm playing as the n----r" or "Kill the n----r" or so on.

One game I was playing against a guy who was constantly singing racist songs and spouting shit about the KKK and such on all-chat. The entire game. I think I mentioned it before. Wasn't able to record it because RealTek does not play nice with Fraps. I did kill that guy every match though, he never got to even halfway in any map :lol

It's really sad how prevalent it is though.
 

FightyF

Banned
Botolf said:
Turn off Multicore Rendering in graphics settings to see if that helps.

Yeah first thing I did as I didn't have a multicore processor.

firex said:
You could add about $40 on to a processor/mobo order and get 2gb of DDR2 if you really want to upgrade.

I didn't realize it was that cheap! YOWzaz. Yeah I might look into that later in the year. Everything else runs fine (all the other Source games, that is), and I'm keeping my 360 version of L4D, so there's no rush.
 

Red Scarlet

Member
Nah, that was one of Pop and my tries at getting Nothing Special ourselves. We beat DT, but we didn't get it; I think I got slashed on DT3 and DT5. :/
 
Red Scarlet said:
Nah, that was one of Pop and my tries at getting Nothing Special ourselves. We beat DT, but we didn't get it; I think I got slashed on DT3 and DT5. :/
=(
That's too bad. That achievement's so mean...I wouldn't be surprised if I never ended up with it.
 
Did you know you can drown yourself in this game? On DT5, crouch under the water for a short period of time and you'll begin to take damage, which is all recovered the moment your head pops above water. I think it may even come back after being incapped, leading to a whole load of temporary health.

I thought it was a nice touch. It might be cool to see that mechanic implemented in a campaign, whether official or fan-made.
 
RocketDarkness said:
Did you know you can drown yourself in this game? On DT5, crouch under the water for a short period of time and you'll begin to take damage, which is all recovered the moment your head pops above water. I think it may even come back after being incapped, leading to a whole load of temporary health.

I thought it was a nice touch. It might be cool to see that mechanic implemented in a campaign, whether official or fan-made.

Yeah, and they even have the game mechanics set up so that the sounds are uniquely different underwater too, I'm assuming we'll see Valve implementing a more water based level in future campaigns.
 

Red Scarlet

Member
Pop is getting super angry at our NS attempts, what with Tanks appearing in our face or instantly during a horde, or hunters/smokers instantly popping up. :(
 
Red Scarlet said:
Pop is getting super angry at our NS attempts, what with Tanks appearing in our face or instantly during a horde, or hunters/smokers instantly popping up. :(

I'd join in to help, but I think I might just get in the way. I have a habit of twitch-shooting boomers in my face.
 

Dragnet

Member
Managed to get the game working on my MacBook....whoa. It ran like turd, I'm talking like 15fps but even through that I could feel how awesome the game is. Oh how I long for a decent PC/360 :(
 

Red Scarlet

Member
We only run into about 6 Boomers the whole campaign probably. Hunters are our biggest peeve aside from Tanks, and we've gotten rid of one magic insta-appearing ones as a tradeoff for a sometimes magic Hunter. Mutfox came in and we got to the cornfield, where a Hunter and Smoker instantly showed up during the horde and both Pop and Mut got nailed. That was really annoying partly due to we JUST got past an insta-appearing Tank immediately before the cornfield.
 
Red Scarlet said:
We only run into about 6 Boomers the whole campaign probably. Hunters are our biggest peeve aside from Tanks, and we've gotten rid of one magic insta-appearing ones as a tradeoff for a sometimes magic Hunter. Mutfox came in and we got to the cornfield, where a Hunter and Smoker instantly showed up during the horde and both Pop and Mut got nailed. That was really annoying partly due to we JUST got past an insta-appearing Tank immediately before the cornfield.
Ouch. That's brutal. Have you been primarily trying it on BH?
 

fallout

Member
RocketDarkness said:
I'd join in to help, but I think I might just get in the way. I have a habit of twitch-shooting boomers in my face.
I'm fucking brutal for that, too. I need an L4D training mode where I can just practice certain motions over and over again.
 

Kritz

Banned
SundaySounds said:
Yeah, and they even have the game mechanics set up so that the sounds are uniquely different underwater too, I'm assuming we'll see Valve implementing a more water based level in future campaigns.

They've been doing this for a while now. In all recent source games, going underwater distorts sounds (Even sounds coming from voicechat), drowning underwater will drain health and then slowly bring it back once you're out (Heck, it did that in Team Fortress Classic) and water in source games breaks falldamage. So you can fall 100 metres and not take damage, as long as you land in water.

Does anyone know if there's a way to make it so zombie corpses don't disappear (as quickly)? After being attacked by a hoard of them, it's weird to look at the ground and see only 4-8 bodies on the ground.
 

Red Scarlet

Member
RocketDarkness said:
Ouch. That's brutal. Have you been primarily trying it on BH?

We've tried it on every map but DA the past few days. We had NM2 down no problem, but we kept getting instantly appearing Tanks in NM3..just last night we killed a Tank immediately in front of the sewer, then about 10 seconds after dropping down into it, another Tank showed up instantly.

For DT, Pop and I do better ourselves..we have the most trouble on the 2nd level if a Tank instantly shows up; the rest of the campaign isn't really any trouble..but Pop doesn't like trying on DT I guess.

We can get through BH the fastest, and we do a similar thing on BH2 as DT4 to avoid an insta-Tank (activate the crescendo, then run through the level). It's just the instant appearing Tanks/Smokers/Hunters during a horde that tends to get us.

I don't really think Pop would have any problem with you giving us a try..we just kill the two AI's usually. Mutfox was fine in our try last night. We thought we had it on DT the other day, but the ai got killed too soon and came back after the finale started, and we got Smokered/Huntered while running over to the ai to kill him again.
 
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