L4D stuff.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Better than 5punkers.

They really don't seem like bots at all, which is good.

[HereComesPete]

Better than 5punkers.

Bees, bees that scream and giggle and cry and shoot each other. In fact we probably do more damage to each other than the zeds. Stoats frayed nerves and ninja fast shotgun claimed many a life last night, as did my wayward twin pistols.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

*shoots the back of fab's head off*

[amblin]

.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I love this game, we managed to invent some special new ways of doing things today

[Gunslinger42]

<a href="http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... 45482">How to play as zombies, single player only</a>

[Dr. kitteny berk]

First off, thanks to everyone for running servers for the demo. We knew going into the release that we were going to need to figure out some ways to make it worth it for server administrators, and now we have a ton of feedback to work with.

Right now we're looking at ways that server administrators can both build a community around their game server (by subscribing to matchmaking) as well as service their group of "regulars" that play on their server. Hooking game servers into Steam Community is going to be our first step, and we're working on that now.

There is a key difference between Left 4 Dead and games like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress in terms of matchmaking that we wanted to solve, and didn't think the server browser could accomplish. In CS and TF2, you can have 2 or 3 players leave in the middle of a game, have their slots filled by new people, and everyone else's experience doesn't completely suffer. When a player or two leaves Left 4 Dead the game suffers quite a bit, and we were worried that the server browser model wasn't the right one for this game. In hindsight, there are a number of cases where the server browser does a better job than the new matchmaking system does, so it is highly likely that we'll be adding it back in soon. It isn't trivially easy to turn back on, but there is overlap between it and the Steam Community work we'd like to do.

Right now we're working toward getting that release out within a week or so.

There are a number of Valve employees reading all of the posts on this list, and while we can't reply to every question that comes across, the discussions here are ones we reference commonly when talking about what to do next internally.

[HereComesPete]

In other words

We left the weak as fuck xbox matchmaking crap on the pc version and everyone complained. Sorry. We're going to cut that shit out and stop being mongs. But we know you fucking love it and it'll be out soon^tm.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I actually think the lobby system is a good idea for the general population, In theory it should put your group onto a low ping server, with the difficulty and options you select with very little hassle.

It's just not suited to groups like 5punk, where we have our own servers to play on and would generally like to do so.

Edit

In what we're building, this should be pretty straight-forward.

Our thinking is that you'll tie a Steam group directly to your game server, and then allowing people inside of that group to browse and connect to it. The server would be able to pull people from this method, and from matchmaking at the same time.

[Gunslinger42]

The matchmaking thing definitely has it's uses, but the server browser has some of it's own advantages and ripping it out entirely was kind of a silly move, but they've listened to all the complaints and realized it was silly and are probably going to do something about it, and that's good enough for me.

[fabyak]

...
Right now we're looking at ways that server administrators can both build a community around their game server (by subscribing to matchmaking) as well as service their group of "regulars" that play on their server. Hooking game servers into Steam Community is going to be our first step, and we're working on that now.

I'm not sure I really want to be 'serviced' by Berk thank you very much

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I'm not sure I really want to be 'serviced' by Berk thank you very much

That's not what you said last night.

[fabyak]

dosing me with rohypnol and making silly voices on my behalf does not count as me saying stuff

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Yes it does.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I love this game

/beaten into submission by impossible mode.

also

mat_queue_mode 0

fixed my crashes.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

L4D preload is open.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

/Tangents

Looks like Versus mode is only 2 of the 5 campaigns, so not really an option for people who want to play the full game.

Ergo my main aim will be enough private co-op servers to keep all twenty-whatever pre-ordered people happy, then if stuff doesn't burn, I'll look at adding publics and versus servers in.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

A required update for the Left 4 Dead Demo has been released. Please run hldspdatetool to receive the update. The specific changes include:

- Added the ability to tie game servers to Steam Community groups. Group administrators can now see the GroupID on the group's administrative page, which can be used as the value for sv_steamgroup. Users that are in that group will then be able to browse directly to them from the main menu
- Fixed setinfo exploit
- Fixed a crash when exiting the game
- Fixed a few cases where the game would crash when using ALT-TAB
- Fixed a problem that could cause texture corruption on some ATI video cards
- Fixed a bug that could cause infected horde to disappear

And we've added more documentation for dedicated servers in the file dedicatedserver_readme.txt

Jason

[Dr. kitteny berk]

This update is all kinds of broken in places btw, serverbrowser and console will work, probably.

[Baliame]

It broke something with steam as well. I'm logging in for half an hour now, and now stuck on Updating after deleting ClientRegistry...