Left4Dead Entities (heads-up for mappers)

[Vicpop]

Hey guys, I'm a member of the Interlopers community (shameless plug http://interlopers.net/ etc). I had a couple of hours after the demo finished preloading, so I figured-- why not try and decompile the demo maps?

Well it works, to an extent-- VMEX drops out after line 300000 or so, but I was able to clean the vmf generated a bit, and I got it to open up in Hammer. I searched around, and I've got a pretty good look at how they set up maps. I DID take some pictures, but if you've played the demo then you already know what they are.

I made a list of entities that are new to L4D. Here they are.

<div class="quote">
beam_spotlight
env_tonemap_controller_ghost
env_tonemap_controller_infected
env_outtro_stats
fog_volume
func_simpleladder
info_director
info_game_event_proxy
info_survivor_position
info_survivor_rescue
light_directional
point_viewcontrol_multiplayer
postprocess_controller
prop_car_alarm
prop_car_glass
prop_door_rotating_checkpoint
prop_health_cabinet
prop_minigun
trigger_auto_crouch
trigger_finale
weapon_ammo_spawn
weapon_autoshotgun_spawn
weapon_first_aid_kit_spawn
weapon_hunting_rifle_spawn
weapon_molotov_spawn
weapon_pain_pills_spawn
weapon_pipe_bomb_spawn
weapon_pistol_spawn
weapon_pumpshotgun_spawn
weapon_rifle_spawn
weapon_smg_spawn
point_viewcontrol_survivor
info_changelevel
func_precipitation_blocker
</div>

Things to note are:
info_director - AI Director entity. All it needs is a targetname.
func_simpleladder - This excites me. No more needing to set up an annoying func_useableladder setup?
light_directional - A new light entity. Looking at its properties, it seems to have a similar setup to light_environment, without ambient light.

[Dead Fish]

That's a good idea, nice list. Pretty much like expected, I guess. The spawnpoints for the Director's items are interesting.

[redspike]

lols ! i spend about a hour trying to get these, i did it thou and have my map setup with survivor spawns

[Oblivion165]

So have you found a way to get hammer to work or just poking around?

[Atari]

Wow, nice work Vicpop :)

I managed to get an old CS-Source map of mine working earlier, survivors were able to spawn and boss infected but no normal infected.

[Atari]

Probably a really dumb question, but how do I create an entity that doesn't exist in the list?

If we can get custom maps working with the demo, that'd be pretty damn sweet.

[Dead Fish]

Probably a really dumb question, but how do I create an entity that doesn't exist in the list?

I think you just create an entity and rename it, then add your own parameters. Not sure.

[Oblivion165]

Ah i see so your just mapping it like a CS:S map and then renaming the entities like Dead Fish said.

[Vicpop]

For now, yeah. I haven't actually tried making a map yet; I'm not completely sure as to how to set it up correctly. Though if you want to decompile the demo maps on your own, you can. A few things to note though:

VMEX won't completely finish it. It'll decompile the way it normally does, and it'll look like it's finished, but when you go to load it in Hammer, chances are you'll get an unexpected EOF error. If this happens, open the vmf in notepad (or another raw-text editor), and scroll all the way to the bottom.

Let me give you an example of the leftover entity that I had while decompiling the apartments map:
<div class="quote">
entity
{
&quot;id&quot; &quot;4847&quot;
&quot;classna
</div>
As you can see, it cuts off at &quot;classname&quot;. Though it probably means you're not getting the entirety of the map, just remove the leftover stuff.

Now it should load. Unless you've configured Hammer for the L4D demo somehow, the textures are probably missing, and the models are all ERROR's; but you can see the entities (look for the OBSOLETE ones) and their setups (note, without SmartEdit).

There's probably someone out there who could write something up much better than this; I just did all of this last night out of curiosity.

[Atari]

Worked a treat Vicpop :)

I have to use 4x info_player_start to get the survivors to spawn

[Davee]

Iv'e got a problem. I'm working on a map that is using resources from HL2 and CSS, and it starts up fine in both CSS and Garry's mod, but when I load it up in L4D it seems that almost every model and texture is missing (note that I just copied the .bsp into the L4D maps folder). I can run around the whole map and so on, it just dosnt look (or sound) very good.
How do i get it working properly? Do I need to extract all the resources from HL2 (source base) and CSS into the L4D folder? That would take a very long time and isn't very fauvorable... Is there a faster way to fix this?
Any help much appreciated :)