Left 4 Dead Mod Tools Released

By Nick Breckon, May 15, 2009 5:20pm PDT The software development kit for Valve's zombie shooter Left 4 Dead were released to open beta today.

The SDK mod tools are now freely available to all owners of the game through Steam.

Valve has also released SketchUp Source tools, which allows modders to create content for the Source engine using Google SketchUp.

The full list of kit features follows:

  • Updated Hammer, the Source level editor
  • Suite of command line compiling utilities, such as studiomdl and map compiling tools
  • Updated Particle editor
  • Updated Faceposer
  • Example maps
  • Example models: common Infected, a breakable prop, and explosives
  • A set of example particle effects
A Wiki for the tools has also been posted by Valve.

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25 Threads | 87 Comments

  • I was actually tempted to mess with this for a while now. Right now I'm kinda busy with messing the Q3 engine...but I think I'm going to have to mess around with this when I have free time during my free time (I've had this idea for a zombie mod since the old Q3 days...a sort of co-op mod that had a LOT of similarities to L4D but was built around the idea of everyone potentially being out for themselves...and it'd be based in large levels that are fairly open and you're goal would be to survive for a period of time with this huge zombie hoard just out to get you along with crazy stuff like black dogs and what-have-you (though they wouldn't be a dominant part of the game...just a secondary thing to really fear...imagine your running across people's front yards with this deformed dog chasing you like a cheetah on crack and you aren't armed (weapons/ammo would be semi-scarce and the sort of guns/stuff that you'd normally find in people's homes or other places in irl)...so you're trying to get to saftey and its dark as hell with only garage lights and the occasional telephone pole light to give you illumination). One player would take on a sort of dungeon master role whereby he/she would have some control over the zombies and other hazards to really mess with the players (sort of an RTS setup).

    Players could barricade themselves in a house and could form sort of make-shift improvised teams...zombies would slowly work to get through barricades or get through remaining ways in and the players would have to survive until a helicopter arrived or some other time goal was reached. Communication would be limited in that you could talk to people around you for as far as your voice could carry...there would be phones (perhaps houses would have 2 or 3 or 4 digit numbers you could even dial or perhaps we'd just have some sort of simplified game-y system for phones) so you could communicate that way or with walkie talkies (but you'd have to find those) or with a cell-phone if you managed to find one. Maybe if you're trapped in a house you could get help from guys in another less surrounded place to bring a car to run down some zombies so you could run into it (and shoot the zombies in your way with what little firepower you had) and make your get away.

    It'd mostly have a rural/isolated setting...both for gameplay reasons and because thats what I know (and because the original motivator for this idea was a series of dreams I had involving the undead...and those were the sort of settings...there was also this tree that created undead...and it was evil and when you went near the thing everything just got really dark and evil and clouds would move by really fast and its influence kept spreading).

    I doubt I'll ever get around to it (espcially since I'm messing with GLSL lighting/shadows in the Q3 engine and I barely have enough free time for that)...but hey maybe I gave someone a good idea or two.