Is going very well. I’ve decided to stop treating this as just a toy to play with for my own amusement and commit to a project that will showcase what I can do with the game Left 4 Dead 2. To that end I’ve decided to work on the project with a strictly professional workflow. I’m making the entire campaign in a rough state from start to finale as quickly as possible and in three weeks I’ve gotten the first campaign sketched out in text files and the first three maps completely playable. I think people are going to find the map03 “event” extremely entertaining. So far just with bots it’s an absolute riot. So then two more regular maps and the finale map left to do. I think now that a lot of work is done in my head and I have the direction of the entire project nailed down solid the last three maps should come together very quickly.
I’m trying to make a game that players will find… comfortable and predictable, and yet at the same time every map will do something fundamentally different than the original campaigns. For instance you start out separated in map01 and must fight alone for a while before gradually teaming back up as a foursome. A fundamental change, but not in a way that requires players to play that much differently than what they are used to. Map02 plays like a regular map, except that it’s reversible so you never know whether you’ll be playing it backwards or forwards. Map03 actually has two completely different maps, so you never know which one you’ll be playing. Map04 is an open-world map–yes this is possible with l4d2 if you know the tricks.
I think the main reason I want to try to keep a blog of this project is so that I can monitor my own progress. I think it’ll be interesting to see how fast and how well this all comes together if I really focus all my energy on it and commit myself fully. Who knows, perhaps it’ll even lead to a job in the game industry. That wouldn’t be so bad now would it?
Next post: pics.
