Valve released more details about their upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 update. In an interview, they note that “The Last Stand” will be a full-fledged campaign.
As fans know, The Last Stand is the final map yet to port from Left 4 Dead to Left 4 Dead 2. In the coming update, Valve and the community are fleshing it out further. Instead of a one-to-one port, both groups decided to create an entirely new campaign.
Update idea came from “Left 4 Dead” community
In the interview, Valve dev Kerry Davis and some members of the Left 4 Dead community noted details about the update. They unraveled the story about how the community update came to fruition.
Raymond Nondorf, known around L4D circles as “Rayman1103”, is a community manager for both titles. Nondorf pitched for a Valve update to coincide with the titles’ 10th anniversary in November 2019.
According to Nondorf, the initial pitch was a “straight up port of the survival items from Left 4 Dead with some additional Left 4 Dead 2 items for a rushed November release”.
While Davis was happy with the idea, Valve devs were busy at the time. They were in the final stages of Half-Life: Alyx, which means they can’t help.
“The entire company was in the final push on Half-Life: Alyx, so we wouldn’t have been able to give the necessary attention to an anniversary update,” noted Davis.
Nondorf didn’t give up, and he offered to arrange a team to add The Last Stand. All he asked from Davis are the Valve Map format files. Once Valve finished and shipped Alyx, the changes were more apparent.
Dev team fleshed out the upcoming campaign
Once Davis gave the community team’s work a look, he decided to help them. Their work was more apparent, as Valve servers were hosting the map. These servers were inaccessible to the general public, leading to speculations down the line.
“On Valve’s side we’ve been providing code support and working on bug fixes, but everything else is the work of community members that’s being integrated into the official game,” noted Davis.
“We wanted to validate our work on an official dedicated server. With a normal project we can do all that on our internal version of Steam, but of course none of the community members have access to that so we switched over a small group of our public servers to our beta build.”
The upcoming The Last Stand update is not an infinite survival map. That wouldn’t likely satisfy the community. Instead, Valve and the community fleshed out the original lighthouse, moving backward from there.
The new update will have new models and sounds for the campaign. Instead of staying as a single map, the game will have multiple stages revolving around “The Lighthouse.” They also updated the game’s scripting features to help the community add more mods.
The upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 update does not have a set date as of yet. The team is adding more in the weeks to come, which is fantastic news for fans.
Images courtesy of JAiZ/Youtube Screenshot