Gaming Left 4 Dead 2 Hands-on Preview

Hooray for the one-a-year-IP. Woo. I'm so happy I could crap.

 

Don't see myself getting L4D2 unless Valve decide to do an offer for owners of L4D

 

I will probably cave and get this, but my only question is how did they make a squeal in one year? This is Valve, right?

 

Not really, it's Turtle Rock Studios. Valve bought them part way through development. Valve themselves are probably still hard at work on TF2/Ep3.

 

Nope, it's mainly the core Valve team now IIRC.

 

Well, I'm slowly starting to like L4D2, though I'm holding off final judgment for a demo.


How well does that fire ammo work? There's a mod for it in L4D1 and it's just lame, annoying, kills the fun, and makes it too easy, specially if you get a tank at the time you have it.

 

Okay, I can see where some of the complaints are coming from about L4D losing support, and unfulfilled promises etc.
But the claim that this could simply be a DLC pack is simply ridiculous. To back up this claim, I would like to present some evidence.
L4D1 featured a hell of alot of sounds. L4D1 has nearly 2.1 GB of sounds. This is with the current Director, and 4 characters. If Valve ended up making L4D1 characters playable in L4D2 like it has hinted at trying to, that would double this amount because you would now have 8 characters. Then this number would become one third greater at least, because all of the dialogue between players (friendly fire, "Hey Bill, you should heal", etc.) would need to apply to all 8 characters: Bill should be able to talk to Rochelle, and Coach to Francis.
Even if we left L4D2 with only its 4 characters, we'll use 2.1 as a base number. But when you consider that Valve has already spoken that they are going to try and make character conversation much more complex, and changing based on situations, stress levels etc., that could easily double this number. So now we have 4.2 GB. Then you consider we have whole new soundsets for some special infected (E.g. the Hunter can be heard with a new scream, etc) and then a whole new soundset for the uncommon-common, and the Charger's sounds. So without taking into consideration ANY of the new 3D models, textures, scripted events, zombie and Director AI, maps, or music, we already could be looking at nearly 6-8 GB of a DLC just purely through sounds. This is larger than any priced DLC I've ever encountered, let alone free DLC"s.
Adding to this is the fact that Downloadable Content =/= Downloadable EntireGameAddon. Like it has been mentioned, Fallout 3 released packs of new areas and content, whereas L4D2 is an entire new game, with new maps, characters etc. So the argument of L4D2 being a DLC, imo, makes no sense.

 

Could we take the whole "valve should release as a.." to the other thread?

 

Sorry for the double post, and apologies for my numeric error in the post above. In my euphoria of numbers I forgot to use the Survivor voice data size instead of the overall, the survivor voice filesize is about 0.91 GB, so for survivor sounds ALONE the size would probably be bordering 2GB for L4D2, and then with the addition of 3 new infected (Since the 4th is not set in stone) that would be around 50 MB additional, and then the sounds for new uncommon commons would be about 39.5 MB. This is all assuming Valve uses the same amount of sound data as they did in the first, rather than expanding upon and adding for variety, which is likely they will. So we have a size of roughly 2-2.5 GB of uncompressed sound data for the DLC alone, without maps, models etc.

Once again, sorry for the double post and my error in the above post.

 

Do you not think that the reason why the sounds took up so much space on L4D was because they had so much space to use? No point compressing sounds if you don't need to.

And if you really think Valve would be willing to put up to 8GB of sound on a DVD then you must be mad. They would need at least 2 DVDs in that case, not to mention how ridiculous it would be to download the full game from Steam

The fact of the matter is that Valve is the company that put The Orange Box on one DVD. One! I very much doubt L4D2 is going to have more sound than TOB, especially with all the commentaries.

Now, I don't know how big L4D is going to be, and I'm not even going to guess, because frankly, any estimates are based on assumptions since none of us work at Valve. I can't imagine it being that big, but I'm not going to pretend to know.

 

All joking aside, It's genuinely hard for me to develop any interest in this title for two reasons: 1) I still feel ripped off by Valve on L4D1 given the lack of additional promised content. 2) the lack of character development and boring avatar art in #2 really looks to me like they're rushing it out the door to rip me off further.

 

This sounds like the kind of crap I'm used to from EA with Madden #69 and Need for Speed 2025....

 

If you had paid any attention the following post I admitted I made an error and corrected it, 8 GB of sound isn't a correct number. Secondly, my argument was that it would be too much data for a DLC, and you reinforced this. Thanks.

 

Hmm. I'm not sure I understand this speculation based on file size. What does that have to do with anything? I can't see it being an issue.

I'm hesitant to join the ranks deploring the "fall of Valve" and such, but honestly. If this new game is "too large" to be considered a patch or DLC, that is because content that could easily have gone into L4D during post-development work since last years release has clearly been withheld. Support for L4D after release has frankly been almost non-existent, and now we know why. There are plenty of examples; the SDK taking almost a year to be released; the game still featuring gameplay issues and imbalances that ruin finales or crescendos in versus or campaign; the unspeakably poor server joining system that is still, infuriatingly, the only method of connecting to a game that doesn't involve using the dev console.

It may be good business practice, but it isn't commendable. In fact, it IS deplorable.

 

The speculation on file size was only my input into the issue of a good deal of people saying that L4D2 is able to be DLC, which I don't believe is the case. And to Skiddywinks and his comment on Orange Box, it probably isn't incredibly difficult to fit that many games on one disc, when essentially its only 3 games, since HL2, E1 and E2 are all recycling a huge amount of content, and Portal also uses this content. Portal also really only has a few sounds that are exclusive to it, if you don't count dialogue. TF2 is about the only game on there that doesn't use a whole lot of recycled content, except for of course, the Source engine. I mean, its like playing 3 different sports with the same ball. It doesnt seem like there would've been many storage problems, and that doesn't make it a huge innovation.

 

Eh? Your point is invalid, I've already explained why.

Your speculation on "recycled content" in Portal is fairly misguided as well. The game features different textures and materials, music and models, different enemies and different weapons, new AI and of course the portal gun's functionality.

 

I didn't say all of the content in Portal was recycled, I said that Portal uses recycled content. Sound effects, textures, models. Concrete textures, metal textures, and the fencing and gates in Portal found near the end of the game are from Half Life, along with padlocks on several gates, which can be shot off if you use the impulse_101 cheat.
Last time I checked, stating that one's point is invalid without offering any explanation doesn't exactly mean the same as "I've already explained why", unless you are really that full of yourself as to assume everything you say instantly becomes reality.

 

I am and it does, but that's beside the point. Look 20 centimetres up, where I counter your suggestion that Valve have created too large a degree of content for it to feasibly work with the original with my own, suggesting that said content has in fact been withheld from post-release support for L4D, and as such the fairly modest amount of new content we see in L4D2 only seems large due to the fact that it is delivered to us in one package at once, rather than many over time.

Furthermore, I take issue with the following sentence: "I didn't say all of the content in Portal was recycled"

When it would appear that by and large you did, not 15 minutes back.

"Portal also really only has a few sounds that are exclusive to it"

 

Well, since everything you say becomes reality, perhaps you should say "I know how to comprehend the English language and take words in context."
Because clearly you can't grasp the fact that when I said "Portal also really only has a few sounds that are exclusive to it" that implies...that Portal only has a few SOUNDS that are exclusive. You know, just like the sentence reads? You do know how to read, right? I hope so. Anyway, exactly as the sentence says, Portal only had a handful of sounds that were exclusive to its title, such as the portals opening, falling through them etc.
And telling me that you think that the data should be made for L4D1 ,rather than made into L4D2, really doesn't have anything do with my saying that it is too much content for a DLC. In fact...it has nothing to do with it.
I do hope you learn to read someday.

 

"And telling me that you think that the data should be made for L4D1 ,rather than made into L4D2, really doesn't have anything do with my saying that it is too much content for a DLC."

That wasn't the point I was making, but as you bring it up, what exactly is YOUR point - that there is so much new content that it will only fit into an expansion for which consumers must pay full price? This is your argument as I read it, although due to my evident inability to manipulate the English language, one can never quite be sure (thank you for your concern). In which case, then, the argument mentioned has relevance.

Either way, I'll withdraw from this discussion now. You argue over semantics and make slurs on my character while contributing nothing interesting or new, and It tires me.