Upcoming Left 4 Dead Server Changes (4-20-09)

[Mooga]

Zoid Kirsch Wrote:I'm a developer at Valve who is working on the Left 4 Dead Survival pack update. We've made several changes to server operation that we'd like to give our server operators a heads up on.

Since Left 4 Dead will now support three different game modes, we removed the console variable "director_no_human_zombies" and added a new variable called "mp_gamemode" which can be set to "coop", "versus" and "survival". This variable is set by lobby reservation, so a normal server running in lobby mode will require no changes by the server operator. If you are running in LAN mode without lobbies, you will need to set mp_gamemode before you load a map. For example, use "mp_gamemode survival; map l4d_sv_lighthouse" to load the new Lighthouse map in Survival mode.

We have extended sv_gamestypes to also include "survival". The default value is now "coop,versus,survival". This may cause issues for some servers that have a lot of tags in addition to the defaults. We realize this is problem and adjusted "sv_showtags" to show the truncated tags to help server operators see if they have reached the 63 character limit.

The tags issue will be fixed in the forthcoming third party campaign matchmaking update. We have extended the master servers so heartbeats will be sent as two distinct packets, one containing the existing server heartbeat, and another containing additional "game data." This game data will contain all the matchmaking server tags such as sv_gametypes, and the list of third party campaign missions installed. This third party campaign list will be used by people searching for servers with third party campaigns installed. Server operators will install the VPK file of the campaign that includes the maps (and associated models, etc) as well as a "mission" description file that describes the campaign and its name used for matchmaking. We hope that as various third party campaigns become popular, more server operators will install them giving a larger base for players to find servers for those campaigns.