This thread will be an open journal on my development for Sugarmill. I want to present my thoughts concisely while making it.
A lot of people, including myself, enjoy these TF2 stylized Left 4 Dead 2 campaigns. They’re fun to make and provide novelty for fans of both games to appreciate. Hard Rain was chosen as a "raising the bar" exercise because of its dynamic weather, and of course another distraction from ctf_4tokyo.
Hard Rain reuses its first 2 maps for the whole campaign, and because they seemed compact enough to be one map, I stitched them together as one super level. The last half where you backtrack during a hurricane was a campaign highlight which would be a disservice to exclude, so it will be available as a second map in the near future.
As the campaign mildly hints at torrential precipitation, I focused a lot of my effort creating a believable storm in TF2. This storm was redesigned as backwards compatible because L4D2 added features making a dynamic storm both feasible and possible. Ultimately my goal was to best emulate the experience with the tools TF2 has. Some of this workflow is used in the first map.
Sugarmill is also the first level I’ve created models for with Propper. It wasn’t as helpful as I thought as models made from it received no lighting information, doing so required proper modeling program experience. I tried something out of my comfort zone at least. Another optimization and time-saving practice would be using instances.
The main map was made into an instance independent of game logic to be shared for both levels, and a separate instance containing map specific entities. Previous maps I’ve made used this technique successfully, and I’m very certain the Left 4 Dead 2 level designers used instances extensively to build their campaigns.
The Last Stand changes have been implemented too. If I had to summarize Hard Rain’s unique gameplay, I would say it’d be the numerous angles zombies can attack from. The best examples are in the Burger Tank, houses, and the Sugarmill, which are created with multiple height levels, cover, and multi-room interiors.
In conclusion, I’m thinking about project scope. Scope could be how we evaluate success by the number of views, comments, or downloads, and anything less than the biggest audience somehow makes your efforts in vain. Many developers and publishers rely on these metrics too, even if they come at the expense of the end user.
There’s a great video by Masahiro Sakurai talking briefly about how the player comes first
(link) and I use "uppercase" and "lowercase" to describe his idea. Uppercase is marketing, the sizzle of the steak, and lowercase the end user peer-to-peer interaction, think ingame chat (usually in lowercase). Both work in tandem leading up to a person’s decision to play your game.
"Hard Rain in TF2" is the uppercase where you imagine the possibilities of how it will play, and it was crucial for me to match lowercase player expectations. Hard Rain itself has an interesting dichotomy with a dull settlement being hit by a dramatic hurricane. Perhaps these two combined make something truly memorable, a holistic reminder in the part of a grand drama of life.
Thank you for following the project, I hope you enjoy playing Sugarmill (and soon Sugarmill Escape) as much as I did making it. Here's a
reward for reading.
Trivia:
- The safehouse between c4m1 and c4m2, as well as their stormy variants, is misaligned sitting closer or further from road than it should be. By comparing various landmarks throughout both maps, I have to come to the conclusion that only the sugarmill entrance was partly misaligned, not the entire 2nd map.
- There is no sidewalk in the c4m2 sugarmill parking lot. One exists in c4m1, and may have been the cause of the misalignment mentioned before. In TF2, this area looks slightly different as it was incorrect to begin with.
- There are hidden director inquires asking about "blocked houses" and writing to a "journal". Some houses may have been inaccessible to increase replayability (like the c4m5 barricaded safehouse), or breakable barricaded windows as seen near the garage sale. The code still exists in game, but has effectively been disabled. This journal is again referenced on the return trip, and still has been effectively disabled.
- I speculate that blocked houses would have functioned like this, one random house boarded up and inaccessible for the campaign, which means less shelter during the storm revisit. It possibly means the 5th map was a late addition (a safehouse at the end) because of difficulty. I speculate this was cut for not being as dramatic and interesting as keeping all homes open to explore.
- Various objects, windows, and entities hint towards previous map iterations that are hidden inside brushwork and props. Notably:
- 1. A fire entity exists inside the burger tank kitchen, but is not set to start ignited.
- 2. A metal fence inside the large cane field building, potentially an extended field.
- 3. Windows inside the sugarmill boiler room and rescue closet sheds hint towards cut details.
- The Sugarmill catwalk grates are not considered transparent, meaning Player Infected can spawn in line of sight of a Survivor while above or below them.
- Unnecessary soundscapes entities exist in the c4m5 checkpoint, hinting that this was not originally a safehouse and could be fully accessible like other houses in the neighborhood.
- The skysphere horizon line has a gap visible at high altitudes (most apparent wall climbing as a Hunter).
- Multiple houses are entirely a func_detail, meaning they do not block render visibility like you’d expect them to.
- The first flower house’s roof (on the street with the truck wreck) does not reach the wall. Its support beams don’t touch the ground either.
- The Sugarmill’s Witch infestation is referenced as "Witchville" where upon entering Witchville has every survivor now whisper their reloading lines.
- An inaccessible ladder exists on the other side of the garage sale fence. Neither NPCs or player zombies can reach it.
- Some garage ports don’t quite touch the ground and have small gaps where the ceiling meets the wall.
- The truck wreck street curve has some holes in it (understandable given this is not a curve friendly engine).
- There are unused Hard Rain related audio clips in L4D2’s directory files. Map wise, Thunder would strike again around the Sugarmill entrance (but no sound occurs ingame), and in L4D2’s files are rain rumble clips supposedly for storm soundscapes.
- The clipping for the street curve at the truck wreck lets you stand on the concrete barrier supposedly blocking your way.
- The storm surge raises sea level by 2 feet. The first foot of water is seen in c4m2.
- It does not appear to rain inside the construction site while you are close to the top floor (rain appears at the bottom and at a distance).
- Referenced from prerelease L4D2 interviews, Hard Rain originally had the starting weapons placed further past the docks, this was changed as playtesters were hesitant to leave the starting area without a weapon.
- I speculate each large weapon cache you find in the houses would be your first potential weapon pickups, and you would be playing with just the dock melees and pistols until you find these weapons (like c1m1). It explains the unusually large supply of potential item spawns in map 1.
- The construction site has area portal windows where at specific distances will become an opaque black wall for survivors in the courtyard. Area portal windows are meant to help framerate by hiding what’s behind them. This becomes a powerful one-way window a Tank can use to throw rocks from without losing frustration.
- The elevator has no way to be called from ground level without someone else to send it down.
- A Railroad texture can be found unused beside the Burger Tank street, hinting about this area’s early detail conception.
- The sugarcane field is internally referenced as a cornfield, it may have used Blood Harvest’s cornfield props as a placeholder during development.
- The construction site has many gaps around the perimeter.
- The sugarmill office has a tiny hole in the ceiling near the pipeyard exit.
- During a storm, rain cannot be heard in some interior locations.
- Boarding the rescue boat early may cause a survivor bot to hang off the ledge as it incorrectly pathfinds.
- The storm surge does not entirely cover the map, mostly around the unplayable edges. This may be intentional as water can be expensive to render. The map attempts to hide this with dense foliage and fog.
- During a storm, wind is meant to ramp up with intensity, violently shaking telephone cables for example, but this appears non-functional ingame.
- Sometimes the storm fog transition will not work correctly and abruptly cuts to the intended distances. This is allegedly a program error of "StartFogTransition" for the fog controller entity.
- Virgil’s boat in the intro sequence is silent as it departs.
- None of the c4m1 houses have electrical outlets.
- On c4m3, behind the cutter ramp is a door missing for a rescue closet. It could be justified given the rampant storm winds knocking the door down, but more likely an oversight.
- During the ending cutscene, the color correction is mistakenly disabled.
- Rarely, thunder will rumble in the distance during the intro sequence.
- The Mississippi river ends abruptly on one side of the docks.
- One item spawn is impossible to obtain, it is trapped inside the initial gas station corner next to the Burger Tank. Likely misplaced.
- Beside the Burger Tank is a roof that is not player clipped, meaning a Tank can potentially punt a survivor over it.
- Tanks on rare occasions spawn stuck in a wall during c4m5’s finale, in Versus they will teleport to the nearest teammate.
- Rarely on a new round, fog lerp may use mismatched settings meant for the storm. This is fixed once a storm strikes.
- On c4m5, there are fog volumes with a missing field named "fog exterior controller finale". This is possibly where the storm would be at its worst further decreasing visibility than in previous chapters, similar to Blood Harvest’s cornfield. It covers the whole finale arena. I speculate its removal as players found the constant fog tiring.
- Although you now have Pyro’s flare gun to signal Virgil, you still need to light up the Burger Tank sign for rescue. He must be hungry too!
