Suicide Blitz 2 in comparison to everything else has really fallen off I must say. There are crazy amounts of clips everywhere, solo skips are practically non-existent besides a tiny one in map 2. Also in map 2 you can do that skip better, and some grenade launchering maybe in map 3, but that's it for the whole campaign because it's very thoroughly clipped otherwise. There was also much more underground corridor-y areas than I realized as well as multiple points where you have to wait for things to happen without being able to skip them. Not the best for speedrunning, really. So disappointing!

Urban Flight is pretty much exactly on the other end of the spectrum. There are a lot of optimizations big and small everywhere, including some nice solo movement tech. Very nice grenade launcher spots assuming one can be found, but there are throwable boosts too in case there isn't. Main drawback is some potential for RNG in a hedge maze on map 3, but the skips definitely make up for it.

Updated list,

Yama (must-have) Drop Dead Gorges (probably must-have) Warcelona (found some nice skips, ridiculously strong in co-op) Ravenholm (nice common jumps) Blood Tracks (light movement tech mostly in solo) Urban Flight (nice big and small optimizations spread throughout) Detour Ahead (potentially most difficult solo movement tech) Suicide Blitz 2 (Pretty skipless and many corridors, this may keep falling down in placing) I Hate Mountains 2¤¤¤¤ (trick checking might make or break this) Dark Blood 2¤¤ Highway to Hell¤ Death Aboard 2¤¤¤ City 17 Energy Crisis (this looks worse as time goes on)

Trick checking,

Blood Tracks has minor optimizations with a good common jump and a silly method for bypassing the Tank I've been working on. Not heavy on the skips overall, but they are still nice maps and it's a good bite-sized campaign, pretty short as well. The finale has a jesus spot that can be common boosted to, an easier jesus spot could still be attempted to be researched.

Detour Ahead may have the most difficult solo skips out of any campaign so far, at least without having practiced them much yet. One skip which is technical movement I gave up on tonight because I didn't want to spend too much time on actually executing it, and the same deal with another common jump that should get easier with practice. There are a couple of other movement skips and a nice throwable boost on one map. The gauntlet finale should have an interesting co-op strategy as well concerning warps assuming a stuck spot exists near the fuel truck. Pretty healthy mix of solo and co-op skips as well as being difficult.

Ravenholm has some strong stuff, credit to bill_play3 for finding a bunch of common jumps. Very interesting solo skips in the first two maps, one of which requires a crouch hop to finish, and in co-op you can save a lot of time with a very horizontal grenade launch. The third map has no tricks until the crescendo where I couldn't find a skip for solo, but a grenade launch in co-op will definitely take care of business. The finale has a jesus spot that can be common boosted to in solo that isn't too bad, co-op is much easier.

Updated list,

Yama (must-have) Drop Dead Gorges (probably must-have) Warcelona (found some nice skips, ridiculously strong in co-op) Ravenholm (nice common jumps) Blood Tracks (light movement tech mostly in solo) Detour Ahead (potentially most difficult solo movement tech) Suicide Blitz 2¤¤¤ (need to refresh + tricks) Urban Flight¤¤ (trick check, etc.) I Hate Mountains 2¤¤¤¤ (trick checking might make or break this) Dark Blood 2¤¤ Highway to Hell¤ Death Aboard 2¤¤¤ City 17 Energy Crisis (this looks worse as time goes on)

[quote=Derpduck]mat_hdr_level is not sv_cheats protected, but it is a "hidden command" and is still protected in multiplayer source engine games[/quote]

It is actually directly changing mat_fullbright, though. If you add mat_hdr_level and check the console at the menu, fullbright will be off, but once you get in-game it toggles fullbright to 1 and locks it. Even enabling cheats and trying to turn fullbright back off doesn't work, it just sticks to 1. Turning on fullbright without the launch parameter causes an identical effect.

[quote=mr.deagle]Cheat protection is sufficient to ban a command, but not necessary. For example, the kick command is not cheat-protected, but is banned anyway.[/quote]

I think the same, which is why I went into explaining why I didn't think it should be allowed regardless. Things aren't always so black and white, sometimes things need to be handled separately as they come up, like the kick command.

[quote=mr.deagle]I don't believe the command gives much of an advantage beyond a few dark areas such as The Passing 2 crescendo[/quote]

I tried it a little bit out of curiosity in swamp fever 1 and it's definitely way more effective than that... toggling fullbright on and off, you can see a HUGE difference in the ease in seeing enemies through bushes and trees especially, and many specials like Hunters in even the slightest dark area are no problem at all to spot right away. It's a really big difference and I could easily see it heightening my reaction times to things coming from my sides since I'll notice them right away.

Anyway, seems pretty settled now. Thank you for bringing the command to the community's attention, mike. Always feel free to post about things like this if there's something weird you want to try which isn't something you've seen used or discussed before.

Thanks! Feel free to discuss any of the ideas here since it's where I've placed them, regardless of how things go I'd still like to get opinions on some of it.

This is not true. When using this command, once you get in-game, it changes mat_fullbright to 1, which is a cheat-protected command. I just confirmed this myself.

Even placing that aside, I really feel that this command, which is being used for a clear advantage, indeed creates an unreasonable advantage while requiring the game to be played in an unreasonable way that most people are not going to want to deal with because it is very painful to look at. I know that I wouldn't want to come in to a speedrunning community to check out the runs and the strategies used and be met with this in the video, I just wouldn't want to watch it through. I can't even imagine playing under it for long, and that, to me, is the unfair advantage, the fact that one would have an easier time seeing enemies coming by having to deal with a setting no reasonable person should be expected to use, so they are the only ones benefiting from it.

I have no idea how this procedure works on this site so hopefully I'm not barking up the wrong tree, but I have been toying with the idea and would like to request moderator status. This is the most serious speedrunning I've done thus far, and by far the most I've been and possibly ever will be involved in a speedrunning community. I care about this game and the series has always been one of my favorites, dating all the way back to launch when I spent hours in Versus daily honing my high pounces and rock throws. I never knew back then how great it was to speedrun, and now here we are...

I'd say it's a fair statement that I am pretty deeply involved in speedrunning this game and working with its community currently. My list of accomplishments up to now would include submitting (with deagle) the campaign voting script, creating handy speedrunning tutorials to teach new players (thanks for the co-op help, Scibsj!), streaming it very often inspiring an influx of new runners (this also led to an autosplitter, thanks bill_play3!), pushing WR's low enough to encourage removing load times so it's fairer for everybody to compete, finding many tricks and optimizations / figuring out how to set up known tricks, and working hard on making sure the new custom campaign categories are the best they can be along with, of course, the others that are helping find and experiment with campaigns as well.

If elected as your new moderator, there are a few things I would like to improve. All ideas are encouraged to be discussed and argued against, for, or changed. Any moderator could enact these currently, but since I am very active I may as well go for it if we're all in agreement, and I can help to accept runs and make other changes now and into the future as I don't plan to be going anywhere. Regardless, I'd still like to toss around these proposed changes anyway. I would like to...

• Maybe remove the "Platform" column to reduce clutter? Darkossz proposed removing consoles originally, realistically consoles will not be able to compete and nobody is running them now nor would I really expect anybody to in the future. Definitely open to discuss this, however, since many other games have platform differentiation even if nobody submits anything but PC. Pretty much there for completion's sake.

• Add a difficulty column that is based on the lowest difficulty played in the run, so submitting things like Expert becomes viable and will essentially have its own leaderboard by sorting via difficulty. Expert doesn't change a lot, but there is no denying the sheer volume of spectators that feel the lowest difficulty is cheap. I've been saying recently that speedrunning is half a spectator sport, so I think there is value in running on the highest difficulty to say you've run the game at the most it has to offer. Unsure if Realism should fit in anywhere? Might warrant more discussion.

• Modify the rules to explain the new loadless method, particularly mentioning in co-op that the timer resumes on the first person loaded in. Also a brief mention on how to submit difficulty assuming that column is added.

• Work on converting more top times to loadless, and see what the boards do if all legacy times are moved to the with loads column. This will be reverted if it makes things weird but I want to try because it's inaccurate as it is right now.

• Reorder the version number dropdown in submissions so default is Newest (most likely choice for newbies) and it descends in order they are likely to be used. If the platform choice is kept, also reorder that so PC is default since it's easy to make the mistake and leave it PS3 right now.

• Create nifty icons to replace the first through third place trophies? I've always wanted unique ones that relate to the game like they do with Super Mario 64 and stuff, definitely up for ideas on what would be cool.

No matter which way we go with any of this, I just want to take a moment to thank you guys all around here for being involved and for sticking with me in stream all this time, helping build viewership and keep my sanity through countless Sacrifice Solo restarts. There is no way I could have ever predicted how involved and how far I'd get before I started early this year and it's been a good ride thus far. <3

Haunted Forest, Carried Off, and Blood Tracks,

Haunted Forest was pretty bad. Cheesy and ineffective (luckily) jumpscares, no tricks, very reliant on hallways and some really annoying gauntlet areas with infinite horde and thin corridors that doesn't allow you to get past them.

Carried Off, the first three maps were fine and may even have some skips with some looking around.... and then we reach the finale.... yikes!!! The entire finale takes place in an office building and is one LONG gauntlet run with infinite horde through constant tiny hallways, offices, and tight stairwells, with the horde always in your face completely impeding progress. That was the most painful level I've played in the game possibly ever and I would absolutely dread "speedrunning" it. It's a shame because the rest was fine, but I have to not recommend it on the finale alone.

Blood Tracks was quite good! Four maps, nice open areas, good atmosphere, a number of nice solo optimizations with a guaranteed Tank on map 3 that isn't a required kill and can be avoided with skill which makes it a plus. Standard holdout finale which needs checking for jesus spots. Not sure on what co-op skips may exist but it's pretty strong for solo which is rare. This one is going high up, I think.

That's the last of what is currently on my list!

Campaigns ordered from most to least liked, the more asterisks next to them the more unsure I am about their ranking, likely because it needs trick checking.

Yama (must-have) Drop Dead Gorges (probably must-have) Warcelona (found some nice skips, ridiculously strong in co-op) Blood Tracks¤ (want to check more, but it looks strong for solo) Detour Ahead¤¤¤ (need to refresh on it + tricks) Suicide Blitz 2¤¤¤ (need to refresh + tricks) Urban Flight¤¤ (trick check, etc.) I Hate Mountains 2¤¤¤¤ (trick checking might make or break this) Dark Blood 2¤¤ Highway to Hell¤ Death Aboard 2¤¤¤ Ravenholm¤¤¤¤¤ (really need to look at tricks) City 17 Energy Crisis (this looks worse as time goes on)

[quote=Derpduck]My plan is to find so many good maps that you have to make an All Campaigns version of this[/quote]

Hah, well, for the first category I figure 1:30ish might be a good mark, once that's run for a while and if there are enough campaigns left maybe another category with more, and then a final, big category with it all? No idea, but at least we'll have a list of campaigns we've investigated to go on if we come to that in the future.

Death Row, Day Break, and Blood Proof,

Death Row wasn't too bad overall. The first two maps have a decent amount of open areas with map 1 having a potential for a large skip off of the roof right away, and map 2 would need some checking. Map 3 gets a bit disappointing, though, as it largely turns into a corridor-fest. Standard holdout finale in a small area so if a jesus spot didn't exist it might not be too hard to find a place that gets the commons spawning close by. I would put it low on the list.

Day Break? More like CLIP BREAK! This has the most thorough clipping I've ever seen, he even lays a clip over the entire ceiling everywhere! This guy is familiar with grenade launcher boosting for sure. Aesthetically nicely done with unique environments, but that is unfortunately the only thing really going for it. Maps 2 and 3 really drag on, no perceived skip potential at all, a lot of points where you have to wait out a crescendo event, and a campaign-ruining finale with super repetitive scavenging that would be quite a nightmare to solo (and this comes from a fan of scavenge finales). A pass all around I'm afraid.

Blood Proof isn't bad, but it isn't great, either. I just feel very unenthusiastic going through it. Three maps, all of which are very short, so it goes by quickly. The first two maps are all streets and buildings, decorated well but very samey. The first map has a couple of decent solo optimization jumps, not sure if map 2 has anything, and map 3 has a gauntlet finale that you can skip activating in the dumbest way possible just by crouching which then makes it a boring, short, straight run to the end although you can do some bunnyhopping. Very unremarkable overall so I'd probably just pass.

Four more, Roadkill, Drop Dead Gorges, Dark Blood 2, and Blackout Basement.

Roadkill was hilariously broken. The first level can be done in maybe 30 seconds, so, yeah.... pathing and clipping is awful pretty much everywhere, and you can stand on any high car and nothing can get to you. Standing on a truck in the finale is a jesus spot. Really lazily done and clearly not bothered to be tested at all. If this were ever used it would only be as a "meme" campaign because of how stupid the skips and clipping are.

Dark Blood 2 was interesting. I enjoyed it for a casual playthrough and it tries some unique things, as well as some co-op skip potential at least. The finale is a very difficult scavenge with a lot of gas can juggling that MrFailzz just LOVES! This would need some thorough checking, but it's worth being on the list even if it's lower in case we need more campaigns in the future.

Blackout Basement is a contender for one of the worst, ughhhhhhhhhhhhh...... I didn't even go beyond map 2, I just didn't want to spend my time on that any further. The first map drags on, and on, and on, and on, with endless dark concrete corridors that all look exactly the same with zero skip potential. Pretty terrible.

Drop Dead Gorges looks FANTASTIC! No, really, it does, that wasn't sarcasm. Talk about a change from the last entry. It is designed well in all aspects from unique aesthetic to how it feels to run around, with a lot of natural verticality to it and very open but controlled spaces, and on top of that looks like it might be one of the strongest for solo skips (after some checking). I really enjoyed running through it, why couldn't Valve include campaigns like this officially!? This one is probably going to be in the must-have category once I trick check it. Good recommendation, Derpduck.

Campaigns remaining for me to check,

Death Row Day Break Haunted Forest Carried Off Blood Proof

Potential campaigns in rough order of most to least liked,

Yama (must-have) Drop Dead Gorges (probably must-have) Warcelona (found some nice skips, ridiculously strong in co-op) Detour Ahead Suicide Blitz 2 (needs trick checking) Urban Flight I Hate Mountains 2 (needs trick checking, might be higher if it goes well) Dark Blood 2 Highway to Hell Death Aboard 2 Ravenholm or City 17 Energy Crisis

I've taken a much more thorough look for tricks in Warcelona and this campaign is ridiculously strong in giant OOB co-op skips, possibly the strongest we'll find with a major jump on every single map.

Map 1, if you find an early throwable (not sure about spawns currently), you can get on the roof of the building right after you get out of the church and do some fancy clip walking to make your way down to the street with the saferoom not too far away. It actually shouldn't be too hard if a throwable can be found quickly.

Map 2 you can do an easy throwable boost on top of a building before entering the subway, walk through the low-res cars for a while, and get back in-bounds through a hole in a roof, skipping the entire destroyed subway section.

Map 3 you can boost any number of places to skip the underwater section and plane, and with an idle warp with another boost skip the howitzer as well. Basically travel down the left side of the map, I think. Bonus! There is a major solo skip here too! With a bile you can do an easy common jump over a fence early on and do some pretty nice technical jumps to get on the destroyed plane and drop in just past its door.

The finale has three grenade launches that can save a lot, one up the hole in the beginning to skip the elevator ride, another up the high wall where one of the fountains are about halfway through the run skipping having to go up side stairs (only saves if a stuck spot is nearby), and a final one into the second floor window skipping activating the gate.

This is definitely a co-op campaign if there ever was one, and it has very strong bunnyhopping as well. Solo-wise there was the nice skip on level 3, but I couldn't figure out anything with the others. I did come really close on map 2, though, and I feel like a common jump somewhere with a little tweak could still work that I just haven't thought of yet. The huge, numerous co-op skips are incredibly enticing, though... remind me next time I'm on, MrFailzz, and I'll show you my findings.

I'd say after that journey I am likely to give Warcelona a final thumbs-up overall.

Three more tonight,

Fatal Freight was disappointingly trickless. The aesthetic was fine, the map design was fine and actually had a good ratio of corridors/open areas, but it was kind of straight-forward to speedrun. Everything is clipped well and there is only really a co-op skip on level 4 that can be done, I'm not sure any solo skips exist at all. The finale is a two-part scavenge and then holdout, the scavenge has some potentially nasty can RNG and the holdout is pretty long with potentially no jesus spot. I'd only use it as a last resort to fill in space since it wasn't corridory and the aesthetics were decent.

Highway to Hell is a tough one. Very confusing as a casual playthrough with some pretty open floorplans with many paths (which could be a boon for speedruns), level 1 was office building mania which I wasn't a fan of but it gets better as it progresses. Setting-wise it has a generic buildings in a city feel for the most part with a standard holdout finale although I liked the area it was in and I would be surprised if a jesus spot isn't found. There may be some major co-op skips and solo I would need to glance around for some things so this might be OK depending on how that goes. On the fence about it currently.

Dam it! 2, the community one not the new Turtle Rock one (that's why I thought of this), unquestionably a pass. It started out alright but very quickly went into tight corridors with no skips and a lot of blind corners for almost the entire campaign, plus a very long and painful wait for an elevator in the middle that was basically a holdout finale in itself. A weird finale that would force the requirement of bots and a ton of variance in time because of these downed lines you need to keep reconnecting. Bleh.

Looks like it's shifted again? The form now says December 2nd.

Unfortunate that it's so difficult to coordinate in the middle of everything else that's going on.

Tried Plan B and The Bloody Moors,

Plan B was three short, very bland, very trickless maps. Nothing much to say here, one of the worst of the bunch so far.

The Bloody Moors, I think we finally found an author that is familiar with throwable boosting because it was clipped very thoroughly. Very big and open maps so it wasn't the best for speedrunning but I did like the aesthetic for casual play. Then map 4 happened. If it's possible for a single level to retroactively ruin everything before it, this is the map, it's like an entirely different author stepped in and shoved it in the middle, I am baffled as to what happened. It really would have been a decent casual experience otherwise. Definitely not speedrun-worthy at all. :(

I hate you, Derpduck! Never going to finish this list, maaaaaan........ I'm passing on any campaigns not showing up in the workshop, I think for future runners that may come in to play these it will be important that they are easily accessible in the official workshop for the game. Gamemaps even froze my browser when I had it up during stream and I didn't realize, missing 10+ minutes of chat, so that wasn't cool of it. It's alright since a lot of good campaigns are turning up anyway. I added a few from your new list to check out that were on the workshop, in particular I look forward to trying Drop Dead Gorges, the screenshots seem nice.

Campaigns remaining for me to check,

Blackout Basement Death Row Day Break Dark Blood 2 Fatal Freight Haunted Forest Carried Off Drop Dead Gorges Highway to Hell Blood Proof

Potential campaigns in rough order of most to least liked,

Yama (pushing hard as a must-have) Detour Ahead Suicide Blitz 2 (needs trick checking) Warcelona (needs some trick checking) Urban Flight I Hate Mountains 2 (needs trick checking, might be higher if it goes well) Death Aboard 2 Ravenholm or City 17 Energy Crisis

I'd submit some solos if it happened if that helps any decision. I already have the L4D2 records so I could slide right in here without any real trouble besides finding alternate ways to do things for a few maps. Not to mention we'll be running L4D1 in the coming AGDQ so the practice would be useful for me.

Wait, now the event has shifted?

I need confirmation on this because my job is in retail and this now starts on black friday. I need to figure out what I need to do if this is true.

Almost done with mine, just the All Campaigns Co-op to go. There are also a couple I need to tell deagle to update (Swamp Fever 10:00, Death Toll 11:29), and those were interesting... I don't have my perspective recorded anywhere for those anymore and it's impossible to tell from his view how long my load is. Luckily, both of the runs were recorded on the same respective days/sessions that the WR's were so what I did was take my total load time from the WR's and mirrored it to those two runs. It's not going to be pinpoint accurate, but it should be extremely close since it was done in the same sessions.

Also, I feel that, assuming it doesn't mess up the sorting on the leaderboards, the times with loads of every run should be placed into the time with loads category with the time without loads left blank since it is implying those are all the loadless times, making the times look slower than they really are.

[quote=lurk]TheMaster, would you be willing to do a donation bid war between the 2 games or are you set on preferring to run L4D2? We don't really have an extra 45min to throw into your estimate with how the schedule is now to show both games.[/quote]

Fair enough, figured I'd try in case there was time. Yes, since there is a choice between the two we would like to stick to L4D2 even just for the reason that it is going to be more interesting to watch since it offers more skips than L4D1. It would be a shame to not feature it if a bid war went in the other direction.

Hey, great to see another person coming in to run the game!

I've sent you the message on Twitch I send everybody who asks with the relevant links. You can see it in your inbox by going to twitch.tv/messages/inbox while logged in to your account.

I have a speedrunning tutorial series on YouTube with everything you need to know to learn tricks for running this game, you can find a link to the playlist here, http://www.speedrun.com/l4d2/guide/z4qtc - note that there is some stuff that's been found since or is done more efficiently that isn't featured in those videos. I plan to do an update with those sometime.

Finally, if you have any further questions feel free to catch me streaming L4D2 runs on Twitch and ask away, or ask them here.

Welcome to the community!

So, at the end of my stream tonight I loaded up Yama to show MrFailzz some stuff and, while messing around in map 3, found this...

I finally brought him around on the campaign tonight, it just keeps getting better and better with this stuff... that may now be my second favorite solo skip behind coaster and this video doesn't even show beforehand when you get out of the ski lift and ride on top of it across the chasm like a badass.

Copied and pasted the availability we had used for the submission since nothing changed since then.

I replied via Twitter direct message but I'm not sure if you've seen it, I'm new to Twitter so I may have even missed a reply, but I'll follow it up here. If there is a choice, we would actually strongly prefer to just run Left 4 Dead 2 over the original as L4D1 is the one already accepted into AGDQ and L4D2 is a much more interesting run anyway. I'm not sure if there is extra time for it, but could a donation incentive to run the original four L4D1 campaigns within L4D2 work instead? It adds roughly 45 minutes to the run. Otherwise I'm not sure what else to suggest, unless you want to skip incentives all together. I'd have to confer with deagle to think up if there is anything else donation-wise that could be done.