North Carolina, USAThis was discussed a long time ago, and one bigger reason it's not on here is because a main site for survival records already exists. Since it doesn't really fit the theme of speedrunning, it made the most sense to keep them separated since there was already another place for it. Stayin' Alive was its own thing so that has leaderboards. It was meant to be a more punishing survival that would avoid having to play for multiple hours for a record.
The community is looking to clean up moderation lists a bit, so I am requesting the removal of "Ihsoy" and "p1xelfart" from the Left 4 Dead series moderation, "flicky" from Left 4 Dead moderation, as well as Ihsoy from super mod in Left 4 Dead and p1xelfart from super mod in Left 4 Dead 2. p1xelfart hasn't visited the site in at least a year, Ihsoy hasn't visited the site in three years, flicky hasn't visited the site in two years, and none were ever active in the community's Discord server. Series page - https://www.speedrun.com/left_4_dead Ihsoy's account - https://www.speedrun.com/user/Ihsoy/info p1xelfart's account - https://www.speedrun.com/user/p1xelfart/info flicky's account - https://www.speedrun.com/user/flicky/info
Could we have the Left 4 Mario and Tour of Terror games removed from the Left 4 Dead series? They are very old leaderboards for custom campaigns within the game that have since been moved into the category extensions section. Left 4 Mario - https://www.speedrun.com/left_4_mario Tour of Terror - https://www.speedrun.com/tot
November 1st, 2020
Updated wording on the following to try and clear up any confusion about recording runs,
"Video must be a live, uncut recording for the duration of run time (not demo playback) and audio must be enabled and clear enough to confirm no addons were used."
Changed to,
"Video must be recorded as you play (not demo playback) and be uncut for the duration of run time. Game audio must be clear enough to confirm no addons were used."
September 28th, 2020
This was actually a few days ago but the site wouldn't send me my PIN. Not my fault!
Because 2020 is the year that just won't stop surprising, many changes have been made to the boards to accommodate the new Last Stand update that is somehow a magical thing that exists. "All Campaigns" was renamed to "All Campaigns Legacy" to preserve existing runs and remain a mainstay for the "final" version the game existed in for all those years. A new "All Campaigns" is in its place which adds Last Stand. This may be renamed and moved to misc in the future if yet another new campaign comes out. Did the same for the bhop misc category.
Last Stand has been added as an IL.
A new version from the "final" previous release of the game and before the mic bug was fixed has been added officially, 2.1.4.7, and Newest now applies to any runs Last Stand or later, which is 2.2.0.0+. All previous runs labeled as "Newest" were updated to the 2.1.4.7 version which is technically incorrect as the number changed with small security fixes and such, but it's impossible to label them with the actual versions and they are functionally identical for a speedrun anyway.
Updated wording on the rules for the All Campaigns category to better make sense for the campaigns that are played, and specified how many of them there are (thirteen and fourteen). Also added a warning that the new categories may be moved to Misc and replaced if new campaigns ever release again.
Credit to burhac for getting the categories and versions sorted out on the day of release!
August 21st, 2020
Made a number of changes to the wording of the game's general rules with community input to add/fix/clarfiy anything that might have been unclear, and also finally added it to the site's new "Game Rules" tab as well as changed each category to reference checking that for the rules rather than having to go to the rules thread. Including a screenshot here showing the text delta of what changed from the old wording to the new wording. Pretty interesting.
Site's rules are dumb and ignores tab spacing so I had to spam hyphens to space out the dates from the commands instead. Better than nothing?
July 6th 2020,
Removed the "Realism" Yes/No column from all categories and hid the "Time with loads" column after a community vote. I made two awful collages of the votes for posterity seen below assuming the image links last,
In brief summary, here are the questions and the votes in text,
vote: should the "realism" column be removed from the leaderboards? vote by adding a reaction, only one vote, and please don't add meme reactions 1 = yes, remove it - 11 votes 2 = no, leave it there - 1 vote 3 = yes but only removed for full-game - 1 vote 4 = i am neutral on this - 7 votes
vote: should the "time with loads" column be removed from the leaderboards? this will leave only the without loads time shown, vote by adding a reaction and again, please only react with one vote and don't add meme reactions 1 = yes, remove it - 11 votes 2 = no, leave it as it is - 8 votes 3 = i am neutral on this - 1 vote
June 23rd 2020,
After community discussion, removed the rule that disallowed toggling realism on or off during a run, so you can now change it freely between campaigns. Since it hasn't been the idea for a while that a run takes place within a single server instance, banning the toggling of realism no longer made sense.
You can find the link to that Discord in the bar to the left. Version 2.0.0.0 is the only one that has the infinite stumble glitch you mentioned, it was patched immediately by Valve after release.
You should submit this to the resources section with a small tutorial.
And also, good job!
Has all of the classics, zombies that can't be knocked back, getting stumbled off of ledges, instant death by spitter boost straight down... it's basically a compilation of L4D's greatest hits.
As stated, the old versions are entirely legitimate ways to run the game as they are exactly what was released by Valve officially on Steam at some point in time. Many games have this option when possible, playing on old patches, game cart versions, or what have you due to some things not being fixed yet.
People can easily start runs and practice on Newest while they feel out if they enjoy running the game or not. Many campaigns can be played competitively for a starting player on Newest, then when they are ready they can take the step to get the old versions to pick up some things like a slightly easier Dead Center 1 skip, or a much easier (but not that much faster) Coaster skip. A lot of things patched in Newest has a workaround, either being slightly slower or harder compared to an old version like both of those previous examples. You can definitely still run on it and learn a lot.
We actually have a very good setup here, our old versions are incredibly easy to run and do not interfere with your main installation, and you can have as many different versions to launch as you want. Many other games don't have it nearly this simple, and for some games you even need to buy an entirely new and faster console! We should consider ourselves lucky.
Unfortunately, but understandably, this site does not allow uploading full old versions to it since that is essentially piracy. As a newer player that has spoken to other newer players recently, how do you think we could get the word out here that the old versions are easy to get through Discord? Would a guide in that section help? A post on the forum? I'm not really sure where new players might be more likely to check, but we can see about adding something somewhere to point them in the right direction.
March 19th 2019,
Added a small bit to the rules clarifying that you can't change game versions mid-run.
Updated from this, "You cannot switch Realism on or off mid-run, you must commit to what you started with."
To this, "You cannot toggle Realism nor change game versions mid-run, you must commit to what you started with."
If any part of the post came off as dismissive, I am sorry as that wasn't my intention. I'm not sure if that was about my talking about our runs or not, but I just wanted to say how the pathing advanced to stress that infinite ammo didn't matter since it did look like you might have felt that way. Looks like we're on the same page with this now.
Yes, mutators are a variable when submitting, but that option in itself is redundant with the main game because with them off, this is exactly the same as running a classic game, with the exception of the All Encounters category. I would be fine with that column being removed since it'd just result in duplicated runs with the main game, but it isn't a big deal. The place for Revolution is to play with all of the available modifiers to make it an entirely different run, and none of them should be disallowed because we already have leaderboards for that, classic TFE and TSE.
There was discussion held on these rules in the Serious Sam Done Quick Discord server with the community active there. A poll was held about the enemy limit, and then results were posted to these forums so things were clear. If anything, it was the previous state of rules that weren't discussed as nobody knew the reason why they were instated as such, and since there wasn't any reason to argue for it being disallowed, it seemed a pretty obvious change to make. They fell apart with the slightest bit of scrutiny of "wait, why is this one thing specifically banned?" which shows how poorly thought out it was in the first place. Somebody who was active from back then please do correct me if I'm not remembering this right, but I believe it was said that a previous mod (not sure if it was the founder?) had just written it in themselves and they aren't around anymore. So, really, if you think about it, the previous state of the rule was the one that wasn't fair, which was solved.
We've got it easy here. Other times when things change in a speedgame it could be a rule that needs to be added which makes runs slower, splitting up the boards in a messy way with legacy runs. Generally changes which don't make previous records impossible to beat are left up as-is, unless the change is substantial enough to warrant a subcategory, which I would very much advocate this does not at all (especially considering this is a barely-played offshoot of the main games). Exception here being All Secrets as I have no idea how that routing is. At least in co-op it's just going to be an OOB-fest with as many players as there are secrets so we never bothered, but solo could be entirely different... I'm not sure. I'd probably still argue that infinite ammo isn't necessary to subcategorize anyway.
I didn't think you guys were accusing us of cheating or anything. We aren't even moderators, we just brought this up to the attention of the community when we started seriously looking into running this game because the mutators are fun stuff. We only completed the one run without infinite ammo at the time more for a fair comparison to the old WR to see how all of the new stuff in the run compared, and yes, because it was in the rules at the time, but the discussion about the rules changing was already taking place so we thought "well, we'll do it with ammo for now to get a 1:1 against the old record". We likely would have continued that way had the rules not changed, but that doesn't mean we agreed with the way it was, nor did others once it was brought up.
So, anyway, in summary, there was process and discussion for the changes amongst multiple people, and I don't think that anything unfair took place. I hope it's a bit clearer now about what the community did behind these rules, and I hope you guys would like to come in again in the future to give the new pathing a go. One last thing about the enemy spawn rate, I have a pretty solid computer and I get lag when there are a lot of enemies too, it's just kind of how the engine works, so with even a moderately slow modern system I don't think you'd be on unfair footing there. Loads in co-op is something else... you can use the in-game time which discounts loading, but if you don't load in time to help your partner that could definitely be a problem. Maybe the slower loader should try hosting? I'm not sure what will happen then, but it might be worth investigating. It could be better than you're thinking, hopefully.
Also, Glover is great! That one is a hidden gem platformer from my childhood, not many people have heard of it. I don't think I'd ever run it but I can imagine it might be interesting since the levels were fairly open, usually. Ah, memories...
EDIT: Jesus. This came out longer than I expected. I'm known for writing essays, and I guess that doesn't stop here.
Infinite ammo is the least impactful to runs so it made no sense that it was singled out before. Why is that setting "cheap" and the others aren't? If I recall, the rules before even called it a "cheat" setting, whatever that means when you can also set fire rate and such. As stated by deagle already, there are massive differences with other settings that are already allowed, and infinite ammo is more a nuisance than anything. Initially, deagle and I even did a run with infinite ammo off since that's what the rule was at the time and still blew away the record because of new routing and many new skips and techniques. At the time we realized how little it did matter besides starting each encounter, which only resulted in it making even less sense it was disallowed.
The change to infinite ammo had no weight whatsoever on your runs falling behind, that was due to the massive advancements that have been made to the route since then. It's a completely different run now. Seeing that this is an offshoot from the original games, I don't believe the crazy settings should be disallowed in any way, including infinite ammo, since they are basic menu options here. Then we would just be inching it closer and closer to being redundant with the leaderboards for the classic games.
I'd instead invite you to come back and check out what's being done with the run nowadays. All of the boosts are pretty fun, particularly Second Encounter is nuts now with sniper boosts.
EDIT: Here's a link to that run that didn't use infinite ammo, and keep in mind this was when we very first started so there has been a lot of practice and improvements to routing since this, https://www.speedrun.com/sscr/run/zg7v49vz#
You can continue the run but if the crash was in the middle of a campaign you would need to start the campaign over. I think the relevant part of the rules you're looking for is this,
"For runs that have multiple campaigns, they can be played in any order you'd like, but each campaign must be played in a single server, from its first map to its last."
All that is required is clear footage of live gameplay with no segmenting or mods and audio that is audible enough for the duration to confirm that no sound addons were being used. Additionally, you either need to have your cursor showing in the recording (which pops up in the center when loading starts) or have the red "4" unobscured in the upper-right of the screen for the purpose of load removal. So, yes, you're fine without a timer. See this thread for general rules that apply throughout all runs unless otherwise specified in their individual rules, https://www.speedrun.com/l4d2/thread/x3cng
Where did you hear that you wouldn't be allowed to submit without a timer being shown? Unless it's from around here by a mod such as myself or on our Discord server (see the sidebar to the left for a link), it might not be "official", so to speak.
11/19/18
Added the Jumpman mutation to all relevant categories.
November 13th 2018,
Finished moving everything relevant over to the category extensions leaderboard including the custom campaigns, so make sure to take a look over at speedrun.com/l4d2_ce if you want to get some action on Blastoff or some curated custom campaigns. Additionally, the old Fortnight Challenges are now permanently open there!
