June 20th 2017 (ish),

It is the end of an era. Really, it was a long time coming, but after the Fortnight Challenge's Blastoff category was run, the realization came up... this mode is really cool and changes the game in a very different and interesting way, too bad Last Man On Earth is the exact opposite. We discussed it for a while, and the majority, as well as some of the top record holders, were behind replacing the LMOE miscellaneous categories with Blastoff, which put the nail in its coffin.

LMOE was a very uneventful, boring mode that only detracted from the speedrun, and was a glorified walking simulator. Nobody actually said they enjoyed running it, nor had interest to outside of purely to compete on a leaderboard. The only real reason was for "practice" before playing a real mode, but there's also the fact that practicing without any of the enemies present in a real run is a dangerous way for new players to pick it up. Besides, the same environment to practice tricks can be done easily with director_stop and the like.

There was no reason for the mode to continue, and with the introduction of Blastoff which generated some excitement to run since it's an entirely new way to path and play the game, it has replaced LMOE. The Full-game Leaderboard now has Blastoff Main Campaigns and Blastoff All Campaigns miscellaneous categories, and the Level Leaderboard now has a Blastoff miscellaneous category.

June 19th 2017,

Added "thirdpersonshoulder" to the list of banned console commands. I forgot about this ages ago, apparently. The thirdperson command is protected by cheats but thirdpersonshoulder isn't, nice consistency, Valve.

June 13th 2017,

Added a small bit to the co-op rules for Main and All Campaigns that states only the runners present at the start of the run and who completed at least one whole campaign can be given credit for the run, and the Co-op category for individual campaigns states the same except instead of one whole campaign, it says for the majority of the campaign's duration. This was made after a discord discussion revealed that somebody could join for 5 seconds and be given credit, which would be pretty silly. This should avoid all silly situations just in case.

After some thought and a vote, Yama has been removed from the boards for being very slow and uneventful overall, and has been replaced with Detour Ahead. Urban Flight may also need replacing as cracks have shown in that campaign as well. To be continued...

With a 6/2 majority it's clear Yama wasn't the best candidate to speedrun, so its fate has been decided. Also with a majority Detour Ahead was voted as the campaign that most would like to see replace it, so we'll go ahead and do so. Thanks to all for their responses, as always.

Here is a sheet with the responses, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wn7DiSNiDrkgRqj0kxcW9IJw6dJJqTuo4-gqSVnNows/

So long. Hopefully you can still pop in to try some Fortnight Challenges and stuff? Either way, thanks for letting us know and the farewell.

It is time. The custom campaign categories were worked on a while ago, and although I feel good picks were made overall, Yama turned out to be quite long and somewhat empty in the middle section. This thread is for discussing if Yama should be replaced before the custom campaigns are locked in and the full-game version of the category is created (which will be directly following this). The decision will not necessarily be made by a majority vote. I am looking for opinions to help me decide what to do with it, and also to decide what it will be replaced with.

When you submit your opinion I ask you to please not do so purely based on any time you have invested in practicing it (hardly anyone has) nor consider the two runs up already. Try to impartially decide based only on its merits of being speedrunnable, whether it's something you want to go through, if it has enough tricks, the length, and so on.

You can write any opinions down in this thread, but the priority is to vote on it in the following form so it's all neatly collected in one place, https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeZpH3GjpnREGsD-L8FoZ8OhpgxKAEiPxkrQloqT8ak2Ch3sA/viewform

I encourage you to crack Yama open and try it before submitting your opinion, as well as trying the other campaigns that could replace it if you'd like to. You have until this time is up! http://itsalmo.st/#timetodecideyamasfate_mvk09

Here are the workshop pages for all of the campaigns on the form,

Yama - http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=170392241

Blood Tracks - http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=377195503

Dark Blood - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121175467

Death Aboard - http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=355946991

Detour Ahead - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121275675

Highway to Hell - http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=175577491

Just to finally cap this off, there was more discussion and a community vote that ultimately allowed the use of the map command. Responses to the questionnaire posted can be seen here, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XyCq84VGijwKDkmVT7kDEwzIRVGRvo-OoDRryjwjyC4/

Thank you to everybody that participated.

May 22nd 2017,

A bit late on this as it happened several days ago, but I added burhác to the mod team! I'll now pause for the applause. clapping clapping clapping roaring whistling less clapping much less clapping one awkward, very late clap

What a reception. I know he'll do well, he was already helping with grabbing loadless times and has been in the community for a while so it was time. I've needed the help with verification as well since I am still streaming often and working out Fortnight Challenge stuff and so on.

Updated wording slightly in the rules about snd_rebuildaudiocache so it's more forceful and also points to the rules thread to get information about what it even is. There have been a couple of runs recently that needed to be rejected for their lack of its use so since I could improve how it was written, I went ahead as it's all I can do to make sure runs are fair.

May 15th 2017,

Really important update today. The most importantest.

I added a new background image to the Left 4 Dead series page which legitimately looks amazing http://www.speedrun.com/left_4_dead - credit to lonewolfhbs on deviantart for the great artwork I found on Google Image.

Also updated some old runs to loadless timing: Blood Harvest, Dead Air, and Death Toll are now entirely done. Credit for that to burhac for supplying the times.

May 12th 2017,

The Fortnight Challenge is live! A single Full-game Leaderboard category which rotates its "challenge" every two weeks has been added, the challenge being pretty much anything we can come up with which seems interesting enough. An official thread for this category has been posted here with more information, http://www.speedrun.com/l4d2/thread/f7m7w

Welcome to the official Fortnight Challenge thread, where you can discuss anything about the current challenge, how it works, and post ideas that you'd like to see for future challenges, as well as vote in polls now and then.

What is the Fortnight Challenge? It is a Full-game Leaderboard category which rotates its active challenge every two weeks. The challenges consist of the game being modified in various ways with its own rules, no potential change is off-limits! This makes for an interesting category that breaks away a bit from the regular game. Once a two-week cycle has ended the leaderboards have their placings recorded here as well as on the L4D Speedrunning Wiki and is replaced with the next challenge and its new ruleset. Make sure to always read the rules for each new challenge as they can change to be specific to it! The challenges run for 11 days from a Thursday night EST to the second Monday night EST, with three days off to allow for a break and plenty of time to get everything sorted out for a new challenge to be rotated in. Within the rules will be linked a countdown timer that you can use to see exactly when run submissions end.

It is encouraged to post here about the challenges and ideas you would like to see incorporated into future challenges, from small changes like movement speed or health, to big changes like modifying cheat-protected commands to change gameplay or modifying spawns. Again, nothing is off limits to explore, and different elements that compliment each other can be combined into one more interesting category, so anything you propose can be considered. I may cherrypick ideas and use them in future challenges.

The current challenge is One With Everything - A Buddhist Master goes to Treescrub and Treescrub asks him "Hey buddy, what can I make ya?" and the Buddhist Master replies, "make me one with everything". Addicted Blastoffman Driver is here! | The challenge ends... at some point? Leaving it open-ended for the time being!

You can find this challenge included in the One With Everything addon which can be: downloaded here.

May 10th 2017,

Finally updated the rules section about load removal to reflect the more accurate method of cursor timing. No actual rule changes result from it, if anything it became more open as having an unobstructed loading icon is no longer required as long as the autosplitter or cursor method is available. It now encourages the use of the autosplitter or ensuring you capture your mouse cursor in your recording, and informs the player that they essentially take a slight time penalty if the loading icon needs to be used instead. I did not want to absolutely require capturing mouse cursor as I could easily see runs being rejected for those initially unaware, and I definitely don't want to require the autosplitter since it can be potentially laggy on some machines. The loading icon is usable, just more inaccurate on version 2.0.2.7 and only off by a frame uncommonly in all other versions. Since it can only ever result in a slower time than the most accurate methods and is therefore not unfair to other runners, I decided to allow it as a backup just in case to prevent rejecting a lot of future runs.

Also updated the load removal tutorial text to reflect information about this. The rules explanation thread has been updated too.

[center]Last updated May 9th, 2017[/center]

Welcome, person that might have followed the link here from the rules! Here we will explore in more depth what each rule means, why it was made, and what you need to do to make sure your run is squeaky clean for submission. Thanks to bill_play3 for suggesting this thread.

[big][center]~ Timing Methods and Load Removal ~[/center][/big] You may be wondering why time is removed specifically for loads but not in other areas, such as cutscenes or events. Runs on this site are generally considered RTA (Real-Time Attack), where timing starts on gaining control and ends at the end of the category. This includes timing any scripted events in the game, including cutscenes. When a level ends the screen blurs for 2 seconds, then the scoreboard appears for 6.5 seconds, meaning that is actually a scripted sequence which lasts exactly 8.5 seconds before loading is triggered, and so only the amount of time the game is actually performing the load is removed. There is a significant difference in time between different machines in how long loading takes, even between runs on the same machine some months apart, so it is necessary to ensure the runs are timed fairly and accurately regardless of your hardware.

There are a few methods for removing your loading times. It is very highly recommended that you either use the available autosplitter (this is still a work in progress for L4D1) or ensure your recording has the option set to capture your mouse cursor. The final method is by using the red loading icon in the upper-right. The mouse cursor is preferred as it always appears the moment loading initiates, while the loading icon has a chance to show up late by a single frame. Since using that mark would mean you are including more actual loading time in your run, if you forget to capture your mouse cursor or do not want to use the autosplitter (again, it's still being ported), you do accept the time loss by having to use the loading icon as a backup.

[big][center]~ Timing Co-op Runs ~[/center][/big] Removing loads for a co-op run is a tricky thing, and unfortunately we have no means at this time to force all players to load in together. The best way, then, is to require that the player who loads in first (always the host of the server) has their perspective recorded so that it can be timed by their map loads, resuming timing the moment the first player enters the next map. Without this, another player could be loading first and taking any number of actions or gaining ground in the map while the time is still paused for another player that is still loading in.

If any players that are not the host finish loading before he does, their game will actually wait for the host to complete his load while they wait to come in themselves. You can force players to load closer together in this way by using the "Local Server" option through the main menu with a player that has slower loading times than others in the group.

The current situation for co-op timing isn't entirely ideal, but it is the best that currently exists and is far more fair than not removing loads at all. We've tried methods to force all players to load in simultaneously but nothing has worked so far. Maybe some day...

[big][center]~ Why Certain Addons are Allowed or Banned ~[/center][/big] A subject of some debate, the addon rules are currently lax, attempting to allow what doesn't give an advantage to gameplay so that players can use addons they like if they so choose to, and banning addons which give advantages. An example of addons that would give an advantage would be changes to special infected skins (like bright white) so they are easier to see, changing the sounds they make so they are more noticeable and easier to react to, and so on. HUD elements are usually for personal preference so it was allowed. Weapon and survivor skins were allowed since they are already so easy to see with the built-in highlights.

There has been discussion on if addons should all be banned outright so that there isn't any grey area and all of these confusing exceptions, but since there hasn't yet been an issue with submissions abusing them, it has stayed lax so far.

[big][center]~ About Those Banned Console Commands ~[/center][/big] In addition to commands protected by sv_cheats, there are some more not protected by a cheat flag which still aren't allowed. Criteria for banning a command could be based on some simple questions, such as:

*Can it be used by the client, or only by the server?

Is it available as an option in the menu system, or only possible through the console?

Does it bypass an element of regular gameplay?*

"z_difficulty" was disallowed because it can only be executed by the server, not the client. This means it couldn't be used in official Valve servers, either. It also bypasses the cooldown timer in the voting system for newer versions of the game.

"changelevel" was disallowed also because it can only be executed by the server, and because it badly breaks the intro cinematic in a way not otherwise possible through regular gameplay if you use it to switch to the first map of a campaign.

"kick" was disallowed again because it can only be executed by the server and is not otherwise available to be used at any time you'd like. An exception was found later in the Dark Carnival finale that uses a developer oversight to force the bots to be kicked from the server, and this method was allowed since it occurs during regular gameplay. Click here for a thread with more details on how it works.

[big][center]~ Using Milliseconds to Break Ties ~[/center][/big] Eventually times were lowered enough to where a whole-second tie was uncommon, but did start to happen. Milliseconds were enabled when submitting times so that they could be used to determine who was truly faster. It is not used when regularly submitting because it makes the leaderboards look very cluttered for an unnecessary bit of information when most runs are full seconds apart. Keeping the Millisecond field at 000 will cause it not to show on the leaderboards at all, so that is required unless your run ties another (for example, you both have 11m22s), in which case a moderator will time them both precisely to break the tie.

2.0.2.7 is also an option which has the same skips and is a bit more stable, as well as not requiring downloading the fix.

Make sure to use snd_rebuildaudiocache once you get the version running. More info about that can be found in the rules thread here (last section), http://www.speedrun.com/l4d2/thread/wlk68

May 2nd 2017,

Small update. Look behind this post. Background! Added a background image to the boards so it's not a plain color anymore. Not sure I'm completely satisfied with the current image but I was having trouble finding one that looked good and also had darker colors so text remained easy to read. I'll see about getting something even better, but for now at least the current one adds some more flavor.

EDIT: Whelp, already found another one after more digging. Looks much better!

Oh, another thing I forgot to mention is the content being run in the challenges. It might vary per challenge depending on how long it seems like it'll take to run through a campaign, but I was thinking on average maybe a run should consist of two campaigns? That would probably place most runs at around the 20 minute mark, and a single campaign seems it could be too short. I also wanted to purposely pick campaigns to match the rules, so a challenge based on bunnyhopping, for example, would likely run on Dark Carnival at least and whatever else compliments hopping.

We could modify the days on/off a bit, odd days won't matter so much since the important part is keeping it in a two week schedule so that the start and end days can be consistent. Having enough time to swap the categories properly without having to rush to do it if real-life things are happening and so on is important. We could go 11 on 3 off, add another day in there around the weekend. That means it could run, let's say... from end of day (near 12am-ish, I guess) eastern time on Thursday, to end of the day on the second Monday? That gives Friday leading into the full weekend twice in my timezone, and should be at least two full weekends in others.

I'm not sure about prizes, at least not monetary... as pickle was saying, that may detract too much from running other categories plus it is a lot to ask from the community to pool that. Also to consider once prizes are introduced (especially monetary) is that the chance for cheating as well as the requirement to stop it goes up dramatically. Some of these challenges may have sv_cheats on if mutations can't force commands effectively otherwise, so being able to confirm that no cheating has happened will not really be possible. If it's left just for fun and a temporary leaderboard that isn't as big a deal.

As I mentioned about picking a couple of campaigns that compliment the current challenge, custom campaigns could certainly be run as well if they fit it. If there's even a really unique campaign (out of the box like Questionable Ethics) that doesn't fit being a permanent fixture on the leaderboards but may be interesting to try anyway, this would be the place for it. I was already thinking of trying Survival here and there which is the same idea.

It is time! Time to discuss the Bi-Weekly Challenge leaderboard that I've been talking about for so long. I finally have more time to dedicate to getting it up. As always, comment on all ideas below and anything else that may come to your mind.

This thread is for discussing the basic idea of the "category" itself, including how often it rotates, how to handle creating the rules and applying them for runs, and whatever else comes up. This is NOT the thread yet for discussing actually running the category as far as challenge ideas or the currently active challenge. That will be its own official thread later. This thread is to get the functionality of how it works done.

The proposed idea is a single, temporary category, likely on its own tab in the Full-game Leaderboard, which rotates its ruleset every X amount of days. It will have "challenges" which are crazy ideas that make for a much different run than usual, the crazier the better and anything can potentially be used to build one of these challenges, including modifying cheat commands.

How the rotation would work is that the category under the Full-game Leaderboard will be created for a new challenge, possibly reading as something like "Challenge - Jockpocalypse", Jockpockalypse being the title of the current challenge. It will have its own rules when you click the view rules button that is specific to the challenge, including either a mutation to use that will set the environment to run it all up for you (ideal, this is being investigated), or perhaps a config with the commands ready that can be executed once in-game. When the challenge is ready to be rotated, the leaderboards will be screenshotted, written out and preserved on the wiki and a thread here, and then deleted and replaced with a new one with new rules and all. I'm pretty sure deleting a category doesn't actually remove the runs and readding a category of the same name will restore it as it was. I still aim to test that.

Originally I conceptualized it as a weekly challenge since that came to mind immediately, but then I worked through that and realized bi-weekly (every second week) made more sense. I am thinking of running it for 10 days on, 4 off, then the rotation. There are many reasons for this. First, seven days may be just a bit too low to get some good runs in before a challenge rotates. It may also be difficult to delete and replace a category with a new one all at once, so four days off gives plenty of time to be sure I can slot a new one in time and do the leaderboard preservation. Having time off leaves other categories more open to run. It will run through challenges at a slower pace, making it easier to keep up with making new ones. This also allows a challenge to run through two weekends, maybe starting sometime Friday and ending the second Monday? Need to figure out what range allows all timezones to get a full Saturday and Sunday twice over.

I am thinking of holding a vote after every 4? 5? 6? challenges to bring back a previously run challenge, or still continue to a new one, in case we really like one and want to revisit it after a while. Hopefully the leaderboards will preserve as I hope so when one is readded all old runs are still there.

I still need to work on actually getting the environment for a challenge done enough (figuring out mutation or config and rules) of one challenge before the category can go up, so it will be a bit. I do have quite a few ideas already to support it for a while, once they are set up and confirmed to be interesting enough.

April 21st 2017,

More rule wording changes for clarity. For the Full-game categories, added a bit near the top under the list of campaigns that now states clearly all campaign finales in the run must fade to black to count as completed. We all knew it, but I realized the rules weren't actually completely clear that's required to count the campaign as completed. Also changed wording in the section describing how time starts and stops. Previously it just said time starts when you gain control and ends when the final escape cutscene starts, now it says specifically what frames are used based on HUD element timing. Rules are lookin' good.

After the majority F1'd in the difficulty vote above, Expert Realism is now added as a subcategory to Main Campaigns Solo, Main Campaigns Co-op, All Campaigns Solo, All Campaigns Co-op, Main Campaigns Bhop Script, All Campaigns Bhop Script, and the Solo, Co-op, and Solo Bhop Script Level Leaderboard categories. Go forth and prove you're a tryhard by completing the game on the hardest possible difficulty, you badass!

Vote's over and the results are in, with an ending tally of 9 to 6, Expert Realism has been accepted. It was a landslide for a while sitting at 9 to 4 for quite a few days, then two no votes came in towards the end. Wonder who was holding out?

I'll add the categories in next chance I get, and once I figure out how best to get it to only the categories they need to be in. LMOE will likely not have an Expert category (that will require even more values be added, plus no Realism), unless it's super requested, I suppose. It has a far greater chance of not being run, though, since it's an offshoot of what's already a miscellaneous category.

Solo, Solo Bhop (I guess?), and Co-op will all have the Expert Realism subcategory, and I'll see about separating the Realism column out of it as well since that's obviously redundant.

The regular difficulty category will be called "Any Difficulty", for now? So it's "Any Difficulty" and "Expert Realism", since I don't think we settled on anything that made more sense. This can always be renamed.

April 14th 2017,

Slight update to the rules in the banned addons section that says to use snd_rebuildaudiocache to fix broken sounds on old versions of the game so it can't be used as an advantage, and also that audio must be enabled as well, to be clear.

Made a rules explanation thread on bill_play3's request, check it out! http://www.speedrun.com/l4d2/thread/wlk68

Added a link to this thread at the bottom of all rules.