Valve has given L4D's Authoring Tools its high school diploma, now it's ready for users to begin their customised onslaught on the zombie shuffler this week.
Modders will be able to simply "package up" their crafted goods into a single .VPK file, for easy trade and installs. Third-party campaigns use the fancy "new Add-On framework."
"Since the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools Beta was released several weeks ago, mod authors have been cooking with gas, so to speak. The ranks of dedicated community members working hard to create new content have been swelling, and a very hungry horde awaits...," posted Valve, on the Left 4 Dead blog.
"We've long believed that Left 4 Dead should fully support community content, and we've been hard at work enhancing the UI and matchmaking systems to provide full support for your creations."
Basically you need to only throw a single file into your Left 4 Dead folder to install the new content, and then select it from the new Add-On menu option under 'Extras' to play it.
While matchmaking, if those looking to join your game don't have the add-on campaign then it'll let them download and install it.
Authoring Tools
"We're also officially releasing the Authoring tools/SDK. Thanks to all who provided feedback during the open beta, the authoring tools have been updated with a few fixes and several new additions, including:"
• The tutorial_standards map has been expanded into a minimal example campaign add-on called 'Dead Line'
• A new command line utility for creating and extracting from .VPK files
• Source files for all the official campaign maps
