Happy birthday Joe 'Captain Rhodes' Pilato

Thats right, our captain is 65 today!. wish all the best joe and hope your looking forward to nmo_fema as much as i am!

A change in direction, but one you may like!

"you can kill my specimens, but what about the millions more that are waiting to greet you outside?"

-Dr.Logan

Well it's been a long time since I've spoken to the loyal fans of Day of the Dead: retribution who are following this page, all 4 of you, my wolf pack lol and i wanted to bring you all into whats been happening and what exactly is going to happen this year, but first id like you to get to know me a bit more and why I'm doing this. So lets kick things off shall we ?

How did i get here?

Growing up films were really important to me, as a child i was fortunate enough to have an understanding family and i was able to sneak 15+ films away for my own viewing, which meant i was able to catch some real classics first time around or at least get my head around them early on. When i was about 9 or 10 years old ( the mists of time help me forget lol) i had cultivated a healthy obsession with horror films, the 80's was a fairly easy time to do that i must say, if you have ever bought a copy of Fangoria magazine you may be able to relate at least a little bit. I had always been a huge fan of the film "Demons" by Dario Argento, a film revolving around a cinema in which the patrons get turned  into monstrous demons with claws who scratch people who then turn into demons with claws, you get the idea and as you can imagine much gore was to be had, but there was more than that, this film was my first encounter with the whole concept of a "pandemic of murder" and how our hero's survive, or more interestingly, why they don't survive. 

I remember stumbling across Day of the Dead quite by accident in my local video rental shop, ultimately it came down to a fight between Day of the Dead and a film i would not get around to watching until i was 23, Terry Gilliam's "Brazil", which i highly recommend as a side note. So there i was, an eager 9yr old gore-hound itching to see another splat fest as the world falls apart. Instead, i found something very different in "Day of the Dead", it showed me extremes of human behaviour i had not considered before (what 9 year old does) watching it, from Captain Rhodes's hateful takeover of the complex to Miguel's decline into suicide the film shows us how humanity's decline is almost inevitable, were it not for the amazing examples of kindness and beauty that are also to be found in the film, Sarah's Love for Miguel, though somewhat broken by the doctor/patient relationship, feels genuine and flawed, like real love, John and Billy we realise, quietly spend there time getting drunk in a pretend beach they have built away from the others, the films subtext is deeply contrasting which is why the events feel so devastating to watch play out. Before i digress too much, simply put, this was how i encountered George Romero and fell in love with the apocalypse.

Be careful what you Google, you might just get it...

I have always been creative in one form or another, i couldn't tell you what I'm looking for as an artist, except to tell stories, that's what i really love to do.So there i was in 2010, i was studying a Degree in Digital film and special effects this time and had also been investing quite a bit of time in Left 4 Dead 2, mostly on Xbox  i admit and after finally getting a decent PC i i got for myself on PC, after finding custom maps etc on line i had that thought that just about everyone has at some point "wouldn't it be great if *insert reference* was on *insert game* so of course mine was "Day of the Dead" on "Left 4 Dead 2".

The source engine has a long history of community creations, some of its most successful games started life that way,  so fortunately when i decided i wanted to do it, the Internet was more than helpful, there a wealth of knowledge out there, if you are willing to dig your heels in and figure things out, but what soon becomes apparent is the sheer size of the workload, i hear a lot about people using hammer as a hobby, but if your making things even semi regularly it really is more of an unpaid job. Don't think I'm complaining though, as i said i love telling stories, and that's what i see Level design as, telling stories.

My "journey" through level design ( to be a bit farty with words) has been an odd one but a truly amazing ride, i was always uncomfortable with the idea that i wouldn't do Day of the dead justice because of a lack of experience with the source engine, so what i found myself doing was when i hit a hurdle with Day of the Dead i would break of and learn what i needed to know by making something else, something i wasn't so precious about to cut a long story short 2 years later i had about 8 L4D2 maps only one of which was day of the dead, and then that was a horribly unfinished teaser just to get some ideas from people playing. I learnt a lot, but as i got closer to Creating day of the dead i found it harder and harder to look past the running zombies and special infected, which i loved don't get me wrong, but were just the opposite to the true feel of that genre, the zombies moving slowly is not just an aesthetic, it sets the tone and atmosphere of the threat in the world, to me the slow moving zombies represent the subtext of the film, "Inevitable death", Aside from this i was also wanting to make the most of what i had learnt about the source engine and do something with it that was more than just extra content. This is how i found the source mod "No More Room in Hell" and was luckily enough accepted to be on the team as a level designer.

"When are you gonna show us something that we can understand?"

Alright captain, cool your heels, I'm getting to it. Sadly i cannot promise that i will finish Day of the dead for Left 4 dead 2, i know this will annoy some people as it has been a long time, i know one guy on l4d maps who will be saying "i told ya so" but I'm not concerned about grave dancing, that's something we just have to live with. The good news is that it is now being developed for No More Room in Hell, it will be under a different name for obvious reasons and i cannot share any screens or details yet as that's not my department, its a little bit naughty me even telling you this much, but i figure if you've been waiting for this you deserve to know and honestly, look at the followers, theirs 4 of you, it would be a bigger leak if i shouted it out my window. What i can tell you is the level has never looked better, or more accurate to the film, and with the true atmosphere of the slow moving corpses, its the last touch i was missing, I have tried to capture all the high point moments of the film in the game-play while still allowing it be its own thing, i think fans of the film will get a genuine boost and none fans hopefully will give the film a try, at least that's one of my many hopes.

If you have read this far then you really must be a trooper so thank you, and for something a reward let me share with you this, last year i contacted the actor who played Captain Rhodes, Joe Pilato and showed him the work i had been doing on Day of the Dead: Retribution,  unexpectedly he replied ! he said how awesome it looked, i did doubt whether or not it was him if I'm honest , we all know the Internet, however he proved me wrong when he sent me this video...

What can i say to that other than... yes sir! fuck you sir! ;)

Yours, bizarrely

Neil "Lou Saffire" Thorpe

Time for some Retribution

"..There's been some progress..."- Sarah






















Hello again ladies and ghouls, its Lou back again to bring you an exciting update on the story so far. Up until recently Day of the dead l4d2 has been on a bit a back burner, time constraints being what they are. With the summer being upon us again.













I have taken the opportunity make some progress, "what kind of progress!",I hear Rhodes insist in the background, well when I originally began production on Day of the dead for l4d2 I was at the very beginning of my experiences with Hammer and level design, i did no preliminary work, knew only the very basics and was still very green, since then i have gone onto create the S.B.S (survival barricade system) for night of the living dead and expanded that to return of the living dead, i have also created blight path which is a full campaign, so when i returned to my old saves for Day of the Dead I quickly realised I had to start again from scratch.From the beginning i decided i did not just want to make a "theme-park" for day of the dead in l4d2, i want it to be its own story and maybe even a community contribution to the Mythology around "the dead" series which is why I have decided to name it Day of the Dead: Retribution, as this fits aptly with how this particular story ends...
















Map 01: A Dead Place















when approaching this level I wanted to include signature places such as the Edison theatre and the bank, in the opening scene of the film Sarah and Miguel shout down the street with a megaphone and i wanted the street to be an important part of map, originally i had decided to create a gauntlet down this street but have since thought better as gauntlets don't leave much opportunity for players to take in the scenery i was going to put so much work into , also a gauntlet event on the first level would most likely frustrate players.

In l4d and l4d2 campaigns the convention is that the first level short and to the point and i wanted to go with the convention on this.

The players begin inside an apartment building, through the window we see John and billy's chopper flying across the city and the level begins from there, I am considering sampling billy's radio broadcasts appealing for survivors for this safe-room just to drive the point home. From the safe-room the survivors battle through the city to reach the helicopter.

From the apartment building the survivors travel through the Edison cinema, past the bank, and down the main street to the harbour, which is where the chopper landed.













Their are a few big challenges with creating this first map, the main street which is an iconic image from the film is like most streets, a straight line, this is not a very interesting route for players to travel also it raises a few issues on where the infected will spawn as they need sufficient distance and cover to spawn, firstly to allow infected to spawn i created the interior of stores on either side of the street and detailed the appropriately, also I want the campaign to play well with versus, previously I have read many accounts of a designer creating a campaign and not considering versus only to have to return to the campaign at a later date and put the time in correcting as well as updating so i decided to tailor areas to accommodate versus right from the beginning, which entails a death charge or two and lots of versus ladders. The straight nature of the street itself was a nice little problem, however in Blight Path i had to handle that exact same problem, I began by drawing things out on paper, using squares and squiggly lines to create lots of different ways I could complicate this painfully straight street, eventually i realised i could only use small to medium vehicles to create the route as the larger vehicles were too distracting from the movie, also no matter which route i created it would always be a simple mater of navigation, nothing wrong with that however I am a bit of a sadist when it comes to these things and also I wanted the street to be a feature in the map, and so i created 5 alarmed cars, calm down they are not all active, only 3 are active in any one round, like alternate which cars that are alarmed do change however.




















































after the street the survivors must battle through the harbour where the chopper is waiting, now the film itself does not give much away about this area and so this was my chance to add some artistic license and created a section of the harbour which had been exporting people to an evacuation point which added a second layer of storyline to the harbour, while not feeling out of place. In the climax of the first level the survivors run for the chopper, but the films characters are assumed to not have noticed the survivors and take off leaving the survivors in trouble, in desperation the survivors squeeze into a speedboat and roar off after the helicopter leading us into map 2.

Screen shots of map 2: The Elevator

Map 02: The Elevator

"Where will you go captain?, you can destroy 

my specimens but what about the millions 

that are waiting to greet you outside?..."

- Professor Logan "Frankenstein"

Hello again, well map 2 is as I said previously almost complete, so i wanted to take some time just to let you know what to expect and how I went about the idea. So to bring you up to speed the l4d2 characters begin inside the city of the first map "dead place" in a mad dash to the chopper they finally realise they haven't been noticed as they watch john's helicopter leave them behind, so quickly they leap into one of the few remaining working boats in the dock and speed off after the city, fade to black.

The return to the bunker in day of the dead suggests a marsh land, part water part dense forest and brush, but I also wanted to add a bit more to the level than "run through the forest to the elevator" so after taking some advice from a kind gent on l4dmaps.com  I read the original script for day of the dead, the film George A Romero wanted to make but wasn't able to afford I strongly recommend you read it its a very different film to what we finally received, I wont say its better, its just different, to be honest I think it would have made a better sequel than Land of the dead, but that's the humble opinion of someone who cant let go of the 80's, yes the hair was weird but it was a golden age of film making , and film makers I might add, regardless I digress.

I decided to imagine before the cast of the film were isolated in the bunker that above ground had perhaps acted like a rescue station in the early days of the end, but inevitably something bad happened and the rescue station was over run, so i went with the concept that the military had to ferry people in by boat, and also people would be finding there way to the station in there own boats, well long story short one of those boats got overrun on the way  there and it crashed right through the fence walls and well you can imagine the rest, so to break up the forest you have a military outpost/rescue station with a custom event don't what to say what just yet as its a spoiler , from there you travel through some more natural landscape until you finally come upon the elevator, now what I can tell you is I'm having a bit more luck with the elevator siren and the event at the elevator is a simple survival as you call the lift back up and the siren attracts the horde, i will get some more screen shots up soon but for now this should give you an idea of basic look.

Thanks for reading!

L4d2 day of the dead? capatin rhodes comments

  Joe Pilato, the actor who played Cpt Rhodes said on facebook after seeing the work in progress
"ABSOLUTELY AMAZING"

well at least he didnt order someone to have me shot!

Map 02: The Elevator, Complete!

thats right  map 2 is 99.999999999% complete ! after leaving the city in map 01: a dead place, the survivors follow Johns whirly-bird in a boat, arriving in the marshland surrounding the underground facility they batle through the dense forest only to find a rescue station which has long since been overrun and destroyed, from there the battle rages back into teh forsest before finally ending at the elevator heliport, i will post some pics soon but for now i just wanted to keep you up to date with the good news!

 thanks for reading!

Back on track

Hello again puss brains!, work is going excellently on the full campaign, ATM i have been working on map 02 "the elevator", as you will remember from the film after Sarah and Miguel fail to find anyone in the city they fly the chopper back to the facility over marsh and overgrown brush and forest, so map 2 is a very natural map, the survivors begin on the boat they escaped the city in and progress through the dense overgrowth, before too long they find a fallen outpost which was originally a rescue station, boats litter the "bay" of this outpost as its obvious that many people tried to reach the outpost for sanctuary from the infection, this area also contains a new form of panic event, possibly something a bit new, from the outpost the survivors fight their way through some more of the forest before coming across the fenced off area that we all know so well, the elevator, which must be summoned up to your level by pressing a button, a small survival is in progress as the elevator arrives and takes you back down to the safe room inside the complex, all but the elevator has been built for this map so far so that is another notch on the belt, I'm doing well so far thanks for all the supportive comments guys they help keep me motivated, also thank you to those people who decide to heckle someone for making things for them lol you keep me laughing, please dont forget to add this blog to your follow list, it lets me know yor still keen.

Lou

P.s
donate button coming soon, your chance to crack the whip and get me moving faster!