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!

--------------------Day is not dead!

hi guys and ghouls, well its been a while since i updated this blog, please accept my sincere apologies for my lack of communication, though with only 3 followers so far you can understand why i havnt thought " omg my huge fanbase is going off the boil" lol.

ok i will have some screens to post soon as ive focused my attention on Lvl 1 "A dead place", a very difficult level to breath life into i assure you , the concept of the first level is that the l4d2 survivors are held up in an apartment when sarah and co. arrive there with the bullhorn they see the chopper and fight through the city to get there, so as you can imagine portraying a city is tricky at best, however im glad to say that the first level is at a very strong 70%!

Lou/Neil

________________________Teaser Released!

Get over to l4dmaps.com and download it now!

Click Here
Don't forget to review and rate!

-----------------------------------Apologies

due to a slight technical hitch on the release day Ive had to postpone the release, ive set a provisional date late November but if i can get it fixed and shipped out sooner i will, to try and make up for botching the release day ill post some pics of the (almost) finished teaser product.

thanks again for your patience

Lou

----------------Day of the dead teaser Update

Day of the Dead Teaser Release Latest


"Anybody got any questions about the way
things are gonna run around here from now on?...."-Capt Rhodes

hi guys well thought id update you on how things are going and let you in on what to expect for the teaser release on the 30th of October, add it to your watchlist now and get notified the moment its released! Click Here















Teaser Overview
the survivors begin the teaser like Rhodes and his men in the elevator room, as can be expected the survival trigger is the elevator power box that Miguel has tore the guts out of, from outside the room the map turns into the bunker storage and basically following the route Rhodes takes in one of the buggy's at the end of day of the dead when he abandons his troops, now like in the campaign, the teaser is set after all the events of the film have taken place, so the door is shot out like when steel does it and i have also tried to account for those killed in the film, the storage caverns lead past the specimen gate used for selecting test subject infected, then past the trailer of John and Billy's which has some nice supplies inside, then finally to the entrance to the bunker which has weapons ammo and supplies as well as decent hold out areas and all the rooms you would expect to see inside the bunker.

Have your say..
OK, there's a few ideas i would like some feedback on..
i like the idea of the race to compound for the survival but id rather it wasn't annoying for people my main idea to enforce the rush was to lock the door out of the elevator area until the button had been pressed so everything had to be grabbed on the fly except for main weapon and initial health kits of course.....what do you think?

Day of the dead Teaser update!

Hey guys, well the teaser is announced for the 30th October, Devils Night!.
The Teaser initial download will contain only one map, but its large and will support both survival and scavenge though i know its hard to get people to test scavenge, the initial map is a comination of maps 03-The Bunker and map04- The Missile Silo, my reasons for releasing the teaser as a form of "Bastard" child is that i dont want to hand out all my work before ive finished, i think every map maker should have standards, even if there low lol, you shouldn't release a map unless it has
A: Been optimized
B: Appropriately textured
C: A working Navmesh
D: Lighting

So, the idea is im creating this teaser as stand alone versions for the survival and scavenges, i want to include custom sounds and as far as i know valve finally fixed that function of the editor, however im not going to postpone the release for sake of the custom sounds i can always add them in the updates, also the guys at l4dmapreviews (click here to check them out) have agreed to give the teaser a review on there channel!

Map 04- Missile Silo

"Sarah: Isn't there an old missile silo back there
Billy: We cant go back there without guns..
Sarah : We can't stay here they'll tear us apart...
Billy: Jesus Mary and Joseph"

Map 04: missle Silo

Well, long time no chat it seems, mainly because im tryng to get the teaser ready and working solidly for the 30th, its going to be one map for the teasers initial release and its going to be the bunker as im suspecting thats what most people are eager for, im creating the teaser out of sections already created for the campaign, and as ive said before the caves means plenty of displacements which are basicly the name for uneven surfaces created with brushes by hammer, anything. the ceiling and floor are flat thankfully but to sell the cave walls properly then i have to make sure they like teh walls from the cave of the film. would type more but very busy mapping lol .

Map 03- 14 Mile Tombstone

The Bunker

OK, so this is the big level the one that needs to shine cos its the whole style of the film, which is hard cos in l4d2 terms the actual bunker is not that big and has no linear route really, so deciding the journey through has been difficult, in the end i decided to establish a linear way through while still feeling like your exploring the suicidal depths of the facility alongside trying to get the rooms from the film right, the corridors have to be a little bit wider than the films for game play reasons, the route is not altogether authentic but Ive tried to keep things recognisable and feel fluid, it has panic events and takes you completely through the interior part of the bunker including places like the meeting hall Logan's study, bubs room, the freezer where Logan is killed etc.. every thing's in there.

The thing that i love to hate about the bunker in Day of the Dead is the claustrophobia, the white walls are blank and heartless and surround you wherever you go, but I'm also working on details to make them feel more natural too thin pipes across the high parts of the wall etc.

DAY of the DEAD: Survival and scavenge

Something to get you in the mood

only last week day of the dead was at round about 1500 views on l4dmaps.com, which im grateful for seeing as it hasn't been released, i decided i would like a few more views and was eager for people to get a taste of what im doing, so almost as a joke i said "when i get 3000 views ill release a survival scavenge teaser!" well either low and behold i checked yesterday and it was over 3000 lol, so in celebration of receiving 3000 views and to keep you wall keen i thought id share this video which is one of my favorite fan vids for Day of the Dead, enjoy!

oh yeah...im keeping my word already started on the survival teaser

Map 02- The Elevator

Map 02- The Elevator

ok the first issues with creating this map are strictly speaking it should just be the elevator surrounded by the wire fence helipad 2 small buildings and the makeshift graves, and the only other map of day of the dead ive seen follows this format, however in l4d2 campaigns 1 small area does not cut the mustard, and also the above ground area is a very iconic part of the film, so i made the some what mad decision to create a level leading up to the elevator, in the

film we see the chopper flying over marsh land and forests to reach the compound, great a forest map to break up the urban sprawl and the underground claustrophobia !.

because forest levels take alot of props to be convincing however optimization is going to be key to this levels success, turns out teh elevator and its surrounds itself were fairly simple, coming up with an idea for the lead up to that however has taken some artistic liscense, i have imagined that the whole facility was part of a larger operation in which people were being shipped from the citys to this location for processing in one form or another, at first when the survivors arrive at the docks that becomes obvious but the closer they get to the compound the more ugly i wanted the sights to be, half way is a mass grave with a panic eventcreated around it, by this point i want it to be obvious that this place was also for disposal not just sanctuary, when they get to the elevator i imaine it has not been magically raise since miguels suicide so im planning on a scavenge event to get teh lift back to the top or simply calling the lift and waiting for it to arrive at the top as yet no final decision has been made, work continues on optimizing the forest, gods its tough going!.

map 01- Dead Place

Map 01- A Dead place

At the beginning of the movie we see the team landing at the edge of the city after failing to raise anyone on the radio, Miguel shouts down the bullhorn
" Hello is there anyone there?!", immediately the city is full of corpses traveling towards that sound.
the first level imagines that there were some survivors in that city, and they tried to fight there way to the chopper but couldn't make it in time and were
left behind by Miguel and the gang only to find themselves at the docks, they decide to steal a boat and follow the direction of the chopper..



Hows it coming along?...
Recreating the city from the opening of Day of the Dead poses a few problems, like most good film makers Romero filmed only the sections of the city he was interested in, and which projected the idea he wanted to communicate to the viewers, this scene in the film has only one sentence of dialogue but speaks volumes, as i rant to my friends when talking about this scene "Romero ends the world in under 10 shots".

So approaching how to create this city for players to navigate and experience is somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle, there are several clear images which stay with any fan of the film from this city, the Bank from which 2 corpses and a corpse alligator emerges, the Edison Theatre, the main streets and the newspaper headline "the Dead walk", i decided to embrace the jigsaw and create these areas separately first and with as much detail as I'm able, this has meant including custom textures and creating a few buildings purely with brushes.



after creating the bank and theatre i was left considering weather or not to leave them as mere display pieces or actually allow the survivors to enter them and have a reason for doing so, however with the daunting task of the entire project i have Little time for considering until the main body of work is done, and so i moved boldly forward onto the main streets, straight away i realised the streets were going to be challenging, the buildings are not like your average urban sprawl, they reek of the 50's and each building really seems to have its own unique idea, when trying to create everything with as much effort as possible this was a very demanding starting point to say the least.






The main street seen right is the first real wide shot
we see of the city, its an image of decay and
immediately we get the sense of an aftermath
of sorts, but also we see the street stretching off into the distance, i decided i wanted this street, the street we are shown Miguel and Sarah are looking down while shouting for survivors to be my finale area, the idea is that the survivors do not make it to the chopper in time so this gave me several things to play with, Miguel's use of the bullhorn is an excellent prompt for the a gauntlet event down the street towards the chopper and just as they reach the end they watch as the chopper flies off into the distance, so work on the street was vital and so i began!.

now as i say each building has its own design feel, so i embraced that and tried to match the feel for the street also making several shops enter able as i progress i will also have to decide whats in teh shops if anything, the shops will also make excellent spawn points for infected as well as the roof tops, though i feel the hunter will have the most fun with them.

where am i up to on this?...
i have created the final stretch section of the road and i intend to work backwards towards the T-junction and from there decide where the bank and theater locations should be, from there i should have a clearer idea where the survivors should begin and just what lies in-between them and the final stretch

Day of the Dead -Map for L4d2 overivew

Map 01- A Dead place
At the beginning of the movie we see the team landing at the edge of the city after failing to raise anyone on the radio, Miguel shouts down the bullhorn
" Hello is there anyone there?!", immediately the city is full of corpses traveling towards that sound.
the first level imagines that there were some survivors in that city, and they tried to fight there way to the chopper but couldn't make it in time and were
left behind by Miguel and the gang only to find themselves at the docks, they decide to steal a boat and follow the direction of the chopper..

Map 02- The Elevator
The survivors arrive at forest surrounding the bunker and here we realize that long before the bunker was used for this operation the military and ceda were perfoming a delicate and extensive cleanup operation which has been abandoned, after fighting there way through the deadly forest the survivors come across the elevator leading to the bunker, but without power its going nowhere, so in a scavenge finale they must reactivate the lift and fight off the horde as they descend..

Map 03- 14 Mile tombstone
inside the bunker corpses are literally everywhere and after searching for survivors they find that all manner of inhuman experiments have taken place down here, its not just a graveyard its a slaughterhouse, the only option they can turn to is to detonate the missiles remaining from the cold war in order to wipe this abomination off the face of the earth.

Map 04- Missile Silo
the missiles are located deep within the mine at the back of the facility and through the specimen gate, there they find the missiles and initiate the arming sequence..

Map 05- "Get off the hill in a hurry!"
racing to the top of the missile silo they fight wave after wave as they try and get to the surface before the missile blows, across the radio they hear the voice of john and billy and realize there not the only ones who heard the arming sequence, can the survivors hold out for john and billy to be heroes after all?...