Left 4 Dead

2005The conception and early development of Terror-Strike, a Counter-Strike: Source mod. 2006Slowly but surely turning Terror-Strike into Left 4 Dead. 2007Gamers get to experience Left 4 Dead's first playable demos. 2008Left 4 Dead fever spreads worldwide as the game nears completion.

To do: There's so much information that this could probably be its own subpage now.

2004#

• October-January: Chris Ashton creates an experimental Counter-Strike: Source map named "zombie_city", for the "Terror-Strike" mod.¹ In this mod, the "survivors" (terrorists) had to go to a specific building and plant "zombie bait" while fighting knife-bots along the way.

2005#

• September:
  • September 19: Survivors can now clear areas of zombies by using their flashlight. Infected players can now send "minion" zombies to attack with the left click. Shotguns have been made weaker at long range and grenades have been made harder to find.
• October:
  • 7 October: Infected and Survivors can both now pick up debris and throw it to deal damage. Knives have been replaced with baseball bats, although no art exists for them yet. All guns now start with full ammo. A "kill combo meter" has been added.
  • 14 October: The Molotov, pain pills, and first aid kit are added. TBD
  • 27 October: TBD

2007#

• July: Showdown 2007 becomes the first event where L4D is shown by Valve and Turtle Rock Studios.
• August: The game is shown at QuakeCon of that year in Dallas, Texas, alongside the then-upcoming Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.
  • 7 August: Eurogamer publishes a 2-page interview with Chet Faliszek of Valve. He states that the game will release in early 2008.²³
• October: The game is shown at World Cyber Games 2007, held in Seattle, Washington.

2008#

• January 10: Turtle Rock Studios is acquired by Valve.⁴
• July: Left 4 Dead is shown at E3 2008.
• September:
  • 30 September: Mike Booth posts the first blogpost on www.l4d.com, explaining how the blog will be used by Valve and the playtesting process that was going on at the time.
• October: The game is showcased all across the globe, at the Leipzig Games Convention, PAX 2008 at Seattle, Washington, and a few other events in the UK, France and Russia.
  • 15 October: Left 4 Dead is available to pre-order on Steam.
• November: After 3 years of development, Left 4 Dead is released on Steam worldwide, alongside the PC retail and Xbox 360 version in North America.
  • 21 November: Left 4 Dead PC retail and Xbox 360 versions are available for purchase worldwide.

2010#

• October: Left 4 Dead is released for Mac OS X computers.

Concept Art#

Box Art#

Various concepts for how Left 4 Dead's box art would have looked like before settling for the iconic zombie hand with 4 fingers. Notably, these works use earlier versions of the concept art for the Survivors from before their face references were chosen - the bodies are the same, but the heads are different.

Survivors#

To do: More background info

The original concept art for the game's survivors was created by Phil Robb in 2005, featuring a completely different cast of a bald police sergeant, a bouncer with a T-shirt with tattoos, a young woman with cornrows and a crop-top, and an "everyman" office worker with glasses. These survivors also appear in the concept art used for the scrapped Dam It campaign.

Later on in 2005, elements from these characters were all taken to create the final cast we know: Bill, the Vietnam veteran, Francis, the bouncer, Zoey, the angsty teenager, and Louis, the "everyman" - however, their personalities were not fully fleshed out yet. During Turtle Rock Studios's development of the game, their designs were noticeably different. In the game's early development, the survivors were clothed in a post-apocalyptic style with ammo vests, gun holsters, and knee pads. The most notable differences in character design are Francis and Louis.

In 2008, when Valve fully acquired Turtle Rock Studios, the game's art style had taken a shift to a more grounded "movie" zombie apocalypse theme. Furthermore, the Survivors were redesigned with a more casual appearance. These designs were shown at E3 2008 as proof of concept for the new Survivor designs, appearing to be mostly complete designs. Provisional versions of these designs can be seen in the early box art concepts. These Survivors have some differences from the models that ended up in the final game:

• Bill, Francis, and Louis are all clean-shaven.
• Bill is missing his signature cigarette and wears a striped shirt.
• Francis's hair is fuller and less grey.
• Zoey's facial features are completely different because her face model had not been chosen yet. She also wears a bandana on top of wavy, bluish hair.

Infected#

To do: Background info

Common Infected#

Smoker#

Several early concept art pieces for the Smoker depict it half-naked and always shirtless, ranging from it wearing underwear to nothing at all. The long tongue motif was also tested in some versions of the Smoker, with some renditions having long, prehensile, tongue-like arms. Several ideas were played around with to make it unique, from boils covering its entire head and eyes to his head being fused to the rest of his body.

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The final rendition of the Smoker adapted the cysts all over its skin from earlier concept art and put it on a body which is (thankfully) clothed. It did away with the long tongue, and the in-game model also reflected this change. The tongue was not added back to the Smoker until up to 2008, quite close to the game's release. The Smoker also wears a brown shirt and greenish jeans in the final concept, swapped out for a green shirt and blue jeans in the final in-game design.

Hunter#

Boomer#

Witch#

Tank#

Screamer#

There's an unused piece of concept art in the game for a "Screamer" special infected. Impressively, we don't have to speculate as to what it did, as the developer commentary explains exactly how he worked and why he was cut! Thanks, Valve. You're champs!

"[Jaime Sue] The Screamer was a boss zombie who didn't have any actual attacks; he was bound in a straightjacket. You knew when he was around because of his crazed, maniacal cackling. The trick to the Screamer was that if he saw you, you had a moment to kill him before he ran away. Once the Screamer got away from the Survivors to a hiding place, he would emit a loud howling scream that would cause a huge mob of zombies to attack the Survivors. While there were several exciting moments of knowing you had to chase him down to shoot him before he screamed, dodging zombies all the way, ultimately it proved too confusing for Survivors to discover how he worked, or even to reliably notice him in the crowd. He was cut, and his horde-drawing attack eventually evolved into the Boomer attack."

The concept art for the Screamer depicts it with long, draped hair, wearing light blue sweatpants with black slip-on shoes and bound in a straitjacket by brown leather belt restraints. It was temporarily removed from the game in late April 2006, and while assets from prototype builds infer that the developers had considered re-implementing it for some time, it was ultimately scrapped from the game. Despite the existence of complete concept art, there are conflicting sources for whether the Screamer even had its own model, with the game's internal developer updates stating that it had been removed before a proper model was created for it.

Scrapped Ending#

According to the Developer Commentary and unused sound files, there was going to be an ending cutscene after the Survivors got on the helicopter at No Mercy. Judging by the sound files, the pilot was to be infected after a failed rescue before the finale. On a related note, the pilot has more unused lines meaning that the pilot was originally going to notice the Survivors.

"[Jess Cliffe] Left 4 Dead was originally going to have a continuous story that started with the hospital campaign. When the chopper pilot picked you up, he would start talking about how he had just done a street pickup and wasn't feeling so well. Clearly, he had just been Infected—and the chopper was about to go down. We found that this left playtesters feeling let-down, instead of rewarded for having survived the challenging campaign. We decided to cut that section of the pilot's dialogue and kept the ending upbeat - reinforcing the players' sense of accomplishment."

While the ending was scrapped, the zombie pilot story was used in the Crash Course DLC campaign. It begins with the survivors exiting a crashed helicopter. Francis and Zoey mention that the pilot became a zombie.

Francis: I still can't believe you shot the pilot!
Zoey: He turned into a zombie, Francis. He wasn't going to land the thing!
Francis: Well, I guess now we'll never know, will we?

Screenshots#

No Mercy#

Most of these screenshots show an earlier version of the No Mercy chapter, known during development as "Urban Underground". These differences include:

• The night sky was a lot darker than the final game's night sky. One iteration of the map had an almost pitch-black sky while another had a dark blue-ish night sky.
• The map had a much more detailed skybox, where in some screenshots, a city skyline with some lit-up skyscrapers can be seen. This texture was sourced from a stock image of a Miami skyline.
• Most of the map's inaccessible buildings had their lights still turned on.

Dead Air#

Blood Harvest#

Blood Harvest has a few differences from the final game's Blood Harvest, known during development as "Train Tracks".

• The map took place during the early morning instead of at dawn, and has significantly less fog than the final game's Blood Harvest.
• The farmhouse's exterior uses different textures.
• The cornfield's plants look healthier than in the final game.

Other#

Renders#

Survivors#

All four survivors had significantly different designs to the final game's survivors, created by Turtle Rock Studios.

• Generally, all survivors look much more prepared for the zombie apocalypse that unfolds, unlike the final's survivors.
• Francis has long hair and is much more overweight compared to the final game's Francis.
• Louis is almost completely different to the final game's Louis. He has a different hairstyle, a white plaster on his forehead, and wears a tan/brown coat, yellow shirt and white undershirt.
• Bill looks older and wears a Kevlar vest on top of his military uniform.
• Zoey is also completely different to the final's Zoey. She wears a hoodie with a white armband on it, ammo pouches, tan-colored pants and striped socks.

HLMV Renders#

Renders of the Survivors taken in the Half-Life Model Viewer (HLMV) created for the game's early HUD. These images are used alongside the Survivor health bars in prerelease builds of the game from 2007.

Smoker#

The Smoker's model was made in early 2006. The initial 3D model didn't have its long tongue and had a brown button-up shirt, just like how the Smoker appears in the game's original concept art.

Videos#

Terror-Strike#

Some very low-quality footage of the "Terror-Strike" mod, which was presented by Doug Wood at the Animex festival in ~2009, sometime after Left 4 Dead was released. This footage seems to be taken in a slightly modified version of the "zombie_city" map created by Chris Ashton.

Watch on YouTube

QuakeCon 2007#

A minute-long video of some No Mercy gameplay from QuakeCon 2007.

Watch on YouTube

Resources#

• Valve Archive

References#