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What Is L4D2 BETA?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by erik, May 17, 2013.

  1. erik

    erik MG Donor

    This is a community update / explanation from Valve dated 2013-05-14.

    It's a good explanation of Left 4 Dead 2 BETA, which may appear in your Steam / Library / All Games area.

    This is a direct copy/paste of the article which I saw in the community area just now.

    "We have had plenty of people asking about the L4D2 Beta showing up in their steam catalog. So in case you missed it or were confused, here is some more info.

    Currently, changes to L4D2 will first appear in the Beta before they appear in the main game. The Beta will change often. This mean this build is very active so you might want to avoid it if you have bandwidth caps. Today we released another update for it. You can read the release notes for the update here.

    Right now the Beta is the only place you can play L4D2 on Linux natively. If you run Linux, load it up and give it a try. If you have problems, let us know. You can post here and share your experience.

    While the biggest changes are for Linux, those changes actually have the possibility to impact Mac and Windows players as well, which is why it is helpful for even non-linux players to test the Beta.

    The Beta also contains an update to the Authoring Tools to allow you to work in the new EMS. These tools are only available for Windows users and only currently available in the Beta. You can check the developer wiki here for more information.

    While the tools are only available on Windows, everyone in the Beta can play the new EMS content.

    We do not have servers running for the Beta yet as we concentrate on client issues and fixes but the server code has been released and is working - so let us know if you have any issues with Windows or Linux servers. We will be rolling out our own dedicated servers in the near future."
     
  2. ChooChoo

    ChooChoo Head Administrator Staff Member

    What is EMS?
     
  3. erik

    erik MG Donor

    What is EMS? What is you? lol

    [​IMG]

    No no, I'm only kidding, I believe they mean Enhanced or Extended Mutation System or something of the sort.
     
  4. Adward

    Adward Game Server Moderator Staff Member

    Extended, iirc. From what I remember it's going to be an easier way of creating mutations (custom game modes/etc) within L4D2. Sounds interesting, anyway. Glad Valve are still doing new things with L4D2.
     
  5. CrazyRabbit

    CrazyRabbit Game Server Moderator

    EMS - Extended Mutation System http://www.l4d.com/blog/post.php?id=9915

     
  6. lukemurawski

    lukemurawski Senior Member

    I had created a topic on this ages ago. Ages ago.

    EMS is an extension to the mutation system and an update to the Squirrel Virtual Machine. To the gamer (that's you guys), there's nothing of interest (note: there are other things like potential new maps and/or cross-platform compatibility, but that's not part of EMS-- that's part of the L4D2 Beta, not L4D2 Beta EMS). EMS adds new things like developer-creatable GUI panels, game event callbacks, entity creation, etc. The only significant thing here is the new game panel set. Soon, you guys will have many more GUI features (that PR can and probably will use) as soon as SourceMod releases the proper signatures and/or vfunc hooks. Although, since HC is a smart guy, he will probably end up sigscanning for them before it's even out, who knows.

    EMS is one part of Valve's steps to make modding friendlier (and easier) on the Source engine. The other steps include making games cross-platform and, of course, the Source2 game engine (still mostly unknown, although we know Valve is working on it). Hope this helps.

    EDIT: I was one of the early beta testers (before Valve released the beta).
     
  7. CrazyRabbit

    CrazyRabbit Game Server Moderator

    I don't know the squirrel language yet but I have been reading the wiki on how to create these few tutorial game modes (Gnome Hunter, Holdout) and they could be something I eventually add to my own maps. Once I get good at those, I can look at my own creations. I taught myself HTML when I was young (a long time ago) by looking at snippets of code I ripped from websites I liked and working out how they did it. With squirrel language, they're giving me the same thing via the tutorials. There's also a decent Appendicies of commands etc that you can learn from.

    Bottom line: if things are well documented, then anyone can eventually learn them.