Author Joe Martin on www.bit-tech.net reported
(Published: 24th March 2009)

The first add-on pack to be released for Left 4 Dead is due out on the Xbox 360 next month, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed today. No official word was offered on the PC version of the same pack, though it's likely that the release will be concurrent for both platforms.

The new downloadable pack, called the Survival Pack, is the first planned expansion for Valve's co-op zombie shooter and should help to rejuvenate the game by adding in new game modes and campaigns for Versus Mode - namely the two existing campaigns, Dead Air and Death Toll, neither of which are currently unlocked for Versus.

The other major addition to game will be the new Survival Mode, which will pit players against endless swarms of zombies that continue to come in increasingly difficult waves. The aim is to stave off the inevitable defeat for as long as possible, accruing points in the process.

Speaking with CVG a Microsoft PR confirmed that the Xbox 360 update will be out, for free, on April 21st. Although there's no confirmation for the PC release date, we do know that it will still be free on the PC at least.

To check out the article on bit-tech.net

Versus Mode

• The Survival Pack will open up Dead Air and Death Toll to versus play.
• Tweaks have been made to allow for more competitive play – survivor camping spots have been removed and new infected spawn areas have been added.
• In Death Toll, the woods around the town have been thickened to make them a darker, scarier, and ultimately deadlier place for survivors.

Additional Updates

• A patch with a few minor matchmaking fixes will deploy shortly before the Survival Pack becomes available to download, some time this month or next.
• SDK will be released simultaneously with DLC, before April 21
• Valve will launch “matchmaking 2.0.” This will have more impact on Steam than 360, since Valve maintains the PC servers in-house and has mountains of data on rage quits to cull through.
• Chet was vague when pressed for details about the new matchmaking system, saying only that if you look at the game’s forums you can get a pretty good idea of what needs to be done. (I guess it's Looking 4 Four system).
• “We still play our games, and we want to keep them updated,” he stated. (Someone could argue about it)

Achievements

• Microsoft’s official policy is that new Achievements can only be included with paid DLC. There will be no achievements for 360 players.
• Brighter side: It looks like we will probably have new achievements on PC! Critic's Edition + DLC
• Valve announced a new Critic’s Choice Edition of Left 4 Dead, which will ship on April 21 and contain the full game and DLC on the disc.
• The downloadable Survival Pack will be released for download at some point before that, adding survival mode and the two new versus campaigns (Death Toll and Dead Air).

Survival Mode

• Survival mode will be playable on 16 maps, 15 of which are culled from the existing campaigns’ crescendo moments and finales. The final survival map is the new original creation, “Lighthouse”.

Survival Mode Gameplay

• Survival mode goes straight for the jugular. It made for a quick jump-in-and-play experience.
• “It’s vital that survival time is based on skill level, and not just having a point where suddenly everyone goes off a cliff,” Chet explained.
• You get only one health pack each (but you can find Pills etc.), and ultimately there are no happy endings. You are going to die, and all that remains will be your best time posted to the global leaderboard. The entire team gets the same score, so there’s extra incentive to help each other out.

Survival Mode - Levels Design

• You start survival mode in a zombie-free map that’s been stocked with heaps of weapons, explosives and items.
• The horde won’t descend until you alert it. This gives you a chance to stock up on supplies, strew explosives around the place and strategize with your teammates.
• Minor modifications have been made to suit the flow of carnage in survival play. For example, in the No Mercy elevator crescendo, many of the rooms around the elevator doors are off-limits until the mob breaks through the walls to open them up.
• Like in versus maps, areas that are overly favorable to the survivors have been altered or removed, so teams won’t be able to rack up easy time by closet camping.
• Crossing certain time thresholds earns the team medals. The time needed to earn a medal will vary from map to map, but will be in the range of 4, 6 and 8 minutes for bronze, silver and gold respectively.

Game and client changes

• Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down
• Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected
• Addressed some surround sound detection issues
• Fixed a rare crash when exiting Left4Dead on Windows Vista
• Fixed a case where the complete all expert campaigns achievement was not being rewarded

Dedicated server changes

• Corrected an issue where Windows based dedicated were sending spurious shutdown notifications to the master causing them to delist temporarily
• Fixed dedicated servers not resetting the versus team swap correctly--you could join a dedicated server that had a previous game that was swapped and arrive on the other team than what was selected in the lobby
• Renamed the tags for sv_search_key to use "key:" in the server tags instead of "sv_search_key." This should help with issues of the 63 character limit of server tags
• Fixed an occasional server crash related to voting

• Fixed sv_search_key appearing in server browser
• Fixed issue where changing the sv_search_key did not update the master correctly
• Fixed master server issue with Linux fork mode that affected availability of Valve dedicated servers
• Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
• Missed from the previous list changes: Fixed acheivements to match stats. Past achievements not previously awarded will be shown in the game UI

Versus Mode Changes

• Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
• Fixed Tank punch being able to hit targets behind walls
• Fixes to 'Tank parking'. The Tank will now run back and attack the Survivors if he becomes AI due to two players expiring the frustration meter
• Fixed a case where a Tank frustration meter could run out right as he was in his death animation and he would come back to life
• Fixed a case where the Tank was moving too slowly while crouching and being shot
• Tanks now have the possibility of spawning in a slightly different position for the first and second teams
• The order that the teams play as Survivors is now determined by which team has the higher overall score. The winning team will play as Survivors first
• The Smoker tongue can now target and grab victims through common infected
• Increased the cone in which a Smoker can grab a target
• The Witch no longer cuts Smoker tongues in a radius around her
• Boomers that explode in mid-air will now hit Survivors directly below them with Bile
• Reduced the damage that burning Hunters do to pounced victims
• Adjusted the time at which players take over from bots to avoid 5 seconds of the bot standing idle while the player finishes connecting.
• Fixed some cases where versus score was not being recalculated properly. It is no longer beneficial to pass pills between players at the end of the round or heal other players and then shoot them
• Fixed a case where it was possible to spectate an AI infected and hit +use to take them over

Server Changes

• Added convar sv_gametype that allows server operators to limit the types of games that will start on their server. Default value is 'coop,versus'. Can be changed to just 'coop' or just 'versus' to limit to those game types

General changes

• Fixed a case where players would join as a dead Survivor when a living Survivor was still available
• Fixed a case where restarting a level due to the team dying would give more than the max primary ammo on restart
• Fixed the speaking icon showing up on the local player during level transition if voice_vox was set to 1
• The scoreboard now shows the numeric value of a player's ping

March 11, 2009 - Left 4 Dead Update Released

• Quick match will now try to match to any campaign. Removed the preference to match to games according to the player progressing through all campaigns
• Games in a finale are now joinable via the Friends and Steam Group games list

• Fixed an exploit with melee where swapping weapons ignored the intended delay between swings.
• In Versus mode, the Tanks' health now reflects the damage he takes from burning.
• Fixed an exploit related to the "joinclass" command

• Fixed client crash on certain video cards

Left 4 Dead has been updated with a host of fixes, tweaks and new features, including enhancements to Versus mode for improved competitive play. The full change list is below. For PC users the update will be applied automatically via Steam. Meanwhile, the update will be made available to Xbox 360 players in the coming weeks.

General

• Fixed Survivors being able to climb surfaces marked for versus infected only
• Fixed a class of SurvivorBot bugs dealing with rescuing downed players
• Players can no longer grab ladders while flying through the air after a Tank punch
• Shooting near a car with an alarm that has already fired the alarm will no longer make chirping noises
• Improved loading time
• Fixed mini-gun physics exploit
• Fixed propane tanks (and other physics objects) causing players to fall through elevators
• Fixed rare achievement bug issues
• Fixed several map exploits
• Fixed various match making issues
• Fixed NAT traversal issues

Versus Changes

• Added HUD elements to show status of other infected players
• Changed color of infected player name in chat to red
• Fixed exploit where players could spawn infected bots
• Fixed instance where a Survivor changing to the infected team would be attacked by infected bots
• Normalized special infected melee damage
• Made the following client commands cheat protected: "Kill" and "explode"
• Fixed exploit where infected players could run away and teleport back to gain health
• Players can only change teams once per map
• Players can't change teams while other players are still loading
• Tank spawns at the same % through the map for both teams in versus mode
• Made the Tank and Witch spawn directly on the escape route
• Increased chance of getting the Tank or Witch
• Fixed team swap issue

Hunter

• Easier to pounce a Survivor who is meleeing
• Increased Minimum damage a Hunter pounce does

Smoker

• Fixed Smoker tongue tolerance
• Smoker now has to be killed or the tongue destroyed for the tongue to break
• Survivors cannot bash someone off the tongue until the Survivor being pulled is paralyzed or hanging
• Tongue attacks that fail to paralyze or hang a Survivor will use the shorter ability delay timer
• Fixed cases where the ability timer was not using the correct time
• Fixed case where you could point at a Survivor but not register a tongue hit
• Fixed Smoker tongue not targeting and landing properly through PZ ghosts
• Smoker tongue does damage every second while dragging paralyzed Survivors

Tank

• Bashable objects now appear with a red glow
• Tanks hitting a car with an alarm disables the alarm permanently
• Tank frustration timer is only reset by hitting Survivors with rocks or fists
• Reduced autoshotgun damage against Tanks

Witch

• Witch spawns at the same % through the map for both teams
• Avoids spawning within a certain % of the tank
• Fixed an exploit where the Witch could be woken up and tricked into attacking Survivors

• Fixed Infected Players melee pushing large objects to block the survivors path
• Fixed +lobby exploit
• Fixed exploit of "hugging" the Witch from behind where she can't hit you
• Fixed players not being kicked from a vote by changing their name before it succeeds
• Disabled difficulty change votes from the console in versus mode

• Finding a dedicated server when starting the game from a lobby is now faster and more reliable
• Versus mode is now locked to Normal difficulty
• Difficulty on a server is now locked to the one set by the lobby reservation
• Fixed lagouts/spikes after level transition
• Fixed directory issue with spray logs in some cases
• Fixed video settings not saving after closing video options dialog
• Corrected a boomer suicide exploit
• Several minor localization fixes
• Fixed disabling cheats incorrectly resetting data

• Fix for alt-tab crash in certain cases