FreeGameDev

Left 4-bit Dead, Demake of the game "Left 4 Dead".

Hello everyone ! Before getting into the description, I would like to tell you a bit how the idea happenned.

A few months ago, like a lot of people, i bought a copy of L4D on Steam. I liked the game a lot ; however, as a linux user and a person who cares about open-source softwares I was worried about the fact that the game is currently not available on linux and will maybe one day the company won't bother about updating/supporting the game anymore (we all have a lot of old games in this case). Therefore began the idea of a remake that would be open-source and playable on a large range of devices.
At the same time I was really fascinated by one of Terry Cavanagh's (and Stephen Lavelle) games called Judith which use ultra-rudimentary technology to simulate a 3D environment à la Wolfenstein.
Then these two idea merged into one, why not making a demake of L4D ? With flat pixelated zombies and simple 3D maps like in Doom or Duke Nukem 3D.

If I was a bit more experienced, I would have started right away making this, however I'm a very beginner in computer programming so I need a little hand.
I have no screenshots or mockup to give yet, I just made a quick prototype with my cousin (who is an engineer in computer... stuffs.. anyway he is a good coder) last week using Ogre3D and QT4 in order to teach me a bit of C++.
Code is available at http://www.assembla.com/code/QtOgre/subversion/nodes if you want to check it out (however it won't be used at all as the base of the project).

Here are the goals of the project
[*]The game will be open-source (license GPLv3 + considered as a postcardware... cause I like postcards)
[*]The game has to be insanely portable. See how ScummVM is portable ? Try to think in the same direction. (Yes, that's hard)
[*]The game have to be light and less ressources hungry as possible.
[*]The game will be coded in C/C++
... (list to improve, your suggestions are welcome)

The project is now at state -1, meaning that your ideas and suggestions are welcome but the coding itself is not yet started. I'm looking, for now, for a coder (or a bit more) to start making a prototype of the project.

Please keep in mind that I'm a very beginner so if you are an experienced coder, this it probably not the project you want to join right in the first place.

Thank you very much for your interest !

This is a quite good pre-playable project introduction (only a screenshot of the prototype - if applicable - is missing)!
You should consider taking a look at red eclipse [videos]. It has a campaign mode [see this video], which features hordes of quite mindless enemies and is multiplayer. You could talk to the people on irc.freenode.net#redeclipse [web chat] and introduce your game idea and maybe work (as designers/programmers) on that section of the game for them or create a game based on their engine.

Billboards are probably not supported by red eclipse and I would recommend '3d pixel' style instead. Perhaps DotModeler can be of help.

Extreme portability and low footprint would probably have to be sacrificed.

If you're doing it in Ogre you can get a head start by making some of the content in something like Ogitor (http://www.ogitor.org/).

That way you've got more then just an idea and that would attract more attention.

You mean demake like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lFkXFqHc9E
?

Anyways, not a bad idea... but I generally dislike the idea of making a low spec game so low spec (e.g. using the doom engine or another 2.5D one) that it isn't scalable. IMHO the best option would be to go with a quake engine derivate, which runs just about everywhere, but can look pretty good on newer PCs with all the stuff found in Darkplaces (a quake engine derivate).

Which brings me to my second point, if you are really interested in something like this I would strongly suggest you to have a look at the mother or all zombie games: Blood1, or to be more precise it's open-source iteration Transfusion: http://www.transfusion-game.com/ !
It's basically a Quake1 mod, so it can run on really low spec hardware, but is also Darkplaces compatible. Furthermore it is a pretty complete game already (has a lot of artwork, with stuff exactly like you are imagining it), but development has stalled lately. And last but not least the few developers still interested in continuing this project are currently looking to steer away from a simple Blood reimplementation and more into creating a fun multiplayer game first... and a L4D like gameplay mode is probably the most feasible.
Think about it... but IMHO that would be a great project to pick up!

Why write one from scratch, why not use one of the many Doom engine projects such as ZDoom:
http://zdoom.org/News

Quake 1 engine would also fit I think.