It’s been six weeks since the infection began; the Survivors have made their way to California and are enroute to an extraction point when their bus crashes at the beginning of an expansive bridge. The quartet are forced to continue on foot without knowing they are heading to a dead-end and ultimately their doom. How long can they hold out?

The Cold Springs Bridge, a survival map available at L4Dmaps.com, has been released. Simply click “Download” and open the containing ZIP file. Once downloaded, installation is as easy as double-clicking the VPK file or dragging it to your left4dead/addons folder.

I’m very happy with the way this has turned out and look forward to building more survival maps in the future. There are many I’d like to thank, most notably: Mobilla, Luigi30, thedaian, Irish Taxi Driver, Rectus, Blazing Ownager, everyone on the Valve SDK forum and everyone in the SDK thread at Something Awful.

During the course of development, it was decided that certain areas of the campaign should be tested ahead of time. The idea that making survival maps, using many of the ideas we intend to employ in the campaign, sounded like a fun challenge. First up: The bridge. See full post.

Valve has, most unexpectedly, released the official SDK this week, officially titled Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools. The SDK is still in beta, but we had a lot of fun tearing it open and playing with all the goodies inside nonetheless.

The updated version of Hammer still feels like the same ol’ Hammer we know and love. It has been redesigned, though, specifically for Left 4 Dead campaings, versus, and survival map editing. One of my favorite new features is that, once the model files are loaded, they stay loaded during a session. The SDK also comes with tons of example files to help newbies (such as us) get started. See full post.

It’s hard to tell, but work behind-the-scenes continues at a rapid pace. The first level, entitled The Suburbs and which takes place amongst the sprawling McMansions of modern suburbia, is making some decent headway. The layout of the house is complete, though exterior detailing needs to be finished up. The interior is missing a few textures in doorways and windows, but it is otherwise finished. See full post.

We’ve been toying with the design and seeking consultation on it from a number of friends for the last few days and I think we’re ready to official unveil the Sprawling Terror campaign poster. See full post.

Left 4 Dead, by itself, comes loaded with a ton of objects for building beautiful urban, rural, and semi-rural environments. Collapsed fire escapes, destroyed concrete pillars, bails of hay, dead cows, and a plethora of objects that feel like they came right out of 1975. The vehicles are no different in this regard: they fit the theme perfectly. The newest of these vehicles is, according to filename properties, a 1995 sedan. See full post.

Welcome to the development blog for Sprawling Terror. We hope to use this as a forum for small releases, big releases, and letting the community sound off on ideas of their own to help shape the campaign while it’s being developed. See full post.