Talk:L4D Level Design/Nav Flow

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Can the Flow possibly make returns?

Hi, I'm planning on making a certain mansion themed map, where the saferoom would be in the first room, but locked. The survivors would have to search the first floor for two keys and then return to the first room so that they can proceed to the second floor. The problem is, will the flow be screwed up, if the saferoom is deceivingly close to the start? Is there a way to tell the Flow, that it should make a few special twists? I'm also worried if Versus mode will get confused and think that the survivors have already reached the saferoom, thus giving them full points, when visiting the first room for the first time before collecting any keys. So basically, can I manually edit or guide the Flow with some kind of "info_nav_checkpoint"-entity or in Nav edit mode? Ps. English isn't my native tongue and this is my first post here, so be easy on me, ok? :P --Vihannes 16:38, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

This is a good idea, unfortunately, I think you're gonna need to rethink all of this since this is very unlikely to work with the current version of the game. Using the same saferoom as start and finish isn't allowed and the flow cannot make returns either. We have the same problem on our campaign, but we got through using a second saferoom... that doesn't mean that the flow isn't particularily awkward of course, since it won't reach the objectives before trying to reach the ending saferoom. I guess that's pretty much impossible. --NykO18 16:56, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, but actually my point was that there are two different saferooms; the problem really was with the wandering infected and the Versus mode score counter. Well, I suppose we can just split our maps into separate parts to allow returns, like Valve did with Hard Rain... That is, if Valve is just too lazy to add an entity that would manually guide the Flow system. But then again, they've heard map makers' requests before! --Vihannes 17:47, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Oh, Ok. That's an idea, yes. I don't think the weird flow affects common and special zombies. On the other hand, it does affect tank and witch spawns, which only occur right next to the escape path. --NykO18 20:36, 6 January 2010 (UTC)