FAQ:
Q: What is "Left4Maps2000"?A: It is something like Qtracker for Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.
Q: What makes it better than Qtracker?
A: You can simply click a link to go to the l4dmaps.com page to download the custom map currently played on the server.
Q: Why are there already servers listed?
A: Because it brings some servers preconfigured. These servers are visible in the list only when they are online. You can add other servers too.
Q: How to install?
A: Download and unzip the ZIP file somewhere.
Use at your own risk.
Feedback is appreciated and suggested features may be added.
Have fun!
alBert2000
Version history:
v1.3.0.0 (2013-01-28)- Added alServ2000 servers as featured Servers
- Updated IPs of Choco servers
- Read the updates about the Ping columns in previous Beta versions
- Keep minimum/average/maximum ping values when a server gets offline.
Max value is especially useful to see if a server offers constant ping quality.
E.g. One server has an average of 200ms and a maximum of 230ms during some time.
Another server may have an average of 50ms but a maximum value of 800ms.
Basically this means that the first server shows a constant performance.
While the second one suffers of high load or so from time to time.
On the second server you may get lags, freezes and "teleporting" players and zombies. - Added coloring of ping columns based on average ping value.
Currently the boundary values can only be configured via Left4Maps2000.exe.user.config file.
Start and stop Left4Maps2000 once so that you can see the default values in the Left4Maps2000.exe.user.config file:
PingBoundary1: default value 80
PingBoundary2: default value 160
Then you can change the values and restart Left4Maps2000
The values will color the ping colums like this:
Green <= PingBoundary1 < Yellow <= PingBoundary2 < red
- New feature: Display server ping duration
There are two new columns: "Ping 1" and "Ping 2"
"Ping 1" is a separate call to the server to determine the ping.
"Ping 2" is calculated during the normal query details request.
"Ping 2" should normally be higher than "Ping 1".
On my machine the "Ping 2" value is more close to the games netgraph value.
You can keep the good ping column and hide the other.
Please give feedback which column is more close to the games netgraph value on your machine.
Maybe only the better column will be kept in the future.
The value in the columns are:
A | B | C | D
A: current ping
B: minimum ping
C: average ping
D: maximum ping
If you use your old user.config file, the saved column widths may not match anymore because there are 2 new columns now in between.
Just adjust the width again and the program will save the new column width values.
v1.2.0.0 (2013-01-03)
- Several custom maps added to L4D and L4D2 (with mapshots extracted from the campaigns VPK file)
- Added Choco Servers to smart scan list (will find new Choco Servers automatically in port range 27010-27020)
- Fix: non-printable characters are now removed when saving the friends list.
IMPORTANT:
Sorry, but the old user.config file is no longer compatible.
You will have to reconfigure the settings and friend list etc. again.
- New: Columns now can be hidden.
Right-Click in the top-left cell in the table view header row to show the menu.
The selection will be saved and restored. - New: Column ordering is saved and restored.
You know you can reorder the columns by dragging the column in the header row. - New: Column width is now saved and restored.
- Improvement: Special characters in player names are now shown correctly.
e.g. the "TM" symbol is now correct. - Feature preview: Use F7 (bigger) and F8 (smaller) to adjust the font size in the table view.
Note: The font size is not saved. - New: The "Server Name" and "Address" columns now have a word wrap at each character.
This is especially useful for the "Address" column where the port number is visible now even if the column width is quite small. - Change: Default Mapshots are upscaled now too to match big width configurations.
Previously the largest Mapshot size was the real picture size. Now upscaling is used to make smaller images larger to fit the configured width. - Added a "Map" column to show the map name for "Versus" maps.
- The Mapshot Packs does not contain "Versus" maps currently.
- Feature: Added a "Add Server" button (removed the context menu entry for adding a new server)
- Improvement: Auto server scan will detect new servers now also when Left4Maps2000 is running.
Previously new servers were only detected during Left4Maps2000 program start.
Note: The detection will only run when at least one server in the list is set to "Refresh". - Validation: If "Stop Refresh" is clicked Left4Maps2000 will really stop all network and program activity.
- Feature: Left4Maps2000 is now looking for updates online and it will display an update notification.
Still the ZIP release has to be downloaded and extracted by hand.
- Improvement: Auto server scan is quicker now.
Psycho servers are now detected only via smart scan. No need to configure the server addresses in the config file. - Feature: Add/Remove your own server addresses.
- Feature: Sort the table view columns.
Just click on the column headers (like "Address", "Game" or "Players") to sort this column.
Click once again to reverse the sorting.
Just to mention it again: You can also reorder the columns.
Just drag-and-drop on the column header.
Column sort and reordering is not permanent. - Mapshot sizes can now be configured (See config tab)
- Mapshot overlay can be activated (Campaign and map name is displayed in the Mapshot)
- Double buffering activated (should prevent flickering even with higher Mapshot sizes)
- Feature: Auto sizing of Player column so that always all players are visible
- Feature: Mapshot size selectable: Small, Medium, Large
- And now the special feature provided by Xeno:
Mapshots included for all standard L4D and L4D2 maps
So the big thanks goes to Xeno for the screenshots and for including them in the Mapshot Packs.
- Feature: Added "Server offline" display in status column (is shown in yellow)
- Several small internal improvements (mainly maintenance)
- Bug fixed: UI did not repaint when a versus map is running in L4D
- Added: Show Friends Only
- Added: Show Player Time
- Added: Show Player Kills
- Added: Version display of all components
- Added: Smart server scan (will find new Psycho Servers automatically in port range 27010-27030)
- ... maybe I forgot some other little fixes or additions^^
- A lot smaller fixes (maybe nobody noticed these bugs before^^)
- Implemented user request (from Major Tom):
The copy to clipboard feature now includes the "connect" string so that it can be pasted in the game console without having to type the "connect"
- Huge speed improvements in server query (Hit F5 to see how fast the servers are refreshed)
- Implemented user request (from Psycho):
Number of Player are displayed now in a new column like: 4/6 (4 Players online of maximal 6) - Hit F6 for some experimental resize table feature.
- A lot of other little improvements I don't remember^^
- Game version display added (in the "Game" column)
- Reordered tabs: "Search" tab is now on second position
- New feature added: Search for Maps and Campaigns (in the supplied Mapshot Packs)
This is especially useful when you want to know the first map name of a certain campaign.
e.g. when you launch a private game in a VPN - Bug should be fixed which prevented Windows (7) to shutdown properly when the Left4Maps2000.exe is still running.
- Note:I have updated the EXE in the zip file and fixed 2 bugs (3 hours after initial upload of v1.0.0.6):
Search for campaign name now works
Map-Links in search results can be clicked now
- Start/Stop refresh option for all servers added
- Start/Stop for individual server added (context menu)
- Status column added
- Add/Remove friends via context menu
- Psycho Versus server added
- Added fiends list feature
Now you can add friends to a list.
If a friend is playing on some server the players cell background color changes to green.
- User config file "Left4Maps2000.exe.user.config" is now saved next to the "Left4Maps2000.exe"
So the application should be portable now.
You have to configure the game exe paths and arguments again.
Sorry for that.
Beginning with this version you can use your previous user config "Left4Maps2000.exe.user.config" for new versions. Just copy the user config file to the new version folder or unzip a new archive to the old location so that the user config file will be reused.
- Added "Address" column so that the host:ip can be copied from this cell with CTRL-C easily.
- Added debug. Enable it in "Config" tab.
Currently only "copy to clipboard context menu" generates debug information.
- Context menu on each server row has been added.
- Copy of host:ip to clipboard is now possible via context menu.
So you can copy the host:ip to connect via in-game console with "connect host:ip" command - Starting the game and connect to server is now possible via context menu
See the Config tab to configure the game path and command line arguments.
You can also configure the command line arguments as you like.
The connect command "+connect host:ip" is added by the program itself.
Click "Save Configuration" button to store the settings permanently.
Note: The user.config file is stored in a path like that:
"C:\Users\Al\AppData\Local\alBert2000\Left4Maps2000.exe_Url_chrke31ww2eiuva1ynblp4rgk1fi2jyn\1.0.0.0\user.config"
This is the .NET feature.
If you change the location/folder of the Left4Maps2000.exe, this checksum part "chrke31ww2eiuva1ynblp4rgk1fi2jyn" will change. You may copy the user.config to your new config folder to get your settings back.
I'm thinking about some better approach to store the user config data. - Server list is refreshed every 10 seconds
- F5 key can be used to refresh the server list manually
Refresh is slow at the moment and sometimes not visible when nothing has changed on the servers.
Need to investigate the slowness.
- Only displays server data.
- No interaction or configuration via UI.
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