Welcome! Here you'll find changelogs of things done with the leaderboards so we have a nice history to reference. Questions or comments on any of the changes? Feel free to post!

December 6th 2016,

Created a load removal tutorial and posted it to the Guides section. Quickly wrote a paragraph and inserted it into all rules which references the autosplitter in Resources and this video in the Guides section so the information is out there ASAP. Too late to do other stuff, more coming soon.

December 7th 2016,

Updated the "Difficulty/level binds" resource as it had the difficulties written in lowercase causing %s1 to show up when using the bind. That explains why the new runners always have that! Thanks to Portal Rex for bringing it to my attention.

Fixed an exploit (it's a setting) where you could submit a run with the same players but in a different order to duplicate runs on the leaderboards. Previously, if you submitted with player 1 2 3 4, then submit player 1 3 2 4, both runs would show. Now the same player roster will overwrite other runs regardless of their order.

The first of the custom campaign categories are in, woohoo! New "Yama (Custom)" and "Ravenholm (Custom)" categories are at the bottom of the level leaderboards. Check out the first ever submission on Ravenholm by bill_play3, he found some pretty cool stuff. More customs coming soon.

Started updating loadless times. My initial aim will be to get the top three at least of every category, focusing on 1p and co-op first, updated, and more beyond that over time. Already finished some updates to Dead Center and Passing. It takes about a minute not counting download times, so not too bad. Thank god for a Twitch downloader plugin...

Updated a small paragraph to the co-op rules. It now states that video perspective of the first-loading player (likely the host) is required. To all rules, it now states that you must have the red "4" loading icon at least partially visible for the purpose of removing loads and so it can be observed the proper autosplitter is being used and is removing loads correctly (should they use it). This is all to ensure submissions have the ability to grab a proper loadless time.

December 9th 2016,

Icons! New 1st/2nd/3rd place icons to replace the generic trophies. It now features the "4" blood spot logo from L4D2's cover art colored as bronze, silver, and gold. Thanks to Balthazar for them! There is also supposed to be a favicon showing (appears in your tab and next to the URL) of the same logo except classic red, but it isn't loading for me. Might need to investigate this soon?

Moar custom campaigns are up! The latest category additions are "Drop Dead Gorges (Custom)" and "Warcelona (Custom)". Likely 2-3 more customs are coming, stay tuned.

December 21st 2016,

Updated the platforms for accuracy, the game isn't even available on PS3 like was available before. I actually attempted to remove it entirely to see what it was like with the column gone, but it turns out that just leaves a blank platform column instead! Grr. We'll go with this for now. Side effect, removing the platforms wiped their entry in all submissions and it didn't save them to reapply when I added it back. Good stuff, speedrun.com. Not hard to add back since it's basically all PC anyway.

Added milliseconds to the boards since we have our first real seconds tie! MrFailzz and burhac both have a 9:07 on Ravenholm. Since we have a reliable way to get an accurate game time, milliseconds have been instituted for use as a tiebreaker. Everything having a time down to the hundredth may look confusing, so a small bit has been added to the rules stating not to submit anything in the millisecond field unless in case of a tie. It doesn't print it if you leave it zeroed.

Banned "emulators" with a setting so that checkbox doesn't show up anymore. No more PC emulation on your PC allowed!

Another custom campaign category is up, "Urban Flight (Custom)"!

December 25th 2016,

Merry Christmas!

My gift to the leaderboards are three new miscellaneous categories to mess around with. "Parish Dash - Park", "Parish Dash - Quarter", and "Tutorial" are now up with Solo and Co-op subcategories. This was the only place I could fit in these meme categories without cluttering up the place elsewhere. The dash mutation is pretty cool. The tutorial map is good to round out speedrunning all "official" Valve maps (blame bill_play3 for telling me it existed).

December 28th 2016,

After some discussion in the speedrunning Discord, we've come to the conclusion that the changelevel command should not be allowed, which was previously something that hadn't been discussed. Added a short new rule that it can't be used to rotate campaigns during a run. The few legacy runs from ages ago that use this command will be staying up. See this thread for more information about why it was disallowed,

http://www.speedrun.com/l4d2/thread/2lkg5

January 1st 2017,

After a long session of completely, thoroughly breaking the Dash mutation and discussing how it changed the runs entirely, I've added a new subcategory to both levels which is called "Co-op Idle Abuse". The "Co-op" subcategory now disallows usage of idle spamming to hit a flag multiple times with a single player, and... well, I think the rest explains itself. This was necessary to keep the integrity of the mode in one subcategory while allowing it to be just utterly decimated in the other subcategory. Seriously. It's SO broken.

Going with the terminology we've been using, changed two of the Full-game Leaderboard categories to read "Solo Main Campaigns" and "Solo All Campaigns", adding Solo to both, to tell the differences in the categories apart more easily. For consistency the Level Leaderboard categories have been changed from "1p" to "Solo" as well.

February 18th 2017,

It's been a while!

Updated the rules for more clarification, adding to the addon section of the rules that HUD mods are allowed ¤excluding¤ the item radar, which was technically allowed in the previous wording but definitely should not be.

Condensed the sections in the rules about how bot kicking isn't allowed and the changelevel command isn't allowed into a new section that simply has a list of commands which aren't allowed. As well as everything protected under sv_cheats, this section also includes the commands "changelevel" "kick" and "z_difficulty". Created a thread to discuss if the "map" command should also be disallowed.

Updated category terminology for the bhop script categories. Previously as examples it was "Main Campaigns (Bhop Script)" and "LMOE Main Campaigns Bunny Mod", which was pretty inconsistent. Basing the new names off of a slightly shorter version of the name and description of the official script in the resources section these categories were created for, I updated all names to be consistent with themselves and read "Bunny Script" instead.

New thread posted to finalize adding a new, high difficulty subcategory. Coming soon!

February 26th 2017,

Forgot to mention in the last update that another bit was added to the rules at the end of the addon section that states game audio must be audible clearly enough to confirm that no sound addons were used, just for safety. I've seen a couple of runs with extremely low audio that you couldn't really tell, and if they are banned we should always be able to listen to the game.

Updated the speedrun.com logo with a custom one, nifty! Thanks, bill_play3's nameless friend!

April 4th 2017,

It's been too long! Good to do something again, while I was busy I've been building up a to-do list to work through which is starting to trickle in now. Did some easy stuff today.

Updated the wording in all bhop script categories to say that it is ¤required¤ to use the script since some sneaky folks a while ago were saying it was ambiguous how it said "allowed" and they could submit normal runs to it, which was kind of true by the old wording. It now says use of the script is required, and I also moved it to the top of the rules since it's the most relevant change compared to the regular categories.

Updated flow in the rules section where it lists what campaigns are run in the main/all campaigns categories. It was kind of just a big chunk of text before that was hard to look at, so I tried to make it flow better and have the campaigns stand out more by adding hyphens. It was hard to come up with a good way and that's the best I landed on.

Added a Realism Yes/No column across the board to support the new strats being deployed in the L4D1 campaigns that we found recently where Realism mode is about 20s faster in finales, to add more information about the run.

Made the LMOE, LMOE Bhop, and Solo Bhop Level Leaderboard categories miscellaneous, so they are now within that tab like it is on the Full-game Leaderboard.

Made a post to decide the fate of an Expert Realism subcategory once and for all (for now). Voting closes in a week, go over there and check it out! http://www.speedrun.com/l4d2/thread/phwzb/1#2hezc

April 14th 2017,

Slight update to the rules in the banned addons section that says to use snd_rebuildaudiocache to fix broken sounds on old versions of the game so it can't be used as an advantage, and also that audio must be enabled as well, to be clear.

Made a rules explanation thread on bill_play3's request, check it out! http://www.speedrun.com/l4d2/thread/wlk68

Added a link to this thread at the bottom of all rules.

April 21st 2017,

More rule wording changes for clarity. For the Full-game categories, added a bit near the top under the list of campaigns that now states clearly all campaign finales in the run must fade to black to count as completed. We all knew it, but I realized the rules weren't actually completely clear that's required to count the campaign as completed. Also changed wording in the section describing how time starts and stops. Previously it just said time starts when you gain control and ends when the final escape cutscene starts, now it says specifically what frames are used based on HUD element timing. Rules are lookin' good.

After the majority F1'd in the difficulty vote above, Expert Realism is now added as a subcategory to Main Campaigns Solo, Main Campaigns Co-op, All Campaigns Solo, All Campaigns Co-op, Main Campaigns Bhop Script, All Campaigns Bhop Script, and the Solo, Co-op, and Solo Bhop Script Level Leaderboard categories. Go forth and prove you're a tryhard by completing the game on the hardest possible difficulty, you badass!

May 2nd 2017,

Small update. Look behind this post. Background! Added a background image to the boards so it's not a plain color anymore. Not sure I'm completely satisfied with the current image but I was having trouble finding one that looked good and also had darker colors so text remained easy to read. I'll see about getting something even better, but for now at least the current one adds some more flavor.

EDIT: Whelp, already found another one after more digging. Looks much better!

May 10th 2017,

Finally updated the rules section about load removal to reflect the more accurate method of cursor timing. No actual rule changes result from it, if anything it became more open as having an unobstructed loading icon is no longer required as long as the autosplitter or cursor method is available. It now encourages the use of the autosplitter or ensuring you capture your mouse cursor in your recording, and informs the player that they essentially take a slight time penalty if the loading icon needs to be used instead. I did not want to absolutely require capturing mouse cursor as I could easily see runs being rejected for those initially unaware, and I definitely don't want to require the autosplitter since it can be potentially laggy on some machines. The loading icon is usable, just more inaccurate on version 2.0.2.7 and only off by a frame uncommonly in all other versions. Since it can only ever result in a slower time than the most accurate methods and is therefore not unfair to other runners, I decided to allow it as a backup just in case to prevent rejecting a lot of future runs.

Also updated the load removal tutorial text to reflect information about this. The rules explanation thread has been updated too.

May 12th 2017,

The Fortnight Challenge is live! A single Full-game Leaderboard category which rotates its "challenge" every two weeks has been added, the challenge being pretty much anything we can come up with which seems interesting enough. An official thread for this category has been posted here with more information, http://www.speedrun.com/l4d2/thread/f7m7w

May 15th 2017,

Really important update today. The most importantest.

I added a new background image to the Left 4 Dead series page which legitimately looks amazing http://www.speedrun.com/left_4_dead - credit to lonewolfhbs on deviantart for the great artwork I found on Google Image.

Also updated some old runs to loadless timing: Blood Harvest, Dead Air, and Death Toll are now entirely done. Credit for that to burhac for supplying the times.

May 22nd 2017,

A bit late on this as it happened several days ago, but I added burhác to the mod team! I'll now pause for the applause. clapping clapping clapping roaring whistling less clapping much less clapping one awkward, very late clap

What a reception. I know he'll do well, he was already helping with grabbing loadless times and has been in the community for a while so it was time. I've needed the help with verification as well since I am still streaming often and working out Fortnight Challenge stuff and so on.

Updated wording slightly in the rules about snd_rebuildaudiocache so it's more forceful and also points to the rules thread to get information about what it even is. There have been a couple of runs recently that needed to be rejected for their lack of its use so since I could improve how it was written, I went ahead as it's all I can do to make sure runs are fair.

June 13th 2017,

Added a small bit to the co-op rules for Main and All Campaigns that states only the runners present at the start of the run and who completed at least one whole campaign can be given credit for the run, and the Co-op category for individual campaigns states the same except instead of one whole campaign, it says for the majority of the campaign's duration. This was made after a discord discussion revealed that somebody could join for 5 seconds and be given credit, which would be pretty silly. This should avoid all silly situations just in case.

After some thought and a vote, Yama has been removed from the boards for being very slow and uneventful overall, and has been replaced with Detour Ahead. Urban Flight may also need replacing as cracks have shown in that campaign as well. To be continued...

June 19th 2017,

Added "thirdpersonshoulder" to the list of banned console commands. I forgot about this ages ago, apparently. The thirdperson command is protected by cheats but thirdpersonshoulder isn't, nice consistency, Valve.

June 20th 2017 (ish),

It is the end of an era. Really, it was a long time coming, but after the Fortnight Challenge's Blastoff category was run, the realization came up... this mode is really cool and changes the game in a very different and interesting way, too bad Last Man On Earth is the exact opposite. We discussed it for a while, and the majority, as well as some of the top record holders, were behind replacing the LMOE miscellaneous categories with Blastoff, which put the nail in its coffin.

LMOE was a very uneventful, boring mode that only detracted from the speedrun, and was a glorified walking simulator. Nobody actually said they enjoyed running it, nor had interest to outside of purely to compete on a leaderboard. The only real reason was for "practice" before playing a real mode, but there's also the fact that practicing without any of the enemies present in a real run is a dangerous way for new players to pick it up. Besides, the same environment to practice tricks can be done easily with director_stop and the like.

There was no reason for the mode to continue, and with the introduction of Blastoff which generated some excitement to run since it's an entirely new way to path and play the game, it has replaced LMOE. The Full-game Leaderboard now has Blastoff Main Campaigns and Blastoff All Campaigns miscellaneous categories, and the Level Leaderboard now has a Blastoff miscellaneous category.