Typical Valve: Left 4 Dead 2 gets a 'minor update' with notes as long as your arm, and names an alligator
Valve has released a new update for Left 4 Dead 2 showing that, whatever the fans may think, someone over there is certainly paying attention to all their complaints. It makes substantial, not-so-substantial, and in some cases slightly bonkers changes to the game. Try this on for size: «Restored the knife's original horizontal swing trajectory.» Knife is once more the best! Though the skillet will always hold a special place in my heart.
Some of the fixes seem like things that should always have been the case, such as only the original attacker being credited for damage caused by exploding props. Others are clearly in response to community requests, such as the addition of a bunch of new script functions, including «GetClosestCharacterWhoIsIT» which will return the closest character who is IT. Sounds like tag.
The real changes are across the game's many maps, most of which have received some sort of a touching up. In some cases this is as simple as fixing genuine bugs, like a spot on map 3 of Dead Center where players could get lodged on a vending machine: hey, may've taken 14 years, but Valve gets there in the end. On Dark Carnival they've patched «an elaborate SI out of bounds exploit.»
Perhaps the best patch note of all comes for the map Swamp Fever. The notes start off strong anyway with the news that Valve's patched a «janky ladder» near the ferry event: I thought janky ladders were just the Source default, but what do I know. Then the news every L4D fan has been waiting for:
«By popular community request the TLS Swamp gator is now canonically named Fred.»
I must admit to zero knowledge of the TLS swamp gator and the campaign to have him named Fred, but this is clearly God's work.
Pretty much every map in the game
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