Left 4 Dead Map Launcher

L4D Map Launcher is a simple application that allows to launch Left 4 Dead with the selected custom map and allowing to choose a difficulty and character. I tried to keep it as simple to use as possible, to remove from map developers the burden of explaining 10 times a day how to starts their maps from the console.

To install this application, you just have to unzip the file and place its contents somewhere you can easily remember.

The map folder includes some examples that will allow you to try the app without even any custom maps. Place the folder's contents into the left 4 dead/left4dead/maps folder. This will allow you to test launching all original campaigns in cooperative, survival and versus modes and Valve's Tutorial Standards map both in cooperative and versus. These files are also a good start to make your own launch files and forget about the console when using custom maps!

The launcher checks the "left 4 dead/left4dead/maps" folder for .launcher files. These launcher files are just plain text files with a different extension, and include all of the info that the app needs to launch any map of a campaign. They follow this format:

[Campaign name]
[Campaign type: cooperative, versus or survival]
[Map creator]
[URL of the map]
[Poster or image file. The image must be on png, jpg, bmp, tiff or gif format (if you don't have an image, set it to none or anything that is not a file).]
[Name of the first map]
[File name of the first map]
[Name of the second map]
[File name of the second map]
...
[Name of the last map]
[File name of the last map]