Dead Air

Dead Air is the third campaign in Left 4 Dead. The Survivors must make their way to a runway in hope of catching a plane away from the Infected.

Official description
Guide your team of Survivors out of the downtown core of Newburg's business district, through derelict office floors and still-inhabited cubicles, and out onto the runway of Metro International Airport, where the only thing standing between you and the last plane out of the city is a murderous army of the undead.

Graffiti
There are several instances on the rooftops where one may find writing, such as "help need food" or "S.O.S." There are also numerous writings about how a bomb will be dropped on the airport. Their predictions look to have come true when the Survivors enter the ruined facility. This is also mentioned in random dialogue by Survivors. Near the end of Runway Finale, sometimes the Survivors may state the airport was bombed to prevent the Infection from spreading. Also, near the sky way in The Terminal, Francis may say, "What idiot bombed the airport?"

However, it has been noted that the debris of a plane can be seen scattered through out the airport, leading to another scenario: That a plane crashed mid flight, and the bomb has yet to be dropped.

Players may also notice one of the later safe rooms with the writing "WE ARE THE REAL MONSTERS" on the wall, along with various other messages below it telling the writer that they are a moron, telling them that the Infected are the monsters, and somebody even tells them that he wishes that they are dead now. Beneath all of this, written in small letters, is a sentence that states "I miss the internet." Also in one sentence, it claims that the Infected were created by the military, and that there is a rumor that the government is giving a cure to the rich, followed by a claim that the virus was made by aliens, along with a writing wondering if this was "first contact."

Several times throughout the campaign, the phrase "God is dead" can be seen. This was a statement originally made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and has heavily been quoted since. Occasionally, the Survivors may respond to the writings, saying things such as, "Oh, no! The zombies killed God!"

In the safe room of The Crane, there is some graffiti on the wall that states "This is our punishment." Right under this is the sentence "It's Dead Air"; a reference to the title of the campaign.

Making Dead Air Playable in Versus Mode
Although Valve is releasing this map in the future for Versus mode, there is already an unofficial way to make this playable.

To make this map playable in VS Mode, just make a copy of all of the map files:


 * 1) l4d_airport01_greenhouse.bsp
 * 2) l4d_airport01_greenhouse.nav
 * 3) l4d_airport01_greenhouse.lst
 * 4) etc...

And rename them so they begin with l4d_vs_...(example: l4d_vs_airport01_greenhouse.bsp). This will make the levels playable in Versus Mode using a Dedicated or Non-Dedicated Left 4 Dead server. All players likely have to make these changes as well in order to enter the game.

The reason adding VS Mode this way works is because all playable maps are located in left4dead\missions\mission_manifest.txt and the maps for airport_vs is in the file by default, despite the map not existing. This is just conjecture, but Valve likely intended to allow all maps to play in VS but wasn't able to due to some kind of restrictions. As with many games, this is likely due to time constraints caused in making the changes in the game maps necessary to balance it for VS mode.

These map changes can be seen in the finale map for No Mercy. The room where the Survivors hole up during the end is different. In Coop/Single, the stairs are enclosed while in VS they are around back and fully exposed.


 * NOTE:This also works for the Death Toll Maps as well. Also, copying the .txt files appears to prevent the chapters from ending correctly. If, when you don't copy the txt files, the chapter ends before the survivors leave the safe room (this happened when I tested the map by myself) just type in the console sb_all_bot_team 1. This fixed the problem for me.

Disclaimer: As of adding this, this has not been tested yet with other players, so any consequences of making this adjustment are unknown. The game could run perfectly, it could cause Steam Validation Failure, or worse. Try at your own risk.