Cold Stream

Cold Stream
Tagline	"The fields have eyes, the trees have ears... and we have guns."
Creator	Matthew "donking" Lourdelet Stephan "CosmicD" Vandenborn (music soundtrack)
Chapters	Alpine Creek South Pine Stream Memorial Bridge Cut-throat Creek

"This community created campaign throws you deep in the back woods to face thousands of zombies as you battle your way to a helicopter rescue. Don't let the water or waves of zombies sweep you away to your death."

Cold Stream is the third DLC for Left 4 Dead 2. It was announced in a blog post on February 16, 2011. Cold Stream was released on March 22, 2011 in beta form on Steam, and it was officially released in its final form on Steam on July 24th, 2012. Cold Stream was released on the Xbox Marketplace August 3rd, 2012 for 560MSP.

Cold Stream is unique in that every chapter ends with a gauntlet crescendo event leading to the safe room. The finale, Cut-throat Creek, is also a hectic gauntlet event going through the entire chapter, like The Bridge from The Parish. Cold Stream is also noted for relatively few calm spots compared to other Left 4 Dead 2 campaigns.

Below is a complete list of video walkthroughs of the final versions of the 4 levels, with the first two levels in one video:

1. Alpine Creek and South Pine Stream
2. Memorial Bridge
3. Cut-throat Creek Finale

Released in Cold Stream

Only for Left 4 Dead 2

• Cold Stream, a community-made campaign from the creator of the 2 Evil Eyes community campaign.
• Ports of Death Toll, Dead Air, Blood Harvest, and Crash Course.
• Play all Mutations anytime you want.

Achievements

	STREAM CROSSER
	Survive the Cold Stream campaign on any difficulty.

The Xbox 360 version of the Cold Stream DLC has no unique achievements added to the game.

Beta

Cold Stream was released to the public on the official servers on PC/Mac via beta release on March 22, 2011 for play testing and bug-seeking, such as finding nav-mesh bugs, navigational issues, hit box problems, missing zombie ladders, art problems, and more.

An in-game bug reporter was activated at the same time allowing players to send feedback and bug reports. This feature was announced by Valve to be extended eventually to work with other community campaigns. But strangely, there's no "Report Bug" button in the main menu or the in-game menu, which requires writing "bug" in the Developer Console yourself.

Players can also post feedback on the official forums in the Cold Stream section. Development of Cold Stream can also be followed on Valve's official Twitter account located here.

Notes

• Sometimes the Survivor Bots will fail to get on the chopper ladder at the end and fall out of the map.
• Earlier revisions of the campaign featured models re-used from the Garry's Mod map gm_forest, amongst content from other games. The game files in "left4dead2_dlc3" contained models and textures for ex. "gm_forest."
  • Since the SteamPipe conversion on July 2, 2013, many un-sourced models were removed before Cold Stream was officially released. The models can be downloaded from GameMaps.com.
• Despite the fact that it is an official map, and though parts of the campaign reference the Left 4 Dead campaigns made by Valve, Cold Stream is not part of the official Left 4 Dead canon, and as such, does not fit in with the central storyline in Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.
• The campaign has several artifacts recycled from other Left 4 Dead campaigns, having the SOS painted sign and the News Chopper 5 Helicopter from No Mercy, the elevator from Hard Rain, graffiti from all of the campaigns, and the military jets from The Parish.
• In-game character dialogue is notably sparse, being largely confined to repetitive one-liners recycled from Left 4 Dead 2.
  • Similar to other custom campaigns, this campaign simply doesn't use variating dialogue and is all the same.
• Left 4 Dead tropes encountered in this campaign include a high-level bridge crossing, rescue helicopters, aerial bombing of a freeway overpass, radio-for-rescue, climbing tanker trucks, a crescendo event maze and cabins in the middle of a forest.
• In reply to a Twitter post on May 4, 2011, Valve explained that they are experimenting with moving community campaigns over to the Xbox 360, along with Cold Stream.
• Cold Stream features Swamp Fever's Mud Men and The Parish's Riot Infected. Riot Infected are the only way to obtain the nightstick.
• Since the release of Dead Air for Left 4 Dead 2, Cold Stream has its own intro theme music and re-uses The Parish's beta horde theme, a decision largely suggested by players from the forums. Prior to this, Cold Stream re-used Swamp Fever's intro and horde music; although deemed fitting for this campaign, they were eventually replaced by the soundtracks mentioned above.
• An achievement called STREAM CROSSER was added. Valve said that if 20,000 players get it they would be rewarded. This goal was achieved almost four hours after the achievement was released according to the L4D blog, and the reward was to release the Dead Air campaign to Left 4 Dead 2 early, which was on July 22, 2011.
• Significant changes were rolled out in the July 2011 update. Among the more notable revisions were wholesale (and most welcome) changes to the Memorial Bridge chapter and ultimate Finale sequences. Common Infected spawning behaviours were now more credible and had tighter sequence linking whilst the number of Special Infected was refined in to enhance the "surprise factor" during gameplay. In addition, the revised Cut-throat Creek chapter saw the introduction of an innovative visibility-reducing mist effect.
• In the game files, the rescue helicopter from the Parish Finale can be found in a folder called "bunny". This helicopter however has an unfinished crashing animation, which was cut from the final release.
• During the intro, an Infected may attack Ellis, but deal no damage.
• Cold Stream is the only campaign poster not to feature the Survivors or the campaign's tagline.
• The Last Stand was not included in this DLC, making it the only campaign from the first Left 4 Dead not to be playable in its sequel without being modded into the game.
• This is the only campaign where no Witches spawn in any chapters.
  • However, there are exceptions on some Mutations.
  • Also, on rare occasions, Witches will spawn during a Versus game. (Confirmed on Xbox 360)
• There is evidence suggesting that this campaign takes place in New Jersey. In the final chapter, there is a map in the Safe Room depicting Union County, with cities like Roselle and Elizabeth marked as well as the NJ Transit railroad line.
• The helicopter in the Beta version seems to be modeled after the US Army Huey model.
• This is the only map in the entire series to show the Chapter's title card in-game.
• On November 15th 2019, a Steam user re-created the Beta version of Cold Stream into final version. Although having the same manner with the Valve one, this version has more faithful rendition to the beta rather than the current Valve's version.

Gallery

Before the July 6th update of Cold Stream, no rendered pilot was present in the chopper.

External Links

• Official Cold Stream Forum References