References to a New Playable SI Found in Game Files

[NF]

A year ago, Turtle Rock Studios (creators of L4D1) Developer Chris Ashton released the files to their unfinished campaign, tentatively called Dam It: Buried by the Flood. We've been digging through these files for a while, and made some interesting discoveries including the existence of two new incomplete tier 3 weapons, the Heavy Shotgun and Heavy Rifle.

Recently, however, beta community member Mr. Sangheili checked into certain files that we overlooked, and found references to a new playable special infected: The Queen. Unfortunately, the entire extent that we know of this new SI is only through the file paths it would have used:

Model:

models/infected/queen.mdl

Weapon Script:

scripts/weapon_queen_claw.txt

Decals:

queen_trail
queen_trail_cheap

The second file gives away that this new SI would have been playable -- files in the format of "weapon_xyz.txt" in the scripts folder are usable items only, so The Queen is not an uncommon zombie or unplayable boss like The Witch. What are your thoughts on this?

[sinclair]

well i think we all miss the queen

[NF]

Update from TRS Developer Phil Rob:

Man, it’s been quite a while and I can’t be 100% sure, but the Queen may have been an early name for the Witch…we did all kinds of experiments with the various infected and their abilities, hard to keep track of all the iterations and changes.

The Screamer model was never made, the Screamer functionality was injected into the Boomer’s vomit before we got that far.

Mr. Sangheili replied that it doesn't really make sense to be files for the Witch, and Phil further replied:

Eh, they may be right. It was a long time ago and I don’t have an encyclopedic memory, hence the preface “I can’t be 100% sure,” Still, pretty awesome to see so folks so jazzed about the OG L4D.

On whether the Witch was ever playable:

We tried it. It was determined that the witch was, in ideal circumstances, way too OP to be playable…in most other circumstances she just wasn’t any fun to play… just sitting there waiting to be triggered sucked, and witch executions made a large portion of the remaining time majorly disappointing.

[sinclair]

a playable witch could be awesome. seems like the biggest reason why they decided against it was they didnt want instakills.

[Map 1]

Someone did make the Witch playable via a plugin years and years ago.

You could move her around, stand her up, sit her down, climb ladders (a bit wonky) and trigger her when survivors were close.

The only thing you couldn't do was control her movements when she was triggered. Don't think it ever became a popular thing, regardless if she incapped you or killed you. I suppose the witch going from a pushover to a sure incap/kill if close was too much of a change for people to incorporate it in any competitive config. Even those OP modded servers that favor survivor or favor infected don't feature it at all.

I suppose this is one of those things if the witch were to ever be playable. Its going to be L4D3 and Valve is going to have to force it on the playerbase with new mechanics.

[NF]

Playable Witch sounds horribly boring, I think they made a good choice in removing it. I'd rather have a 4th standard SI to attack with.

[Map 1]

I would've liked to see the Leaker in action.

A proximity based Special could've been a neat idea.

[Artifacial]

Surely you could have made it playable in a way that wouldn't have made it boring. i.e. optionally playable within a certain proximity, so you're not just waiting around the entire map (survivors come within a certain proximity of the witch, an infected SI can opt in to taking control of it by giving up their spawn, and opt out again if the survivors just dodge it). AI witch pathing is terrible, could have done away with it completely. If players didn't take control of it, she wouldn't aggro, easy crown. Would also give the infected team the option of holding on to their spawns if they had a hit in an area where they think could have done more damage.

[KiLLaToY]

[Bravo]