Zombicidal

When you want to start tweaking your Left 4 Dead experience beyond what the game settings offer, the console is the first place you should go. It will allow you to do a surprising number of things—bind keys, kick computer players, connect directly to servers, cheat (if you so choose…wanker!), etc.

The console can be enabled in the Keyboard/Mouse Settings. Set “Enable Developer Console” to “Enabled”. Then, you can open it with the :CONSOLE: key. The console enables you to interact directly with the game engine by directly issuing commands and changing command variables (cvars), which affect how the game behaves. Note that changing some variables results in a change in game mechanics, so some cvars are either only available when cheating or are locked entirely.

Understanding the Console

Let’s start by learning how the console commands work. What you type into the console is called an expression, and it requires a specific structure in order to work. All expressions are made up of a sequence of separate arguments in a specific order. Let’s look at a basic example. Here is an expression that binds the key ALT to voice chat:

bind ALT "+voicerecord"

There are three arguments in the expression. The first, bind, tells the game which function you want to use. The ALT argument says what key you want to bind. The third argument, "+voicerecord", is what action should be taken once that key is hit. So basically, the first argument always states what you want to do, and any following arguments state how you want it done.

Let’s look at another example, this time involving cvars. A cvar is slightly different from a function, because it doesn’t tell the game to do an action; rather, it tells it to change some variable or condition. So, if you wanted to enable cheats, you could type

sv_cheats 1

In this case, sv_cheats is the name of the cvar, and 1 is its value. The most important thing to note from this example and the last is that arguments are separated by a space. If you were to type sv cheats 1, the console would balk at you as it tried to use the set the cvar “sv” to the values “cheats” and ‘1″. The developers use underscores to replace spaces within a single argument.

Another thing to notice is the “1″ argument. This is called a Boolean, and Booleans can be either a 1 (for “TRUE”/”YES”) or 0 (for “FALSE”/”NO”). Here, sv_cheats only accepts Boolean values. You can’t put sv_cheats yes or any tomfoolery like that.

Another thing you may wonder is when you should use quotation marks. This depends on the argument, but having to use them is rare. In the case of the bind command, you have to use quotation marks because the third argument might include spaces. Quotation marks prevent spaces from being interpreted as separations between arguments.

You can also combine multiple commands together in one line. The end of a command is marked by a termination operator. Pressing ENTER actually sends a termination operator, the carriage return. The other one is the semicolon (”;”). By using this, you can indicate that one command is over and the next can begin. So, let’s say you wanted to kick all the bots at once. You could put this:

kick Bill; kick Francis; kick Louis; kick Zoey

Note that the last command does not need a semicolon, since it is terminated by the carriage return.

As you type commands, the console will automatically suggest commands in a list under the entry box. To select these suggestions, press the UP or DOWN arrows.