Left 4 Dead Message Board  

I know this is a very old game now, but in the interest of reviving some play by those who have it, I thought I might share some ways to make a "shotgun pistol" or SMG or rifle for that matter.

Go to your "scripts" folder... c:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead\scripts and go down and select weapon_pistol.txt

Open it with notepad or whatever good editor you might have like Ultra Edit or some other and look over the text inside.

The key is to add the lines "PelletScatterPitch" and "PelletScatterYaw" to allow shotgun like capability. Then, under "Bullets" you add the number you want. For most uses 10 to 16 seems to work best. Not shown below is the "clip_size" which you can increase to match modern "gun gamers" capacity.
Also, if you wish to play without the sv_cheats 1 option and need to reload, make that fast. Some computers will get stutter if you make it too fast, so maybe limit it to about 0.25
or so at first and see what happens.

I have left some of the file below so you can see other changes I made over time to make the pistol faster and easier to handle. I couldn't add the whole file because I ran out of characters... the max allowed here is 6000 but you'll get the idea from some of the comments I made to the file. Playing with the various attributes of the gun makes the game more interesting for me and increases the replay interest. These same changes can be made to SMG's and rifles which also benefit from an increase in rate of fire ("CycleTime"up to 0.33 or so depending on your computer.

Have fun and keep modifying!

WeaponData
{
// Terror-specific Data --------------------
"VerticalPunch" "0" //was 2.5 this is recoil effect made it 0
"SpreadPerShot" "0" //was 1 Don't want any spread
"MaxSpread" "3.0" // 2.0 last time, pretty good. 4 before that, but previously set to 7.5 like shotgun.
"SpreadDecay" "0" // was 5 Don't really know what this does but I don't want any spread
"MinDuckingSpread" "0" //was 0.5, but again, don't want any.
"MinStandingSpread" "0" //was 1.5 but don't want ANY!
"MinInAirSpread" "0" //again, don't want any srpead at all.
"MaxMovementSpread" "0" // was 3.0 but don't want it.
"PelletScatterPitch" "1.0" //last was 2.0,1.5 before. This line starts the shotgun pistol stuff. 3.5 crosshair is too large
"PelletScatterYaw" "1.5" //last was 3.0. Now looking for deadlier close and mid range pistol with balanced pattern.
"DeployDuration" "0.15" //0.5 is stock duration figure... trying for fast deploy times.
"DualDeployDuration" "0.17" // 0.65 is stock duration
"ReloadDuration" "0.15" //this didn't exist so I put it in to speed up reloads... seems to work, or at least
"DualReloadDuration" "0.30" //it did before win8.1
"AddonAttachment" "pistol"

// 360 Terror Data
"MaxAutoAimDeflection1" "10.0"
"MaxAutoAimRange1" "0"
//This value determines how "big" a target is for auto aim. If a target is 10.0 units big then it is considered 10.0*scale.
//You can think about this value controlling a falloff value on distant targets, the smaller the value the harder it is to //hit at a distance.
"WeaponAutoAimScale" "10.0" //was 1.0 so now I'm making it easier to hit stuff at a distance.
// End Terror-specific Data ----------------

"MaxPlayerSpeed" "600" //was 300, stock is 250. Seeing if making this faster improves pistol speed.
"WeaponType" "Pistol"
//"WeaponType" "SubMachinegun" //trying to make full auto... doesn't work so far but trigger is fast.
"WeaponPrice" "500"
"WeaponArmorRatio" "1.2" //was 1.0, made it 2.0, but rifle is 1.4, but pistol blows the doors off.
"CrosshairMinDistance" "0.1" //was 2 last time. Don't know exactly what this does, but tried 0 in
//the past and seemed about the same.
"CrosshairDeltaDistance" "0.1" // was 2I think this and the one above makes the crosshair vary in size by distance... 0 //again.
"Team" "ANY"
"BuiltRightHanded" "1"
"PlayerAnimationExtension" "pistol"
"MuzzleFlashScale" "1" //played with this before but don't want bigger or smaller flash.

"CanEquipWithShield" "1"
"NoiseFactor" "150"// was 350 then 250 don't need that much

"Rumble" "1" //reduced to 0 to try to make the gun faster


// Weapon characteristics:
"PenetrationNumLayers" "2"
"PenetrationPower" "50" //was 30 but rifle is 50 so doing that.
"PenetrationMaxDistance" "0" // none. was 0 so left it so there is no limit.
"CharacterPenetrationMaxDistance" "8192" // this category was not here before but is in some other weapon files so I added //it.

"Damage" "400" //250 last time but it breaks all doors. This is per bullet per shot, so @250 4000 per shot w/16 //pellets below
"Range" "8192" //was 2500, but made it 8192
"RangeModifier" "1.0" //was 0.75 but made it the same as the hunting rifle
"Bullets" "12" // 16, a bit slower. last was 10 with max spread of 2. obviously was 1 to start, but hey, //this is shotgun pistol. 10 with spread of 2 very accurate but still doesn't always stop a zombie.
"CycleTime" "0.003"// last was 0.003. Looking for fastest it can be. Sorta works when moving the gun.
//"CycleTime" "0.175" //I believe this is the amount of time for the gun to fire. Was 0.175 have tried //faster to no avail.