Left 4 Dead How to install skin mods

Introduction

There are many ways to install skin/texture/model mods for Left 4 Dead. Some of them work, some of them don't.

I have found one that works and can be toggled on or off in case the game crashes or other issues appear.

Extracting Pak01_dir.vpk

Before you can begin you will need GCFScape.

You can download it from https://web.archive.org/web/20191012095539/http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=26.

The archive.org link is used since the original website is unavailable. You can read more about GCFScape from https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/GCFScape.

The difference between the installer and archive version is that the installer version will be installed to the system and require administrative rights while the archive version can be extracted and run directly without installing or requiring administrative rights.

Once done downloading, open it up and you should see this screen.

Click File on the toolbar and then Open in the dropdown menu.

Navigate to your Left 4 Dead folder (typically C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Left 4 Dead) and in the left4dead folder, open pak01_dir.vpk. Now you should see this

If the above location doesn't work or if you have installed Steam to a different location:

Go to your Steam library

Right click Left 4 Dead

Click properties

Click browse local files

If you open pak01_dir.vpk under a different name like pak01_backup_dir.vpk it will not extract properly!

Hold down the control key and select all the folders on the right pane. Then right click and select Extract. Extract it to a different folder for now; in the image below I am extracting it in a folder called _extractedVPK located in the left4dead folder.

Once done extracting, close GCFScape. Select all the files from the extracted folder and paste it into the left4dead folder. Accept all folder merges.

After merging the folders, rename pak01_dir.vpk to pak01old_dir.vpk.

Install your mods and it should now load.

Extracting And Fixing Mods (part One)

If your mod doesn't work you will have to manually fix it. The reason why it doesn't work is that these mods have purposely mispelled file names or mispellings in the vmt files for a different mod method (directly editing the pak01_dir.vpk method).

Go to your addons folder and select the mod that doesn't work. On another window, go to your Left 4 Dead folder and open the bin folder. In this bin folder find vpk.exe. Then drag your .vpk onto the vpk.exe. This should extract the mod.

If you do not see vpk.exe then you will need to install the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools. You can use the install button from this page: https://steamdb.info/app/513/

Once the mod is extracted, delete the original vpk. Then go into the folder and correct any file misspellings you find.

Before: After:

Once the mispellings are fixed, drag the folder onto the vpk.exe to repack it. You can delete the folder afterwards.

Before:

After:

Extracting And Fixing Mods (part Two)

Sometimes there will be mispellings in the vmt files, causing the mods to have missing textures.

Unfortunately some mods will have a lot of vmt files so its not very efficient to edit each vmt file one by one.

In this case I would recommend to install Cygwin from https://cygwin.org/

Cygwin includes a tool called sed that will be very helpful in fixing those mispellings in the vmt files.

First step is to open the Cygwin Terminal and run:

cd "$(cygpath "LOCATION")"

Location is the folder where you will be doing your corrections. For this example it would be:

cd "$(cygpath "C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Left 4 Dead\left4dead\addons\(gpz)zoey_aftermath\materials\models\survivors\teenangst")"

Cygwin also includes other tools that can make the renaming process easier. For example:

rename "boey" "zoey" *rename "bluee" "blue" *Will take care of the file misspellings.

To check if all vmt files in the directory contain a mispelling, use this command:

for f in *.vmt; do echo "$f" && grep "boey" "$f"; done

To fix the misspellings use this command:

sed -i 's/boey/zoey/g' *.vmtYou can now rerun the check command to see if everything's been fixed.

Just remember that you will have to do this for each directory that has misspellings.

On a side note the terminal screenshots will look different from yours, but the commands will still run the same.

Extracting And Fixing Mods (part Three)

Sometimes there is just an issue with the mod itself unrelated to the misspelling issue.

If you still wish to try and fix the issues you can either:

A) Delete some of the mod files so it loads the original files and looks better

B) Compare the mod files and game files to try and correct the issue

For example. With this GPZ's Zoey Aftermath mod everything looks fine except her eyes; they are purple and black checkerboard (missing textures).

If I remove the teenangst_eyeball_l.vmt and teenangst_eyeball_r.vmt files the mod looks fine once again.

But if I look at the file path (materials\models\survivors\teenangst) I can go into the game files and compare the files to see what could be the issue.

In this case it seems to be caused by a inconsistent use of back and forward slashes and an incorrect $Iris file (seems it should be $Iris "models/survivors/TeenAngst/blue_iris"):

So I make the file only use forward slashes and set a correct $Iris file and everything works.

Before:

After:

Conclusion

Mods used:

miku auto shotgun Version Kawai :3

https://www.gamemaps.com/details/19922

Tremors pipebomb

https://www.gamemaps.com/details/16498

Tremors pipebomb (fixed)

https://files.catbox.moe/sgitgd.vpk

gpz's zoey the aftermath for l4d1

https://www.gamemaps.com/details/8998

gpz's zoey the aftermath for l4d1 (fixed)

https://files.catbox.moe/omzb39.vpk

Change Log:

2020-11-03

First published

2021-06-13

Added some more text here and there.

Added two more parts (fixes) for the misspelling issue.

Added list of mods used.

Updated screenshots.

If anything breaks or goes wrong, just rename pak01old_dir.vpk back to pak01_dir.vpk.

If you ever need to verify your game integrity or something related be sure to rename pak01old_dir.vpk back to pak01_dir.vpk or else Steam will waste time redownloading game files it doesn't need to.

Thanks to BoomerSTEAM from GameMaps.com for the original guide[www.gamemaps.com] .

Although a bit of extra work to just get some mods loaded into the game, this is something I wish I had known since I basically didn't bother with skin mods since I could never get them to work.

And now I finally can; only just to install one or two skin mods and be satisfied enough.

If this is too much work or time consuming for you then you'll be glad to hear a game called Left 4 Dead 2 that solves all these issues! :^)

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2276453098

How to install skin mods