BioFear – A biofeedback mod for L4D2

Needed  a break from job hunting, so decided to record some video of a biofeedback mod I wrote a few weeks back for Left 4 Dead 2. Ideally I wanted to record another mod I developed while at LJMU, but iPad’s are a little more tricky to work with.

BioFear, is a small mod I wrote while trying to push sensor data into L4D2 through the the enhanced mutator system. The concept behind the mod being: the Tank now responds to the player’s stress level, once the player reaches a certain level of stress the Tank will be alerted to the player’s presence and will attack. The player can prevent this by actively trying to reduce their stress level before its too late. The mod works on a similar principle to how the witch is triggered but uses the player’s physiology rather than proximity.
The video above demonstrates the mod in action, showing the player’s current heartbeat rate and stress level. The mod isn’t calibrated terribly well, but for a small amount of effort it did offer some interesting experiences (e.g. when the stress meter rapidly increases, you can see the “fear” in my eyes as I try to counter it ). If I ever figure out how to deploy mods over a network it would be cool to see this mod work with 4 players trying to control their heartbeat rate instead of just one.

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