Team Fortress 2

[Syri]

Fucking sweet.

[JustinCredible]

The unlockable for the Heaviest pugilists out there is the K.G.B. Any time a Heavy kills an enemy with the K.G.B he receives five seconds of guaranteed critical hits. This crit-boost can be used to punch and kill further enemies, extending the boost time. Alternatively, the Heavy can switch to another weapon and use the boost to take out an enemy at range. The Heavy's slow movement speed, and the K.G.B's slower swing speed, make it a risky prospect.



Download the Heavy Icon Set:
http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/Achievements.zip

http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/kgb.htm

[BlackedOutLT1]

Originally Posted by Syri

Fucking sweet.

that is amazing!

That new map, steel, is pretty awesome! I like how they changed the way it works!

I can't WAIT!

[BlackedOutLT1]

http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/badwater.htm New update, Badwater Basin map!

[JustinCredible]

[BlackedOutLT1]

lol its monday, time for the next heavy item to be revealed!

[JustinCredible]

[JustinCredible]

[JustinCredible]

http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/sandvich.htm

[JustinCredible]

Meet the Sandvich Video
http://steamgames.com/v/index.php?area=app&AppId=5073

[/b]

[JustinCredible]

Alpine Art Style

http://www.teamfortress.com/images/p..._concept_1.jpg

http://www.teamfortress.com/images/p..._concept_2.jpg

We decided to create a new TF environment after sensing some desert-fatigue, both internally and externally. The new theme had to be a departure from the current look without being so different that the characters felt out of place in it. We also wanted to leverage some content from our existing environments, since crafting every asset from scratch would mean we'd be moving the release beyond Valve time and into the realm of geologic time. Given these goals and constraints, we settled on the Alpine theme for two reasons: Its green foliage and blue-gray rocks let us introduce a new, cooler color palette to the game, and the lumber mill / mining camp buildings fit our existing set of structures. For Arena Lumberyard, the goal was to establish a clear difference between the two sides of the map. One side climbs up toward a large mountain peak, and the other dips down into a vast valley. We're excited to have a new visual theme to play with, and we'll definitely be using it in future maps.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1760

[JustinCredible]

Team Fortress 2 Updates Coming To Xbox 360 Later This Year

Owners of the Xbox 360 version of Team Fortress 2 will be scarfing down sandviches and delivering payloads later this year, as Valve is finally bringing all the updates delivered via Steam to the Xbox Live Marketplace. That means new, class-specific Achievements, new unlockable weapons for the Pyro, Medic and Heavy, new gameplay modes and new maps, all on your Xbox 360.

Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi got that piece of business out of the way just before our latest Left 4 Dead demo, saying that the developer wanted to build up a massive update for Xbox 360 users before delivering. Given that Valve is being forced to charge for the update, they wanted to ensure that 360 owners were getting their money's worth.

So, how much? The price isn't final, but Valve is hoping to go as low as possible, aiming for a ten dollar price tag. Not too shabby. Sorry, PS3 owners, no word on when or if Valve will be giving you the same Team Fortress 2 updates.

http://kotaku.com/5040417/team-fortr...ater-this-year

[JustinCredible]

A Grim Bloody Fable

The path to arriving at a final design for a character is sometimes a long and winding one. This was especially the case for the Demoman and we thought it would be interesting to step through that process and shed a little light on how we arrive at our final designs. Early on in the process, soon after we decided that we were going to start a new, more stylized direction for TF2 it opened up a whole range of possibilities in terms of what that meant visually. One of the first (albeit short-lived) ideas that was being thrown around was to try to recreate a look of claymation for our game. The idea was to make the world look like a miniature set built for clay figures which animated and gibbed into chunks of clay.



A quick set of concepts were made to test the idea but we quickly realized that though the novelty of such a direction would be interesting, it didn't fit some of our higher level goals in terms of what kind of product we were trying to deliver. However, we did want to hold onto this concept of simulating real world artistic materials in the game and this led to the more painterly look which eventually shipped with the product.

Now that we were back to the drawing board an effort was made to first think of these classes as full characters with a history, distinct personalities and even nationalities. Short biographies were drafted which helped the artists concept characters which they imagined would match these biographies. For the Demoman, although the angry Scotsman was already an archetype common in media we decided to embrace that. The short bio was:

With this bio to springboard from and constant meetings between the artists and feedback from the team, a number of concepts were created:

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_concept2.jpg

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_concept3.jpg

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_concept3a.jpg

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_concept4.jpg

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_concept5.jpg

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_concept5a.jpg

As we were designing the characters, a stronger emphasis was simultaneously being placed on readability of the classes when playing the game, and so as you can see in the examples above, the silhouette of the Demoman was becoming more and more distinct. The first few concepts didn't really separate him out from the rest of the classes but as he was refined the more substantial upper body shape helped make him recognizable immediately.

At this point, the 3D model for the Demoman was being built and we were preparing to move on. However, there were still some who didn't think he was quite there. A nagging feeling that perhaps the embracing of the archetype was a little to generic. Perhaps a little too much like a groundskeeper in Springfield. We needed a twist to make him more interesting. We didn't want to lose his personality but felt like visually he needed something that broke the cliche. A suggestion was made to have him of African descent and we ran with it.

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_concept6.jpg

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_concept7.jpg

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_concept8.jpg

With a few modifications to his overall shape we soon arrived at the final concept and what you all see and play in the game today:

http://teamfortress.com/images/posts/Dm_final.jpg

http://teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1783

[JustinCredible]

A Day in the Life of a Demoman
http://www.wegame.com/watch/A_Day_in..._of_a_Demoman/

[JustinCredible]

History As Told By TF2
http://teamfistory2.ytmnd.com/

[JustinCredible]

Team Fortress goes 2D



Originally made for the TIGS demake competition Gang Garrison 2 has now spawned a following of its own, what is Gang Garrison? A complete demake of Team Fortress 2.

Complete with every character, multiplayer, demade music and a whole lot of fun.. Check out the gameplay footage after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRuyjVPu1sY

GG2 is quite an impressive achievement although it doesn’t knock Underland off as my favourite demake, perhaps we should set up a Casualty Gamer server for some fragging fun?

Download a copy here and find some friends to frag.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=2491.0

http://casualtygamer.com/2008/09/team-fortress-goes-2d/

[JustinCredible]

Team Fortress 2 Updates Not Coming For PlayStation 3
Gabe Newell confirms no ongoing development for Orange Box on PS3.

In a new interview we are publishing today, Valve co-founder Gave Newell and marketing director Doug Lombardi reveal that the recent free updates for Team Fortress 2 on the PC (which are confirmed for the Xbox 360 as well) will not be coming to the PlayStation 3 version of TF2. Furthermore, there isn't much hope for the content ever making its way to that system since Valve currently has no internal PlayStation 3 development.

"We don't have PlayStation developers," Lombardi told us. Earlier in the interview, Newell discussed how Electronic Arts had handled the PS3 port of Orange Box rather than Valve internally. When asked whether or not EA would support the game by helping port the downloadable content over, Newell said, "They're not doing ongoing development on The Orange Box for the PS3."

Newell also noted that not having a PS3 version of their upcoming zombie shooter Left 4 Dead was also partially due to EA. "We don't have the bandwidth," Newell said. "For The Orange Box, EA did the PS3 version. They're interested in getting a PS3 version done. We just have to figure out where the resources can come from. We don't have the bandwidth. We're doing the 360 and PC version ourselves." Newell did confirm that Valve would like to work on in-house PS3 development, but that this will only come "as our bandwidth allows us to."

It's reassuring that Valve is looking to pump up work on the PS3 despite Newell's well-documented dislike for the platform. That said, "as our bandwidth allows us to" isn't going to do much for the disappointed PS3 owners wishing they could check out that sweet new Team Fortress content or do some co-op zombie killing this winter.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3170096

[JustinCredible]

Finding the Time to Bleed

Since the release of Meet the Sandvich in August, several people have asked us how something we'd boasted would be "our magnum opus," "over four hours long" and "make Citizen Kane look like something dumb a complete idiot would make," ended up being one un-dramatic minute spent inside a refrigerator.

Now that more than a month has passed and the wounds have healed on Meet the Sandvich, we can finally give you an honest account of this aborted 240-minute epic, and by that we mean point fingers: It was all the bean counters' fault.

The suits took issue with every brave, authority-questioning page of our Meet the Sandvich script-specifically that there were supposed "similarities" between it and the 1987 action film Predator, and more specifically that it was word for word the 1987 action film Predator.

"Could you explain to us how your script is in any way different from Predator?" asked one of the suits.

"Predator takes place in Guatemala," Erik Wolpaw explained, using his I'm-explaining-something-idiotic-to-a-child voice. "Meet the Sandvich takes place inside a refrigerator in Guatemala."

"Where you can hear Predator happening outside of the refrigerator," clarified Jay Pinkerton.

"Also, Predator is two hours long," Erik continued. "Ours is four hours long."

"Right," said a suit, "but only because the script includes the first half of Predator..."

We nodded.

"... then all of Road House, and then the rest of Predator."



More nods. For a bean counter, this guy had really done his homework. Much like Dutch, when Dillon explains to Dutch how the Predator uses the jungle to its advantage, these suits really "got" it. We let our defenses down.

"Our script is pretty much exactly like Predator," Jay agreed.

"We took the script for Predator and put our names on it," Erik added, in case this hadn't been clear.

"Also, we had to paste the script for Road House there in the middle," Jay said when it suddenly occurred to him that business types who don't understand the creative art of writing might think merely writing your name on the Predator script isn't a full time job for two people. With everyone apparently now on the same page, Jay began working the room and shaking hands.

As it turns out, we'd been led, like the Predator by Dutch, into a trap. Instead of sharpened bamboo and weighted jungle pulleys, though, this was a trap of words, and instead of the Predator, it was us.



The suits demanded we give them the script so they could shred it. Just like in Predator, Jay doused the script pages in mud to conceal their heat signature from the suits. Unlike in Predator, this did nothing. The script was confiscated and destroyed. This created a small problem for all the Team Fortress actors we had standing around in the recording booth, watching us through the window with increasingly visible agitation.

"Hello?" barked Rick May, the voice of The Soldier. "Are we doing this or not?"

"Oh man, we are going to get fired now," Jay said. "We'll have to get jobs! We'll have to..." Jay tried to think, failed, then gave up in frustration. "What do people who aren't writers do?"

"I think they... sell things," said Erik, clutching at fuzzy images of people he'd walked past on the street on the way to nice restaurants. "Shoes and watches. From behind tables." He remembered his butler, who wasn't a writer. "Oh! Or they serve things."

"What are you two idiots talking about in there?" asked Gary Schwartz, the voice of the Heavy.

Jay grabbed the intercom mic. "Shut up, please," he observed.



"Anyone else notice this script is basically Predator?" Nathan Vetterlein, the voice of the Scout, asked. "It's not just me, right? This is word for word Predator."

"You think you can do any better?" spat Erik, a cloud of sandwich chunks hitting the sneeze guard they put between actors and writers in professional recording studios.

"You think what we do is easy?" screamed Jay, sending a further cascade of sandwich onto the sneeze guard. "Where would you have put the script for Road House into the script for Predator, smart guy? At the beginning? Because then it's just two movies," he said, not even believing how stupid someone could be to do that. He put his sandwich down to better illustrate the point with his hands, using his open palms to signify two different scripts, then bapping them together to further illustrate how stupid that would be.

Just as Jay's sandwich hit the table, a light went on in the refrigerator in Erik's head. "Sandwich... Sandwich! Say..." He punched the intercom. "Hey, guys? This is gonna sound crazy, but I have a new direction I want to try. Who's seen the movie Predator?"

"I have!" Jay exclaimed, thrusting his hand into the air.

Erik began to pace. "We open on a chopper. Inside sits Dutch, muscles bulging thr—"



"Look," Rick May interrupted, "how about we just improvise something?"

"Improvise..." Erik said, stretching the "s" out thoughtfully while staring at the ceiling.

After a minute of Erik saying "sss" followed by a gasping gulp of air followed by a few minutes of silence, Rick May tapped on the glass and asked us if we wanted him to tell us what "improvise" means.

It turns out "improvise" is another word for "the writers just watch," which sounded good to us. Better yet, the improvising was a big success, and led to the dialog you heard in Meet the Sandvich: rude, raw and spontaneous, like freestyle rap (or, as Valve writer/amateur freestyle rap impresario Marc Laidlaw refers to it, the poetry of the streets.) Here's a sampling below of some of the stuff we didn't end up using:

Heavy:

"What's that, Sandvich?"

Scout:

"Gimme back my legbone!"

"He's like a big shaved bear!"

"Pain!"

"I regret everything!"

Soldier:

"We got him by the short and friskies!"

"Don't do it!"

"You're writing checks your butt will find uncashable!"

"You only get one!"

"You call that killing me?"

"I will pay you all of my money!"

"Half the blood in your body!"

After an hour of high quality stuff like the dialog above, the writers had gained enough confidence to improvise some of our own. Here's a line we improvised ourselves from the movie Predator:

"I don't have time to bleed!"

Another improvisational gem, courtesy of Valve's award-winning writing staff, unilaterally tag-team writing alongside the powerhouse writers of Road House:

"Pain doesn't hurt!"

Here's a line we improvised that almost did make it into Meet the Sandvich, and was only removed after a non-writer dropped by our office and pointed out that we hadn't actually written it per se, and in fact had stolen it outright from The Simpsons:

"He's already dead!"

The point for all you young writers is just this: if the constraints of your current project don't specifically forbid it, your best writing will always result from writing your name on the Predator script. If, for whatever stupid reason, this isn't an option, improvise. Improvised dialog feels more real because it's lived. More importantly, it requires no actual writing.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1889

[JustinCredible]

Left 4 Dead Teases Tenth Team Fortress 2 Class



Eagle-eyed Kotaku reader Srider spied something interesting during his playthrough of the Left 4 Dead demo, amusingly enough on the back of an in-game box of "Chocobites" cereal. Seen in the first apartment in the game's first campaign — and wherever cereal is eaten in Left 4 Dead — the back of the box promises a free six-inch Team Fortress 2 action figure. The catch? It teases us to "collect all 10!"

But there are only nine Team Fortress 2 classes: Pyro, Engineer, Sniper, Spy, Heavy, Demoman, Medic, Scout, and Soldier. Hmmm... Valve's Robin Walker has hinted at such additions in the past. Maybe they're coming sooner than we think.

And, by the way, Valve. Put me down for some of those action figures.

http://kotaku.com/5088007/left-4-dea...rtress-2-class

[JustinCredible]

TF2 - Mass A.I.
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn9970dxQ2g

[JustinCredible]

Hey good job, there, hardhat

We've been pretty quiet lately, but thankfully, that's about to end. In the next few days we'll have an update out that has a couple of new features for the Engineer and Spy, and a variety of other smaller fixes.

* Teleporters will be upgradeable to level 3. As the teleporter is upgraded, the cooldown will decrease.
* Dispensers will be upgradeable to level 3. They will heal faster and generate metal faster as they are upgraded.
* Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground.
* We've made a bunch of minor changes by adding particle systems and upgrading the HUD to show things like deaths by critical hits, players that are overhealed, and giving more information to medics when people are calling for them.

These are just to work on some class balance and depth issues that we've seen in the wild with these two classes, but aren't meant to replace their entire class packs. They will be getting more attention further down the road.

While that's in testing, we're off working on several things that folks have been emailing us about, so we thought it'd be good to provide some detail:

* The next class pack will be the Scout. One of the main goals we're focusing on for him has been to provide tools that make him useful in maps like Dustbowl & Goldrush. If you have any ideas for what you think would work well, post them over on the Team Fortress 2 Forum and we'll take a look.
* We are actively working on a massive XBox 360 update, which will include pretty much everything we've shipped on the PC in the last year. We'll provide you with a rough date when we have one.
* We're also working on bringing over a variety of engine improvements from Left 4 Dead into the TF2 engine, but it won't be a wholesale replacement of the engine. This means we'll get some of L4D's performance improvements, like the better multicore support, but not all of them. For example, we can't bring over some improvements without dropping support for DX8, which we're not prepared to do.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2096

[JustinCredible]

'Very Different' Team Fortress 2 Mode Coming 'Soon'

Team Fortress 2 developer Robin Walker has teased a new, "very different" mode will soon be added to the stylistic multiplayer shooter.

"A new Payload map is in the works, more community maps are on the way and the team will soon unveil a very different new game mode," writes The Escapist in a story on Walker and the team at Valve.

Walker also revealed that while the team is primarily focusing on bolstering the game's existing classes, it does have a running list of candidates for an entirely new class.

"We've got several new class designs floating around, some of which we like a lot, but right now we're focusing on the broadening of our existing classes through the addition of the unlockables," said Walker.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...the-Fortress.2

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56847

[JustinCredible]

That's what I'm talking about!

We're just about done with the Scout pack, and our design and coding has already moved on to the next pack. The weapons and achievements are all nailed down, and we just have to finish up the final artwork on them. We like to do the final art as late as possible to ensure that we don't waste any work, which turned out to be a good decision this time around due to the large number of unlockables we tried out as alternatives to the Scattergun. Balancing his replacement weapon has been very tricky due to large threat difference of the Scout between skilled and non-skilled hands. More on that soon.

In the meantime, here's a few answers to some questions we get regularly:

"When's the next update going to be out?"

* We've got an update that should be out tomorrow with a bunch of bug & exploit fixes. Later this week we hope to have another update out that changes the way we store your unlockable items. You shouldn't notice much difference, other than if you play on multiple computers we'll now propagate your item choices. You can think of that update as the one that moves your inventory into the Steam Cloud. Once that's out of the way, we'll be able to ship the Scout pack.


"Why did you change the minigun's muzzle flash away from the original one shown in Meet the Heavy?"

* That muzzle flash was one of the earliest effects that we put in the game and it was done before our new particle system was in place. As we moved forward with the effects we decided that such a cartoony hard-edged look to the effects didn't help the readability of the overall game. If the muzzle flashes and all the effects had well defined edges, they would visually compete with the rest of the TF2 world and the players. So it was decided that the effects should be much softer than the rest of the game so as to not overwhelm an already visually dense game.


"Why should I use Natascha? And doesn't she only do 66% damage, not 75%?"

* You're correct, there was a bug that caused her to lose 0.75 damage off each individual bullet she fired. She spits out so many bullets that a tiny amount like that added up to a significant difference. Tomorrow's update will fix that, and also includes a slight boost to the amount of slowdown she delivers. Our internal playtesters have been finding her much more useful, especially on the large number of Scouts running around with new toys.


"Why is the Sniper such a fake Australian? Aren't several members of the TF2 team Australian?"

* Yes, it's true, the Sniper is a fairly unconvincing Australian. Most of his lines make him sound more English than Australian, and the voice actor is clearly an English actor faking an Australian accent. As for why we didn't fight to make him more authentic, we though it was appropriate that he was about as convincing an Australian as the Demoman is a Scotsman, or the Medic a German.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2193

[JustinCredible]

Okay, this does not look good here. Umm...

The Scout was one of the first TF2 classes we worked on when we decided to try out a more stylized approach to the game. As a result, his concept art is further afield, and in the eyes of our artists, much more embarrassing. This might be exacerbated by their desire to not have people looking at a piece of their artwork and not liking it, from an artistic point of view. Concept art has a different purpose than that, and so the effort to make it look great is usually unnecessary. In short, there's a special place in hell that all our artists hope we'll go to for showing you their concept art.

Dhabih threatened us in various ways not to show anyone his Scout concepts, so we told him we wouldn't do that. Luckily, he doesn't read the internet much, preferring to spend his time sipping lattes at locally owned organic vegan coffee shops, so if you don't tell him you've seen the this concept art, we won't.


Here's one of the earliest ideas for the Scout. We thought that a wired-up-on-coffee bike messenger had the right body shape for the Scout, and would provide a variety of fun animation possibilities.


This succession of Scouts was produced around a point where we were still exploring the transition from the older military version of TF2 towards a more stylized set of unique individuals.


We're really not sure what this one is all about. Dhabih refused to talk to us about it.


Much later in the process than the preceding images, this piece shows how we explore a variety of smaller details once we've decided on the overall character and silhouette. Here, we're making minor changes to the silhouette without affecting the overall shape relative to the other classes, and we're exploring clothing and accessory options for animators, voice actors, and game designers to use.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2195

[JustinCredible]

Team Fortress 2 Update Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

New client features
Added Viewmodel FOV slider to advanced multiplayer options
Added a hide viewmodel option to advanced multiplayer options
Added custom crosshair support
Added crosshair image, scale, and color settings to the Options->Multiplayer settings tab
Moved HUD minimal mode & Disable Spray options into the Advanced Multiplayer settings
Added "open_charinfo_direct" command that opens the loadout directly to the class you're currently playing
Replaced the "Open Loadout" entry in the options->keys dialog with this new command. Rebind / reset your config to defaults to use it

New server features
Added "tf_damage_disablespread" convar to disable the 25% damage spread on all damage
Added class limit support to tournament mode
Set the "tf_tournament_classlimit_X" convars to the max number of class X allowed
Added "tf_tournament_hide_domination_icons" convar, that allows a tournament mode server to force clients not to display domination icons over their nemeses

Gameplay changes
Modified critical hit calculation. Overall, critical hit chance is now much more recent-performance based:
Base chance is now 2% (was 5%).
Bonus range based on damage done changed from 0%-15% to 0%-10
Damage range required for bonus changed from 0-1600 to 0-800
Reduced random damage spread applied to all player damage from +-25% to +-10%
Slight reduction (improvement) of the minigun's spread
Increased flare direct hit damage from 20 to 30
Rewrote Natascha's slowdown code to be more consistent
Sniper rifle now supports Crit Boost state like all other weapons (i.e. Kritzkrieg makes all shots critical hits)
Stealthed spies are no longer able to pickup the intelligence. They must uncloak first
Increased soldier primary ammo count from 16 to 20

Bugfixes
Fixed crash when running in tools mode
Added UTIL_IsCommandIssuedByServerAdmin() checks to several "physics_" CON_COMMAND scripts to prevent clients issuing the commands
Fixed bug in teleporter logic that allowed engineers to build teleporters with HUGE health values
Fixed matching teleporter not getting a health buff when the pair is upgraded (only the tele you were hitting got the health buff)
Fixed Medic UberCharge percentage in minimal-HUD mode

http://store.steampowered.com/news/2214/