TF2 Official Blog

Is that an Equalizer in your pocket?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:59:00 +0000

RUN! RUUUUUN! I AM COMING FOR YOU!

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:15:00 +0000

Aye, that's tha way ya do it!

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:23:00 +0000

Engineer Update is Here!

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:53:36 +0000

Say you have two things: a perfectly good hand, and a brilliant inventor for a grandfather. One day you stumble across a blueprint for an amazing-as-hell robot hand meant to replace an arm-stump. Wait, you have three things: the hand, the grandfather, and a saw.

Engineer Update: Day Three

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:15:04 +0000

Quick: Name someone whose body of work is a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit; whose strength and moral guidance informs your every decision; and who starred in one of the Police Academy movies.

Engineer Update: Day Two

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:39:05 +0000

Everyone loves remote control toys. But the problem with most of them is, unless you manage to remote control one directly down someone's throat, they're pretty useless as weapons. But what if we were to tell you that we fixed that obvious design flaw?

Engineer Update: Day One

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:09:53 +0000

Those of you who spent the weekend Tokyo drift-racing your way to a rap battle—or whatever it is people do when they go outside on the weekend—probably feel pretty good about yourselves right now. At the end of the day, though, what do you have to show for it? Vague memories of changing lanes. Twenty-five of the people who wisely chose to stay home and craft items, on the other hand, now have shiny new ultra-rare golden wrenches that they can keep. For a weekend? No. For a lifetime. Eat it, drift-racers. Eat all of it.

Loose Canon

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:52:00 +0000

Since our announcement of Team Fortress 2 on the Mac, we've received literally thousands of emails from over seven people, curious as to how the Apple comic shown in the update fits into the ongoing TF saga. Did Saxton Hale really buy the Apple company? Can Heavy's gun actually shoot email bullets now? Who was that mysterious figure? And why were Valve's lawyers so insistent that he remain mysterious?

Steam Web APIs

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 21:18:00 +0000

Listen!

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:13:05 +0000

Do you hear that? That ominous, otherworldly silence? That's what we in the game biz call the calm before a storm. And keep listening... do you hear that distant rumble? We call that thunder. It happens during a storm whenever it's not quiet.

Three Maps. Two Teams. One Victor.

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:52:57 +0000

So you've been taking advantage of Training Mode and Offline Practice Mode all week, and you think you're pretty hot stuff. What better way to find out how wrong you are than to watch some pros in action at The Steam Powered User Forums' "Battle of Both Worlds" match this week? Also known as the "Pros vs Pubbers" event, the match features a team of competitive players versus a team of highly skilled public-server players. It's a perfect opportunity to see a whole bunch of truly great TF2 players have some truly great fun. Check it out.

Wow, you guys are GOOD

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:07:40 +0000

We'd originally planned to tease out today's update over the course of 19 deviously brain-twisting blog posts, each containing a mercurially complex riddle hinting at the nature of the update. Unfortunately, everybody seems to have cracked the subtle rhyming codex embedded in our first blog post, which was actually supposed to be the most unsolvable of the 19.

So anyway. Team Fortress 2's available on the Mac now.

Tomorrow.

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:07:03 +0000

Big things are happening RIGHT NOW at Valve. Things involving cultivated tree-fruit. BIG things. Things that rhyme with "grapple." Things that rhyme with "Speem Gortress zmavailable on the Babac." Not today. But tomorrow. BIG THINGS. Stay tuned...

Danke, my hard-hatted friend!

Mon, 24 May 2010 17:59:16 +0000

After slaving away for over a year, the fine folks at Polycount have unveiled their new community site for video game artwork. Given that a year is roughly the time it takes for us to post a blog update, you can imagine our immediate and deeply-held suspicion that they probably used magic. Possibly black magic. I won't bore you with the details, but long story short, we immediately raced to their office, armed with holy water and fire, to confront them. Several police officers informed us that we were mistaken, and then made us apologize to the wizards, and then made us stop calling them wizards.

All I can tell you about this next procedure is that it will be excruciating.

Tue, 18 May 2010 22:43:03 +0000

We're going to ship an update with another small set of Pyro changes this week. Like our previous update, our goal is to increase the degree to which skill can make a difference between two Pyro players. We received a bunch of useful feedback after the last update, and we think we've managed to address most of it, without removing the skill-based additions. As always, play with it for a bit, and then let us know what you think.

Gotta move that gear up!

Thu, 13 May 2010 23:10:09 +0000

In between obsessing over hats, we've been trying to keep up with all the neat things the community is doing.

A Week in the Life of the TF2 Team

Thu, 13 May 2010 20:45:30 +0000

It's been a busy week for the Team Fortress team. That's right: the police are here again. We're on a first name basis with them, the fire department and the nasal extraction emergency response team at Overlake Hospital by now, so it was like meeting with old friends.

Imagine if I hadn't been drunk

Wed, 05 May 2010 18:18:33 +0000

We're shipping a quick update to clean up some of the confusion around the 119th Update badges. We initially chose to calculate which badge to give players based on the beta release of TF2, because that was the date that customers could first play TF2. This turns out to have been a mistake, largely because many players did the math and thought they were getting something other than what they ended up with. So to remove that confusion, this new update moves that date forward to the official retail release of TF2, the 10th October 2007, and reissues updated badges to anyone who would be affected by that date shift.

119

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:59:03 +0000

Today marks the 119th (or so) update to Team Fortress 2.

We think that calls for a celebration.

Thanks for standin still, wanker.

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:19:36 +0000

Today we're shipping some significant changes to the item drop system.

Previously, we rolled randomly at intervals to see if you got an item drop. Now we roll to determine when your next item drop will occur. So you're guaranteed to find items at fairly regular intervals. The bulk of drop complaints we've received in the past have been from players having unlucky streaks, where they didn't find any items for weeks. That won't be possible now.
We've significantly increased the rate at which item drops occur, compared to the previous average interval.
There's now a maximum amount of playtime per week in which you get item drops. Playing beyond that amount won't find any more items. The amount varies, but if you play an hour or so a day you're good. Some of your unused time will rollover to the following week, so if you're an intermittent player you'll also be fine.

It is a good day to be giant man

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:00:29 +0000

At Valve, we like to play games made by other people, mainly because a) we don't have to make them, and b) they're generally more fun than ours anyway. In particular, games made by other people don't have Pyros named Eric Smith, who makes our collective lives miserable on a daily basis in playtests. (If you ever wonder why features like "Pyro now gets assists for airblasting enemies into environmental hazards" keep getting added to the game, thank Eric. Not content with killing us by just holding down W+M1, he persists in finding bold new ways to get points by any means necessary.)

Gotta move that gear up!

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:50:18 +0000

Just a quick update to point out some of the fantastic community activity out there that gets emailed to us every so often. Hopefully you're aware of some of it already. If not, you're in for a treat.

Nice goin', pardner

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:55:29 +0000

In the past we've shipped features that came from community suggestions. Now we've taken it one step further: we're shipping game content that was directly built by the community.

Your Mac Questions Answered

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:30:13 +0000

Yesterday, we announced that Steam and all our Source engine games will be coming to the Mac. Sound too good to be true? Well, guess what: It is true! There are no catches! Sometimes life actually works like that. The bad news is that we've just truth bombed your hard-earned lie detector back to the stone age, and you'll probably lose all your money to the next international lottery scam that sneaks through your spam filter. Still, Steam on the Mac!

Dammit dammit dammit dammit!

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:55:33 +0000

We're plugging away at the Engineer update. He's an interesting class to work on, because he creates a larger footprint in the game than any other class. This means we have a lot of options to work with, and the resulting set of ideas is truly daunting. Since we've already built and playtested some things that haven't worked out (with no false modesty, I think we've mastered the art of rapidly making things that aren't fun), we thought it might be interesting to give you some of our failed experiments.

Propaganda Contest Runners-Up!

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

As the Administrator mentioned last week, we've sorted through the 11,000 submissions to the Propaganda contest and picked some of our favorites from the frankly jaw-dropping number of first-rate entries. Scroll and enjoy!

Cheaters, Winners and Busybodies

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:20:04 +0000

Firstly, as should come as no surprise to anyone, it is my sad duty to reprimand the various con artists and charlatans in our community who insist on making a mockery of the hard work of others by cheating to win. The following is a list of the top twenty kill counts of the recent Demo/Soldier competition:

Better Late Than Never

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:19:41 +0000

In the latest update, we've finally fixed the Double Crouch Jump bug—a longstanding issue involving Scout not being able to double crouch jump without looking like his legs are made of raw bacon strips held up in a wind tunnel:

Yo, a little help here?

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:54:47 +0000

Today we're unveiling the TF2 Contribution site. This nifty site will allow anyone who's made a custom piece of TF2 content to submit it to us, with a view to it appearing in-game. Many of you have been building fantastic TF2 work for a while now, and we wanted a way for you to get it in front of all TF2 players, and for everyone to see that you were the one that built it.

Erectin a dispenser

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:27:07 +0000

With the success of the AI systems of Left 4 Dead, we've been continuing to develop these technologies to create new kinds of game experiences. Team Fortress 2 is an excellent "sandbox" for explorations of this sort, and we've been quietly doing so for much of this last year. Some of the results of these explorations are TF "bots" — AI-driven player proxies with simulated humanlike senses, reaction times, and tactics. Although the TFBots are not yet complete, they play a pretty decent game of King of the Hill.

We thought you might enjoy testing your skill against these work-in-progress digital killing machines.

Update Update

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:15:39 +0000

We've got one more update to go out to our backend item system. After that, we'll be granting all the missing items that weren't granted properly when you finished achievements.

And the Winner is...

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:31:26 +0000

...the Soldier!

VI DAY!

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:23:05 +0000

Victory on the Internet Day has been declared! The war is over! Who won? We don't know! Yet!

Luckily, I, Robin Walker, was up all night building a kill-calculating machine for just such an eventuality. We turned it on, the building filled with smoke, and right now a fireman is yelling at me to leave the building with everyone else. I'll leave when they pry this tiny netbook out of my cold dead hands. Or when an angry fireman fireman-carries me out of the office, which is what is happening right now. Anyway, once all the firemen calm down, we'll announce the War results with today's huge update. To pass the time, go get yourself a fresh mouse and start reloading this page as fast as you possibly can.

Countdown: War ends in less than an hour

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:00:43 +0000

You heard right As of noon PST today, the Demoman/Soldier WAR! is over. The score is, as of this writing:

Demoman Killed: 6,323,921

Dead Soldiers: 6,298,465

It all comes down to this. I'd give you a motivational speech right now, but the time you wasted reading it would be less time you spent making a difference on the battlefield. Go ahead and break the bad news to your grandfather: YOU are officially now the greatest generation.

It's Close: 5,727,928 Soldiers, 5,742,720 Demos

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:59:24 +0000

Adding in the points awarded to our recent Propaganda Contest winners—60,000 frags added to the Killed Demomen score and 25,000 added to the Killed Soldier score—the war currently stands neck-and-neck at 5,727,928 Killed Soldiers to 5,742,720 Killed Demos. We need to stress to you that we have not gamed these numbers in any way: After a solid week of gut-grinding combat and an astonishing 11,470,648 total kills, the Demomen and Soldiers are separated by a mere 14,792 points.

Propaganda contest winners!

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:34:32 +0000

The Big Red One

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:08:58 +0000

Soldiers continue to hold the lead in the war—but like an M&M lodged up their collective noses, the Demoman refuses to melt away quietly. In other M&M-Stuck-Up-Drew-Wolf's-Nose metaphor news, the Soldier's lead remains thin as a candy coating. In fact, judging from our most recent numbers (4923531 Soldiers killed to 5056134 Demomen killed), the Demo actually seems to be closing the gap as the War hurtles to a close.

Casualties of War

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:25:17 +0000

If there is a tragedy in war (besides all the killing), it is that there must be a loser. Currently, we all know who that loser is.

Weekend Update

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 03:35:00 +0000

The Soldier/Demo war has generated more email than any event in Team Fortress history. The number one question I'm being asked is "are you going to publish any new information over the weekend?" Absolutely we are. In fact, here's some news right now: As of THIS MOMENT, there is still an M&M lodged up TF artist Drew Wolf's nose. Drew's in the hospital, and the entire team's thoughts and prayers go out to that brave little peanut M&M. Well, have a great weekend everyone!

War, Day 2

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:33:35 +0000

A day later, the war rages on—the kill tally is, quite literally, in the millions, and the forums are alive with the sounds of people having good, friendly fun while hurling bitter, teary-eyed recrimination at one another.

It's a Bloodbath!

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:34:27 +0000

In the sixteen hours since war was declared between the Demoman and the Soldier, a whopping 2,681,005 kills (and counting) have been tallied. That's bloody astonishing! And it's all thanks to you! You should all be proud of yourselves!

The War Update

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:16:28 +0000

So: how is the War update different from our other class updates?

In many ways, it's not. Like any other class update, the War update will reveal three new weapons each for the Demoman and Soldier throughout the week, as well as some maps, achievements, and surprises, right up until the day of release, when everything we've been teasing goes live.

Attention Employees...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:27:53 +0000

Friendship ends in one day.

Team Fortress News Roundup

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:46:17 +0000

TF2maps.net's Payload Race & A/D CTF Contest

What happens when you give some TF2 mappers six months to make a map? What happens if that map is payload race or a resurrected Team Fortress Classic game mode, Attack/Defend CTF? TF2maps.net decided to find out. Take 'em for a spin and place your votes!

Pre-Order Giveaway Madness!

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:48:33 +0000

Those of you who pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2 (PC)on Steam or at participating retailers now have exclusive access to the momentous event they said would never happen. For the first time in history, two separate Valve universes collide. That's right: it's a Left 4 Dead/Team Fortress crossover! This is not fan fiction! This is not a dream sequence! The characters from Team Fortress 2 will team-up with Bill's hat from Left 4 Dead 1!

The Final Countdown

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:14:49 +0000

The good news is that yesterday's $2.50 sale saved the company. The bad news for our bean counters is that, as a "thank you" from all of us on the TF team, we're rolling back prices like it's Thursday. That's right — Team Fortress 2 is BACK ON SALE at its original, company-busting Thursday Super Sale of the Century price of just $2.49! But only until 1:00pm PDT! And this is the last time we're doing this! There will be no more sales!

Important Financial Report

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:11:43 +0000

Remember yesterday when Team Fortress 2 was on sale for the ridiculous, mathematically-basically-zero price of $2.49? According to the bean counters, we're now broke. Man, what were we thinking? Anyway, in a desperate attempt to move some units, make up the shortfall, and save the company, TEAM FORTRESS 2 IS ON SALE FOR $2.50 UNTIL 7PM PDT! Pennies from Heaven!

How to Get a Ghostly Gibus Hat

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:54:09 +0000

The Powers That Be have instructed me to pen another dispatch for you unfortunates. How many goddamn words do you people need? In my day you wrote just enough words to convey meaning: "Secure that damn hill." "I will have more sausages." "This man spoke trash and I strangled him." Today's writing is complicated and has to mean two things at the same time, or it won't win writing awards. Double intendreys. Metafores. If I meet the Billy Shakespeare who came up with that nancy-assed garbage, I will bury my war-foot so far up his ass it will be a foot and a half up his ass.

We're Practically (But Not Actually) GIVING the Game Away!

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:40:21 +0000

From now until 2:00pm PDT, Team Fortress will be available on Steam for the horrifyingly (to our accountants) low price of $2.49! What else can you buy for that price? That's not a rhetorical question, we're interested in all the things we can buy once those $2.49s start rolling in.

Robin "Twofortyninenaire" Walker Get Team Fortress 2 for yourself or treat a friend.

Drop And Give Me Terror!

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:32:26 +0000

At ease, you wastes of skin. The Powers That Be have commanded me to write another short missive—I'm told it will be broadcast on some manner of punch-card tube machine and read by the thin, stupid youth of today, who evidently ignored my past instructions to stop wasting their lives and do more push-ups.

Meet the Sniper's Assets

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:29:42 +0000

With work on Left 4 Dead 2 calming down for us a bit, we were able to finish up something we promised you a while back—gathering up all the source files for the character models and getting them online. This'll hopefully let you guys get a lot more creative out there with your fan-made content. (We can't wait to see it.)

Patent Pending: #1308 - "GUARD DOG"

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:22:15 +0000

Patent Pending: #1308 - "GUARD DOG"

Did that hurt? Sorry!!!

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:22:29 +0000

As with the first Left 4 Dead game, most of the TF2 team has moved over to help out Left 4 Dead 2 get through its final shipping steps. This time around, though, we've improved our process a little to ensure we can keep some people on TF2, enabling us to continue doing TF2 updates. We've been a bit slow on updating here, and there's plenty of stuff to talk about, so we might as well jump right in.

Incoming!

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:22:56 +0000

Over the next few days we'll be removing all TF2 items that were earned using external idling applications. We're going to adopt a zero tolerance policy for external applications used to manipulate the persistent item system. Due to us not having a policy in place prior to today, this time we're only removing the items earned through cheating the system. Going forward, if we find users using external applications, we'll remove all of their items. If you're interested, only about 4.5% of the players in TF2's community will be affected by this cleansing process. Going forward, if we find users using external applications, we'll remove all of their items.

This point ain't gonna cap itself!

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:26:42 +0000

We thought you might be interested in seeing some of the "behind the scenes" work that goes on in Team Fortress 2. The process usually starts with a team discussion: This helps us determine the goals of the map we're going to build. In this case, we wanted a game mode that had an intense, centralized experience with quick player turnaround. We liked some of the facets of Arena mode, but it was clear that many players don't like to wait for the next round to play.

The final day of the First Ever* Classless Update is upon us!

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:45:03 +0000

Go check it out, and keep your eyes peeled for goodies!

*Has probably already been done by someone in the TF2 community. Please don’t sue us.

Theft is a Dish Best Served Cold

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:38:15 +0000

I would like to thank you for emailing us to point out that Viaduct is not the first TF2 map to feature snow. More importantly, I would like to thank you for stopping.

Immediately.

Classless Update - Day 2

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:01:11 +0000

The Classless Update continues to class up the joint with some previews, including a brand new game mode and some retooled classic maps. Check it out, then fire back on the forums.

This one's ours now!

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:19:54 +0000

After setting a new standard for Lack of Class in an FPS with the addition of Jarate (the jar-based Karate), we've raised the bar on lowering the tone even further with the first ever Classless Update!

We have you surrounded, at least from this side.

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:45:03 +0000

We've been shirking our updating duties here, so we thought it'd be a good time to do some quick housekeeping:

We recieved a bunch of positive responses to the release of the .vmf source behind our official TF2 maps. As a result, we've decided to go ahead and release the source behind all the player character models, as well as associated animations. We hope this will make it much easier for custom modellers to design new character models, and for machinima makers to have more control over how characters animate in their movies. Look for that SDK update in the next week or so.

More dot-commy mumbo jumbo for you bunch of women

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:10:27 +0000

At ease, you worthless sons of mothers!

I've been asked to present our internet blog-reading public with this handsome collection of avatars, which I'm told you can use on Steam. I don't mind telling you I have no idea what any of the words in that last sentence meant. This is the problem with the youth of today: too much time inventing nonsense words, not enough time taking a bullet in the lung defending a hill. I don't have to know what the hell twitters and texting and body sprays are to understand that they're not the sort of thing men should be engaged in. Like conversations, or painting things that aren't a house.

Get 'em, boyos!

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:05:12 +0000

Today we're releasing an update to the Source SDK that includes the .vmf source files for many of the official TF2 maps. This is something we've wanted to do for a while, especially as we've been growing the range of game modes in TF. Here's the list of maps that are included in the update: Lumberyard, Ravine, Badlands, Dustbowl, Granary, Gravelpit, 2Fort, Badwater, Goldrush, and Hydro.

Some Manner of Grid-based Cipher Code

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:25:43 +0000

The men at TF2maps.net have devised some sort of box puzzle that they thought you'd enjoy. Let me clear this up right now: They are incorrect in this thinking. I have stared at this blasted thing all morning and I can't make heads or tails of it. This is the problem with today's youth, if you ask me. Spending all their time devising clever boxy word puzzles instead of doing something constructive, like pushups, or jumping on a live grenade, or sitting in a foxhole cradling a man in your arms and watching the blood run out of him and the life drain from his eyes, or sit-ups.

Every one of you deserves a medal!

Fri, 22 May 2009 22:22:09 +0000

First off, a quick note: We put so much stuff into this update that we didn't manage to cover it all on the internets before the update went live, so we made a special Bonus page. In addition, our merchandising crew had as much fun coming up with Spy & Sniper themed merchandise as we did making the update, so make sure you go and check it all out.

The Sniper vs. Spy Update

Thu, 21 May 2009 22:59:20 +0000

...is live. What are you waiting for? Go play!

Sniper vs. Spy Update, Day 7

Wed, 20 May 2009 23:47:04 +0000

Oi! You! On the internet! Click this link!

But wait. First, is your boss around? No? Well get him over here! He is going to love this! Your fiancée's parents too. Heck, gather everyone around your computer right now, then read them this prepared statement:

Day 6 Spy Update Hooray!

Tue, 19 May 2009 21:00:31 +0000

Hello to you! My name is Stavros. I am now Vice President of Valve game company! Is very exciting! But much work. I am now head programmer, animator and game designer, plus I am washing Robin's clothes. (So many beef stains!)

Case closed

Tue, 19 May 2009 02:57:26 +0000

"Marianne, send in someone please. Anyone at all. Oi! Send in someone with one eyebrow! That'd be marvelous."
"Sir, you've fired everyone."
"Already? But it's not even eight o'clock."
"You've outdone yourself, sir."

At the W's

Tue, 19 May 2009 02:51:14 +0000

I think I've found my man. Valve's staff is now down to two employees: me and our Greek intern Stavros Xanthis. We're sitting in the main board room, staring at each other from across the table. I turned up the thermostat as far as it will go. It's hard to make him out behind the waves of heat coming out of the vents, but I think he looks guilty.

Overheard: Robin Walker gets results

Tue, 19 May 2009 02:29:55 +0000

"Alden, you have three seconds to tell me why you're fired."
"Wait, what? I—"
"You're fired."

Getting warmer

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:40:34 +0000

Valve's head of HR, Kathy, just came to talk to me. I'd been lining up employees in a row against the wall so I could run past and fire them faster.

Getting to the bottom of things

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:32:38 +0000

As many of you know, the Meet the Spy video was leaked this weekend. Some of you on the forum have wondered if Valve leaked it on purpose. And until we find the clown who did leak it, the answer to that is yes.

Sniper/Spy Update, Day 5

Mon, 18 May 2009 17:14:24 +0000

You've met the Scout, the Soldier, the Demoman, the Heavy, the Engineer, and the Sniper. Then, for some reason, a sandwich. But now it's time to meet the stealthiest, shiftiest, most secretive, suit-wearing TF team member of all...

Sniper Update, Day 4

Fri, 15 May 2009 20:11:13 +0000

Day 4 of the Sniper update brings us…uh… hold on, that’s not…

Holy hell. All those conspiracy theorists on the TF forum couldn’t have been right all along, could they? Pyro's going to be inconsolable now.

Sniper Update, Day 3

Thu, 14 May 2009 21:17:31 +0000

Sniper shows off the latest addition to his arsenal: the Razorback, a beautiful hand-carved tribal shield with a shocking modification.

TF2 - Super Smash Brothers 64 Intro

Thu, 14 May 2009 20:09:20 +0000

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the spiffy TF2 video made by AyesDyef over here and check out how spot he really is here. It was his birthday earlier this month, so if you see him on a Goldrush out there, wish him a happy birthday before you shoot him!

Sniper Update, Day 2

Wed, 13 May 2009 22:48:22 +0000

Day 2 of our Sniper Update is live, this time with a rundown on a new game mode and two new arena maps. Plus a postcard from Sniper, who likes to keep his parents updated on his exciting, legal, not-being-a-crazed-gunman job.

The arrow, the wall and you.

Wed, 13 May 2009 00:08:31 +0000

No, the Huntsman doesn’t stun. It pins dead/dying players.

G'Day!

Tue, 12 May 2009 20:09:14 +0000

The Sniper Update is upon us.

I'm gonna be all over ya like shingles

Tue, 05 May 2009 22:27:57 +0000

Also, a quick note: The fine fellows at Gang Garrison have just released version 2.1 on their webpage. We played a bunch of 2.0, and can't wait to spend some time with the new update. There's a ton of new additions, from Control Point mode to Killcams to Manviches, so even if you've played it before, you should head over there and check it out!

You better hold onto your head, mate

Tue, 05 May 2009 20:48:21 +0000

The Sniper has been a tricky class to update. In particular, designing an alternative to the Sniper Rifle has been a challenge. To understand why, we need to go back, way back, into the mists of time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and we started working on TF2. If it helps, you can listen to the Doctor Who Theme while you read.

Wave goodbye to yer head, wanker

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:22:21 +0000

A sneak preview of the next class update!

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:38:27 +0000

And that's what ye git fer toochin that!

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:29:03 +0000

One of the things we've been thinking about for a while now is how to improve the player experience around finding a server to play on. It's a tricky problem because our master servers need to ask a game server for its details, and that server can lie to us if it wants to. We decided we needed to find a way of scoring servers, with a goal of finding and delisting ones we considered "bad". The scoring system had to penalize lying without penalizing custom game rules, because some players like custom game rules. Best case, the system needed to work entirely from data that didn't come from the servers themselves, so they couldn't lie to us in any way to affect it.

I Can't Take My Eyes Off You for Five Minutes

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:38:25 +0000

Honestly.

Please, do take a cursory glance at the missive directly below this one. Take care to notice its author, and the dismally recent date of its posting.

You Have Failed Me

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:44:18 +0000

It saddens me that despite my best efforts to instruct and better you, some of you insist on finding new ways to fail.

Ya appear to have trodden on a mine!

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:49:19 +0000

The news you've all been waiting for: The Scout Update!

Also, we released an update yesterday with a change that needs some clarification. The update notes said this:

Sticky bombs now get a reduced close range damage ramp up (like Rocket Launcher & Syringe Gun)

Take your lumps like a man, Private Twinkle Toes!

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:08:15 +0000

On Tuesday we shipped an update that added a bunch of features / bugfixes / balancing tweaks that came out of the community's feedback. In particular, it made some changes to the underlying TF damage system, and as part of that, it modified the way critical hits are determined. We thought it might be interesting to dig a little into the change, and hopefully give you some insight into our thinking.

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

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:01:09 +0000

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.

That's what I'm talking about!

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:33:35 +0000

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.

Hey good job, there, hardhat

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:39:20 +0000

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.

Finding the Time to Bleed

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:18:09 +0000

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.

Git along there, little doggies

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:09:31 +0000

Work on the next class pack is gearing up, a little slower than we'd like. In the meantime, I thought I'd post some answers to the common email questions we receive.

How do respawn waves work? Is my respawn time affected by my performance? Why do they exist at all?

Gentlemen,

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:49:24 +0000

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since we updated the blog, and we thought it was time to let you know why we've been so quiet. The last couple of weeks we've actually been moonlighting on Left 4 Dead. While the L4D team has been focusing on finishing up the core cooperative gameplay, we've been helping them by working on their Versus mode. Versus is the recently-announced competitive mode where one team plays the Survivors and one team plays the Infected. We've learned a lot while working on TF2 in the last year, and we were able to apply some of those lessons to Versus mode. As a result, we've just finished adding critical hits, respawn waves, flawless auto-team balancing, and facestabs to L4D, while removing anything that looked remotely like a grenade. I kid, I kid.

A Grim Bloody Fable

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:12:18 +0000

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.

Alpine Art Style

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:55:16 +0000

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.

Incoming Heavy!

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:21:36 +0000

We've been a little quiet for the last week as we've put the finishing touches on the Heavy update. We thought the Pyro pack was the biggest we'd be doing for a while, due to the large changes to the Pyro, but the Heavy update has turned out to be even bigger. In addition to the three unlockable weapons and thirty-five achievements for the Heavy, we've got a new game mode with five new arenas for it, a new Payload map focusing on more open spaces than Goldrush, and another popular community-made map. Throughout the rest of the week we'll be giving you the details on all this, and if all goes well, you'll have your hands on it shortly afterwards.

TF2 Environments

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:24:04 +0000

One of the things we're looking at for the next update is the creation of a new type of environment for our levels to be built in. We're pretty happy with the way our environments have turned out so far, but as we create more and more maps with these achievement packs, we want our level designers to have more to work with in terms of giving their settings a unique look.

TF2 Trading Cards - Part 3

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:32:15 +0000

For this week's update, we've got another set of trading card images to take a look at. The focus of our most recent achievement update, the Pyro is a character that players may have seeing a lot of lately - making life a nightmare inferno for both the Spy and Medic.

Neat Community Creations

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:57:26 +0000

One of the things we hope to do on this blog is to point out the creative things that members of the TF2 community are up to. The Steampowered TF2 forum members have been collecting links ever since TF2 was released, and you can take a look at the list (and its accompanying 46-pages-so-far (!) forum thread)here.

So much blood!

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:49:10 +0000

Well, we were expecting some response to A Heavy Problem, but we severely underestimated just how much interest everyone had in contributing. If you're one of the many folks who emailed us proposals and haven't received a response, please accept our apologies, because there's just too many for us to reply to all of them. From the large amount of feedback and forum activity, it's clear that many of you found this interesting, so we'll definitely be posting more design goals. For those of you still thinking about it, here are some more tools to use in evaluating ideas:

TF2 Trading Cards - Part 2

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:16:42 +0000

To continue from the previous week, today we have some additional finished trading card images for you to take a look at - the Heavy and the Medic.

A Heavy Problem

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:11:47 +0000

As Gabe mentioned in his lengthy response to an email recently, the next class pack will focus on the Heavy. For the Medic and Pyro packs we kept our goals for the pack pretty close to our chest, but for the Heavy we've decided to open up the process a little.

TF2 Trading Cards - Part 1

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:10:59 +0000

During the development process with most of our games, we end up creating content that, for a variety of reasons, may never see the light of day. Sometimes we may not have the time to bring the content to finish, sometimes we use them as a company-only experiment, and sometimes the content just isn't in line with what we're doing at the time. Needless to say, there's a fair bit of cool stuff that we've never been able to share with our fans. We're happy to say that this blog has now given us a unique format in which to share some of the unused artwork with you.

The Medigun Healing Ramp

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:03:25 +0000

In any game there's often a bunch of hidden complexity behind some of the simplest looking features, and TF2 is no exception. One example is that of the Medic's medigun. From a player perspective, it appears simple enough: point it at a team mate, press the button, and it'll heal them. After playing with a bit, most players notice that they have to stay near their target and maintain line-of-sight to their target. After playing with it a lot, some players notice that there's some variability in the rate at which they heal their targets. I thought it might be interesting for Medics to explain what's going on here, and why.

The Flare Gun

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:32:42 +0000

When producing concept art, our artists believe in providing a variety of options for any given subject. A single concept rendering would place too strict a constraint on the resulting game design.

Welcome to the TF2 blog

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:26:43 +0000

Now that we've settled into regular releases of content, we've found ourselves wanting a better way to talk directly to the TF2 community about the state of the game and some of the reasoning behind the choices we're making. Our hope is that this blog will accomplish that, and give everyone some better insight into our development process as well.