http://www.teamfortress.com Insight and announcements from the creators of Team Fortress 2 en-us TF2 Blog RSS 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1760 Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:55:16 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1760 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1738 Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:21:36 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1738 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1729 Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:24:04 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1729 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1711 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:32:15 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1711 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1704 Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:57:26 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1704 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: http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1688 Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:49:10 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1688 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1678 Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:16:42 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1678 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1670 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:11:47 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1670 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1663 Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:10:59 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1663 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1656 Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:03:25 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1656 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1655 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:32:42 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1655 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. http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1654 Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:26:43 +0000 http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1654