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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.
First off, a quick update on where we are with the character model and animation sources. After we got over our excitement of releasing them, we ran into a couple of problems:
As a result, it's taken a bit more work than we'd originally intended. And to make sure that the work is being done right, we decided it'd be best to get one model out, if only so we could get your feedback on it before we went ahead and got the rest done. So today we're updating the Source SDK to include all the model and animation source for the Heavy. Take a look at it, and be sure to send us your thoughts.
Secondly, some community updates:
Finally, we've had a lot of requests to release the official set of "Ubercharged" avatars that Dhabih did for our internal TF2 clan. You can buff up your community profile by getting them from the Official TF2 Community page or grab the zip of them here.
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.
Meanwhile, everyone who took the moral high road will soon be finding a new hat in their inventory. We've also significantly increased the chance of finding any of the existing hats.
We realize there is a high level of demand for items, and we're still working on systems to allow you to find them in new ways (via Trading, and crafting duplicates into desired items). However, we need to draw the line at running external applications.
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 sooner we could prototype the new mode, the sooner we could start gathering data on it. To this end, we converted some of the existing arena maps and started experimenting. Some were more successful than others. We quickly found out that fun arena maps weren't necessarily fun KOTH maps. Playtesting the new mode on existing maps helped us explore various ideas that we used to generate rough sketches of what would become Viaduct. In order to get some real data on its success or failure as fast as possible, we used Hammer to quickly turn the sketches into a very rough version of the map. Then we started playing.
Here's a timelapse video showing the evolution of Viaduct:
If you wish to watch this video, you will need to Download the Flash plugin.
If you wish to watch this video, you will need to Download the Flash plugin.
We playtest daily. Almost every version you can see in the timelapse video was at one point tested with a mix of experienced and new players. That way, decisions are driven by the observations and feedback generated by the test. As an example, at one point several sessions in, it felt as though the player wasn't being given enough of a "cool-down" period after being in the action at the control point. The pacing was actually too intense. In addition, teams that captured the zone felt they had no space in which to keep control, due to the continuous stream of enemies pouring into the space. This devalued some classes significantly, like the Engineer. We were able to address both of these issues through the creation of an area in front of the respawn rooms. This allowed us to push the spawn points further away from the control point.
Once the map started progressively improving in terms of playability, we started to feel more confident about the new game mode. Now the art pass could begin. We were still playtesting the map throughout this phase, though the layout changes tend to be on a smaller scale (such as moving health and ammo, adjusting jump distances between objects for classes, and addressing sniper sight line issues). The snow, as you can see from the timelapse, was a late addition—the idea was put forward to extend the alpine theme and provide a new, visually interesting space to fight in.
Due to popular demand, the Classless Update Day Two "Medic and Heavy" image is now available as a downloadable wallpaper, available in either 1600x1200 or dual monitor 2560x1024.
Also check out this awesome top ten frag video collection from someone who sounds German but apparently isn't. Suspicious. We'll be spy-checking him shortly with a flamethrower and get back to you.
Lastly, the always-awesome TF2 mapmaking community has already cooked up a King of the Hill map pack. Be sure to give 'em a look!
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.
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.
In accordance with our corporate policies on plagiarism, Corey Peters—the person responsible for Viaduct—has been forced to uninstall Hammer under the supervision of our crack security team. He was then asked to remove his hard drive and bludgeon it to pieces with a stapler, also under the supervision of our crack security team. Lastly, he was bludgeoned to pieces by our crack security team. He is currently in surgery having important organs replaced. I have seen to it that any map-making appendages he possesses (all of them, to be safe) are removed, so that an oversight of this grievous magnitude will not occur again.
Dhabih Eng—the artist behind the Innovative Snow Effect Never Seen Before in an FPS (his words)—has been suitably reprimanded, and by this we mean he has been launched into space, where I'm told there will be plenty of snow for him to steal. The writers behind the "first Team Fortress map to take place during a snowfall" line on our website have been replaced with new, better writers. (They're surprisingly easy to come by.)
I hope this is the last I'll hear of the matter. Any further emails regarding this will be forwarded to our crack security team.
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The Administrator
