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Major Updates
May 18, 2010 - Dave Riller
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.
While we've been mucking about with game balance, Mister Royzo has unveiled his latest round of creations over on his Fancy vs Nasty Update page. Go take a look, and try not to melt his web server down.
May 13, 2010 - TF2 Team
In between obsessing over hats, we've been trying to keep up with all the neat things the community is doing.
- The fantastic folks over at TF2maps.net have unveiled the results of their latest community mapping challenge: The Competitive CTF Contest. If you're a fan of CTF, or a competitive team looking for some new maps to try out, it's the best day of your entire life. All down-hill from here, sorry.
- The Third European edition of Pros vs Pubbers event is coming up. Like previous events, their goal is to bring competitive & public players closer together. If that sounds like fun, head over and get involved. They also sent us this neat poster to show us that not only are they better at TF2 than us, they're also better artists.
May 13, 2010 - Robin Walker
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.
Anyway, seems like a Team Fortress staffer went missing this week, so they need to poke around the office a bit and see if they can find out where he went. While I was poking around the missing staffer's PC looking for evidence to erase, I stumbled on a game production diary it looked like he'd been writing, and figured why not throw it up on the TF blog? Enjoy!
My first day at Valve working with the Team Fortress 2 team. Pretty excited! TF2 is my all-time favorite game, and I just know I'm due for big things here.
Robin Walker showed me around the office and explained that Valve has a "flat management" style, meaning that nobody's in charge of anybody.
"And I'm the MOST not in charge of everybody," he said, cocking a thumb at himself. "I fired everybody at the company once. I could fire you and not even break a sweat."
I laughed at this, then looked around and saw everybody else not laughing. I trailed off.
"He really did fire everybody," Corey Peters said.
"Then he bought a horse," Dario Casali added.
Robin laughed warmly at these memories as he fed sugar cubes to his horse. "This is your desk," he added. He didn't point anywhere or look at anything besides the horse.
"The horse is my desk," I said for clarification. Robin looked at me like I was some kind of idiot, then pointed to a tiny desk under the horse.
All in a all, a big first day. Pretty sure I'll fit in fine around here. Robin's already given me a nickname: Big Face. Wasn't sure what that meant. Robin explained that I had a big face, in his estimation.
Also, note to self: buy a hat. I seem to be the only person not wearing one.
TUESDAY, APRIL 6th, 2010
Noticed that everyone's wearing different hats than they were yesterday. Robin asked where my hat was. I said I didn't have one yet. Got really quiet in the office all of a sudden. I added that I'd probably buy one this weekend. Could be wrong, but I swear I heard someone whisper "terrorist."
Big team meeting today. I came prepared. I've been programming a playable demo version of TF2 with an entirely new tenth class. I had to teach myself programming, modeling, level design, character design and about twenty other skills, but I think the results speak for themselves. Everybody took a crack at playing it.
"This is pretty balanced gameplay," admitted Robin.
"I like how we haven't found any hats yet," said Brandon Reinhart. "It sets up the suspense better. I'm all, 'When am I going to find a hat already?'" Everyone laughed.
"I hope it's soon, I can't wait much longer," said Corey Peters. "Look how stupid this tenth class's bare head looks!" More big laughs.
"Actually, there aren't any hats in this demo," I said, chuckling. Deathly silence. Then everybody got up at once and stopped playing. Eric Smith got really mad and threw his keyboard through a wall, then stormed out and went home. Robin asked to speak to me privately.
"I don't think you're applying yourself enough," he said.
"But I invented an entirely new class from scratch," I said, feeling my face get hot.
"Yeah, that's really, really..." he trailed off, so bored with the sentence he didn't bother to finish it. "Look, maybe you should read this. You know--help you get into the 'Team Fortress' mindset."
He slid over a well-worn game design manual. I leafed through it. It wasn't a game design manual, it was a coffee table-sized book of women wearing hats.
Mistaking my confusion for interest, Robin excitedly pulled his chair over to me, and looked over my shoulder. "Would you look at that hat," he whispered, pointing to a lady in a wide-brimmed hat. "Gorgeous."
"Are you crying?" I asked, because that's sure what it looked like he was doing.
"What? No. I just had something in my eye."
"Okay," I said. It was pretty easy to see what he had in his eye, though. Tears.
Robin suddenly jumped up and took everybody hat shopping. I tried working in the empty office for a while, then decided to just go home.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7th, 2010
All work suspended so the TF2 team could spend the morning modeling their hats. Brandon Reinhart won Best in Show for his calfskin sombrero. (I thought it looked ridiculous.)
After lunch it was back to work, and Robin outlined the next six months of objectives for the team. I noticed the word "hat" coming up a lot. Like in all the objectives, for instance. And a couple of times, it looked like he got distracted and just wrote "hat".
"Question in the back?" said Robin, pointing to my outstretched arm.
"Yeah," I said. "What the hell is wrong with you people?" Twenty-odd faces turned to me. "You could be designing anything you want! You could be coming up with new levels and game modes and weapons and--and--and all you do is sit around making hats!"
A hushed silence. I started to think I might have gotten through to some of them. Brandon Reinhart, especially, looked at me with a newfound sense of wonder.
"You know, guys," said Brandon, "the new guy would make a great hat if we hollowed him out."
Nods of agreement. Then, as one, they leapt up and advanced on me.
I woke up in a janitorial closet. I guess this is some hazing ritual on the new guy. I want to believe that, anyway. But now I'm starting to wonder if Brandon's sombrero was calfskin after all.
May 5, 2010 - Robin Walker
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.
Continued...
April 29, 2010 - TF2 Team
Today marks the 119th (or so) update to Team Fortress 2.
We think that calls for a celebration.
Continued...
April 20, 2010 - Erik Johnson
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.
Continued...
April 15, 2010 - TF2 Team
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.)
Continued...
April 8, 2010 - Tom Bui
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.
Continued...
March 18, 2010 - TF2 Team
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.
Continued...
March 9, 2010 - TF2 Team
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!
Continued...
March 2, 2010 - Brandon Reinhart
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.
Continued...
February 2, 2010 - TF2 Team
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!
Continued...
January 28, 2010 - The Administrator
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:
Continued...
January 25, 2010 - TF2 Team
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:
Continued...
January 13, 2010 - TF2 Team
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.
Continued...
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