Gotta move that gear up!
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.
- About a billion or so people (we counted) emailed us links to the amazing Law Abiding Engineer trailer. If you've already seen it, make sure you check out the side-by-side comparison with the original trailer, so you can truly appreciate OneMoreUser's work.
- The mysterious person behind the Guard Dog update has raised the bar on fake updates to an insane height with his latest opus, the fake Engineer Update! We're going to warn you ahead of time: Whatever we end up actually coming up with probably won't be as cool as the Chicken Cannon.
- The talented folks behind Gang Garrison have just released version 2.2. With reworked weapons, new game modes, and fancier menus and HUDs, it's pretty much better than TF2 in every possible way now. Except for the total lack of hats. Guess we know who the real pros are around here. Go download version 2.2 and let them know how much you want fancy headgear. It's been scientifically proven that hats improve any game they're featured in.
- Slightly older, but if you haven't played Dylan 'Steaky' Loney's Great Class Dash yet, you should head over and grab it right away.
- Community Fortress continues to do a much better job than we do of tracking competitive TF2. We really liked their latest Moments of Glory, because Riki's engineer moment reminds of why all the most awesome players are either Engineers or Australians (usually both).
- ETF2L is gearing up for their Highlander Community Challenge. It's a fun tournament aimed at getting lots of people into some fun competitive matches. If you feel like you're crushing everyone in pubs, this'll be a great opportunity for you to find a new challenge. In addition, we're providing them with the ability to give out in-game medals to players who participate in the tournament. Everyone knows there's only one thing that beats a fine hat-wearing chap: a hat-wearing chap who's also covered in medals. We're not making any of this up, people. These are game design facts.
- We love jsparakov's TF2 & L4D mashup, especially the "gassing up the cart" bit. If he'd only thought to cover the zombies in hats and medals, it'd be the greatest map ever made.
- Pink Royale has done some neat reproductions of the snapshots in Meet the Spy. Pretty hot stuff. Don't email this to the Scout.
Nice goin', pardner
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.
Today's TF2 update includes a bunch of new items and weapons, all of which were made by members of the TF2 community and uploaded to the Contribute! site. The overall quality of submissions we're receiving is fantastic, by the way, so there'll be plenty of new additions to follow. The submitters of these items will find nifty unique versions sitting in their backpacks, so they can show everyone their work.
This is really exciting for us here at Valve. Starting from our core belief that entertainment products should be services, we've tried to increase the set of ways our community can impact our games, and the ways in which we can reward you for it. From the implementation of features requested by players and mapmakers, to unique community items given to valuable community contributors, to the purchasing and shipping of popular maps, to the ARG-style product announcement of Portal 2, we've tried to include our players in the ongoing challenge of improving our games and their communities.
This update represents the next step in that process. The line between developers and players is getting very blurry, and we think that's a great thing.
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!
Since we're getting a lot of email asking the same basic questions, we figured we'd just answer them here:
Q: I own TF2 on the PC. Do I have to buy it again on the Mac?
A: No. If you own TF2 on the PC, you own TF2 on the Mac (and vice versa). You don't have to buy the game twice. In addition, the Steam Cloud will automatically propagate your configuration settings and custom sprays to your Mac for you.
Q: Is it just some crappy emulated version of TF2?
A: No! Also: How dare you! Mac users aren't getting a crappy emulated version of the game. TF2 will run natively on OSX, like an actual big boy game for adults.
Q: Hmm, that all sounds pretty good. But I'll bet I can't play with my friends who own Macs if I'm on my PC.
A: Mac and PC users will all play together, on the same servers. We're not creating two separate universes. We're all going to be one big, happy family with guns locked in a bloody, never-ending struggle for cap points.
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.
The first was a new building internally known as the Repair Node. We gave Engineers the ability to replace any current building (teleporter entrances and exits were considered one building for this) with the Repair Node instead.
While deployed, the Repair Node would draw from a pool of energy to fix damage to nearby buildings. When the node ran out of energy, it would stop repairing and regenerate up to full, creating a window of opportunity for the attackers. When sapped, the Repair Node's repair function was disabled for the duration of the sap.
The goal of the Repair Node was to solve a perceived problem in the Engineer's play experience: always having to be tied to your base. The Engineer often has little to do after his base is built and fully upgraded except wait for the inevitable Spy sapper attempt, or for the battlefront to reach the base. The Repair Node was meant to buy the Engineer time if he wanted to range out to gather metal or harass the enemy with his shotgun.
This is usually how we approach our game design: Identify a problem, then discuss the ways it could be solved. Our experience told us that even when the Engineer didn't feel immediate pressure, he still couldn't range out away from his base. If a Spy, Soldier, or Demoman found the base unguarded, it didn't take long to blow up. The further away an Engineer was, the fewer buildings he would be able to save from sapping. We also felt that the Engineer invested a lot of up-front work to establish bases that were very easily destroyed. Thus the repair node was born.
Play-testing the Repair Node showed us one expected, and two (somewhat) unexpected, outcomes. The expected outcome was that bases were far harder to destroy, and turtling became a super effective strategy. Fortunately, this is the kind of problem that can be attacked by turning the correct game design knob, and the Repair Node had a lot of available knobs. We could lower the rate of repair, lower the amount of repair energy, lengthen the vulnerable period, and so forth. We tried several options. One change we made was to add diminishing returns so that two Repair Nodes working together were less than perfectly efficient, and adding a third didn't really help at all.
Despite the design choices we had available, we were never really able to get the Repair Node to feel balanced for the attacking team. TF2 maps tend to be designed with very specific predicted Sentry placement locations and length of Sentry survivability. The Repair Node distorted old favorite maps and made testing new ones more difficult by exaggerating intentional choke points and creating new choke points where they didn't previously exist.
The first unexpected outcome of the Repair Node was the team realizing just how valuable the Dispenser and Teleporter were to so many aspects of game pacing. If the Engineer isn't able to build a Dispenser, his team loses the support power that the Dispenser provides. In most games Dispensers are ubiquitous. You don't really realize what you've lost until you've lost it. Fewer Dispensers had the effect of slowing attacking teams down in a variety of ways: Teams were more fragile, metal was harder to get to the front lines, and team rally points were harder to define.
An Engineer who took a Repair Node instead of a Teleporter put his team in an even less viable position. The pacing of many maps became completely broken without Teleporters in play. Teams weren't able to push as effectively and the lines of battle moved closer to the spawn points. This lack of flexibility meant that attackers weren't able to hold gains and matches took longer to complete.
The second unexpected outcome was downstream from the first. Teams perceived Engineers with Repair Nodes as less "friendly", specifically because they weren't building Dispensers or Teleporters. In retrospect, older data at our disposal should have known this would happen. Prior to TF2's release, the Medic had weaponry that was significantly more powerful, leading to highly skilled players playing Medic as a purely combat class. Aside from the balance issues this created, it also resulted in a Medic that wasn't interested in healing anyone, which didn't typically sit well with his teammates. Their perception was that healing is the Medic's job. Medics who didn't do that weren't perceived to be team players -- an identical reaction to Engineers refusing to build Dispensers and/or Teleporters. Like many design exercises we didn't learn what to do next so much as what NOT to do.
- Lesson 1: The problem of the Engineer being tied to his base still exists, but the Repair Node was too heavy-handed a solution. If we solve this problem in the future, it will have to be in a way that doesn't distort the existing balance between attackers and defensive choke points.
- Lesson 2: The Dispenser and Teleporter are really good. We already knew this, but we didn't know that they were really, really good. Encouraging Engineers to either avoid building them entirely, or to build them in weird ways, broke the game's pacing immediately. New buildings in the Engineer update will probably take the form of upgrades, or entirely new choices alongside the old buildings, instead of replacements.
These may seem like obvious lessons, but knowing for certain
why a particular idea doesn't work can often be as valuable as an idea that does. This process highlighted specifically where and why the Engineer is valuable, and how even slightly altering this value can have game-shattering implications.
Ultimately, the Repair Node was cut because it made the game more of a grind. While it definitely made it less stressful to manage a base as an Engineer, it wasn't
fun. The Engineer gained a little bit of fun, but nearly everyone else in the match suffered as a result.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In other news, our minds were blown this week when we saw
Andrew Kepple's amazing Spy & Pyro cartoon. We've decided this is final proof that TF2 fans are smarter, more creative, and much better looking than fans of all other video games. On the competitive side, we've been addicted to watching
CommunityFortress's eXtv series of commentated competitive TF2 matches. If you haven't watched any, take a look at some great European and North American matches. If you haven't watched much competitive play, eXtv's commentary does a great job of helping you understand the tactics being employed.
Propaganda Contest Runners-Up!
February 2, 2010 - Shawn Zabecki
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! (Oh, and to the runner-up winners below: Keep an eye peeled for an email from us so you can claim a little something for all your hard work.)
Most Unique Likenesses of Soldier and/or Demo
 |
 |
| - Draw |
- Brown |
Best Use of a Term We Don't Know the Meaning of,
But That is Probably Filthy
 |
| - Matthias Rigling |
Best Incorporation of Another Class
 |
| - Reese |
Most Likely to Get Us a Cease and Desist Order From Bethesda
 |
| - LARATRON |
Best Use of the Time-worn Maxim "Sex Sells"
 |
| - Agent Melon |
Best Attempts to Make Soldier Look Adorable
 |
 |
| - Delicious Spyger |
- Anneka |
Best Attempt to Make Soldier Look Heroic
 |
| - metalpiss |
Best Attempt to Make Soldier Look Jet-Propelled
 |
| - B0nd07 |
Best Attempt to Make Soldier Look Manly
 |
| - Commissar K |
Best Attempt to Make Soldier Look Normal
 |
| - Brooke |
Best Attempt to Make Soldier Look Melting
 |
| - Nick Pearce |
Best Attempt to Make Demoman Look Cowardly
 |
| - huzzah! |
Best Attempt to Make Demoman Look Like a Drunk
 |
| - The Fox Fanfare |
Best Attempts to Make Demoman Look Evil
 |
 |
| - Chanicle Bullie |
- Daimao |
Best Attempt to Make Demoman Look Like a Kamikaze Pilot
 |
| - ?Faction |
Best Attempt to Make Demoman Look Like Billy Dee Williams
 |
| - The Wenny C's Pride |
Best Alternate Entry by a Contest Winner
 |
| - J.Axer |
Best Ironic Resuscitation of a Long-dead Genre
 |
| - Prototype |
Best Use of Euclidean Space
 |
| - Hollohill |
Best Attempt at Iconography
 |
| - Viva La Demo! |
Best Poster to Take Into a Tattoo Parlor While Pointing at Your Chest
 |
| - BAO |
Most Convincing Argument for Evolution
 |
| - Rawr/TankTaur |
Most Convincing Argument for Education
 |
| - Plank |
Most Convincing Argument for Learning How to Contract by One Pixel in Photoshop
 |
| - Cliff Hanger |
Best Poster Evidently Scanned From a 14-Year-Old's Binder
 |
| - Ryan "Danger" Ohlemeier |
Best Attempt to Raise Awareness About the Dangers of Alcohol
 |
| - Christian Grund |
Best Attempt to Raise Awareness About Sticky Bomb Tragedies
 |
| - Esk |
Best Use of Eye Patches
 |
| - Christian Kaiser |
Best Reference to Conan the Barbarian
 |
| - UnidColor |
Honorable Mentions in Catchphrase Creation
 |
 |
 |
 |
| - rEJ |
- Wofiel |
- Shenanigans |
- nik. |
Honorable Mentions in Catchphrase Borrowing
 |
| - kris aubuchon (awesomerobot) |
Best Use of Garry's Mod
 |
| - Eric Salama |
Best Reference to William Wallace
 |
| - Alan Longstaff |
Best Reference to Uncle Sam
 |
| - Dan Tyler |
Best Reference to Loch Ness Monster
 |
| - Wade "Nineaxis" Fabry |
Best Literal Depiction of Larvae
 |
| - Christopher Martinez |
Most Inevitable Incorporation of Urine
 |
| - Christian |
Best Use of Sticky Bombs
 |
| - Michael A. Szymanski |
Best Use of Gratuitous Violence
 |
| - Kyattsuai |
Poster that Made Us the Most Hungry
 |
| - Swankery |
Poster that Made Us the Least Hungry
 |
| - Yoplatz |
Best Weapon-Centric Posters
 |
 |
| - Saturnian |
- Ben Holland |
Best Attempts at Authentic WWII-Era Propaganda
 |
 |
 |
 |
| - CaptainCube |
- AGENT MELON |
- KILOMONSTER |
- THE KAMINATOR |
Best Attempt to Write Soldier Dialogue
 |
| - Eastman's Cranium |
Most Incorrect Statement
 |
| - BLOB |
Best Use of the Most Primitive Computer Art Program Available
 |
| - Zachary Lindemann |
Most Disturbing Use of the Most Primitive Computer Art Program Available
 |
| - Johan |
