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| Team Fortress 2: Meet the Spy vignette bares it all |
May 19, 2009, 8:26 pm
Despite the fact that Team Fortress 2 has been released for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC ages ago, it looks like Valve Corporation isn't done rolling out introduction videos for its cast members yet. Latest out of the bag (leaked out of the bag, rather) is the vignette for the French-accented, cigarette-smoking Spy.
Of the bunch, this character profile vid is instantly my favorite already. It's got the other cast members - Heavy, Soldier, and Scout, plus cameos of the others in the team (and some "pornography starring Scout's muzzer"). Happy weekend watching!
"Watch, he'll turn red any second now... Aaaaaaany second now..."
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-Absolute
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| News: Now Accepting Beta Applications! |
April 14, 2009, 12:12 pm
Fortress Forever is now accepting beta applications!
Simply go to this link and follow the instructions there.
The question I've heard most lately is "Why now?", with just plain "Why?" in a close second. There's a few good reasons.
Previously, we had something on the order of 200 beta testers. Only a handful of them were still active after 2.3 was released. This first and foremost was a security risk - that's more accounts that aren't being used that could be easily compromised. Moreover, it made things an organizational mess.
We had been talking about what to do about the situation in the dev forums and decided the fairest and best thing to do was to simply clean out the beta and start fresh. We archived the old forums and cooked up some new ones. We set standards that we are going to hold our testers to. We've upgraded our organization and security in countless ways.
All of our old beta testers are on a list available to us, and those that wish to reapply may be welcomed back depending on numerous factors that I am not going to get into. A few of our best took the beta reorganization as the chance to relieve themselves of a responsibility that they no longer had time for - to you guys (and all of our past testers), we wish you the best in your new endeavors.
That's the why. As for the "Why now?"...
2.4 is shaping up and we have, as usual, a lot of fun things in store. The Orange Box port is coming along gradually and that is going to, frankly, introduce a whole world of new problems. The more eyes on the problem, the better. The FF Team is getting their act together and we're trying to hold ourselves to a standard representative of the excellent legacy that we are trying to keep alive - the very spirit of Fortress.
So what are we looking for in a tester? If you're a talented FF player who can conc circles around the enemy defense, well... we have a lot of those guys already. You're very much welcome to apply. If you have no experience with Fortress games at all, that is equally - if not more - important to us. We want to get a wide variety of perspectives on our beta team.
In other news, I'm busting my butt as usual trying to get the good word out about Fortress Forever. Any good P.R. guy will tell you that you never go into specifics until the deal is sealed, so I won't. Keep your eyes on the front page and our forums. Things are only going to get better from here.
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-Absolute
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| News: Forums Back Up! |
April 9, 2009, 2:47 pm
Our forums are back online thanks to the hard work of Scuzzy and the rest of our team!We're glad to be back.
We still have a few remaining issues.
First and foremost, we regret to say that our password database is effectively broke beyond repair. As such, everyone - regular users, betas, and devs - have to reset their passwords. If you go to our forum you will see further instructions at the top of the page related to this issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Secondly, you may notice that practically all of our staff is listed as "Retired FF Staff". Please be assured that everyone on the team has not just gotten up and left. This is a temporary solution as the fine people in charge confirm the identity of each of our devs one by one and reauthorize them for developer status.
A general message to the community: we are accepting beta applications. Keep an eye on the forums and see if anything pops up related to that. Past testers are welcome to reapply as well.
Well that's it guys! Thanks for sticking around during this tough time. We appreciate the support of the community and we're getting our butts back to work on all things Fortress!
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-Absolute
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| News: Forum Maintenance |
April 9, 2009, 2:47 pm
Our forums are currently undergoing unscheduled maintenance. The FF team apologizes for the downtime and we will have them back up and running as soon as possible.
Love,
Ihmhi
Update:
Among the few problems we're having, I've been told that our forum database has been corrupted.
Thankfully, we learned our lesson from that huge forum mess-up that we had a few years ago and we have been doing nightly updates. We're only going to lose, at most, roughly the last 12 hours of posts as we restore from the backups. Our forum database is roughly 1 GB in size so this backup is going to take a while. Please be patient.
Update #2:
It looks like the database restore is going to take much, much longer than we had hoped it would. We're looking to get the forums up by sometime tomorrow morning. We've sent an announcement to this effect on the FF Steam group. By the way, if you're not a member of the FF Steam group, that's usually the place we send out news first. It's as good a time as any to join!
I personally will be getting into Fortress Forever and hopping onto a server. We don't have the forums to use so we may as well play the game!
Update #3:
The backup was restored successfully. I really do wish it were simply a matter of flipping a switch and turning the forums on, but there's still some stuff that has to be done.
It's also been brought to my attention that our wiki is down. This is probably because it is tied into our forums. (An account on our forums also gives you an account on our wiki.)
In short, we're probably 90% back, but we're going to have to work some stuff out here still. As always, we at Fortress Forever appreciate your patience and loyalty while we try to get all this crap sorted out.
*nbsp;Lastly, I know a lot of you people must be sittin' bored out there with nothing to do besides play FF. Well, I was recently delighted to discover the Hulu has a whole bunch of episodes of NOVA, one of my favorite shows. If you live in the States, check it out (or proxy in) and enjoy.
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-Absolute
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| Team Fortress 2 getting Sniper class pack, additional update with content for all cla |
April 4, 2009, 11:14 am
The Team Fortress 2 team has posted another update on the game's official blog regarding the upcoming updates for the game's Xbox 360 version.
That's right, updates. Plural. Apparently, the Sniper class pack's not the only update they're working on at the moment. According to Greg Cherlin, they have another update that "should be done before the Sniper, and that one will include some new content for all classes."
Nothing very detailed was revealed about either packs, but Cherlin did mention that the Sniper class pack will also come with new maps. He also gave this explanation for those who are feeling way too antsy that the Xbox 360 update's still not done:
The original version of TF2 in the Orange Box was very close to the XBox's memory limit, and all the additional TF2 content we've produced has pushed well beyond it. We've found a couple of nifty ways to get back a bunch of that memory, but it's turned out to be a lot of work, and that's what most of our time is being spent on. In the meantime, we're going to get a code update out to address the server cheating that's going on.
I wonder if the code update will also include the "content for all classes". Keep checking back here for updates.
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-Absolute
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| Dev. Journal: Ihmhi |
March 11, 2009, 11:13 pm
There's a lot we'd like to do with FF. I'm going to give you guys some examples of excellent ideas that have been posted in the beta and dev forums.
HUD Customizations
What if you never look at the map time? Perhaps you don't even both with looking at your armor count - you just care about your health. Maybe you want your armor and health to be on the right side above your ammo count. Maybe you want it to be below your ammo count.
We'd love to have a customizable HUD to a degree that hasn't really been seen in any game yet. You could drag around the individual elements of the HUD and place them where you'd feel comfortable. This would also, of course, support custom HUDs that the user can put in so they can really pimp out their own personal copy of Fortress Forever. Speaking of customizations...
HUD Refinements / Additions
That bar over the disguise area when the Spy disguises is one of many things we would like to do to improve the HUD. The short list:
- Cloak Cooldown Timer - You know that whole "You cannot cloak so soon!" message? A simple little bar or something that shows the cloak recharge time.
- Spy Disguised Weapon - A little-known feature that we'd like to make more obvious. If you have the nailgun out and you're disguised as a Soldier, it will show the Soldier's RPG. If you have the knife out, it shows the crowbar, and so on. You should be able to see what weapon your disguise is showing on the HUD.
- Detpack Countdown Timer - Shows the time until your planted detpack goes off.
- Sabotage Countdown Timer - Shows the time until your sabotage(s) run out. If you have multiple sabotages, it shows multiple timers - up to a limit. Basically, it would show the same icons as the Engy's SG and dispenser, perhaps like this:
- ICON - Sabotaged Buildable Location - Time Left
- Jump Pad Timer - How much time you have left before your jump pad goes kaplooie.
- Navigational Refinements - A lot of newbies get lost. We've been discussing some kind of entity-based waypoint system where its easier for newbies to navigate a map - basically the objective icon on crack.Team-Colored HUD Improvements - The Team-Colored HUD works decently at best - the text can be difficult to read with some colors and its a bit buggy. We'd like to make it look more professional and less buggy overall.
Customization Management
Replacing standard files is so 1998.
Right now, if you wanted to use a custom model you would have to replace the existing ones. Rather than do this, we'd like to set up a menu where you could select from a variety of models.
Instead of all of the models being put in one folder, there would be a variety of folders divided by purpose and class. For example, a few of the main folders would be Weapons, Grenades, and Classes. The Weapons folder would have subfolders for every weapon - Crowbar, Single Shotgun, etc.
Moreover, if you change a weapon it also replaces it globally in the current version of Fortress Forever. This means if you have a custom crowbar, every class that has a crowbar would have that custom model. Aside from being able to just pick from different models, you would be able to set each model by class - so your Scout could have a giant fish crowbar and your Soldier could have a lightsaber crowbar.
Background Image
Pretty much the same thing as above. Right now, to replace it you would have to replace a certain file in your FF directory. I don't see why you shouldn't have a drop-down menu where you can pick from whichever one you'd like to use.
Converting images to textures is also a bit of a hassle for the average user, so if it could use .jpgs that'd be sweet as well, wouldn't it?
Multi-language support
The Source engine actually supports multiple languages. We have a project in our forums to get some translation work going, and implementing it would be relatively trivial.
But while we can swap out text messages (like "You have the flag!"), swapping out other stuff in-game would be a bit more problematic. For instance, the signs in the game are textures (like the ones that say "Flag Room") wouldn't be affected by the language change.
One idea is to make different versions of the textures - one for every language we support. When you choose Spanish, it switches out Flag Room sign texture with one that says "Flag Room" in Spanish.
Melee Hit Detection
Melee Weapons in Source are spotty at best - they're basically a one pixel dot that you have to hit the target with.
The first improvement we'd like to make is to just have the crowbar, medkit, etc. work better. One idea that has gained favor is that a melee swing is actually an explosion (or series of small explosions) in regards to the code - if an enemy is hit with the explosion, it does damage to them. This would make it easier to hit with melee (and we may reduce damage as a result).
From there, we'd like to work on giving each class their own melee weapon (something many people have assumed that we'd like to do, it's obvious) and have them be unique in their own way. Right now, these are our melee weapons:
- Crowbar - The Scout, Sniper, Soldier, Demoman, HWGuy, and Pyro currently have this weapon. Your standard melee "do damage" weapon.
- Medkit - The Medic's melee weapon. It heals allies up to maximum health in one shot and can overheal allies. It also infects enemies with a poison that kills them slowly and can only be cured by other Medics.
- Knife - Does twice the melee damage of the crowbar. A backstab is an instant kill on any class, regardless of their health or armor.
- Spanner (Wrench) - Reloads/repairs Sentry Guns and Dispensers and it can restore teammate's armor (at the cost of cells). Otherwise, it does the same melee damage as the Crowbar.Umbrella - The Civilian's melee weapon. I think it does the same damage as the Crowbar, but I'm not quite sure. For all intents and purposes it's a crowbar clone.
So there's our melee weapons. We have 6 classes sharing the same melee weapon and we'd like to change that in the future. For instance, one suggestion was that a class had a melee weapon that gave a conc effect when you hit someone. Another suggestion was a weapon that could reflect projectiles/grenades - if someone shot a rocket at you and you timed it right, you could bounce it back at them. Most of them would just be "Damage dealers", but we can deal damage in different ways. The crowbar could be the standard quick taps like it is now. Perhaps the HW Guy could have a huge, slow, melee weapon that does damage in a wide, sweeping arc. Stuff like that!
Orange Box Stuff
We made a lot of modifications to the Source Engine. Our current build of the Orange Box broke a lot of the stuff that our coders have written over the years and we're going to probably have to rebuild a few things. That's a problem, but the bigger obstacle is the all the cool stuff we'd like to do with Orange Box - global stats (finally!), achievements (a possibility), integrating community stuff (your Steam icon & info), and tons of other stuff that trepid_jon is so excited about that he's having seizures in his computer chair.
Conclusion... FF needs YOUR help!
Why am I telling you guys all this stuff?
One (small) reason is that I wanted to give you guys insight on the kinds of ideas and plans we have floating around in the dev forums. Some of this stuff is solid, some of it is experimental, and some of it we haven't decided on yet. We'd love to get to work on it.
Sadly, we only have a couple of coders at our disposal. A lot of the stuff holding up more frequent patches is coding work. FF needs more coders.
If you or someone you know is skilled with coding in Source SDK and you can provide a few examples of your work, we'd probably bring you on board to help out! Any interested parties can send an e-mail to ihmhi [AT} fortress-forever {DOT] com.
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-Absolute
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| News: FF 2.3 released! |
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| News: 2.2 released! |
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| News: 2.2 Server Files available |
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-Absolute
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