Team Fortress 2
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Team Fortress 2 is the long-anticipated sequel to the original Team Fortress mod for Quake. It is currently being developed by Valve Corporation. It is to be a multiplayer team-based first-person shooter and is expected to be released over Valve's online distribution system, Steam. The game has been through various concepts, in 1999 the game appeared to be deviating from the original Team Fortress by heading toward a more realistic and militaristic style of gameplay, but was expected to feature "classes" like those found in Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic. The lack of information or apparent progress since then caused it to be labelled as vaporware and it regularly made the top 5 of Wired Magazine's annual vaporware list. However, in July 2006, Valve announced that Team Fortress 2 would ship alongside [[Half-Life 2: Episode Two]], moving it from the realm of vaporware to reality.
Release
During the July 2006 Electronic Arts press conference, Valve revealed that Team Fortress 2 would ship as the multiplayer component of Half-Life 2: Episode Two. A conference trailer demonstrated the game's new Pixar-like graphical style, and the single in-game [link] screenshot so far released to the public, featuring all of the original Team Fortress classes, points towards a more lighthearted and whimsical approach than the dark, serious military simulation fans had originally been shown. Gabe Newell described Valve's goal as being to create "the best looking and best-playing class-based multiplayer game".Gameplay
Just like its predecessor, in Team Fortress 2, players will be able to choose to play as one of several archetypal classes at the start of a match, each with its own unique strengths and weaknesses. While it is unknown if the abilities of each class will be similar to the original Team Fortress, all indications so far are that the basic elements will remain the same: Heavy Weapons characters will have huge guns with incredible firepower but will have a slow walking speed, scouts will be able to move very quickly, but are lightly armoured, and so on. While it is unclear at this time what sort of gametypes will be included upon release, capture the flag and "control point" matches are likely to return.Graphics
Team Fortress 2 will not opt for the realistic graphical approaches taken by the official Valve mods Day of Defeat and Counter-Strike. Rather, it will use a more stylized cartoon like approach reminiscant of a Pixar film. The effect seems to have been acheived using a special Valve in house rendering and lighting technique [Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood in Arms Preview] IGN.com. It is unconfirmed what new engine features the game will have, but it is likely that the game will make use of the enhancements scheduled for release with ''[[Half-Life 2: Episode Two]]', including more realistic soft-shadows and possibly depth of field effects.Classes
As of 2006 the following playable classes are known, all returning from the original Team Fortress.- Medic
- Heavy Weapons Guy
- Spy
- Scout
- Soldier
- Pyro
- Demoman
- Engineer
- Sniper
History
Originally planned as a free mod for Quake II, development on Team Fortress 2 switched to the GoldSrc Half-Life engine in 1998 after the development team (consisting of Robin Walker and John Cook) were first contracted and finally flat-out employed by Valve Corporation, then merely Valve Software. The original plan at Valve was also to release TF2 as a free add-on, this time to Half-Life, but as development progressed it was decided to move production up a notch and make the game standalone. To bide fans over (since, as well as time issues, many of TF's player base had purchased Half-Life solely in anticipation of TF2's free release), work began on a simple port of the game which was released in 1999 for free as Team Fortress Classic. Notably, TFC was built entirely within the publicly available Half-Life SDK as an example of its flexibility to the community and industry.
Walker and Cook had been heavily influenced by their three-month contractual stint at Valve, and now they were working full-time their design was undergoing rapid metamorphis. TF2 was to be a modern war game, with a command hierarchy, networked voice communication, a commander with a bird's-eye view of the battlefield, parachute drops over enemy territory, and numerous other innovations that planted the game several years ahead of its time.
The new design of the game was revealed to the public at the 1999 E3 expo, where it earned several awards including Best Online Game and Best Action Game. By this time TF2 had gained a new subtitle, Brotherhood of Arms, and the results of Walker and Cook working at Valve were becoming clear. Several new and at the time unprecedented technologies on show: Parametric animation seamlessly blended animations for smoother, more life-like movement, and Intel's Multi-resolution mesh technology (nowadays known as Level of Detail) dynamically reduced the detail of on-screen elements as they became more distant to improve performance.
In 2000, Valve announced that development of TF2 been delayed for a second time. They put the news down to development switching to an in-house, proprietary engine that is today known as the Source engine. At around this time, all news ran dry and TF2 entered its six-year radio silence, which lasted until 13 July 2006 (see Release section). During that time, it became clear that Walker and Cook were at the very least working on other Valve projects other than Team Fortress 2 (for instance, Walker is featured in one of the commentary tracks in Episode One talking about working on that game), raising further doubts that Team Fortress 2 was really still an active project.
The next significant public development occurred in the run up to Half-Life 2's 2004 release. Valve's Director of Marketing Doug Lombardi claimed that TF2 was still in development and that information on it would come after the release. This did not happen; neither was any news released in a timely manner after Lombardi’s similar claim during an early interview regarding [[Half-Life 2: Episode One]], then known as Half-Life 2: Aftermath. Near the time of Episode One's release Valve's Gabe Newell again insisted that news on Team Fortress 2 would be forthcoming.
Due to the game's engine switch and lengthy development cycle, it is often mentioned alongside Duke Nukem Forever, another long-anticipated game that has seen many years of development and engine switches of its own.
The 'old' Team Fortress 2 is quite possibly the only game to have spawned a thriving sub-genre prior to its own release.
Information leaks
While Valve were very successful in keeping the game under wraps during its protracted development, when the full Source SDK was released, the Half-Life 2 source code it provided contained many references to the game. Some merely confirmed what was already believed, but others provided completely new information, such as the presence of NPCs in multiplayer matches, the game taking place in the Half-Life 2 universe, fixed plasma gun and missile launcher emplacements, and more. This information is now known to be outdated and is extremely unlikely to have any bearing on the final game.See also
- Team Fortress
- Team Fortress Classic
- [[Half-Life 2: Episode Two]]
References
External links
- [Team Fortress 2 official site] (currently redirects to official Half-Life 2 site)
- [Valve Software]
- [PlanetFortress]: The only remaining fansite for Team Fortress 2. Not maintained, but still available.
- [Fortress Forever]: A third-party modification bringing classic Team Fortress gameplay to the Source engine.
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