Team Fortress 2

[bhodi]

No new maps? Fuck! Seriously -- who would pay $30 for an online-only game with 4 maps?

[schild]

Bhodi, Ookii and I paid a lot more than that.

Say hello to the server that's left.

[bhodi]

Yeah, I know... but just because others spent more doesn't allay my annoyance! I expected those maps to be beta maps with a full map dump on release.

This is me, being let down. I enjoy TF2 but it's not going to be for much longer if I have to play the same ol' maps. It's a copout for them to expect community modders to pick up the slack.

[schild]

It's a copout for them to expect community modders to pick up the slack.

There aren't many times where dev expectations and "being right" line up.

This is one of those times.

[Strazos]

I'll just be happy when we can get the map rotation we want.

Also, it needs to stop swapping off of DB in the middle of the series. If the attackers win the first two maps and time "expires," it should still go to the third map before swapping.

[Phildo]

Woo, I iced some fools tonight!  Go me!

[Driakos]

I got it for the 360, played it most of tonight.  I had a lot of fun being a Pyro.  This game will definitely eat a lot of my time.

[Venkman]

This is me being too MMO-myopic: they made TF2 for the 360? Any word on if it'd ever allow players from 360 to play against get owned by PC players?

I finally got in last night. Steam seemed to weather the storm of people buying it pretty well, though I have no idea how many other people were just interested in TF2. I was very pleasantly surprised by the first thing I noticed right off the bat. From the screens I'd seen (hadn't watched any videos), I was expecting WoW-esque low-poly worlds and low-textures. Instead I got a cartoony HL2 (to my eye anyway). This game looks fantastic at max settings.

Better still it's just fun as heck. I was very surprised by that as well. I plunked the $30 site unseen (no beta since I didn't pre-order Orange Box), like any schmo stumbling into their first game. I was expecting to get omgwtfn00bsteamrolled all night and yelled at by my team for being stupid, particularly since there's no way to learn some of the nuances outside of battles. What I got instead was a very intuitive experience, fast action, people doing the same thing I was, no team kills. The only thing that took me a second to realize is that invincibility mode thing. Man that's cool. Even Engineering was easy: have metal/get metal, build one of four things, upgrade Turrets, repair them. My only downer was I couldn't build more than one turret. I still have fond memories of my Planetside Engineer-spec :)

What I don't know is how much of that had to do with the random server I picked from the low-latency/secure/22of24 I picked from the list. I forgot to favorite it.

This is also really the first time I'm using Steam to any fair degree. I love the seamless integration, particularly in how you can not only contact your Friends, the system will tell you what TF2 server thye're on. I had only previously checked out some of the casual stuff through the digital delivery thing, but most of that seemed no different from RealArcade, MSN GameZone or XBLA. I do love Venice though.

Anyway, say hi to the guy off the street who did no research, was looking forward to it, and lovin' it

[Venkman]

Oh, and dumb tech question:

Does TF2 require Steam to run? Like, if my group had a private server, could we just launch TF2 and connect to that without having to run Steam at all, even knowing the Community features won't work? I'm not looking to get around any authentication or DRM thingy. We all own the game already. I'm thinking more from a security angle. I've got some pretty paranoid friends :)

[schild]

Oh, and dumb tech question:

Does TF2 require Steam to run? Like, if my group had a private server, could we just launch TF2 and connect to that without having to run Steam at all, even knowing the Community features won't work? I'm not looking to get around any authentication or DRM thingy. We all own the game already. I'm thinking more from a security angle. I've got some pretty paranoid friends :)

Use steam. You don't really have a choice.

[Venkman]

Ok, thanks.

Also, anyone have any insights to offer on the mod tools? I don't know anything about "Source". Is it a bunch of texture and code files or do they actually provide an UnrealEd-like map editor? I poked around with UnrealEd a few years back, and it wasn't that hard for someone with copious CAD experience (I'm not uber, but have been around the block with them). I'd love to actually get crackin' on a TF2 map or two once I have the game down.

[Ookii]

You can set the server to not use steam, russians use it to create servers they can connect to with their pirated copies.

That said, you're not russian.

[bhodikhan]

Also, anyone have any insights to offer on the mod tools? I don't know anything about "Source". Is it a bunch of texture and code files or do they actually provide an UnrealEd-like map editor? I poked around with UnrealEd a few years back, and it wasn't that hard for someone with copious CAD experience (I'm not uber, but have been around the block with them). I'd love to actually get crackin' on a TF2 map or two once I have the game down.

I took a quick look at the toolset and it looks like they use a modified version of Softimage:XSI as the modeling platform (HL2 engine from what I can tell). Given that I use Softimage all day it might be fun to make some maps. The real trick is to use their textures, meshes, and other assets so your custom maps don't take a week to download.

Time to start reading up on the mod sites.

[schild]

someone at f13 (not me) should make a tutorial for making TF2 maps so we can all get in on it.

numbered steps
in laymen terms

that'd be AWESOME

[Venkman]

Thanks Bhodikhan. I've never used Softimage specifically, but it is pretty straightforward. And I completely agree on the libraries to use. I'm not anywhere near good enough to go all Extreme+ with maps enough that people want to come to my site and grab them.

Definitely tonight's thing to dig into. So much for the WoW dailies ;)

@schild: yes. Maybe a few of us can start a wiki or somesuch. I'll wait in the thread to see who is a) as interested or more; and, b) has a lot more experience doing mods/maps than my few hours with UnrealEd :)

[schild]

Hm. Wiki. I have a Jotspot account That hasn't been used for anything. That's an interesting idea. A straight guide would probably be best though.

[Sky]

I used to work with UnrealEd, made some stuff for NWN and Morrowind, started back making Quake levels (I forget the editor, though). Well, actually, started waaay before that, making ASCII games and text adventures on the C64...One hallmark of my Quake levels was trying to set up areas so monsters would fight each other if you played conservatively. Especially those grenade-launching guys, making it so a few of their grenades would bounce into a room with something nasty was a lot of fun.

But really, I don't have enough time to /play/ games as much as I'd like, so I'm probably not real interested in level-making unless it's fairly fast.

[Yegolev]

So, which of you are going to be putting the portal gun into TF2?

[Grand Design]

Isn't the Portal gun essentially the same thing as the Engineer's entrance & exit?

Well, with two-way travel, the ability to shoot it, cool 'through the looking glass' effect..



Yeah, somebody put it in.

[schild]

Part of me really wants to take the scout, give him a portal gun, the bat and a handgun and make Team Portal 2. Lots of labyrinth style maps and such.

Jesus I swoon.

[Yegolev]

He won't need the handgun.  Not at all.  Think about it.

I feel like I did when I was twelve and I was pretending Mum-Ra and Skeletor teamed up against He-Man and Optimus Prime.

[Venkman]

Portal gun would be insane! I'll be concentrating on the world stuff though personally.

I used to work with UnrealEd, made some stuff for NWN and Morrowind, started back making Quake levels (I forget the editor, though). Well, actually, started waaay before that, making ASCII games and text adventures on the C64...One hallmark of my Quake levels was trying to set up areas so monsters would fight each other if you played conservatively. Especially those grenade-launching guys, making it so a few of their grenades would bounce into a room with something nasty was a lot of fun.

I loved doing that in NWN. Patrols that if you timed it right, you could let them clear themselves out. I gleefully ripped off my days doing that with opposing-faction mobs in EQ1 though :) Good puzzler element.

I used to be jealous of my friends' ability to manipulate sprites on the C64. I had to hard-code the graphics in Applesoft. Best I could do myself was an Ultima III world that didn't have the animated NPCs and water. Ah, those were the days. Finally ended up programming my own Font creator... not that you could do much in 8x8. And I had mouse control. Mouse control!. I shoulda sold out to Aldus ;)

[bhodikhan]

UnrealEd? Holy crap! I do 3D for a living. Mostly box modeling and texturing and I could never figure out what the hell Epic was trying to do. It always seemed to be a game of "Carve a map from a solid block". What a mess. Working with the Valve toolset is much better.

Unless Epic changes it's methodology I foresee many TF2 maps and no UT2007 maps in my future. You couldn't PAY me to make UT maps. Pain and more Pain.

[Venkman]

Oh, yea, UnrealEd was crazy. I didn't even "figure it out" per se. I had to do a lot of reading. But after awhile it made a twisted sort of sense. Back in the day I was doing solids modelling in things like Pro/Engineer and Solidworks, programs Industrial Designers and Engineers use to talk directly to tooling machines with their data (the other side, surface modelling was for character models, CGI, etc). UnrealEd felt more like a bit liek that, where you start with an object and then work the interior of it, sorta the inverse of how CADD modelling works, but not a huge departure. But intuitive it was not.

I'm looking forward to something of a lighter faire :)

[Samwise]

Portal deathmatch could really suck if the maps weren't well designed for it.  You'd have to make sure that it wasn't possible to use a portal gun as either an instakill weapon (e.g. put a portal over a lava pit and then just shoot the other end at people's feet over and over so they fall in) or a way to avoid combat indefinitely (e.g. run around spamming portals ahead of you so nobody can get a bearing on you or follow you through your own portals).  Also, you might need a way to differentiate between the portals of different players to allow people to figure out where any given portal goes as easily as they can in the single-player game.

Multiplayer coop puzzles might be cool, though.

[Grand Design]

I think that adding a charge-up time and 'ammo' count to the Portal gun could solve most problems.

[Yegolev]

Portal deathmatch could really suck if the maps weren't well designed for it.

I agree with you completely, and I really want to participate in the total carnage and assfuckery that this sort of simple implementation would bring.  It would make so many heads explode.

You'd have to make sure that it wasn't possible to use a portal gun as either an instakill weapon (e.g. put a portal over a lava pit and then just shoot the other end at people's feet over and over so they fall in) or a way to avoid combat indefinitely (e.g. run around spamming portals ahead of you so nobody can get a bearing on you or follow you through your own portals).  Also, you might need a way to differentiate between the portals of different players to allow people to figure out where any given portal goes as easily as they can in the single-player game.

These are all really bad suggestions.  You want to encourage this sort of behavior.  You want an additional class, a scout with only a bat and a portal gun.  No modification to the portal gun whatsoever.  If this doesn't produce enough epileptic fits, you have to add some boxes and barrels to the maps.  It will turn your brain to mush.

I suspect it won't be very easy, though.  The likelyhood that turrets or players have full physics is small, so you probably won't be able to drop a heavy player on a sniper and kill him.  I can dream, though.

[kaid]

The engineer portals are from what I saw last night not like what you see in portal. Its more like a more normal teleporter. You jump on the blue pad to teleport you to the reciever. You could not from what I can see shoot through it its just a nice way to bring reinforcements up to the front faster.

We had a good engy make a good protected port in place when we were doing that capture the three points map when we were staging for the last point helped get reinforcements back up to the front really fast.

[eldaec]

GIven you have to hit feet, and portals are slow and highly visible, I'd have no issue with the insta kill thing.

Using the momemtum transfer trick to fling people into opposing bases would likely break everything mind you.

[Triforcer]

Far more amusing then using portals over instakill lava would be to put the entry portal on the ground and the exit portal on the ceiling above it.  You'd have to disconnect from the game to escape...

[Fabricated]

I downloaded HLDJ so I could annoy people by playing the Gummi Bears theme over voice chat on a few servers I go to that allow that sort of thing, and I can't get the shit to work. :(

[eldaec]

Far more amusing then using portals over instakill lava would be to put the entry portal on the ground and the exit portal on the ceiling above it.  You'd have to disconnect from the game to escape...

Or you could just continue moving forward.


Both games, and HL2, allow you to add momentum while airborne.

[NiX]

I downloaded the SDK and I'm in the process of setting it up to make maps. If anyone can figure out how to make Portal multiplayer, I'd be on board to learn how to do Portal maps. Co-op would be hot.

[Samwise]

It looks like TF2 isn't listed yet in the Source SDK stuff.  There's undoubtedly some sort of way to haxor it in there, but I'm going to wait until they have the "PUSH BUTTON HERE TO MAKE TF2 MAP" button.

[NiX]

It looks like TF2 isn't listed yet in the Source SDK stuff.  There's undoubtedly some sort of way to haxor it in there, but I'm going to wait until they have the "PUSH BUTTON HERE TO MAKE TF2 MAP" button.

Getting it hooked up for TF2/Portal takes, oh, about 15 minutes. Though I can understand why you would rather wait.