Team Fortress 2 Official Blog

Head on over to http://www.teamfortress.com for the official TF2 Blog full of interesting behind the scenes tidbits, and news on upcoming features!

A brief history

Computers intrigue me.  I have been in IT for ten years now.  When I am not working I enjoy creating and playing on PCs. 
Half life and all other Source related games have ruled my life for the last 9 years.

It started with Half Life (HL), a computer game created by Valve Software, back in November of 1998. Some friends of mine and I would get our PC’s together and play Half Life - Death Match (HLDM) for hours.  Shortly after that some fine people developed a MOD for HL called Counter Strike (CS).  CS was the first time that I had seen teams of people getting together to compete.  To show that these players were part of a group/clan, they would adorn tags before their in game names, such as {Killerz}, or [l33t].   My friends and I being a fun loving bunch would put fun tag in front of our names, one of which stuck around, [Boobs]. Boobs Clan (BC) was/is a group of 20 or so guys who enjoyed the game for the fun of the game.  We were not bad either.  

Now that we had a clan we needed a server to call our own. Since I worked at an ISP and had the ability to run my own server that’s what we did for the next 4 years.  We went through at least 3 different servers. I setup a Website (no longer running) to view statistics and download new content for the games we enjoyed. 

I always enjoyed knowing how the game was running.  Back before STEAM the servers were running in a command line window.  This is sort of like watching the matrix, only in English and white, not vertical green lines of text. This had lead me to the understanding of the underlying structure of the game and how the back-end of the system ran.  Sending commands from the server you are able to control the game enforcement. I loved this aspect.

Much time passed (years), CS had grown to be the most played multiplayer fps (first person shooter) game in the market. Valve had gone on to create the next version of HL appropriately called Half Life 2.  With this new version they had created a new engine for the game to run on called SOURCE.  Source was a huge update to the games, new and old.  Valve took the time to port the older games to the new engine as well as create new games.  The next step was to update the hugely popular CS which valve had purchased the rights to.  The next version of CS was titled Counter-Strike Source (CS:S).   This was another huge success. 

Utilizing the statistic tracking that the STEAM distribution engine has provided Valve they determined that the gamers wanted newer content quicker, which lead them down the episodic content path.  Basically they can provide newer content with the features that gamers want in a shorter time span based on feed back from the gamers themselves.  This idea is a good one.  We do not like waiting 5 years for new content. So HL2 begain its Episodic life with HL2 Episode 1.  This was another wonderful chapter in the Gordon Freeman saga.  Now a year or so passed and Valve not only finishes HL2:Ep2, but they wrap up the (Very, very, very) long awaited Team Fortress 2, and also picked up the mind/mood altering Portal.

I had been introduced to the team behind Portal while searching for a game to pass the time between Episodes.  Once Valve grabbed up this team the very talented writers turned Portal into one of the smartest and funniest games in years. 

Team Fortress 2 has gone through many revisions and I have to say I am refreshed to see how it has turned out.  The current crop of Class Based FPS seems to all repeat themselves with the same WWII theme, over and over. Where as TF2 may not be realistic it makes up for it in FUN.  Many of the elements in the game would just not look right in a realistic setting, such as the medics medigun which shoots a colorful ray of healing goodness at your mates.

Valve has gone above and beyond with TF2 providing entertaining video shorts of some of the characters in the game, thus adding to the enjoyment of playing by adding a personality to the characters.  To further that personality Valve added in game voice commands, some to help communicate with your team, to taunt your opponents, and others just for fun.  These are some of the many things that make me want to be creative with the content Valve has given the community. 

For the Love of the game(s)

I needed a way to speak publicly about my creative urges that I have with the games that Valve Software puts out.  Hopefully at some point I will be posting some screen shots of the things I create with all of the wonderful free software they so kindly give away. 

I have been on board with them since Half Life first arrived.  I have dabbled with their SDK content. I have always been fascinated with the content they produce. 

Now with the arrival of Team Fortress 2 and the other great games in the Orange Box I am very excited to work with the tools.  That being said if you feel the same way please feel free to leave comments, questions, etc… about anything related. 

Later days,
FRAGgleROX