Rhythm Stick

Almost immediately after I thought my idea well had run dry, I hit on something of an idea. A rhythmic melee weapon. Basically, the weapon charges on a timed charge bar. The bar fills up, and if you can land the hit just as the bar hits 100%, you get a bonus.

The initial idea was as a training weapon, one that somehow taught new players to time their swings properly, or taught them how to engage foes at melee range, by encouraging the bonus to happen as they're swinging, or if not a bonus, at least a little celebratory noise. That way, they'd know when they were connecting with a melee swing.

But then I thought that maybe it could be a gambling thing. The bar's 0-charge leaves the weapon at fifty percent, with 100-charge giving the weapon 150% damage. Alt-fire to choose the charge. Whatever you pick, that's your melee damage for ten seconds.

Or perhaps the bonus isn't damage. Maybe if you can land it just as an enemy is using a melee attack, you counter his attack and deal a crit--a karate weapon that's ideal for melee mode!

This idea needs a little brainstorming.

Somewhat Burned Out

I've been a bit off lately. I haven't had any great ideas and there's nothing exceptional looking to come this way. Although I think TF2 is still one of the best games I have ever played, the compromise on the art style, the neverending expansion of meaningless noisy content, and the fact that my ancient computer cannot run the latest version has had me on the ropes.

I'm excited about the Vaccinator, I have to say, but even that hasn't been enough to inspire me lately. We'll see how things go after Christmas. Maybe new games will seek to inspire my tired brain, and I'll find some more stuff, locked down there in the content bowls deep under the surface.


Until then: if you're reading this, intrepid soul, send me your favorite SFM clips and items. I'm really feeling frazzed here and I could use the inspiration.

Sincerely yours,
Amin

Dominated

I really enjoy TF2, and I think it's starting to make people I play games with hate it. See, I did not play FPS games before I played TF2--well, I did, but it was a dabbling that I begrudgingly accepted while I hung out with people hungry for those fights. I certainly didn't enjoy FPS games at the time, and I still for the most part don't now, although they're much, much better.

However, TF2 has become my gold standard, and every time I play a new FPS, I'm astounded at the seemingly obvious design decisions laid out in TF2 that make everything else look like total rubbish. Recently I realized that I have never been teabagged in TF2, for example, and I realized this is because of two factors (well, maybe more). For one, TF2 has taunts, which are cooler than teabagging for just... so many reasons. I might have to watch a bit of Monday Night Combat to see if teabagging happens there, because it's the only other FPS I can think of that has taunting.

The second, and this is speculation on my part, is that TF2 has dominations. The game tells your victims when you're better than them. It even hangs a flag over your head that is designed to say "come at me, bro". I understand why it might not work in other games, games with smaller teams where often of course you know who's killing you, he's the only other guy on the map, or at least he's the only one that speaks with that particular Cold War accent.

Now, the absence of teabagging is no small thing to me; but the community feels less like a sack of soggy douchebags for it. Don't get me wrong, the TF2 community has its scumbags, just like anyone else, but it is so nice that they don't do that one thing.

Okay, so this wasn't the greatest discussion of why TF2 has better design principles than most FPS games. But thank Gabe there's no teabagging. Or Robin. Actually, I don't know who to thank.

The Day the Heavy Ran Out of Ammo

Pan slowly through scene 1. Shell casings litter the ground, dead pyro barely visible in frame. Distant Heavy laughter can be heard. Fade to black.

Fade in on scene 2, pan slowly through. More shell casings. A dead soldier should appear visible in the frame, and a scout's hand is visible, too, dead at the foot of a fridge.  A half-eaten buffalo steak sandvich is on the ground. Fade to black.

Fade in on scene 3, pan slowly through. Faint battle sounds. Pan through the scene, to freshly falling shell casings and a Heavy firing maniacally into a diverse crowd of BLUs, a Medic healing him. Boom-headshot, the Medic goes down. The Heavy looks over his shoulder, angry but not about to stop shooting.

Click-click-click--- the Heavy stops, perplexed, and lifts the minigun to shake it gently. It rattles hollowly. Experimentally, he pulls the trigger again. Clicking.. He feels the pouches on his waist.

Heavy POV, close up on his palm--there are three bullets, which roll out and clatter to the ground.

Low shot of Heavy watching them roll away. After their last clink, he sags, slightly. Then, sounds of a building deploying and a wrench whacking a building. An Engineer is building a dispenser! He hustles over to it carrying his Minigun, and watches as the Engie whacks it.

Unlike in the game, if possible, the Dispenser-deploy animation should be syncopated with the wrench swings, i.e. wrench hit, followed by 20% of the animation, wrench hit, next 20%, to imply that the Dispenser requires an Engineer's touch. This should stretch the tension nicely.

Finally, the little bottom hatch opens, to reveal an ammo belt. As the Heavy reaches for it, a BLU sticky bomb lands next to his palm.

Reaction shot of the Heavy. He defends himself from the explosion with his hand.
Heavy POV on Dispenser--it's gone, but visible through the smoke is the Demoman, grenade launcher in hand. Shift shots through the smoke to establish that he's there, backed up by a Scout, Pyro and a Soldier. They all look smug.

Shot of the Heavy, glaring at them, holding his gun, thinking.

Close shot of the Demoman raising his sticky launcher to fire another shot--slow motion--as a minigun flies into the shot and bowls him flat on his back. The scout looks on in surprise at the Demoman (whose foot is sticking up from the bottom of the shot), when the Heavy barrels across the ground punches the Scout.

Now we see the Heavy, he's holding the Scout's scattergun between two fingers. He pokes the trigger mechanism with his finger. Close up on the gun--it's too small to accommodate his finger. He looks around, and grabs the scout in a headlock, stuffs the gun in his hand, and fires it at the Pyro three times. There's an explosion of gunfire--the Soldier is holding a now-smoking shotgun.

The Heavy throws the Scout at him.

TF2 FANFARE, ROLL CREDITS

Brute Medic

Working on a concept idea for a kind of hulking Brute Medic unlock, wherein the Ubercharge turns the Medic into a temporary melee-class killing machine reminiscent of L4D's Tank or Bioshock 2's Brute Splicer.

Currently, I'm considering the following buffs for the Brute Medic:
AoE healing--the brute medic is still healing allies as long as his charge is in place
Barehands Melee Attack (+50% Damage)--the brute medic's method of attack replaces the Secondary Slot while the charge is active. Switching away from it allows you to interrupt the charge
Megajump--to allow the Brute Medic to get in and out of combat quickly and chase foes
Knockback Resistance--allows the Medic to tear up in combat mode, much like the Demoknight
Damage Resistance--also devoted to giving the medic some staying power in close combat

Obviously, this idea is left-field crazy, but it has its basis in a couple weapons/classes/characters in a few games. The Big Daddy suit for Bioshock 2's multiplayer, for example, and the Tank in L4D share qualities of fortitude and power in a limited sort of capacity. If you have some ideas for ways the Hulk could change, let me know on SPUF forums or here, on the blog!

SPUF Runner-up: Kayohgee

Bio
Quite literally a "Baby man", the mercenary known as the Heavy in TF2niverse-159354 is the result of an experiment in which a prototype Mark IV "Manndroid" Exo-suit was given a single infant pilot (as the capsule was originally built for chimpanzees and was therefore unsuitable for an adult human).

The pilot's name, gender or (brief) personal history are a mystery, as are its motivations. While it clearly enjoys its work, whether the infant believes it is "playing" with the other mercenaries or is truly psychopathic at an impossibly young age is unknown. What is known, to allies and enemies alike, is that he or she has proven to be one of the most efficient killing machines in the Mann Co. army, and is indisputably the second deadliest baby on Earth. With a suit constructed out of solid Adamanntium and an arsenal of weapons at its disposal, the Heavy's only true weakness is its mobility. While the Mark IV is capable of travelling at speeds exceeding those of an ordinary human, its infant pilot consistently scores well below the accepted minimum on the "Ability to walk" portion of his or her yearly physical and tends to precariously stumble around the battleground, a featherweight away from toppling over.

Weapons
Primary: Dual Miniguns - one mounted to each arm.
Secondary: The BaBa - this consumable calms the Heavy, boosting his accuracy for a short time, but afterwards causes him to nap for six seconds.
Melee: The Rattle of Steel

Voice Lines
While the Heavy is only able to babble, his or her telltale gleeful laughter is often heard while mowing down entire waves of opponents.

Editor's Note: I preferred that this be a monkey to a baby, not just because shooting at babies seems wrong somehow but because it generates a little bit of diversity in character. I left it as a baby for the purposes of this posting. But seriously, who couldn't love the idea of a Monkeynaut Heavy?

SPUF Character Contest Runner Up: The Medic

 Dexter is in his mid-twenties. He's of unknown European heritage but he has become accustomed to the US. He is tall and fairly skinny, with blond hair and blue eyes. The attack from the RED Spy has left scars on his left arm and left cheek. His mercenary uniform comprises of a short-sleeved shirt, a grey tie and trousers with heavy military boots. He wears short, blue gloves and bands on his arms showing his mercenary class. Attached to Dexter's belt is an unusual machine, that creates a magnetic healing field. The machine is attached to his Medigun, which is worn on his back when he's not using it.

Dexter's weaponry consists of multiple scalpels that he wears on his belt, his Medigun, which is a heavily modified shotgun with two firing modes. The first mode fires a beam of healing plasma, controlled by a magnetic field. The second mode fires buckshot, which, when it hits a wall, releases a healing gas. Dexter also carries a revolver for when he needs to go on the defence.

Quotes:
When healing a team mate:
"Oh dear, silly you, getting yourself injured again..."
"If only friendships were this easy to fix..."
"You're all fixed up. Try not to do that again."

When killing an enemy:
"You'd think I'd be easy to kill, what with me only having a revolver..."

When injured:
"Might be a wise idea to pull back and heal up..."
"If only this device worked on me..."

When close to death:
"It's a good thing me and Dell invented the RESPAWN machine..."

Domination lines:
"Hah! You let yourself be killed by a doctor?"
"Pfft. You weren't even close!"
"Only one person got close to killing me, and you're not him... Okay, two people..."

Domination line against Spies:
"Seems like you've lost your touch!"
"C'mon! Last time we met, you nearly killed me!"

Domination line against Engineers:
"You traitor!"
"That will teach you to focus entirely on killing!"

Editor's Note: I liked the original nature of this character. It departs a bit from the very detached framework typical of TF2, creating a very specific character with a closely generated backstory. There's a bit of thought here, plus there's lots of voice lines, which I always like to see. Good work.  Check out The Medic's blog!

The Party Favors

Party Favors
Level Communism Fists
On Kill: Four seconds of using the primary weapon of the victimized class.
DOES NOT WORK ON PEOPLE OVER 200kg

Whenever the Heavy catches a victim in his grasp, he puts them in a headlock and squeezes. Every powerful squeeze causes their fragile bones to twist and snap, pulling the trigger on whatever weapon they happen to be holding, until finally, well, puny baby bones weren't meant to be broken that way.

I know it wouldn't work as an unlock, necessarily. It's pretty complicated and the actual benefit is badly broken... I just like the mental image of the Heavy with a Scout under his arm, forcing him to shoot people because the Scattergun's tiny trigger is too small to accommodate hands of Slavic proportions.

SPUF Character Contest 2 Winner: Stamda

The Mercenaries in TF2 are just guys. They work their jobs--blowing things up, shooting people in the head, shooting lots of people in the head, keeping people alive, shooting people in the head with rockets--but they're regular guys from a variety of backstories.

Those backstories are arbitrary, and I wanted to change them. Not because I think they're bad, but they're arbitrary and I wanted to see who else could do these jobs! So I challenged SPUF and said "Show me your moves!" Design a new version of a TF2 class, write a couple voice lines for 'em, tell me what their default melee weapons, and I promised them that I'd put them here.

Well, here's one by Stamda, who won the contest! Runners up to follow!

The Sniper
Bio: Stay off her lawn! A curmudgeonly old hag from Fort Gratiot Township, Michigan, this geriatric banshee of a woman can thread bullets through skulls as easily as she can string into sweaters! If you don't get a head full of lead, you'll sure as hell get an earful of berating from this living insult generator! She's mighty good at cribbage and checkers, too.
Appearance: Wrinkled, sunken face, gummed mouth, bifocals, an orange wig, a nightgown and slippers. Stands with a hunch, runs with a hobble and swings melee weapons meagerly.
Weapon changes:  -Rifle is an ironsights rifle with a crack in the stock and a piece of fake hair stuck in the ejection port. -SMG is dual Scorpion variants that are heavily beaten, with a tally mark (totalling 7) labeled "Husbands" on the right gun. -Melee is a rolling pin with flour and blood on it.  Voice: Raspy, wheezy, and intended to annoy.
Voiceline examples:  Kill streak: "Do they kill boys at birth now or what?" Headshot: "Here, let me help your miserable wife out!" Melee dare: "Don't run, you'll just die tired and an embarrassment!" Dominating a Scout: "Nyeeheehee, my dentures are squrrielier than you, schoolgirl!"

Team Fortress Throughout the Ages

So I recently discovered the Wayback Machine, an Internet archive service. It is excellent because they've been taking snapshots of websites periodically for at least the last fifteen years, and boy, amongst the sites they've saved? Teamfortress.com

Check out the first Snapshot: 1/6/1997. Look at that web design! Fiery jpeg text, pure black background... It's great. I cannot snicker about this because I'm not in the business of throwing stones, at least until the lease is up on this glass house I live in, but it's pretty cool to see how far the web has come--how far this site has come--in a decade and a half.

This is probably the greatest gem from that site.  It's Robin Walker's company bio, a little over ten years before the launch of TF2. That's pretty cool.

Robin Walker
Position: Director, Lead Designer
Title: Director of Nonchalance
Future: I'd like to keep coding freeware game add-ons.
Present: I'm handling the game design for our TC, and maintenance of TF.
Past: Two years at uni officially doing computer science (I'm not going back to finish my degree, I swear!)

 The site breaks around 2001 and comes back online, owned by Valve apparently, in 2004, advertising Halflife 2. Interesting to nobody except me, probably, is what Team Fortress 2 looked like when I was a junior in college, when I was just an innocent lad who didn't like FPS games and had only the vaguest idea of what TF2 was all about. Meet the Heavy would change my life and cost me literally hundreds of precious hours of sweet existence.

SPUF-Authored Voicelines

I ran a bit of a contest on SPUF, where I challenged the community there to write voicelines for their favorite set. It got a few replies with a variety of good voicelines, although far more references to Doctor Who than I had anticipated. Such is life, I suppose. Anyway, here are voicelines that I felt really captured the spirit of the contest, or made me laugh.

Astronaut--
Court Marshaled, Maggot!
To the firing line!
Back in line, maggot!

Stamda--
Where's my money?
Hey you, with the shoes and the shirt!

 Von Raptor
On Kill assist: "where would I be without my Patient?"
Spy Kill: (Angrily) "It seems my team can fight, but cannot observe..."
: "There is nothing more obvious then a "Deceptive" Spy"
: "and so ends the curious incident of the engie in the night time"
: "Bad spies are common, Good ones are rare, therefore it is in the former that you fall!"
:"no ghost need apply"

After a large number of kills/assists on a short time: "When you have eliminated the enemy, what ever remains must be a failure! Haha!"
"I am the Medic, it is my business to stop your business"

Winner!

Vivhero--
When Dominating
Scout: "Dominated! Can't run now can ya ya poser?"
Soldier: "Keep lobbing rockets brotha, I can eat them up!"
Pyro: "Oh man! Your like a big walkin' Healthpack!"
Heavy: "Ya wanna eat fatty? Hope ya like fish, I got seconds when ya come back!"
Engineer: "Drink it up cowboy!"
Demoman: "Aim always beats spam!"
Spy: "COme on ya spook, disappear! Try it!"
Medic: "Ya won't be needed here doc!"
Sniper: "No matter how high the tower is, ya still get beat by a fish like a moron!"

Toying with Sets: Taunts and Voicelines

TF2 is full of item sets, and some item sets, when you wear them, affect the Merc's behavior. Whether this translates to silly voicelines (Heavy is prettiest princess!) or silly behavior (Thriller Dancing) or just something else changes depending on sets, but generally it introduces some new ways for the Mercs to make us laugh.

So I had this idea: what if any given class had been released with a particular set as their default outfit and weapons? Obviously, this would affect the way the players thought about the characters and change the way the characters were written. What if the Sniper was British Expat in Saudi Arabia instead of an Australian? What if the Scout was a bankrobber?  How would it affect their domination lines? How would it affect all of their lines?

For example, I look at the Riot Demoman set and I imagined that the Demoman, rather than being a black Scottish Cyclops, was a black, drunk Scottish Cyclops policeman, and wrote a handful of lines to match.
Here's a selection:
"Die! In the name of the law!"
"I'm a police Officer! I'll leave you in pieces!"
"What's that? Po-lease brutalize me? With pleasure!"
"I'm a loose cannon with nothing left to lose!"
"You have the right to remain dead."
"If you cannot afford a coffin, one will be provided for you."
"What's all this, then?"

"I need this point for police business!"
"This is being held for evidence!"

This is something I intend to do for a handful of sets as I like, and to seek help in doing from the SPUF! Leave a comment with a handful of unique voice lines for your favorite Subclass!

Meet the Dumpster Diver/ TF2 Voice-overs

This is easily the greatest SFM video I've seen since the program started. Well written, original, wonderfully animated, choreographed, and best off all, it takes that hideous Dumpster Diver set and makes it into easily the Baddest Bad Thing ever. I won't go as murder-house crazy as one poster (who threatened to eat a stew made of his own pubes if it didn't win a Saxxy), but seriously, if this doesn't win a Saxxy it will be because the world was destroyed by horrible fun-hating creatures from beyond the stars.

Something about this video lead me to start thinking about how voice acting is used in SFM. The way he mutes Merasmus and the Soldier's conversation not only sells the idea that you're eavesdropping, but it also breaks up the audio so that the fact that it's going to be recycled lines that are pitch-for-pitch identical to the stuff in the game is not as distracting.

 The voice acting in TF2, while comedy gold, isn't really performed to be conversational, which means that even sentences that grammatically work as dialog sound off. These aren't even really meant to be dialog--they're background noise. Hilarious, well-written background noise, but mostly it's stuff to give TF2's combat a little sonic texture. When they're used in Source Filmmaker videos, there is often an uncanny valley effect: the words don't quite match up with the situation. This, of course, gets worse for TF2 fans; we've heard all this audio a billion times, so we know exactly where every line comes from and it tends to really remind me that you don't have access to the original voice actors.

Of course, it's not really that bad of a problem, and I cannot say that it genuinely detracts from a movie's overall quality. But it's something to be aware of, I guess. Listen to your audio really closely when you add it.

Ask yourself some questions:

 "What was the VO intended for--does it match the emotional relationship with my usage?"
 For example, although two lines may be written down as "Help me!" One may be frustrated, while the other is desperate. The Engineer shouting "I need some doggone help!" sounds angry, as though he's tired of being the only one on the point. The Spy shouting "I require assistance!" sounds a little more needy, but it's such a long sentence compared to "Help!" it diminishes his desperation.

"Can I edit this VO to make it fit better?"
Use editing software to change up dialog lines. Minor changes are usually better than major ones--add a tenth of a second to simulate a pause here, slightly change the pitch to alter the inflection there. Sometimes you can make Frankenlines by editing two together, but I don't know if that's going to sound great every time

"Do I need this audio?"
People tend to overuse audio because they have access to it. But watch these videos: The Mac promotional video, the Mann Vs. Machine promotional video, the Engineer Update promotional video. Three videos, and each one has one VO part in it, and none of them uses anything more than incidental audio.

The community's familiarity with the voice acting means that unless you use that audio in a really, really novel way, it's going to sound robotic to them. These are jokes they've already heard, so unless it's absolutely necessary to the scene, it's probably better to limit yourself to one, or let your acting do the talking.

"Can I get someone else to do it?"
Write some original dialog for your scene and see if you can't get someone else to perform it. Even if the actor is completely terrible, the novelty of original dialog might bring your video up! And sometimes, you might get lucky with some great material or something. Who knows?

The Necromedicon

The Necromedicon
Level Undead Medigun

On Ubercharge: Allies in an AOE reduced to zero HP become zombie mercs.

Zombie Merc:
On death, the zombie's respawn counter begins but they continue playing as a Zombie Merc. If they survive until their respawn counter reaches zero, they're respawned in their current location*.

Zombie mercs have 75 HP to start, but they begin to passively heal the longer they stand near the medic. Zombies cannot interact with objectives (they cannot block or capture points, carry intel, or push carts).

When the Charge ends, all zombies begin to degrade at a rate of 10HP per second, but they will still respawn at their location*. If the Medic dies at any point, all his zombies die. Zombies who die or degrade do not have their respawn times reset.

Zombies are limited to a vanilla Zombie Melee Weapon, which causes bleeding but otherwise shares its stats with the standard melee weapon (.6 swing speed, 64 damage).

*Live-Respawn is subject to change depending on whether or not it's possible in-engine and proves balanced.

Suggestions? Drop me a line, tell me what you think!

Slender Medic

So there I was, just minding my own business, looking at the SDK to see if there were any cool unused animations for Merasmus, when I found this and

AAH AHH AHH AHH if you can hear this please, they are right outside my door! No time to call for help

Haha! Yes! Zombie Halloween! Called it! Yes, it was totally obvious, but that doesn't matter. The important thing is that I called it and it is awesome.

TF2 just introduced Wave 666, the Mann Versus Machine mode that adds goddamn zombies.

Prairie Fort Companion

The Prairie Fort Companion
Split Level Sentry Pod

The first pod costs 125 metal, with subsequent pods costing a mere 75. You can build up to 3. Once at least one pod has been laid, it will activate a Gun. Once the gun is active, it will travel to whichever pod has enemies the nearest, and attack them. When a pod reaches 25% health, the gun will retreat to a different pod and attack from there.

This allows an engineer to patrol multiple areas at once, although he won't be able to secure any area as strongly. It's like a sentry gun crossed with an ender man. A minisentry gun that takes a little bit more time to set up.

This is based on an old, old idea I had that has long since been deleted from the SPUF.

Generic Melee Idea

The Leverage
Level 10 Crowbar
 +5% damage for every enemy within 100 Hammer Units
-5% damage for ever ally within 100 Hammer units 

This generic melee weapon gets stronger when you're by yourself! Of course, if you're in the majority it's not very strong.

The Medieval Wrench

The Olde Fashioned
Level XVIII Wrench

+25 HP
On kill: +25% to Ingredient Bar
Alt fire: Expends 25% ingredient to deploy Rake
Cannot Haul Buildings

The Rake
Deals damage to the person that steps on it, then breaks
Deals less damage if it hits enemies in the back   

So, Buildings in Medieval Mode is my most viewed blog post, probably because I link to it basically every time someone even thinks the words "clockwork" or "ballista". This is my idea of an alternative that feels Engineer-y without completely shattering the balance in Degroot Keep and making it a painful, boring slog. I mean, at least I think it does.

Anyway, the nufs and bolfs: this thing allows you to do something pretty basic. Create a little proximity trap that hurts anybody who walks over it. However, because the M2 button is now bound to dropping the rake trap, it cannot be used to haul buildings. Since you cannot haul buildings in Medieval Mode, that translates to pure benefits there, but a fair downside elsewhere. Originally the rake was going to be a bear trap made from a ribcage, but I recently posted a bear-trap looking weapon on this blog and anyway the Rake was funnier. Plus, a "rake" is old-timey talk for an unscrupulous person and we'll pretend that's entirely deliberate.

Why does it do less damage if the enemy backs over it? Because getting a rake to the nose hurts more than a rake to the shank, that's why, and also because it gives enemies a way of dealing with rakes that doesn't compromise their usefulness in regular gameplay (i.e. they cannot be shot to destroy them) and also makes your enemies behave in a silly way.

Spy Buildings

Part of my MvM building project, this is the logical conclusion for building weapons for every class. The Spy is a tricky class because of his covert nature. He's exactly what you'd expect from a spy--he should be ready to quit the territory at the drop of a hat. Sorry about the slow updates lately, I've been swamped with school work.

Offense:

The Flipped Asset
This mine-like building will snap up an approaching robot and spin it around, forcing it to fight its former comrades. It'll attack just like it normally would, albeit without moving. A Flipped Asset is not considered destroyed until the robot that it captures dies. Giant robots are immune but take damage from a Flipped Asset.


Support:

The Web of Deceit
Generates a field that distracts the bomb courier. Bomb couriers in range of its effect  that are not within a set distance of the real Bomb Target will head towards the Web. The WoD loses HP for every second a bomb courier is caught in its radius and cannot be repaired. Sentry busters will be distracted, but tanks cannot be persuaded to change course.



Transportation:
The Blind Spot
Generates an invisibility field. Allies will be ignored by enemy AI unless they fire an offensive weapon or are bumped into by a foe.

The Man in Tin

Everybody seems to think that the Engineer should get an Iron Man style suit. I disagree, but I have a lot of ideas on the matter that I think could fit into TF2's overall design style, without an unnecessarily elaborate changeover in mechanics, new keybinds, or inexplicable abilities.

When I was writing this idea out, I didn't bother with balancing it because I don't think it's a good idea. The engineer is a bit of a middle child in TF2, he fulfills both a defense and support role. He's not the best defender, or the best support, but he has more support capability than better defenders and more defense capabilities than better support.

So no, I wasn't balancing it, I'm simply experimenting with the form, looking for keybinds and controls that fit into TF2, that allow the player to make fun decisions with his loadout underneath the armor, and this is the result of that experimentation.

The Hand of Tin
Melee Weapon
Replaces the sentry with the Tinman Suit Generator
Alt-fire removes Tin Man Suit

The Tinman Suit Generator 
150/180/216 HP
30/20/10 seconds on suit generation
20/25/30 DPS
150 metal (+200 per upgrade)
Standing on this will activate the Tinman Suit. Upgrading the Tinman suit confers extra benefits to the suit, reduces the downtime between suit productions. It also repairs suits of any Tinman engies standing nearby. Building suits costs 100 ammo, repairing suits costs 1 ammo per damage tick.

Tin Man Suit

100/125/150 Armor HP
+10/15/20 percent damage to primary and secondary weapons
+25 jump height
At level 3, gains a bonus ability*
The generator grants additional benefits (?) while suit wearers are near it, and will warn you when you leave its proximity. The Suit will be destroyed when its armor HP runs out, when the Generator is destroyed, or when you use alt-fire on the Hand of Tin to manually destroy the armor.

You will be dual wielding a second weapon when your primary or secondary is out (regardless of what t is)

*Bonus Abilities List:
Exploding debris (the suit's chunks will explode when shot at, like pumpkin bombs)
Hover jump (hold jump to slow a fall)
Goom stomp (deals damage by falling on enemy heads)
Fortify (crouch to repair HP)

Minecraft-Dustbowl

Found this online and it combined two things in a way that just blew my mind. I don't normally like to post other people's content, but look at that! It is crazy, man, that is crazy town. Minecraft TF2. It sounds pretty exciting. Unfortunately the specific class setups for the 8 classes aren't readily available on their website. But from the videos seen here, it seems to be a fully functional map with no mods necessary to play.

Now, I realize of course that this is by no means the first TF2-themed map, or the first functional TF2-themed gameplay. I started thinking about ways to outfit Minecraft Steve like the Mercs as one of my first major Minecraft projects, but I never did it because, well, I liked the native art on Minecraft enough to let well enough alone.

Still though, you have to admit it's pretty sweet.

Morgan

Morgan is the oldest TF2 unlock that I actually remember, and one of my proudest moments on the Internet. Here it is, the thing that made me feel as though I could actually write about this stuff for my own amusement. Definitely not for a living, but for my own amusement.

Morgan
While held:
66% clip size (4 rounds)
120% reload time (1.2s + .6, 3 seconds for full reload)
125% firing interval (~.75s)

While Deployed:
100 HP
35-50 damage
Cost: 25 metal
.5 attack interval
1 second deploy time
26 ammo
Can't be upgraded or repaired
Sappers destroy Morgan in one second and cannot be removed
Automatically self-destructs upon Engineer death
Automatically reequips upon wrench-hit, saving remaining ammo

The Morgan is a technological marvel. Originally developed to discourage eagle attacks in the Badlands, Dell adapted it for its modern use in worksite security. Engineers who have their hands full constructing the team coffee machine or puma attracting engine can rest easy knowing their backs are safe and sound so long as their trusty Morgan automated defense turret is around.

Writing Weapon Unlocks

Writing unlocks is something I do a lot here at On The Subject of TF2. In real life, I do it all the time. Almost subconsciously, I tend to turn everything into a TF2 weapon at some point or another. It's just something I enjoy doing. I'm not the only one, either: the SPUF forums are soaked in a hip-high slurry of weapons ideas. About forty somebodies have an idea every day for a new weapon that should totally be in TF2, and while I don't think anybody seriously thinks their ideas are going to totally get picked up, everyone always really hopes. It's like auditioning for American Idol by walking past Simon Cowell's house and singing really loud. Every day.

Anyway, I just wanted to kind of write out my process so I could get some perspective on it. These aren't actually in any order.

Keymapping
 Building a mechanic means remembering how keymapping works in TF2. Most weapons have access to M1 and M2, so you can have a primary and secondary fire. Hold M1 is also an option, but the only use of it I've seen is charging stickies for greater distance. Some weapons have special activation on taunt, but those abilities are generally expensive. I try to avoid taunt action for personal preference. Get creative! Some weapons could interact with your other action keys, especially the crouch and jump keys.

The Demoman and the Spy are unique, in that they have specific weapons bound to M2 that trumps everything else. The watch, the stickies, and the charge are all universally activated on alt-fire, no matter what weapon is out. That means that primary and melee weapons can't use M2 for these classes. I think that presently, the Soldier is the only class with zero alt-fire abilities across every unlock.

Bars + Benefits
Lots of weapons have bars these days. Some weapons--like Jarate, Bonk, or Mad Milk--use them in place of ammo counters, to let you know when it's safe to use that weapon again. Others have them as incidental meters, showing you how far your sticky will fly or how much damage your sniper rifle has charged. The final and most common bars are charge bars. They reward you for doing something specific:

Have A Plan
 There are lots of potential goals in TF2 that a new weapon can reach. Expanding a class's role in combat, or drastically changing their playstyle, introducing a new mechanic, patching a balance gap, or just being fun... your unlock should do something like this. That said, do not try to raise skill ceilings. You can introduce new skill trees, but making a class harder to play (and then giving them extra benefits for mastering the more difficult moves) is not the best goal, since it doesn't introduce any new skills other than "coping with unnecessary problems". Downsides shouldn't be arbitrary limitations, is my point.

Additionally, stat-stealing is fine if you have a plan. Think the Blutsauger would be fun for the Scout? You can't just steal the stats, explain what you're doing and why the scout deserves those benefits.

Be Fun For Everyone
Make sure your design is fun.For me, "fun" means making interesting and unique choices and getting interesting and unique results. It's pretty common to design unlocks that counter specific scenarios, but the more specific the scenario, the less likely you are to carry that weapon in your loadout. Having something that's fun to use will make it more accessible than something that counters a specific scenario, especially if that scenario only lasts for a few seconds. Nobody's going to carry around an anti-banner to defeat that one soldier that's carrying a banner. But somebody might decide that carrying around a support banner is better than using a shotgun.

Generality
Weapons should be general, in my inexpert opinion. I don't like weapons that fit into very narrow scenarios. The Pain Train only comes out when you're attacking on CP maps. The Razorback only comes out when you're getting harassed by a spy. They have their place, but I don't like them and generally try to avoid writing them. Unlocks that only work in certain gamemodes are best avoided. However, if a weapon is better in a specific game mode or map type, mention it. "This weapon is better for the small maps typical of Arena Mode". "This weapon is useful for vertical maps like Egypt."

The Burn Ward

The Burn Ward
Level 10 Flamethrower
Victims share healing as long as they're on fire
-66% afterburn damage
Fire does not extinguish over time
Fire extinguishes on death

You might recognize this as another one of my Injury Update weapons. It was one of the better ones and I felt it deserved its own post and some concept art. If you're wondering what the deal is with the concept art, the little radar dish is supposed to be the receiving antenna that heals you whenever enemies heal themselves.

There was some concern when I initially unveiled this that enemies extinguishing themselves with healing would circumvent any use this thing had. After all, most forms of healing cure the fire debuff. So your earned healing would usually be limited to a medium medkit. There were also concerns that this would discourage enemies from healing burning enemies (unlikely given the busy battlefields of TF2).

I wanted the whole thing to encapsulate a very complicated sort of strategy. Enemies know that as long as they're on fire they're vulnerable to crit combos and their heals also heal the enemy, but killing the Pyro will sooth their pain. Entice enemies into attacking you from weak positions. The main problem here is conveying how differently this kind of fire works--making the unique nuances visible without breaking game readability.

Let me know what you think here, or on the related SPUF forum thread.

Practical Problems

I didn't make this movie. I just found it on Youtube, but I have to say all the best TF2 films seem to involve the Engineer. He's the Wiley Coyote of TF2.

The best SFM films have a few qualities that makes them special. Common SFM films generally use bug-eyes, screaming, and nonsensical spontaneity to buy a laugh. I don't want to say that this is the result of laziness (all the SFM films I've created are the result of laziness, to wit, I have not written any) but it's the product of people who are trying to hard to write a joke. I do it all the time when I can't think of anything funny to say--say something crazy enough and people will laugh just because they're relieved you're not eating their kidneys.

See what I mean?

The Single Class Server

Recently I've taken to playing TF2 on my Xbox, where the game is simpler and I can play in comfort instead of inside my freezer. My computer is a piece of crap and I can't afford a new one, these things happen. Anyway, Xbox Team Fortress 2 is different than PC Team Fortress 2. That's an obvious and actually kind of dumb statement; PC TF2 is several times larger than Xbox TF2 in terms of pure content and even though every new weapon slightly tweaks the game's balance even the vanilla stuff has been changed, nerfed, buffed, and gold-plated. The maps have changed: Dustbowl is slightly different but Granary massively so, new maps have been added, new gamemodes... Mann Versus Machines practically added a new game to TF2.

There is one feature that appears to be Xbox only. It might be a server tool but in four years of TF2 I've never encountered it on the net. No, wait, once. Maybe; I forget. Anyway! Class limitations. The Xbox's TF2 has built-in adjustable class limits when you're creating a server, meaning people can decide that if they want their game to feature only one medic per side, or that they'd like to see a game of Sniper on Sniper, they can do that. That's actually what lead me to this post.

Playing two rounds, one Engineer Only Dustbowl and one Sniper Only 2fort. Both games were incredibly fun and incredibly frustrating. The engineer one was badly broken, of course, because engineers are dangerously useless on Offense and they are almost infinitely stackable on Defense. Red would cede the first point after the initial "two sentries over spawn doors" trick, then build seven sentries on the point. I think the longest anyone stood on the point without being turned into a chunky Southwest-style salsa mist was two seconds. But at the same time, it was oddly compelling even to be on offense, killing sentries with your pistol, etcetera.

The Sniper one might have been fair. I'm an awful sniper, but I make up for it by being sneaky; with no engineers I strolled onto the 2fort battlements and stabbed three fictional people to imaginary death. Then I realized that these people were almost cartoonishly oblivious, so I climbed back up to the battlements and shot eight of them in the head. I think I might have shot some of them twice. Then the host changed the rules so one team (his, I assume) had an engineer to control the courtyard, and it turns out that if you switch a class limit to 0 while somebody is rolled as that class, they will stay that class until they change classes. So one side had an engineer that controlled walking-class access to the intel. Snipers aren't great for fighting a well-placed sentry and the game stalled, one side feeling helpless and the other steamrolling them.

But I had an idea that I'd like to see executed: two rounds of exclusively one class. One server, two rounds, all Medics. One server, two rounds all Demomen. Still 12v12 like TF2 was meant to be played, but iterated through individual classes. Who wins when Dustbowl is exclusively guarded by Soldiers? Or attacked by scouts? Is 2fort more fun with 24 pyros?

You might be wondering, what's the point of all this is. It's kind of a balance thought experiment, to see how differently the game plays when you make subtle changes like that. For example, with all Engineers a game of Dustbowl favors RED. Of course, with no players Dustbowl favors RED. But what happens in a game of all Scouts? Competitive TF2 is a game played in the margins of an ubercharge--what happens when it's not?

Most of all, there's something vaguely liberating about it: "When everybody is OP, nobody will be".

The Quick Switch Cabinet

Recently, TF2 added support for multiple loadouts to the backpack. Well, a year ago, so... recently enough. The Preset Loadout GUI, if you're unfamiliar with it, allows you to create four loadouts for each class. These loadouts can be any permutation of items an individual TF2 class can have, with individual items available for use across multiple loadouts. Ideally these loadouts reflect "ideal loadouts" for various situations. As a Demoman you might have loadout A set to your vanilla Demoman and loadout B equipped with the Demoknight set.

Anyway, I had a crazy idea. Since you have four available loadout presets, why not create an in-map interface that automatically allows you to swap instantly between preset loadouts? In keeping with TF2's deliberately very-simple design, the Quick Switch Cabinet requires that you walk up to it and press 1, 2, 3, or 4. With that press, the relevant loadout is activated. You can still play around with your loadout in the loadout menu, but now each preset loadout is accessible at the press of a button, without having to go into the backpack and select.

Upon activation of a particular loadout, the loadout appears on the right hand side of the screen so you can be sure it's the one you want, and boom, transaction complete.

Stick one of these in every spawn room from Teufort to the Gravel Sea!

The Crawling Explosive

Version 1

The Driver
Level .08 Sticky Launcher
Grenades explode on timer or direct hit
Alt-fire causes them to change direction
appropriate downside

Version 2
The Driver
Level .08 Sticky Launcher
Can only have one bomb out at a time
M1: Fires bomb, bomb adheres to surface and crawls
M1 (while bomb is out): Bomb changes direction by 90 degrees
M2: Detonate
Bombs cannot be destroyed (?)

Now, I had this idea because I thought it was cool, but I ran into some trouble. I wanted to create a navigable sticky similar to the Bombchu from Legends of Zelda, but there aren't enough keybinds to fully control a bomb that works like that.

If you're trying to figure out how the launcher I designed works, the rear handle rotates (technically it rotates the other way) to open the loading hatch for the next crawling sticky. Once loaded, the back handle rotates in-line with  front handle, then pulls back to prime the charge.

If you have any suggestions, quips, critiques, commentaries, or insults, drop 'em in the comments sections. I love that stuff and if it's great I'll post it here on Fridays. If it's not, well, I'll weep myself to sleep.

Engineer MVM Buildings

Part of my MvM building project, this is the logical conclusion for building weapons for every class. I tried to give the Engineer practical problems to solve with his buildings. Unfortunately, these ideas also lend themselves to some of the cartooniest, corniest designs. Stunlocking and slowing enemies over a large AoE fits a magnet weapon, and honestly I wanted to give the Engineer a big horseshoe-magnet weapon. I had to take control of those influences when designing the Magnetron, but I still think I'm gonna stick a magnet on there. We'll see where the drawings take me when I start working on 'em. I think these have the most visible influence from Iron Brigade.

Offense:
The Magnetron
Stunlocks enemies in close range, slows down enemies at midrange

The Magnetron is meant to keep enemies in places where they're vulnerable to your big bad sentries. Useful for setting up kill boxes and slowing enemies down in places in places where it's better that they go slow.

Support:
The Bill Collector
A vacuuming building that absorbs nearby piles of money.

Transport:
The Generator
Looks like a small, gas-powered generator.Buffs friendly buildings, effectively making them "level 2"

Demoman Buildings

Part of my MVM Buildings For Everyone project. Putting a PDA in the action slot for every class, complete with its own buildings in the three slot spots taken from the PDA. All three are probably too powerful to be strapped onto one non-Engineer class, but who knows? Maybe one idea will be a good balance for the canteen in MvM.

PDA: A Countdown timer, seen here

Offense：
The Carpet Bomber
This minelayer allows you to dynamically cover a small area of the map with short-term explosives. Essentially, it'll lay five stickies, then detonate them when an enemy gets close. These bombs have a comparatively long arm time, so you can't trust them to catch fast enemies (like scouts or medics). These have a limited supply of ammo, expiring after expending just 10 ammo.

Support:
Robot Bait
Attracts the nearest non-tank Bomb Courier as long as its in range.  Tremendous range.

Transport:
The Pop-Up
This nonlethal minelayer pops enemies into the air, delaying them, putting them on a predictable path for your skeet-shooting snipers, and of course letting you get easier combos for weapons that deal in-air damage penalties.

Viewer Workshop: Thunderchin

Thunderchin gets props for being the first person to comment on this blog. I've seen his work before on the SPUF forums, so there's extra props there. Check out his blog here. Anyway, as promised I plan to promote ideas I like from the comments section on Fridays, in a segment I call Viewer Workshop. I might even talk a bit about ideas, offer suggestions and such.



The Medic
Offensive/Support/Transportation is all in one Building. Think of it as a Dispenser that can overheal. As it heals, it builds up a meter of its own. Also as it heals, it doles out speed boosts to whoever it heals. When this meter gets full, it becomes a planted Buff Banner except with full crits instead of minicrits.

An all-in-one building that offers overhealing, speed buffs, and eventually full crits. I've dubbed it the "Comprehensive Coverage". It's a full support machine from a full-support class. I like it.


The Spy
Offensive: Decoy Generator
Generates holographic decoys of the friendly team to help draw fire.
Support/Transportation: Team Invisibility

I'm a known proponent of team invisibility in general, so of course the team invisibility machine gets earmarked as a good idea. Of course, it's one I think is so valuable it could even be extended into the multiplayer arena, so that would be interesting to see.

Heavy Buildings

The Heavy Buildings were kind of a tricky build because, of course, everyone always wants to suggest a sandvich dispenser, and nobody wants to see a support building that gives the Heavy independent heavy ammo a la the dispenser. Giving him an offensive weapon that didn't come off as overpowered

Anyway, this is a continuation of the MVM buildings project, buildings for the Heavy. Further concept art is forthcoming. As always, suggest your own! I am by no means even a halfway competent developer and I have a one track mind. Get creative and submit stuff to my comments! Good comments and ideas will get posted--with credit--on Fridays.

Offense:

The Western Affront
Rename pending. This is a fast-deploying minisentry type weapon, meant more to help the Heavy beat retreats than serve as additional firepower. Drop one of these to stall the robots while you spin down, back up, and head for more health and ammo.

Support:
Natascha II
This support weapon works like a regular sentry, but instead of firing bullets, it slows down its victim. Hits are still registered as hits (and can thus draw the attention of sentry busters), but do zero damage.

Transportation:
The Cubano
This "transportation" building actually generates a defensive cloak--enemies cannot attack through it, as though it were a fortification. Technically I guess it is a fortification.

Medic Buildings

A continuation of the MVM buildings project, buildings for the Medic. Further concept art is forthcoming. As always, suggest your own! I am by no means even a halfway competent developer and I have a one track mind. Get creative and submit stuff to my comments! Good comments and ideas will get posted--with credit--on Fridays.

Offense:
The Zombie Turret
On kill in AOE, generates a zombie minisentry
Minisentries can be controlled by dead allies



  
This is a double modification of a couple of older ideas I had. The Zombie Turret doesn't actually do any killing on its own. However, when there's a kill nearby, it converts the victim's robot corpse into a Zombie Node, a tiny minisentry that deals a small amount of damage. However, there's another special perk to this: zombie miniturrets can be operated by the spirit of dead comrades waiting for a respawn. Medics can opt to eject unhelpful allies by shooting a possessed zombie turret.

Support:
The Blood Bath
Collects all non-medic healing in range and converts it into a canteen charge. Every time a nearby ally collects healing from a medkit, eats a sandvich, lands a hit with the Black Box or Blutsauger, or heals themselves in any way, they generate charge. As an added bonus, a canteen charge ALSO fills a medic's uber bar by 50%.

Transportation:
A standard teleporter. I got nothing.

Pyro Buildings

A continuation of the MVM buildings project, buildings for the Pyro. Further concept art is forthcoming. As always, suggest your own! I am by no means even a halfway competent developr and I have a one track mind. Get creative and submit stuff to my comments! Good comments and ideas will get posted--with credit--on Fridays.

Pyro PDA: A charred notepad and pencil (?)




Offense:
The Volcano Rig
This teeny-tiny sentry remains dormant until an enemy gets close, then lets loose with a fiery blast that knocks the enemy into the air while setting them on fire. Its dormant state is silent as the grave.






Support:
The Camping Fire
Expendable canteens last a few extra seconds longer

Transportation:
The Air Elevator
Tosses an ally into the air (and extinguishes them!)

Looking for a clever way to bounce allies around. This isn't really that clever.

The Streetfighting Scout Set

Seen here in front of a weird brown blob

The Bonk! Variety Pack
Primary Weapon
M1: Throw held beverage
Hold M1: Shake held beverage (creates splash attack)
M2: Consume held beverage
Jumping off someone's head deals 25 damage

You can throw beverages quickly, about one every one second, with each dealing 60 damage on a direct hit. A well-shaken can deals 120 damage with splash. You can consume cans to gain beverage buffs, but they fill a thirst bar. When the bar is full, you can't drink any more, so watch out. You have six bottles, and you're carrying a two more six packs in your satchel. Or towel, or whatever the Scout is wearing on his back.


The reload animation is the Scout flipping the empty carton over his shoulder and taking a new one from behind his back.

The Bonk Variety Pack activates a PDA slot, the Beverage menu. The beverage menu can be used to select which flavor is next in the rotation. This feature is especially under consideration for utility.

Flavor 1: Bonk Standard
normal phase ability, cannot attack during

Flavor 2: Crit-a-cola Classic
minicrit bonus, can attack during

Flavor 3: Painslayers brand Analgesic Beverage
Heals 30 HP and negates ramp-up for ten seconds, can attack during
Flavor 4: Australium in a Can
Your projectiles deal extra damage for ten seconds, can attack during

The idea was to create a Scout set that takes away all his guns and leaves him using sort of found, everyday weapons instead. Mostly I just like the idea of a guy running into a gunfight whipping bottles from his six pack at everybody he sees, but eventually I realized it was sort of a Scout-appropriate grenade launcher disguised as a six pack.

And I liked that. People on SPUF would complain if you created an item called "The Gremlin's Grenades" and was a badly nerfed Scout grenade launcher, but if you disguise it as something the scout would plausibly use... I probably shouldn't be explaining this out loud.

The Arthur

The Arthur
Baseball Bat
Alt fire: Improved functionality to targeted friendly building
Excessive buffing will hurt you
-50% swing speed



Basically, the Scout uses his non-bat-holding hand to love-tap friendly buildings, causing them to temporarily work faster. Dispensers heal slightly more, teleporters recharge faster, and sentries fire a little quicker. Buffs are administered on a meter, and exceeding the buff hurts the Scout's hand. Just a fun little idea.

Scout Buildings

Brainstorming All-Class PDAs, because obsessive completionism and machines are more fun than working game mechanics. These are designed specifically for MvM, where the smaller playercounts make all-class sentries a workable idea. This is an idea that keeps reverberating in my head, buildings for all classes as designed by the Engineer, because I want the engineer to design more things. I hunger for them. Admittedly most of these have more in common with the "character" of each merc than their class, but then this is a fun exercise more than a serious game changer.

Non-engie buildings are, in this vision, not upgradeable or repairable partially to avoid the visual incongruity of fixing a things by hitting them with swords, baseball bats, or whatever.

Ultimately, these ideas turn TF2 into a Orcs Must Die style castle defense/action title, and that sounds like a freaking awesome idea to me.

First up is the Scout.

PDA: Simple, gameboy-like PDA (credit where it's due)

Offense: The Pitching Arm
Fires stun baseballs
Looks like the sentry, but with a horizontal spinning wheel over the ammo feed to fire baseballs. And a modified barrel. Obviously.

Support: The Second Phase
Allies moving near this building charge it, eventually activating a phase ability that minimizes damage
An handheld cooler containing bonk. The lid is wired with a timer, and when it reaches zero the lid opens and allies are phased.





Transportation: The Plate
A directional plate that gives classes running over it a speed boost.
Looks like home plate.

The Combat Mini-Sentry Robot

So, after posting that last one I realized I never actually posted my dear friend the Combat Mini-Sentry Co-Op Robot to this blog! I love doing portmanteau art, combining similar or separate concepts into one design. I do it a lot with TF2, having done combos of Team Fortress and Portal several times, as well as Bioshock, Minecraft, Left 4 Dead, Orcs Must Die, and on one weird occasion, Shadow of the Colossus.

This guy here is a Portal co-op android, but also a combat mini-sentry. He was designed to solve complicated riddles, such as "What are the effects of bullets on human flesh" and "At what frequency do bullet-riddled humans beg for their lives." He is, and I quote, a "cute little gun".

Ugh, a New Robot

So I was thumbing through backlogged ideas of cool stuff that I could do, when I saw on my DeviantArt that The Combat Mini-Sentry Robot got a ping, and I decided to design another one, this time based on the dispenser. That may have been a mistake.

Well, you can see him there on the side, and of course all the problems that come with trying to find an iconic Engineer item that you can wrap robot limbs around and turn into a Portal robot become immediately apparent. Once the Sentry was gone, there isn't a single shape that fits the bill the same way. Maybe I'm too structured in my thinking, but the dispenser's boxy shape just doesn't work.

 Use the comments to tell me what you think. Make suggestions! This guy's design is bugging me, and not just because I was really lazy while throwing together his limbs. Is there a more iconic engineer shape you would recommend, or some other thing I should use?

Mann Versus Halloween Mode

It's interesting to think about, the addition of this new Horde mode, because I think everyone sees the blood-writing on the old-timey parlor wall. We're going to get a Halloween-themed MvM map, perhaps with zombies for mobs. Or, if my fantasies are achieved, zombie robots, commanded the Headless Horsemann himself.

I was going to suggest it, on this very blog, in my typical suggesting-things style. Until I realized there could be a problem: Valve has never produced an "original" Halloween map. Harvest, Mann Manor, and Eyeduct are all Halloweenie reskins of existing maps, with only Eyeduct being a reskin of a map that was already in-game.

Hopefully, with the dearth of MvM content, we'd get a shiney new map.

Sorry, I was looking at my little thing up there and realized I was complaining about something that hadn't happened yet, and that MvM Halloween Content is inevitable and was probably planned like a month before MvM launched.

So yeah, just kind of enjoy Count Demoskull up there.

Fighting Robots

Here's a picture of the Headless Horsemann drinking scrumpy.

And one of him flipping you off. I'm going camping, see you next week.

The Posse

The Posse
Level 10 Sentry Manufacturing Device
--Dispenses up to 3 simultaneous Disposable Sentries

Disposable Sentry
20 HP
35DPS (+ 20 per level)
Cannot be repaired, cannot be refilled

This sentry deploys disposable sentries. When it senses a foe, it fires a disposable sentry at it. The DS then activates and engages the foe until it runs out of ammo or is destroyed.

The Posse upgrades as normal; HP and sensing speed upgrade at the same rate. A deployed DS will stay put even if the Posse is moved or destroyed and vice versa, but a given Posse will only have three DSes out at a time. Sapping one DS will sap all related elements, and destroying a DS will deal 20 damage to the Posse itself.

The Arms Race

The Arms Race
Level Vodka Fists
On Miss: Hit Yourself, dummy
On Kill: Throw enemy ragdoll for heavy damage

A weapon that allows you to kill enemies, and then throw their bodies at their buddies. Yeah, this is a remake of the Heimlich Counter Maneuver, but I liked it so much I wanted to repost it.

The downside is kind of a rough issue. On the related SPUF post  people pointed out that hitting himself would allow for advanced mobility options, or "self-damage jumping". It immediately split, one person liking it, the other seeming to dislike it. Either way, I'm not wedded to that as a downside, so if it's not downsidey enough... who knows. If it's too tough on the Heavy, a simple cooldown on missed swings might be preferable.

And handling a technical issue: I know that ragdolls are handled client-side. On a kill, the "real" ragdoll would have to be hidden or destroyed immediately, while the heavy created a generic version of his victim's ragdoll in his hands to serve as the actual projectile weapon. Since it has immediate in-game consequences, it would be treated as a projectile, NOT a ragdoll, in order to prevent people's optimization settings from killing the rag-doll. Think of it as a sandman ball that happens to be victim-shaped.

For a model, I was thinking that rather than created a new set of gloves for the Heavy to wear, his melee animations would change. The idle animation, rather than a pugilistic boxing pose, would be the Heavy standing with his palms open flat and displayed, almost like his retreating animation. The swing would be an open-handed swat. On a kill, he'd lift the body over his head--from the player's perspective, he'd see the Heavy's elbows (maybe?) and the hand of his victim visible in the upper corner of the screen. From someone else's perspective, they'd see the swat animation coming down, followed by a brief recovery animation as the Heavy lifted up his victim.

Rejected Mercenaries

An idea I'm developing...a short video featuring four classes that tried out for the mercenary team but were ultimately rejected. I like the idea that the merc team we see aren't the only people in the world, that there are people with highly specialized skills that could have been on the team but aren't simply because the gameplay would be godawful or they couldn't fit into the culture of mental illness propagated by the team. Specifically, the idea is that RED and BLU actually hired a GI-Joesque universe of mercs with highly specialized skills, and this video would be a small sampling of who they are and why they're not in Team Fortress 2.

The Diver

A frogman-style diver in a skintight body suit, flippers, and monoglass scuba goggles, he speaks in a voice like Sean Connery pretending to be English.

Weapons: Speargun /Limpet Launcher /Diving Knife
Abilities: Can breathe underwater / Improved Swimming speed
Scene Baselines:
Runs out of spawn into Badwater's desert environment.
Ambushes a spy, but is subjected to a karate chop, larate kick, and eyeful of powerful chest hair
Eventually settles blithely in a knee deep puddle, sighs dejectedly

The Pilot 

A long-faced but smiling chap in aerial ace gear, like the fur-trimmed bomber's jacket, aviator's goggles, and mic. He speaks in a methodical, almost lyrical slow tones, like a commercial airline pilot or Bing Crosby. On his back is his main loadout, a rocket backpack. Different loadouts carry different packs, including a balloon, helicopter rotor, and jump jet.

Weapons
Shotgun
Airborne PDA
--Letter Bomb (creates area where enemies temporarily take minicrits)
-- Air Drop (drops a fast-deploying air sentry or weapons crate for allies)
--Paralanding (teleporter)
Microphone
Abilities: Hold jump to fly
Domination lines:
"You are now free to move about the coffin."
"And if you look out the window on the right, you will see the fiery gates of Hell."
Jokes for video:
takeoff through roof
Runs out of fuel, landing amongst an enemy camp

The Boxer

Weapons: None, obviously
Abilities: None of these, either.
Hand to hand fight with scout, as he's winning, scout pulls out his scattergun

The Bureaucrat

Weapons: n/a
Abilities:  n/a
Spends the entire video sitting quietly at a desk, scribbling. Various explosions rock his desk, disturb his papers, and tip over something onto his desk.

Turtle Bay

Turtle Bay is variation on a TF2 map I've wanted to develop for quite some time. Basically, it's a map that's a little more dynamic and exciting in the way new paths open up and such. For now, I think Special Delivery or CTF would be the best game modes to express it.

Thematically, it's meant to be the factory where the Engineer manufactures his weapons. Now obviously, he designs all the buildings, and he builds them in the field. Video games tend to use visual shorthand to convey actions: the engineer hitting his sentry with a wrench isn't really him fixing it by dumbly bludgeoning it, it's meant to subtly convey the act of repairing a building. In the same vein, you might expect that the automated build process stands in for a complicated deployment stage where a team of engineers painstakingly assemble a sentry like an IKEA bookshelf, but I prefer to interpret the automated deployment literally.

If that's the case, then the Engineer must have a facility that exists to supply him with those toolboxes, where he keeps the workshop seen in The Engineer Teaser and tests out elaborate weapons. I also thought it could double as an experimental weapons laboratory for a Mann Co competitor.

The Map's Gameplay Aesthetic

First of all, the Intel points in Turtle Bay are different than other maps (where they are the same). The intel is located near a pick-up truck with its bed full of suitcases. The potential problem, obviously, is that a bed full of intel briefcases might confuse players entering the intel room, so a spotlight would shine on the truck while the intel is there, and go off while the "active" intel is gone. If this proves to be too confusing the intel pickup could be altered to a single briefcase, with the truck moved out-of-bounds.

There are then three drop-off zones, themed around different rewards for intel and showcasing a large engineer weapon that supplies the reward. Get three caps in any zone to win--or mix and match! The first Zone might be the Critical Hits zone, where a generator-sized object that looks like an engineer building crossed with the kritzkrieg and a fire hydrant lives. Supply it with Australium to get crits for ten seconds. Although each dropoff zone is different, ideally one would be my long-lost Intel Repository, with its huge stack of briefcases. Awesome, right?

Other zone ideas:
New spawn areas

New Paths
-- moving a train to complete a hallway
--blowing up a wall
--rising elevator platform
--drain/flood section of map

Map-hazard special sentry guns
--fire
--ceiling mounted
--aerial bombardment
--electricity pylons

Grants access to "bonus zones"
--vending machine with candy bar healthkit
--access to additional ammo or health

Deactivates enemy map bonuses?

Engineer Buildings Contest

So I think the Engineer could build stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. So over at SPUF, I threw together a sort of contest for people to describe and design buildings for the Engineer to design. See, the thing is that a lot of people have ideas about what the engineer would design but no idea what it would really look like. One of the most prolific designers of Engineer weapons, Pyanodon, is a fantastic and creative modeler but I thin that everything he designs is more suited to Doctor Robotnik than the Engineer.

So I want people to design things that the engineer would build. Even if they're ultimately unusable for the game, it'd be fun to see what people come up with.

So to start it off, I created the Uber Generator, a machine that builds uber. This isn't the finalized design, as it's too boring and the silhouette looks too much like the Dispenser (which is intentional, since it was meant to be a retrofitted dispenser originally).