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.

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)

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.

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.

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).