Part 4
Wholeheartedly scooping
around with both hands! Dig, baby, dig!
How customizable on the server side will the game be -- similar to Quake? Teamscore is being used, but I assume teamkills are also permanently on?
We're working with a couple of well known admins to make sure we provide a complete set of administration tools. Working with the Half-Life engine allows us to give the game dll a little bit more power, allowing it to then make life easier for the admin.
In terms of scoring, we score only by the team score, but we still keep track of each individual's score (frags, captures, etc) for those that are interested. Teamkill is currently similar to TF1. By default you can kill teammates with all directfire weaponry, and you do half-damage with explosives. With its increased admin capabilities, the game itself prevents idiots from abusing this.
If 32 teams are possible, how many team skins/colors will be available in the actual release?
Yes. TF2 supports 32 teams, but all our maps will use 4 or less visible teams. The mapmaker now has the capability to change player's teams and set allied teams. So, a map could use 4 teams, where the first 3 teams are all allied and the players on them all look as if they're on the same team. To the players, it would look as if there were only 2 teams. This might sound useless, but it's actually extremely useful for some of the weirder TF maps out there. For instance, the Hunted President map could use 3 teams, one for the president, one for the bodyguards, and one for the assassins. The president and bodyguard teams could be allied, and perhaps even combined into the one "Team" on the team selection menu, so there'd only be 2 teams to pick from. This way we don't have this problem of bodyguard's sentryguns killing the president ;)
Note: this is one issue which has been a major point of contention among TF mapmakers and players since ... well, since as long as I can remember. I was extremely happy to see this feature being implemented at the suggestion of the players. And people say TFS doesn't listen? At least not to the bad ideas, anyway.
How will team skins work? Will you build a team pattern and it will fill in the spaces like TF1 did with colors, or will you have to do a whole set of skins for each team?
Skins for each team aren't based on areas of color anymore. Now we use different camouflage for each team (urban camo, desert camo, etc). We'll be providing an area on the skin where a clan/team logo can be placed, so clans don't have to redo the entire skin, just the logo portion. This gets around the problem we had with TF1 and clan skins. If you'd designed clan skins for all the classes, other clans couldn't identify classes anymore. With TF2, you'll be able to recognise the class & team by both the model and most of the skin, and you'll be able to recognise the clan by the insignia.
Personal question: what's it been like for you guys, waiting almost two years for this project to come to fruitition? TF was released in August 1996, what have you been doing since then, and did you have any idea things would end like this?
Yow... too big a question!
I'm sure everyone reading this is saying "Yow, too big an interview!"
Obviously, its been fantastic for us. We're now living on what was once our hobby, and I think that's something most people would love to be able to do.
Personally, I find it great to be in such a good position to make TF2. A few months ago I remember reading a comment by someone about the commercialisation of TF2. He said he couldn't understand why we'd gone commercial when TF1 wasn't commercial, and that we could just port TF1 to Quake2, which surely wouldn't take too long or need to be commercial. And he's right in one way... it wouldn't have taken that long. And I remember that a few people responded to him saying that we had to eat. And in a way, they're right too... but not completely. We could have done TF2 freeware, and I think it would have been a good game. As good as TF1. We wouldn't make any money off it, but I was never interested in the money anyway. We wrote TF1 because it was fun. People may have got their fun out of playing it... we got our fun out of writing it.
TF2's the same. We want to have our fun too, dammit. We want to write TF2. Porting TF1, or even just doing a mediocre freeware version, wouldn't have been fun for us. In a way, its a very personal pride type thing... I know we can write TF1. Now I want to know if we can write TF2.
And that's why I'm so personally happy about TF2 and Half-Life... we're in a position to make TF2 something it would never have come close to if we'd stayed freeware.
And I'm having a lot of fun :)
My take on this whole interview? As I noted above, the fact that TF2 is going to be a finished, polished product when we get ahold of it is going to totally revolutionize our concept of the game. No bugfixes, no gameplay tweaks -- it's DONE. Everything is being built, as I type this, around that central set of ideas that those four (or whatever) guys came up with however long ago. Surely things have changed since then, but that same vision has kept them committed to bringing us the highest quality multiplayer game to date. It doesn't seem possible that we will be disappointed no matter how high our expectations are, because we've never seen this group in the professional element before. Coupled with the Half-Life team ... the sky's the limit. Hearing suggestions for the game being tossed around is really a unique experience, and seeing the game out on the shelf at Best Buy and being able to say "hey, I was there when these guys first made their debut, and stuck with 'em all the way to the top. I know what they're all about." We have TFS to thank for that, folks.
It's obvious from this that Robin and the others involved in this game have a great passion for bringing their vision about. After talking about these things for weeks on end, it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that their goals do not involve wealth or fame (too late for that one, maybe?). There is genuine interest in satisfying their loyal fans. Having not even seen the game myself, I am thoroughly impressed (not to say proud) of the great work our pet programmers are doing. q-:
I'd like to give a big thanks to Robin at Valve for his generous donation of time to give these detailed answers, as well as patience in dealing with a cub webmaster. Thanks to Lisa Mennet in the PR department (whom I've never spoken with) for not tearing everything I sent in to shreds.
I greatly appreciate all those on my contact list who helped out with ideas for inquiries even though this did end up as one of the most muddled and roughly done interviews I have ever come across in my brief time online.
Hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought of it!
Moriarty.