TF2 Development
Team Fortress 2. Where it's been, where it's heading.
— The Warthog
 Valve
Valve, now a game developer praised by many, started as a simple idea by 3 Microsoft Employee's. They planned to make a single player game, "Half-Life" and arguably, their prospects where not the greatest when they announced the game in early 1997 to be released, "soon."
Guess what, the game didn’t make the release date. As you’ll see by the screen shot to my right (yes, I’ve been formatted into the page these days) that if they had released the game back then, they would have made the release date, but not with a game. It would have merely been a vision of what could/should have been done with their idea.
So Valve took everything and started over from scratch. They continued modifying their Quake 1 engine license (Yes, Quake 1.) and completely reworked all aspects of the game. Half-Life was well behind its first intended release date, but so what? It went from something that would be reviewed on oldmanmury.com or somethingawful.com to being proclaimed Game of the Year by nearly any publication, online or print, that had the ability to do so.
Not only did Valve deliver a great single player experience with enemy AI that for once was challenging and worked together, people in-game you could talk with, outstanding plot and goals, visual and audio effects that raised the bar and now have become a standard that one must meet to create an average experience, etc. But Valve also focused very specifically on Half-Life’s multiplayer. Before Half-Life was released, Valve brought on John Cook and Robin Walker from TeamFortress Software. These were the guys that had created the insanely popular mod, Team Fortress. The plan was to create TeamFortress 2 for Half-Life as a multiplayer expansion pack. When I first read an interview with Robin saying that they were not going to be doing TeamFortress 2 for Quake 2, but were instead doing an official expansion pack for this game "Half-Life" I was very intrigued, all along I was worried about this new company "Valve" being a good place for TFS to work. In retrospect I’ll say that it was like worrying about loosing my bet to DieHard that he wouldn’t be able to nail Jell-O to a tree.
 So
Ok, so Valve took a long time with Half-Life and made it the most successful game to date with multiplayer
development tactics, ideas and mod support yet to be matched by any game developer. Valve takes time and
care with their products, numerous times in interviews you’ll find an answer along the lines of,
'If we don’t like it, we’ll fix it. If we don’t like it at all, we’ll start from scratch and do it until it’s
right.'
It can be a pain waiting so long for the patches, and stuff still does go wrong even when they do arrive, but Valve takes extra time to develop things, and if you look at Half-Life and compare it to Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament (both games released a year after Half-Life) you’ll note that Half-Life still seems to have an edge.
TeamFortress 2
TeamFortress 2 has been development in one form or another for over 4 years. First, Team Fortress 2 was going to be a mod for Quake 2. And in fact, if you remember (you can still read it here) Robin Walker saying a release of TeamFortress 2 is very close.
During this development time, Valve acquired TFS. At the time, this was an awesome move for a small game company wanting to get it’s name out there, by bringing on the developers of the most popular mod ever (yes, Counter-Strike is now more popular). It turns out TeamFortress Software benefited just as much in the long run, now developers of the most popular game ever.
TeamFortress 2 was now announced to be an official add-on pack for Half-Life. Gamers were excited, and when Half-Life came out, almost all TF vets jumped at it. And soon all gamers did. Waiting in anticipation for TeamFortress 2, lots of information was released and we were all drooling. Heck, even PlanetFortress got to help Valve decide what box to ship TF2 in.
Unexpectedly, Valve made a decision that excited most, but a handful were upset (because they had now bought
Half-Life and would not be getting TF2 with it), by announcing that TeamFortress 2 was now going to be it’s
own game, and not an add-on for Half-Life. They said they made the decision because they realized if they
wanted to fulfill the true potential of this game, it would have to be that, a full game and not an add-on.
Meanwhile, Half-Life was patiently awaiting an Software Development Kit (SDK) so people could make mods. Valve wanted to make the most versatile, ability to be creative, easy to use SDK available. They decided that the best way to know what mod authors would want, would be to make their own mod. Thus, TeamFortress Classic was born. Robin and John were able to now truly finish off and balance the mod which they had gone as far as they could with in Quake.
TeamFortress Classic is still being balanced off, just the other day (at the time of writing this article) a patch was released beefing up the pyro and toning down the Heavy Weapons Guy. The user made maps aren’t as popular as anyone would like, but the community is working hard to make a difference. The mod is great, just like anything people don’t like it because of this or that, but TFC is good overall.
It was planned originally at Valve to have TeamFortress 2 use a modified Half-Life engine, (which is a modified Quake 1 engine). Soon after the time when TFC was released, Valve made a decision (but didn't tell anyone) to switch gaming engines entirely for TeamFortress 2 by creating their very own. Very little information about this engine has been released since, but Valve is very pleased with what they have done. Just another way to improve the game ( and take longer to release :)
Throughout TFC’s development and Half-Life patches have been released testing TeamFortress 2's technology. The first test was a new netcode (something needed for Half-Life in general) along with a new VUGI interface. In the future will come a new parametic animation modeling system (which has already been released in the retail version of Counter-Strike) and in game voice communication. These are integral parts of TeamFortress 2's development, and Valve wants to have it right before shipping.
The other thing Valve has done in preparation for TF2's release is cultivating popularity of Half-Life, they’ve helped any and all mod authors produce the best mods possible. They’ve bought the rights to Counter-Strike and made a retail version of it bundled with other user made mods. By looking at GameSpy’s Stat pages, it’s safe to say they’ve made some good moves in developing popularity for Half-Life to get everyone excited about TeamFortress 2.
TeamFortress 2 has been in development at Valve for an ungodly amount of time. TeamFortress Classic was about six months late in arriving to us, TeamFortress 2 is about a year and a half behind schedule since it was announced to be a full game. Valve has added all this new technology which they are testing in TeamFortress Classic and Half-Life, along with creating their own home crafted game engine that they have kept tight lipped about.
Now, just because it’s taken a long time does not mean the game will be any good. Diakatna took forever and the game was behind the technology curve, and the gameplay wasn’t what people were looking for. Looking at TF2's screen shots, the graphics are up to date, while we know about the gameplay; no one will be able to decide if it’s going to shock the world until we get our hands on it.
Valve is not the gaming company god, but they seem to be doing quite a few things right when looking at Half-Life sale records and GameSpy Stats. I for one look forward to TF2's release, it’s been a long time coming, but at this point in time if any company is going to do it right, it’ll be Valve.
Shake that money maker on over to our TeamFortress 2 info section to find out any and every piece of information that’s been released about it.
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