Valve Trip Overview
DieHard, Hellchick and The Warthog flew to Seattle to visit Valve Software and see what exactly is going on over there these days. Some very cool things are going down, plus we got lots of needed questions answered. Rock!
— The Warthog
Welcome to day one of Planet Fortress’s journey to Valve! In the following days we will be discussing the trip to the Kirkland based Fortress, a first hands on look at the new models, the new class/bot, voice communications, along with interviews with Robin, Doug, Pink, and Erik J. Some of the topic in today’s news will include DieHard’s first visit to Starbucks, a first look at the new models, and the general environment in the office.
We were scheduled to meet Valve at 3pm. Needless to say, The Warthog, DieHard and Hellchick managed to arrive a good fifteen minutes early [g]. We found the building with little troubles, noting that Valve was located on the 2nd and 1st floor. The main lobby was on the 2nd floor according to the chart, so we headed on up. Getting off the elevator we saw a sweet sign that had the “VALVe” logo on it pointing us to the main desk. Past the main lobby we could see through the main conference room (which was all glass walls) and I noted the very posh view of the street corner that included the Starbucks we were about to head down to. - There was some water and pretty nature stuff, but who cares about that anymore?
A passerby, whom we missed his name, was cool enough to get Doug for us. He told us what we were going to be doing (meeting people, a play test and a look at the new models). Once we made introduction rounds, we picked up Robin Walker, John Cook, and Erik Johnson and headed down to the Starbucks they frequent (more often than DieHard complained about getting hit by the truck -- wuss). John recommended the grande mocha to me, which was very good, and I did get a bit wired, but just being there was enough for that anyway, so it was a cool buzz. DieHard got something funky, “a brown brownie something” which he thought was excellent. Hellchick went the straight coffee route. Robin had ordered close to the same as mine, and we ended up getting mixed up, the girl working was having a rough day, but we got it fixed as she made another. DieHard would also like it to be noted that “She was hot.”
Robin, John and I started chatting about various things they had been up to. It’s very hard to describe what it was like talking to the two main guys who created Quake TF, TFC, and who are working on TF2. All games which I like so much that I, hell, run a website about. Everyone that we met at Valve were the coolest people, they were nicer than even a lot of people who I would call my friends. It must be one of the greatest environments to work in.
Once we had been at Starbucks for a few minutes, we went back up to Robin’s office and he showed us all the new TFC models. They asked our opinions on things like the sniper’s scope (color of the lens), new movements and such. We learned a couple interesting facts about the models (the lost pipebomb model that never got in, the HWGuy chaingun, and so on) that we’ll have all the details in our TFC Models article.
After seeing all of them, we randomly chatted with Robin and Erik about Valve, TFC, TF2 a couple times. And were told that we'd get ready for a playtest for everyone to look at the new models and check up on a couple bugs.
We found out that back in the days of QTF, Robin loved DieHard's audio show over all the others that were being done simply because of his accent. Robin ribbed DieHard telling him he was rather disappointed that he couldn’t laugh at it anymore. A hilarious argument ensued between the two of them about accents and who sounded funnier. Hellchick and I were about on the floor and the more they yelled, the more distorted and illegible their voices became.
For the playtest, DieHard and Hellchick stayed upstairs, while The Warthog went downstairs with Erik J. He set me up next to Pink (of FLF) who was a great teammate to have.
Hellchick was actually a little unsure about what class to play in this setting. Robin gave her HWGuy 101
for Dustbowl. Basically, he explained that there are only one or two doors that everyone has to run through
for each section. "Pick a door, and give it hell." That's right, you heard it here first.
As we were told it was going to be, the match was intense. Robin, and pretty much everyone else there (except Eric Smith) love Dustbowl, so that’s become the standard playtest map. Even though it was a playtest for the models, everyone in the office was dead serious about kicking the other team’s ass. Feeling the repercussions of a bad beating from DieHard that he dealt me in our visit to a “Wizards of the Coast” shop that allows you to rent gaming computers for a while and play on a lan, I felt the extreme need for payback so we were on opposite teams.
For the first round, I was on the attackers team, having been warned about a few particular tactics of Doug and a few others, I felt that I would have a pretty good standing out there. As it turned out, my team took half of the map time to get the first command point under our control. It took huge coordinated effort, I became the sentry removal man, while the heavies cleared out all the people and Pink and another medic worked on the flag. We ended up with the flag right on the bridge when the end round came up. I was rather disappointed by that, and was dead serious at making sure that they didn’t get as far.
Round two put us on defense, and the way the match unfolded was quite identical to our round, we held them at the first point for half of the map time, and I was the engineer for our defense, and had a great sentry spot that I’m now going to use every time. Some damn pyro (everyone was changing their names constantly, so I never really knew who I was fighting) was causing me trouble, but overall we had a good thing going. The end of the map ended up just like the first round, the flag ended up on the bridge. I was very happy that they didn’t get any farther. What was also cool was I put some ludicritve smack down on DieHard both rounds, which made me feel a LOT better.
After the playtest we went back upstairs to the meeting room to recap.. The discussion was mainly led by Erik Johnson, the match was talked about and also brought back on track covering the questions of what still needed to be fixed. The TFC birthday mode got brought up as to what should be done for that. They noticed a couple animation problems that need to be fixed. They were very interested in our opinions of the models (which we felt were awesome) and wondered if we had any transition problems to recognize the classes and teams and all that. I imagine that people will have a short adjustment curve to go through, but nothing major as they have taken some very good consideration to keep everything easy to tell apart (classes and colors).
We then went and played Soul Caliber, of which Robin was god. And really, I say he was God, and I mean it. No one can beat him, he played the game so well he should be banned from it. If anyone there does actually beat him writes down the date to make note of it (and is usually smart enough to not play him for a long time to allow the victory to last). -- The Soul Caliber games have dwindled down a bit in favor of the Playstation 2. We just brought back memories for them of all the different moves they named and all that.
After a couple rounds around the room, we went back to Robin's office to do our interview.. We talked with him for quite a while and then Doug.. Gabe even stopped by to say hello.. He sports a goatee now, Hellchick didn't recognize him.. Doug stopped in to observe and answered a couple questions himself, plus we had a few separate interview questions. - And as suspected by rumor, Robin Walker is a post apocalyptic Aussie loaner.
Tomorrow we'll have screenshots of all the new TFC Models, and there is more to come all week! Enjoy!
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