Team Fortress 2 Message Board older than one year ago

Since our announcement of Team Fortress 2 on the Mac, we've received literally thousands of emails from over seven people, curious as to how the Apple comic shown in the update fits into the ongoing TF saga. Did Saxton Hale really buy the Apple company? Can Heavy's gun actually shoot email bullets now? Who was that mysterious figure? And why were Valve's lawyers so insistent that he remain mysterious?

#zelda We like Zelda. We like Team Fortress 2. By that thinking, then, it is safe to assume we like it when the two are combined. More »

Do you hear that? That ominous, otherworldly silence? That's what we in the game biz call the calm before a storm. And keep listening... do you hear that distant rumble? We call that thunder. It happens during a storm whenever it's not quiet.

#tf2 Polycount, an online resource for video game artists, has been running a Team Fortress 2 competition, asking users to submit their ideas for new weapons and items for the game. Valve, I hope you're taking notes. More »

#screengrab The mangled syntax and childlike enthusiasm of Team Fortress 2's Heavy is very much reminiscent of a five-year-old's view of the world, the obvious inspiration for this crayon drawing about his friends and teammates. More »

#clips For the Team Fortress 2 player obsessed with joylessly grinding for Steam achievements, the community creates special maps. One of those achievement whoring maps has a special, apocalyptic surprise. A furious feline filled with lasers and bees. Bees? Bees!! More »

So you've been taking advantage of Training Mode and Offline Practice Mode all week, and you think you're pretty hot stuff. What better way to find out how wrong you are than to watch some pros in action at The Steam Powered User Forums' "Battle of Both Worlds" match this week? Also known as the "Pros vs Pubbers" event, the match features a team of competitive players versus a team of highly skilled public-server players. It's a perfect opportunity to see a whole bunch of truly great TF2 players have some truly great fun. Check it out.

New single-player training mode added.

The Team Fortress 2 blog has revealed the impending arrival of one of Valve's biggest games to the Mac platform. Tomorrow, Mac-owning gamers will be able to join the Team Fortress 2 ... team.

Well, Valve didn't even confirm that it is Team Fortress 2 that is being released tomorrow. Sure, it was on the Team Fortress 2 blog, and the post was topped by the above image of Team Fortress 2 characters, but really it could be any game whose title rhymes with "Speem Gortress."

Per the Steam store, TF2 will be offered as a stand-alone title for $19.99. If you've already purchased the PC or Mac version of The Orange Box, it will be made available as a free download.

It turns out that Valve's completely opaque hinting yesterday referred to a Mac release of Team Fortress 2! If you have an inclination toward team-based, cartoony/violent FPS action, head over to Steam now and enjoy the newly OSX-compatible game.

Valve has provided some decent motivation to do so quickly, if fun isn't enough: if you play on a Mac before June 14, you'll get some in-game earbuds like the ones sported by the blue "Mac" team in the above video. Oh, and you can also play for free this weekend (through June 13) on both Mac and PC, or pick up a permanent copy of the game for $10. Both of those offers are good through June 13.

[Thanks to all the excited Mac owners who sent this in mid-freakout]

#valve Mac versus PC. It's officially on, Team Fortress 2 style. Slip in your earbuds, Mac owners, because the team-based multiplayer shooter is now available for download. For free. More »

We'd originally planned to tease out today's update over the course of 19 deviously brain-twisting blog posts, each containing a mercurially complex riddle hinting at the nature of the update. Unfortunately, everybody seems to have cracked the subtle rhyming codex embedded in our first blog post, which was actually supposed to be the most unsolvable of the 19.

So anyway. Team Fortress 2's available on the Mac now.

#valvetime Portal 2 isn't the only game being affected by the curious properties of Valve Time. While promised Wednesday updates to Steam for Mac have been late (or nonexistent), Valve is about to make up for it with Team Fortress 2. More »

Big things are happening RIGHT NOW at Valve. Things involving cultivated tree-fruit. BIG things. Things that rhyme with "grapple." Things that rhyme with "Speem Gortress zmavailable on the Babac." Not today. But tomorrow. BIG THINGS. Stay tuned...

#cosplay If Valve was ever going to make a movie based on Team Fortress 2, we'd hope it was animated. If some studio executive insisted it be live action, however, we could tolerate it looking like this. More »

After slaving away for over a year, the fine folks at Polycount have unveiled their new community site for video game artwork. Given that a year is roughly the time it takes for us to post a blog update, you can imagine our immediate and deeply-held suspicion that they probably used magic. Possibly black magic. I won't bore you with the details, but long story short, we immediately raced to their office, armed with holy water and fire, to confront them. Several police officers informed us that we were mistaken, and then made us apologize to the wizards, and then made us stop calling them wizards.

#screengrab If Activision had made Team Fortress 2. By Steam forum user nofriends, seen yesterday by reader Zach. More »

We're going to ship an update with another small set of Pyro changes this week. Like our previous update, our goal is to increase the degree to which skill can make a difference between two Pyro players. We received a bunch of useful feedback after the last update, and we think we've managed to address most of it, without removing the skill-based additions. As always, play with it for a bit, and then let us know what you think.

#republished Have you ever played a game where the minigames or secondary goals were more exciting and compelling than the rest of the entire game? More »

Not since we've seen a DeLorean in Crysis have we been so in love with a mod. Team Portress, a 3 Point Games Community mod for Team Fortress 2, adds the iconic gun from Portal into the mix. As you'll see in the multiple videos past the break, nothing stops a Scout dead in his tracks like a nice portal trap.

Some necessary changes had to be made from how the portals usually operate. For example, there's a timer for each portal, instituted in order to keep players from being stuck in perpetual loops. Also, by reloading, you can manually kill any active portals in the game world.

Peer past the break to check out a bunch of videos showcasing the mod, courtesy of 3 Point Games and Pixelated Geek.

[Via Pixelated Geek; thanks, Jessica]

In between obsessing over hats, we've been trying to keep up with all the neat things the community is doing.

It's been a busy week for the Team Fortress team. That's right: the police are here again. We're on a first name basis with them, the fire department and the nasal extraction emergency response team at Overlake Hospital by now, so it was like meeting with old friends.

#mods Don't want to wait for multiplayer in Portal 2? Some modders are privately testing out Team Fortress 2 equipped with portal guns, and released this video to show how far they've come with the concept. More »

http://i.imgur.com/PQGXU.jpg Mentally defective sadist? With that smile? Yes, very much yes. [As seen on Imgur via Reddit] More »

#valve Here it is, kids. The final major Team Fortress 2 character updates (for now). The last-in-line Engineer is due for his big makeover and Valve has officially upgraded our anticipation to Tier 3 with a new teaser. More »

We're shipping a quick update to clean up some of the confusion around the 119th Update badges. We initially chose to calculate which badge to give players based on the beta release of TF2, because that was the date that customers could first play TF2. This turns out to have been a mistake, largely because many players did the math and thought they were getting something other than what they ended up with. So to remove that confusion, this new update moves that date forward to the official retail release of TF2, the 10th October 2007, and reissues updated badges to anyone who would be affected by that date shift.

#valve The first offering in Valve's new line of collectibles, Team Fortress 2's the Heavy, is now up for pre-order. These lovely limited edition statues can soon be yours, provided you've got the scratch to afford it. More »

It's as if millions of wallets cried out and were suddenly silenced, stripped of their precious cash money and left hollowed out and dead. We imagine that ringing in our ears has something to do with Valve and Gaming Heads, who just inked a deal to produce a line-up of collectibles based on hit Valve franchises. Pictured above is The Heavy, which will be the first in its Team Fortress 2 series -- available in Red and Blue varieties, of course.

Gaming Heads will also produce statues based on other popular Valve properties, such as Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead 2. And if some decorative shelf or desk items aren't really your thing, there's the promise of "life-sized props," meaning there's a possibility you could actually own a Portal gun without having to make it yourself sometime in the future. Just imagine: you'll be the hit of the Halloween party!

The Heavy will be available for pre-order on Monday, May 3.

[Via Team Fortress 2 Blog]