KritzKast interviews Eric Ruth

Eric Ruth has found fame and fortune of a kind, tearing apart games and rebuilding them in unexpected ways. Somehow his one-man games studio is able to pump out titles at an alarming rate so it was only a matter of time before his attentions turned to Team Fortress 2. KritzKast was lucky enough to chat to him while his title “Team Fortress Arcade” was still in development. If this interview is anything to go by TFA stands to be an excellent experience.

• Eric Ruth Games
• Eric Ruth’s twitter
• TFA gameplay
• Xpadder

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KritzKast interviews MisterMild

MisterMild is having a tough year. He’s had to forsake his movie making for the most part and concentrate on study. Not too surprisingly he’s training for a life in cinema. Though for a man who usually lets his gmod characters tell their own story he is being quite talkative with KritzKast. We discuss the origins of Engineer Techno, the role YouTube has in his work and hints of future projects.

• djy1991
• DasBoSchitt
• MisterMild – YouTube
• MisterMild – blog
• MisterMild – Twitter>

Contributors

djy1991 – DasBoSchitt

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KritzKast interviews Mixup Match

Agro talks to the etf2l admin, Ashkan as well as a few of the players in the mixup match with Robin Walker, Buck Sexington and some of the biggest names in TF2 at the moment.

• eTF2L
• Team Dignitas
• Official TF2 wiki
• MangyCarface
• VanillaTF2

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KritzKast #119: The Missing Musical

Episode 119…remind me, is that significant in some way? Oh yeah. it was the 119th update that valve celebrated, not 100th. So we are doing the same. We saved our musical from the clutches of episode 100 and now it can be yours to listen to. That right, the Kritzkast musical is here to stay.

• Track 1 – 2 Teams
• Track 2 – The Drunken Scottish Demoman
• Track 3 – Pyro Gone Crazy
• Track 4 – Just the 2 of us
• Track 5 – Dead Ringer Spy
• Track 6 – Enter Hale
• Track 7 – Anything you can kill, I can kill better
• Track 8 – Banding togeather
• Track 9 – Final Battle
• Track 10 – The Arrival

Contributors

Musical credits: Music taken from
Ayreon: Welcome To The New Dimension – Frankie goes to hollywood: 2 tribes – Charttraxx Karaoke: I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-general – Bernard Herrmann: Twisted Nerve – Eminem: 97 Bonnie And Clyde – Micheal Jackson: Thriller – Rotersand: Storm – KingOfKaraoke3691: Anything you can do, I can do better – Apoptigma Berzerk: Eclipse – Mercury music: Princes of the universe – MG-Rizzello: Aurora Movietrailer – Greendjohn: End of the Beginning

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Rob Laro, the self-made man.

The harder we work, the luckier we get. Never has this been truer than in the case of Rob Laro. He’s been labouring away for the last 7 years to scrape together enough luck to get more items added to the Mann Co. store than anyone else to date. A record 12 items that we don’t think will be broken any time soon.

Around the time of the Shogun update we sent him some questions. He’s a busy man so we were more than happy to wait for his considered answers.

KritzKast: We’ll start out with a simple one: who are you?
Rob Laro: My name is Rob Laro, I’m 23, I work at home as a freelance illustrator/concept artist and I’m the creator of the Homewrecker, Tankbuster pack and the Shogun pack.

What are your favourite classes and maps?
I really do love all the classes, but I mostly play Soldier, Spy and Pyro depending on my mood, or death streak. As for my favourite maps, I prefer the Valve made maps, Gravelpit, Goldrush, Badwater and Dustbowl, since I feel most at home on those.

What’s your load-out and do you get a kick out of playing with your own weapons?
Well, I like to play around with load-outs and new gear, so it changes along with the TF2 updates. It is very satisfying to play with my own creations, however if the stats aren’t great, I’m not going to use a weapon for its appearance alone.

I’ve seen some of your artwork, you have an elegant cartoonish style that seems very sympathetic to working with TF2. Are you a classically trained artist?
Yes, ever since I was 16, just up until a few years ago, I had been studying traditional illustration in college and university. However, for as long as I’ve been doing art I’ve been exploring digital techniques in my own time, from programming, 3D modelling, 3D animation and digital illustration. Preparing myself so that I’m game-making ready and what have you.

That we know of, you’ve built the Soldier’s polycount weapons, the Pyro’s Homewrecker and now the Shogun items. Have you summited other items for review and what was your favourite?
The only items I’ve created for TF2 and sent off to Valve have been added to the game, so luckily no rejections yet. Although the only item I’ve sent normally through the contribution system was the Homewrecker.
My favourite item I would say, is the Homewrecker. While the model is years old and not a great example of my best work, it was one of the first weapons added to TF2, which was an incredible feeling. So the whole thing was a very memorable experience for me.

Most people are stoked to get one item into the Mann store, you’ve had more than a dozen. Are there any tips for the modellers starting out?
I’ve been asked this question countless times, most of which the person asks me “how to model?” or “how to get an item added to TF2?” Both of which are just impossible to answer.
Now it’s different for everyone, but in terms of myself, I have sacrificed my life to art. If you are unwilling to learn and dedicate an ass ton of time to art, your relationship with it is going to be an extremely short one.
The only piece of advice I can give is the obvious one, grab a 3D program or a trial and start modelling like hell and keep at it. When you come across problems, search for it. There are more than enough resources out there on the internet to help you along your way.

What about the guys who’ve been toiling away in obscurity for years? How do you get Valve to notice you?
Generally, I would say doing something different and unique would get them to spot your item among the thousands of submissions they get, although not too “special” of course, haha.
From then, your best bet is to submit as much as you can and make it the best you can make it, then just hold tight and see what happens. That is after all, all we can do.

Have you ever seen a new weapon that wasn’t your own and thought, “Damn! I’ve been working on something like that.” Or, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
I love the stuff the community churn out. I definitely get those feelings when I browse what they’re up to. One thing that always amazes me is how people manage to come up with new ideas for hats. There has just got to be some sort of breaking point, there can’t be that many more hat types left, can there??

This week we’ve seen the most expensive actual money trade so far. $2200 for a Burning Kabuto. How do you feel about item trading?
While I find it to be a rather bizarre alternative universe, I like to hoard items myself. It’s rather compelling to see a huge list of items that are difficult to acquire and barter yourself some new items for your collection. I have a 38 refined metal frame around my 12 self-made items. Why? I really don’t know.

Had you tried making models before the opportunity with Valve came up or is TF2 your first love?
In terms of mods and skins, TF2 is my first love. There really isn’t any better game to contribute to.

Do you take your inspiration from things you see, do you sit at your breakfast table gluing eggboxes together to make shapes or do your designs have no real form before you make it?
Well, I like to base everything I create on some sort of real world reference, since I don’t really trust myself to come up with something from absolutely squat. I find the interpretation and development of an idea to be most intriguing personally, nothing better than something you can relate to, with a twist. Although, working with eggboxes is a great starting point too, mind you.

When designing an item, Where do you start? With a name, a look, a theme?
I start with Google image to be honest. I just plug in some words related to what I want to do and see where it goes from there. I save anything that catches my eye and as soon as I have some sort of theme going on, I start making some concepts, piecing an item together from the reference I’ve collected.
I like to shift a majority of the work to the 2D side of an item, establishing as much as I can in the concept, leaving less time having to wing it in the 3D viewport. Most of the ideas I come up with never get past the concept stage though. If you’re not feeling it, not much point beating that dead horse.

What tools/software do you use to model?
I use Maya 2011 for modelling and Photoshop CS5E for the texturing and general image making.

Do you work in CG modelling or considered it as a full blown career path?
I work at home as a freelance illustrator/concept artist, so the modelling is mostly a “hobby” of mine, and so far it hasn’t been a requirement for me to make ends meet. However these days, I’ve been doing an awful lot more concept art and 3D for there to be time to do any illustration, so my job title may just change in the near future.

As I understand it Sega commissioned you to design the Shogun items. That must have been a surreal conversation. How did they come to be asking you?
With Sega having enjoyed the packs from the Polycount update, they wanted one of the winners to create a huge series of promotional items for Shogun 2. So they sent out a bunch of emails to the five winners of the Polycount contest. Apparently, I was the only one that wanted to do it, so it was just pure luck that I landed the job.
I guess my naive enthusiasm carried me though. “So, we are doing a tie-in with TF2 and we were wondering if you…” – “I’LL DO IT, WHERE DO I SIGN”.

Did Sega pay you a one-off commissioning fee or do you take your payment from the Mann Co. sales?
I created the items for Sega free of charge, assured that I would receive the standard contributor cut, 25% of the sales of the Shogun items in the Mann Co. store.

You must have made a mint with the 25% from the Mann Co. store. What are you ploughing your money in to?
Since forever it’s been a huge aim of mine to create my own game. Thankfully, the money I have received from my TF2 ventures have enabled it to be financially secure, allowing me to focus on getting a game done and out there. I couldn’t be more excited to see where its going to go from here. Project “Odonata” is the name, keep an eye out for it on my blog.

Where can people find you and your work?
People can check on what I’m up to and my general activity through my blog, pardon the nekkid ladies! – http://larolaro.blogspot.com

All of us at KritzKast would like to thank Rob for finding the time to answer these questions. We wish him the best of luck with his indy game and hope to see him in game soon. So long as there’s TF2 there will be KritzKast.

KritzKast interviews Mecha the Slag

Mecha the Slag, the creator of TF2Ware, TF2Ware2 and The Advanced Weaponiser joins us. Mecha chats about his work introducing new and unusual weapons and how some of these items have made it into the full game.

• The Advanced Weaponiser Facepunch
• The Advanced Weaponiser Wiki
• Advanced Weaponiser Steam Group
• KritzKast’s Advanced Weaponiser server
• TF2Ware
• Cube Soccer
• Slag Soccer

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OneMoreUser, A different world

Nearly a year ago to the day and completely out of the blue TF2 – Law Abiding Engineer fell from the YouTube sky and the legend of OneMoreUser was born. A previously unknown, Russian animator had taken the dramatic trailer to F. Gary Gray’s Law Abiding Citizen and turned it on its head. The trailer OneMoreUser pushed out kept the explosive tension of the original film but inserted Team Fortress 2 characters into the lead roles. The merge was so convincing it prompted Valve’s Tom Bui to mention it on the official TF2 blog.

Just at the point where the impact of his work had begun to fade from our memories, OneMoreUser unleashed his re-imagining of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. This time, Batman was played by the Blu Demoman, Joker the Red Spy, Harvey Dent the Blu Soldier and roles were found for all other classes. Even the scout’s mum and Gabe Newell have their parts to play.

KritzKast caught up with OneMoreUser to ask him a few questions.

KritzKast: Who are you and where did you come from?
OneMoreUser: Kulikov Alexey Gennadievich (One More User)
Moscow, Russia. Just finished the university (as a coder), getting a full-time job.

KK: How long have you been animating?
OMU: I’ve started with all this 3d stuff in the 2002-2003. There was a project about remaking the StarCraft BW on the WarCraft 3 engine named “Project Revolution”. I worked in that team with a nick Zookeeper, there was a lot of animation and modelling work so this project gave me some experience. Unfortunately, project was never fully released AFAIK.

KK: Do you animate professionally or is this just a hobby?
OMU: More like hobby, I don’t know a lot of things about it, so I can’t use it in high-level projects.

KritzKast: These are very polished videos. Would you consider ditching your coding and taking a job in animation, if someone were to offer it?
OMU: Yeah, I’m going to work in the CG sphere, not in the coding one.

KK: What software do you use?
OMU: 3ds max for modelling and animating, Nuke for composing. Also Photoshop for other things. There are some more, but I use them less often.

KK: Do you work as part of a team or is this all your own work?
OMU: L.A.E. and Demo Knight are my own ones. Well, there are elements that are not mine (like models and heh, the movie footage) but I always try to mention in credits everyone who did them.

KK: L.A.E. came out in March 2010 and now, almost exactly one year later year we have The Demo Knight. Can we expect to see another TF2/Trailer animation in March 2012 or are you working on something to come out much sooner?
OMU: Not sure if I’m going to do anything like these two trailers soon. The work of that kind is pretty time-consuming because of lots of scenes and characters shown in almost every trailer you can use. We’ll see about that.

KK: L.A.E. took 6 weeks to make according to your comments. Was T.D.K. any quicker?
OMU: I don’t remember actual date when I’ve started making the T.D.K. but I guess it took some more time to do it than L.A.E.

KK: What were the most difficult / fun / rewarding parts of T.D.K. to make?
OMU: The most difficult scenes were the ones with the crowd, like the one where Joker comes to the party with his gang. Most fun are probably short scenes with something that wasn’t in the movie, for example one about the spy with an explosion on the background. As for the rewarding, hmm, maybe the loadout screen, the grenade-jump, and the RED/BLU soldier with a nice big cup of maggots.

KK: What made you start doing these and why you chose TF2 characters?
OMU: Why the TF2 ones, hmm, actually because of the first video (L.A.E.). I just thought that Engineer vs Spy would be nice and I can even add some more characters. So in the next video after all those “MAKE MOAR” comments I had no doubts which models i am going to use.

KK: What’s your favourite TF2 class?
OMU: In the 2007 that was the Demoman but now it’s the Pyro. The hardest for me is the Sniper.

KK: I too am a Pyro; you couldn’t have said anything to make me smile harder.

Links:

Full HD version of The Demo Knight (right click – save as)

OneMoreUser’s YouTube site

Thanks to Kulikov for answering our questions and letting us host his work. So long as there’s TF2 there will be KritzKast.

KritzKast interviews TF2TV

We put cameraman and co-founder of TF2TV, Comedian, on the spot. Find out what it takes to do a shoutcast for TF2, stories of past and future and the answer to the age-old question, “Which is better; pancakes or cheesecake?”. For the record, it’s cheesecake.

• TF2TV
• 6v9 Winter Wasteland pl_upward
• UKCS Community Cup

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KritzKast interviews Pie_Tony

We chat to the co-creator of the Blighted Beak, Pie_Tony about texturing, facepunch’s TF2 Emporium and his latest collaborative endevour, The Medieval Update.

• TF2 Emporium 29
• The Mediveal (fake) Update
• Medieval Update Forum
• Modelling for TF2 – Guides and Resources
• Blighted Beak

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Episode 100 – Community is Kredit to team

We made it. We finally made it. 100 episodes have lead us to this point. A pile of content from the fans, New tools for map making, a backpack valuator, fake updates you can be a part of all made by the community. But that’s not all. No No. We Finally reveal the winners to the meet the Demoman uncensored contest and reveal what was censored in the video 3 years ago. Its one hell of a show and its been one hell of a ride. Here’s to another 100 episodes.

• TF2 Tron Skins
• TF2 As Art
• Backpack valuator
• Medieval Update
• Construction Items from TF2Maps
• Fan Wallpaper
• KK Fan Club
• Meet The demoman Uncensored – VALVe Winners
• Meet The demoman Uncensored – KK Winners

Contributors

SapphireIce – DevinShadowV – arseofdarkness – Westy – Five Finger Discount – Sir Raffi – albion – unspoken – cryogenetic – aeyve – theguardKK – themooselord – save_us – bubbles

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Kritzmas Unlock

Well we couldn’t let the holidays pass without giving you guys a present now could we. But be warned. This episode contains outtakes, live audio, TF2 christmas skits, poor impressions and horrific singing. But all with Christmas cheer.

Schedule
1 – Outtakes – Peguins
2 – Skit – Grinch gets an idea
3 – Outtakes – Panty Talk
4 – Carol – Carol of the Noms
5 – Outtakes – TF2stats.NET
6 – Skit – Stealing Intel
7 – Outtakes – talking about strippers?
8 – Outtakes – Sly pyro
9 – Carol – Breaking and Entering
10 – Outtakes – set us up the fan club
11 – Music – Kritzmas Tree
12 – Outtakes – Paying attention
13 – Skit – Heavy Loo hoo
14 – Outtakes – Need assistance
15 – Outtakes – Fag videos
16 – Story time with hale

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KritzKast interviews Apocalypse Gaming

We chat with Nahanni and Meo, the Co-Founders of the Apocalypse Gaming Community, and Lange, of their High Team, about modest beginnings, team sponsorship programs and what it takes to be a mentor.

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James Benson, Dance Fortress 2

Many people have had a crack at making videos for TF2, using g-mod, in-game footage and (slightly dubiously) Source FX. Few though have started from scratch and created their own works.

In the dwindling months of Summer, 2010, we had a chance to interview James Benson. He’s an animator, new to his field of expertise, but keen to show his worth. He’d reached a level of internet fame as a result of his test videos. They depict each of the Team Fortress 2 characters performing their own dance moves to the 90’s hit C+C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now”.

As we were to discover James had more in mind than simply animating his strange marionettes. He revealed during the interview that it was his intention to create an entire scene where all the TF2 team would find themselves gyrating to the same song.

Almost two months later we were to see the results of that hard work. James has kindly allowed us to host the full, High Definition files on our site. You’ll find links to these and his YouTube page below.

Downloads:

Full HD version of Dance Fortress – compressed with WinRAR

Full HD version of Dance Fortress (right click – save as)

Tutorials

James’s Blog Work in Progress

Wallpapers

About James Benson

James’ YouTube site
James’ contact details

Thanks to James for letting us host his work. So long as there’s TF2 there will be KritzKast.

KritzKast interviews thejazzman9475

We talk to the creator of the ‘Everybody Dance’ TF2 music videos, James thejazzman Benson. Find out how he did it, why he did it and how you can have a go yourself.

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Exclusive Interview With Robin Walker

A few weeks ago we started a conversation with co-creator and software developer on VALVe’s Team Fortress 2, Robin Walker. Robin kindly agreed to answer a few of our questions. Our focus had been on the community elements of TF2 including mods, mapping and the future of the game itself. Robin has given fresh new insight into the history, current and future development of this great First Person team-based Shooter.

Kritzkast: TF2 went through many transitions in the conversion process from TFC to its current form, including a variety of near-realistic styles. Given the short-term meteoric success of titles such as Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2, are you still happy with the period styling that you chose?

Robin Walker: This is a very interesting question, and one that we discussed internally a lot throughout the development of TF2 (obviously, MW2 & BC2 hadn’t shipped then, but Counter-Strike’s success alone was enough to generate the discussion). Whenever we started talking about it, though, we’d quickly run into the list of interesting gameplay elements that’d become more difficult to explain (rocket jumping, double jumps, the medi-gun, etc). Ultimately, TF2′s art direction is the right fit for its gameplay, and we think that’s still the right decision.

Kritzkast: There were to be a lot of things as spin offs for the TF2 franchise that either haven’t yet materialised or have but not in the form which we expected; cartoons became web comics as part of an update, Saxton Hale comics are just front cover concept art. Has this been a design or marketing issue or are you simply waiting for the right time to release “TF2 The Movie”?

Robin Walker: One of the strengths of the “entertainment as a service” approach that we’ve taken with TF2 is that it allows us to test things out before we heavily invest in them. So we’ve been able to try out a wide variety of things, and observe the community response. In some cases, like the Saxton Hale comics, we really weren’t planning on making the comics at all, and while the response to them was great, it didn’t make us think we should stop making games and get into the comic business. In other cases, the response made us keep working on them. Saxton Hale himself is a good example of this. He started with a small part to play, and the response to him was so positive that we’ve kept expanding him with every update since.

Kritzkast: As a team based game, TF2 is dependent on players wanting to come back frequently and play for the game to continue to attract new players. Does the recent foray into bots on koth maps mean that you’re seeing dwindling numbers? Is this another sandbox test for a different game using the Source Engine? Do you expect to be able to realise bots for other maps too?

Robin Walker: Like most things we do on TF2, there are several reasons why working on Bots was something that made sense. Several months ago we started digging into the data we had that showed a significant number of players who played TF2 only once. We wanted to know why they’d quit, and what we could have done to help them. The end result of that digging was the finding that the majority of them quit because they didn’t know what they were doing, and there was no “safe” place for them to learn the game at their own pace. The number one requested solution was some kind of offline training mode. That that got us thinking about Bots, because they’re part of that solution. We’d also been kicking around various other gameplay ideas we had for future titles, and Bot technology in TF2 could teach us some things that’d be useful. Finally, the technology behind the TF2 bots is the next evolution of the technology behind Counter-Strike’s Bots, and Left 4 Dead’s AI, and we’re always interested in driving that kind of AI further forward, because it enables new gameplay experiences.

Kritzkast: The official TF2 blog is still one of the most talked about areas of the community that surrounds TF2. I have visions of Saxton Hale standing astride the mouth of the giant Cave-o-Email each month. Whip by his side, shouting directions to his minions not to return without fresh material. How do you decide what makes it in and when to publish?

Robin Walker: The blog is written by the members of the TF2 team, so it tends to get updated rather haphazardly, as most of you have noticed. We try to update it regularly, but we’re always working on the next update, and gaps in posts generally coincide with some large chunk of work we’re all banging away on. In general, our philosophy is that while some words from us might be nice, fans are a lot happier when we ship something.

Kritzkast: Even within our own ranks the question of the gender of the Pyro is still argued over. Will we ever know? Chemical Alia, the artist for whom the styling of the scout’s mother was attributed, has created alternative female characters for each of the classes. Will valve be making these official and including them in the game as choices for players?

Robin Walker: We’re still working on Meet the Pyro, which will let you see the world through the Pyro’s eyes. We’ve seen Chemical Alia’s great models, but even with that work done there’s still a significant amount of work to do, and some design issues that we haven’t found good solutions for. Having multiple character models for a single class would have performance impacts due to increased memory requirements, production impacts in that new items have to fit onto both models, and content issues in that we’d need another set of voice acting. Finally, you have the issue of hit detection. If the two models don’t have identical hitboxes, there’ll be a competitive edge to picking one of them over the other. If they have identical hitboxes, you’re probably going to have issues in how well the visuals match the hitboxes in one of the models. In short, multiple models for player classes is something we’d love to do, but it’s not likely to happen in the near term.

Kritzkast: For some classes their roles have changed so much from their point of origin. The scout for example, has gone from a peck and run class to an over powered front runner. Will the character models be changed to reflect their new roles?

Robin Walker: Actually, we always considered the TF2 Scout as a flanking, high damage output character, such that we sometimes even refer to him as the assassin, a Spy who can’t disguise. We felt the Force-A-Nature pushed him even further into that role, having an even higher damage spike, and a lower ranged harassment capability. The Team Fortress Classic Scout was a different creature, being much more of a runner than a fighter. When we designed the TF2 Scout’s character, it was this evolution into a fighter that contributed to him having such an aggressive personality. In retrospect, we probably should have taken the opportunity to name him something other than “scout” at the same time.

Kritzkast: We have all had epic moments when we’ve tried for and pulled off the impossible move only to realise that we alone saw it and no-one will ever believe it really happened. Back in July 2009 you were recorded as talking of a new demo system. Are you any closer to releasing that into the wild?

Robin Walker: We’re closer, but unfortunately still not ready to release it. The primary function of it is to ensure that after that impossible move happened, you can say “I want to save that!”, and have the game not only save it for you, but also provide you with an easy method of getting it onto your favorite movie sharing siteKritzkast:May 12th 2010, saw the introduction of the Steam Client on OSX. How soon will it be till you see TF2 being available on Macs? Up till this point you’ve been developing updates on just one platform. Will the introduction of a second (and possibly third) platform(s) make update releases and bug fixes far more sporadic?

Robin Walker: TF2 should be available for Mac in the next month. The Mac team was very focused on trying to reduce the cost of multi-platform support, and have done their best to automate as much of the process for us. As a result, we’re hoping that it won’t have a significant impact on the rate at which we release updates.

Kritzkast: Our conversation with Drunken_f00l revealed that valve has been thinking of integrating items management into an iPhone app, either under their own label or with the assistance of a third party. Should we expect TF2 innovations to be available on the iPhone/iPad some time in the future?

Robin Walker: We’re not working on anything right now, but we think both of those platforms are interesting.

Kritzkast: Do third party maps, mods and game modes need to be redeveloped for the Mac OSX? What assistance are you giving to the fan community to help them get to grips with working with both DirectX and OpenGL simultaneously?

Robin Walker: TF2 content is platform independent, so maps and models will just work on Mac, so they should just focus their time on making a fun map / mod / etc..

Kritzkast: We’ve seen PropHunt, Dodgeball and various other brilliant community created mods emmerge as add-on server modes for TF2. Is it your intention to merge these concepts into the final product, exposing them to all TF2 players, or are you simply happy to allow them to exist on their own terms?

Robin Walker: It’s something we think about on a case by case basis. As mods become more popular, we generally start by adding some functionality to solves specific problems the mod authors are having. If it continues to expand in popularity, and fits well enough into a TF2 customer’s expectation of what they might see in front of them when they join a server, we start thinking about building it directly into the game.

Kritzkast: The standard map base for TF2 has expanded rapidly largely as a result of community maps. Under what conditions do you attempt to take ownership of a map and has a map maker ever turned you down, are they even allowed to?

Robin Walker: We try to include a community map or two in every major TF2 update. We playtest a bunch of community maps internally, and we try to pay attention to what maps the community seems to be having fun with. Once we select a map we contact the author and see if they’re interested. So far no-one’s turned us down, but they’re absolutely within their rights to do so.

Kritzkast: Mentioned on the blog was one of the ideas for the Engineer update that was tested and removed. What other design ideas have you tried, tested and rejected in the course of your search for engineer update nirvana?

Robin Walker: One of the other things we tried was a secondary weapon that instantly teleported the Engineer to his teleport exit. So Engineers could leave their sentrygun for a bit to skirmish or collect metal, and be able to immediately teleport back to the sentrygun if something bad happened. It did work at achieving those goals, but we didn’t like the side effects. Teleporters stopped being much of a team focused tool, with Engineers placing them in places that made sense for their personal use, and not necessarily for the team. We also felt it was too easy for Engineers, almost eliminating the risk inside the decision of whether they should leave their nest to grab some resources. Both of these were solvable issues, but while testing this we found another idea that played much better, attacked the same problem of Engineers being rewarded for moving out from their nest occasionally, and had lots of other interesting applications.

Kritzkast: There have been several fake engineer updates by the community, ranging from guard dogs to chicken guns and ammo magnets. Many of these have been very detailed and well thought out. How much notice do you take of the fakes and what’s the chance of one of these ideas seeing its way into the final build?

Robin Walker: We love these. On the game team, we love seeing interesting ideas with more thought put into them than just text. Our web team loves seeing the way these pages have used the style of our TF2 update pages to do neat stuff, often challenging us to do better ourselves (see http://www.engineer.fragfestservers.com/). Ultimately, good ideas make their way into the product by passing an analysis of what problems they solve, what benefits and disadvantages they have, the amount it costs to build and ship, and so on.

Kritzkast: Please, Mr Walker, may we have a guard doggie for our Birthdays? We promise to walk it and feed it and wash it when it smears its body in the dismembered corpses of our fallen foe. I shall call mine Kevin.

Robin Walker: See the analysis line above, especially the last “cost to build and ship” bit.

Kritzkast: With the fast approaching (valve time) last known update, the engineer’s, what assurances can you offer that Valve won’t simply drop the TF2 update program, close the blog and move on (to TF3)?

Robin Walker: We’ve never really planned too far ahead in TF2, because we want to be able to react rapidly to community feedback. So, we can’t give you any assurance that we won’t move on to another product at any point, but we wouldn’t have been able to give you that assurance two years ago, either. We’re already working on the next big update after the Engineer pack, though.Kritzkast: I think I a lot of people are holding their collective breath waiting for the your trading system to go live. Are those plans still on the engineer’s table or did a wayward OMGWTFBBQ incinerate them all?

Robin Walker: We’re still working on trading. It’s been slower to implement than we’d like, mostly because it’s a feature that straddles across the development cycles of both Steam and TF2. So there are pieces of work that we need Steam’s dev team to implement (and they’ve been real busy on the new UI, among other things), and other pieces we need to do ourselves, and we’ve been real busy on the Engineer update and other things we believed were more important. To summarize: yep, still coming. Sorry for the delay.

Kritzkast: Will there be a place for 3rd parties to create their own trading facilities such as shops, trading posts and semi-automated trading?

Robin Walker: Like anything else we do, we’ll ship what we think is a solid initial feature set, and then see what feedback we get. If that’s what everyone is screaming for, then that’s what we’ll work on.Kritzkast: On a personal note, do you and your dev team still play TF2 outside of the test environment? Are you any good even without invoking your God-mode-esq rocket launcher? Have you tried scrimming or are you strictly a pub/LAN player?

Robin Walker: We used to be good in the few months following TF2′s release, prior to which we’d been in months of heavy playtesting. Now, we’re all old and tired. Most of us still regularly play TF2 in the wild, but it’s almost all pub play. On rare occasions I’ll join a scrim, with some of the competitive folks on my friends list, to remind myself how terrible I am. Luckily, this isn’t very relevant to TF2′s design, because we try hard to avoid using our own play experience as data when we’re working on TF2.

All of us at KritzKast would like to thank Robin for finding the time to answer these questions. We hope that he’ll continue to expand this game we love.

So long as there’s TF2 there will be KritzKast.

Episode 46 – Kritzmas Gift

Well we couldn’t let the holidays pass without giving you guys a present now could we. But be warned. This episode contains outtakes, live audio, TF2 christmas skits, poor impressions and horrific singing. But all with Christmas cheer.

Schedule
1 – Outtakes – Intro V1
2 – Skit – The scouts Inn.
3 – Outtakes – Stress test?
4 – Skit – watching the flock
5 – Carol – The fortnight before christmas
6 – Outtakes – Pre-show fapping
7 – Skit – 3 Wisemen
8 – On location – Why to use a trackball
9 – Skit – Birth
10 – Outtakes – Chronos stumble
11 – Music – Saxton Hale

 Standard Podcast:

Episode 9 – The Christmas Episode

A special Christmas Episode for you all. Released on the very eve of Christmas and only conceived 2 day earlier, so sorry for the quality. Please enjoy Singing, laughter, outtakes and more.
Schedule
1 – Outtakes – Episode 7 – Setting up the mics.
2 – Skit – Come sit on Santa’s knee
3 – Outtakes – Episode 4 – Are we done yet?
4 – Song time with Chronos – Dustbowl Wonderland
5 – Outtakes – Episode 7 – Can I start again?
6 – Skit – What would you like for Christmas?
7 – Skit – Santa in a match
8 – Outtakes – Episode 8 – Where did you get your car?
9 – Song time with Tempest – I’m dreaming of team fortress

 Standard Podcast: