This article has a talk page!This page details pre-release information and/or media for Team Fortress 2.
Early BuildsThe many early attempts at making this game. From 1998 to 2005.
Later BuildsA final vision is found, but there are still quite a few differences. Covers development from roughly 2005 to the game's release in 2007.Post-Release
Many in-development items and concepts have been accidentally revealed by Valve through the years in various ways, with a lot of them never seeing a proper release.
Resource ListsAll of the items that were leaked in reslists.
Texture Preload ListAll of the items that were leaked in the texture_preload_list.txt file.
Cosmetics & WeaponsAll of the early stuff "leaked" through official media.Summarized Development Timeline#
1997#
- August: The first ever iteration of Team Fortress 2 is announced as a Quake 2 mod, with a tentative release date of April-May 1998.
- December: TF Software posts a blog where the mod's design is slated to be "90% complete", with all classes and weapons finalized.
1998#
- March: A two-minute long "audio demo" is shared by the developers. During this month, Valve decided to invite TF Software's developers to discuss turning Team Fortress into a Half-Life expansion pack/mod.
- April: Valve acquires TF Software and the Team Fortress IP, with the Quake 2 mod iteration getting scrapped.
- May: Team Fortress 2 becomes a Half-Life expansion pack/mod named "Half-Life: Team Fortress".
- Half-Life: Team Fortress changes name to Valve's Team Fortress, and with it, a slight change of direction.
- 21 December: Valve's Team Fortress is announced at PC Gamer's January 1999 issue.
1999#
- Valve's Team Fortress is scrapped and Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms begins development.
- 16 March: A new model format for Team Fortress 2 is created, known as VRM, based on Intel's Multiresolution Mesh Technology (MRM).
- 26 July: Sierra posts some new TF2: Brotherhood of Arms screenshots to their Team Fortress website.
- 25 October: The game is featured by Sierra Studios in their "Future of Teamplay" feature, alongside games like Tribes and SWAT 3.
- 20 December: 12 new screenshots of the game are uploaded to the PlanetFortress website.
2000#
- 2 June: Robin Walker is interviewed by NextWish of Planet Fortress in an impromptu interview about TF2, Team Fortress 1.5 and the Half-Life SDK.
- 13 June: A preview by the ActionTrip website is published.
2001#
- The VRM model format is phased out in favor of returning to SMD models for unknown reasons.1
2005#
- Invasion is scrapped and the Team Fortress 2 we know today begins development.
2006#
- 19 July: The first trailer for TF2's current stylized iteration is revealed at EA's Summer Showcase event.
- 21 August: The second trailer is shown at the 2006 Games Convention.
2007#
- 25 June: An early build is compiled.
- 13 August: Valve releases a video titled "Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2" during the International Synopsium for NPAR in 2007, detailing the game's artstyle and rendering techniques.
- 17 September: A closed beta build is released for players who activated a coupon or pre-ordered the game.
- 10 October: Team Fortress 2 is released for PC and Xbox 360 as part of The Orange Box. After 9 years of development, it was most definitely worth the wait.
- 11 November: The Orange Box is released for PlayStation 3 in North America, with the Australian and European releases coming out almost two weeks later.
Tiered Attributes#
In July of 2010, a total of three hundred and fifty-five attributes were found to have been added to the Steam API, but were not added to the attribute list in the game files. They were all standard existing attributes from the game, but with five copies of each attribute. Each of the five attribute copies had their names prefixed with "Tier" and a number ranging from 1 to 5, e.g. "Tier 1", "Tier 2", etc. Unlike the standard attributes ingame which are able to have their values changed, these tiered attributes had their values pre-set, with each tier being a slight upgrade to the previous tier in most cases.
It is unknown what these attributes were to be used for, but speculation includes either the attributes being for some form of an item levelling system, or that they were Raid Mode's version of Mann vs Machine's Upgrade Station. Supporting the latter idea, Raid Mode as a concept dates back to around the same time as the inclusion of these attributes, with filenames for Raid Mode bosses being found in cp_degrootkeep.lst when it was added to the game with the map itself in the Australian Christmas 2010 update.
Name |
Tier Values |
||
|---|---|---|---|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
Tier # damage penalty |
0 |
0 |
0.95 |
Tier # damage bonus |
0 |
0 |
1.05 |
Tier # clip size penalty |
0.9 |
0.85 |
0.8 |
Tier # clip size bonus |
1.1 |
1.15 |
1.2 |
Tier # fire rate penalty |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # fire rate bonus |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # heal rate penalty |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # heal rate bonus |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # ubercharge rate penalty |
0 |
0 |
0.95 |
Tier # ubercharge rate bonus |
0 |
0 |
1.05 |
Tier # overheal bonus |
1.08 |
1.12 |
1.15 |
Tier # heal on hit for rapidfire |
0 |
0 |
1 |
Tier # add uber charge on hit |
0 |
0.01 |
0.02 |
Tier # crit vs burning players |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Tier # max health additive bonus |
5 |
10 |
15 |
Tier # critboost on kill |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Tier # move speed penalty |
0 |
0 |
0.95 |
Tier # health regen |
0 |
0.3 |
0.4 |
Tier # dmg taken from fire reduced |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # dmg taken from fire increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # dmg taken from blast reduced |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # dmg taken from blast increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # dmg taken from bullets reduced |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # dmg taken from bullets increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # increase player capture value |
0 |
0 |
1 |
Tier # health from healers reduced |
0.85 |
0.75 |
0 |
Tier # health from healers increased |
1.1 |
1.15 |
0 |
Tier # weapon burn dmg increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # weapon burn dmg reduced |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # weapon burn time increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # weapon burn time reduced |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # aiming movespeed increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # maxammo primary increased |
1.1 |
1.15 |
1.2 |
Tier # maxammo primary reduced |
0.9 |
0.85 |
0.8 |
Tier # maxammo secondary increased |
1.1 |
1.15 |
1.2 |
Tier # maxammo secondary reduced |
0.9 |
0.85 |
0.8 |
Tier # maxammo metal increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # maxammo metal reduced |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # cloak consume rate increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # cloak consume rate decreased |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # cloak regen rate increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # cloak regen rate decreased |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # minigun spinup time increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # minigun spinup time decreased |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # max pipebombs increased |
1 |
2 |
3 |
Tier # max pipebombs decreased |
-1 |
-2 |
-3 |
Tier # SRifle Charge rate increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # SRifle Charge rate decreased |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # Construction rate increased |
1.1 |
1.15 |
1.2 |
Tier # Construction rate decreased |
0.9 |
0.85 |
0.8 |
Tier # Repair rate increased |
1.1 |
1.15 |
1.2 |
Tier # Repair rate decreased |
0.9 |
0.85 |
0.8 |
Tier # Reload time increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # Reload time decreased |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # selfdmg on hit for rapidfire |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Tier # Blast radius increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # Blast radius decreased |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # Projectile range increased |
1.1 |
1.15 |
1.2 |
Tier # Projectile range decreased |
0.9 |
0.85 |
0.8 |
Tier # Projectile speed increased |
1.05 |
1.1 |
1.15 |
Tier # Projectile speed decreased |
0.95 |
0.9 |
0.85 |
Tier # move speed bonus |
0 |
0 |
1.05 |
Tier # health from packs increased |
1.15 |
1.25 |
0 |
Tier # health from packs decreased |
0.9 |
0.85 |
0 |
Tier # heal on hit for slowfire |
0 |
5 |
8 |
Tier # selfdmg on hit for slowfire |
0 |
-3 |
-5 |
Tier # ammo regen |
0.03 |
0.04 |
0.05 |
Tier # metal regen |
1 |
2 |
4 |
Tier # max health additive penalty |
-5 |
-10 |
-15 |
Tier # dmg bonus vs buildings |
0 |
0 |
1.05 |
Tier # dmg penalty vs players |
0 |
0 |
0.95 |
Miscellaneous#
Random prerelease information throughout the game's life.
Female Classes#
At some point, Valve had experimented with the idea of adding female variants of the classes to the game. The existence of a model for a female Soldier shows that this idea had been seriously considered and worked on before being scrapped for whatever reason.
(Source: Drew Wolf's portfolio)
Creating Viaduct#
A two-part series of videos by Valve released in 21 August 2009, detailing the koth_viaduct map's development, from early blockouts to release. Note that both videos feature an unreleased version of the "Rocket Jump Waltz" music track.
- Originally, Viaduct started as an alpine-themed map before Valve decided to make it a snow-themed map instead.
Watch on YouTubeWatch on YouTube
rd_asteroid Concept Art#
In the blog post New Comic and What We're Working On! from the official website, Valve released a piece of concept art for the unfinished Robot Destruction map Asteroid. The filename of the image implies the map was once set on the Moon rather than an asteroid. In addition, RED's base is shown with more detail and much larger than it appears in game.
