It’s been an enormous week for Team Fortress 2’s modding group (nicely, particularly an enormous eight days, however let’s name it every week for comfort). Last Tuesday, Valve lastly launched The Team Fortress 2 SDK, updating the Source SDK with all of the netcode gubbins from its 2007 shooter, thereby enabling gamers to “construct utterly new video games based mostly on TF2.” Now, top-of-the-line present Team Fortress 2 mods is formally coming to Steam, making it simpler to play than ever.
Team Fortress 2 Classic is a professional-grade mod that reimagines the shooter’s early years, earlier than the hats and the bots. Commencing in 2014, it initially launched in 2020 in non-vapourous kind, and has been persistently up to date since. Developer Eminoma introduced the transfer to Steam in a brief, daft Steam replace: “‘Steam’ is a mysterious useful resource created when coal is burned in sure conditions — a harrowing thought to coal-lovers just like the civilian, to whom burning coal is like setting one’s personal youngsters on fireplace. But possibly a foray into the Steam business is simply what the corporate must seize new eyes.”
The civilian is TF2’s Classic’s bespoke playable class, based mostly on a personality of the identical title from the VIP mode of Team Fortress Classic. It’s one in all quite a few options the mod provides to TF2’s pre-2010 skeleton, alongside reverse-engineered variations of TF2 prerelease weapons just like the Nailgun and Dynamite pack, and a chaotic “four-team” mode that provides inexperienced and yellow factions alongside pink and blue.
As nicely as these “new-old” options—concepts impressed by or excavated from Team Fortress’ previous—TF2 Classic additionally provides “new-new” options, together with weapons like flak cannons and “chains wrapped round your fists” in addition to customized modes like VIP Race, the place every staff will get a civilian who should seize management factors in enemy territory. It’s mainly an alternate historical past for Team Fortress 2, imagining a extra conventional replace path for Valve’s shooter.
Eminoma hasn’t introduced a selected date for the Steam launch, but it surely does clarify that this milestone is much from the top for TF2 Classic. “A staff filled with contributors is working nonstop on content material, stability modifications, and bug fixes,” writes Eminoma on the mod’s fancy new Steam web page. “Anticipate new weapons, modes, and characters as Team Fortress 2 Classic grows.”
