Team Fortress 2 SDK Update Includes Source Files For 10 Maps

Valve recently announced on the Team Fortress 2 blog that they are releasing the source files to 10 of the game's maps, making it much easier for fans to customize them. They also said they'd be releasing more source files for maps and models in the future. "Here's the list of maps that are included in the update: Lumberyard, Ravine, Badlands, Dustbowl, Granary, Gravelpit, 2Fort, Badwater, Goldrush, and Hydro. For the beginner map makers out there, we hope this gives you an easier entry point by allowing you to alter or edit an existing map, as opposed to being forced to start from scratch. ... We also hope that it'll reduce the amount of confusion around the game logic and entity setup required for the various TF game modes."

And nothing for the 360

[Anonymous Coward]

There's never anything for the 360.

Buying The Orange Box instead of just building a gaming rig: Worst. Decision. Ever. :(

Re:I loved this

[icsx]

It's good thing that Valve supports the community and shows how they do things. People can learn by just opening the vmf files. In the past they had to decompile the original maps with vmex software but the decompile wasn't always 100% correct. Some Areaportals and such were left off.

Beginners mappers will do mostly remakes as it's rather easy but not all of them are interested of doing something original. These just released files are more inportant to the people who already know some mapping and perhaps have made some work of their own already. Only problem there now will be is the countless remakes of their maps. Some people do not see the problem in this but as a guy who runs TF2 servers or plays a lot of custom made maps, i can safely say that 95% of the remakes will be crap, won't be played on many servers and will have only minor fixes. As the map sizes are somewhat 30-50MB, it's also kind of pain to download the countless remakes since some servers do not provide fast downloads to their maps in-game.

There are some successfull remakes of the original maps too, which incorporate separate game modes. For example Dustbowl was made to Payload map and it is quite successfull. I could see how Granary would become a nice Payload Race mode map with the hands of someone.

Re:And nothing for the 360

[Anonymous Coward]

Console people have seriously got to get off their high horse of "if the PC guys have it, WE MUST HAVE IT!".

Editing a map with thumbsticks? Just who do you think you're kidding? Really. Have you ever even made a map?

It's a simple matter of what works on the system. PCs make games, so they're pretty good at making maps too. Consoles are great for playing games, but they don't make the best platform to develop on. Right tool, right job. Try not to mix that up.