Latest News

Hi all,

We've been hard at work on the next major update, 2.1.0, and are inching closer to a full release. In the meantime, we've opted to release a smaller patch, 2.0.4, that backports a large number of bug and exploit fixes from 2.1.0. These vary in size, and we'll publish a full changelog in a few days when the update is released, but we wanted to give a heads up for server owners who may be affected.

In this release, we plan to purge item schemas and other loose text files whenever a client disconnects from a server. While this resolves the issue of servers, intentionally and unintentionally, poisoning clients with broken schemas, it also makes life easier for anyone that wants to host a server with custom weapons.

Previously, to avoid accidental poisoning, you would have to go out of your way to rename map files and repack the contained cubemaps. Now, you can trust that whatever you send to your clients will only affect your clients. This means that once 2.0.4 is released, you can run unmodified maps on your server, and ship item schemas for them as-is—"pl_upward_items_game.txt" is no longer an occupational hazard.

Though existing setups will not break yet, we highly recommend migrating to serving your weapon assets and schemas separately from your maps in order to respect the bandwidth of your players. Packing item schemas directly into modified map files is considered deprecated, and will likely break in 2.1.0.

Separately, we also maintain our own official builds of the tools and binaries for SourceMod usage. Assuming that you use SourceMod on your server, we recommend upgrading. You can, and should, already do this on your 2.0.3 server, see here: https://github.com/tf2classic/SM-TF2Classic-Tools

We also have a server verification system now. Message us on our Discord to request approval, and you'll be given access to the #server-hosting channel on our Discord for special help and support, along with having your server and its live playercount listed on our website: https://tf2classic.org/serverlist/

That's all for now. See you soon when we officially release 2.0.4!

Hello everyone.

We'd like to let everyone know that there's been no response back from Valve, and that we plan to re-open downloads to the public. In doing so, we'd also like to update everyone on what's been happening.

BEHIND THE SCENES
As we've mentioned in the past, we had gotten in contact with Valve about a few questions regarding TF2 Sourcemods. In particular, about their stance on reverse-engineering, as the Open Fortress team was working on a reverse-engineered TF2 base to use in place of the 2008 leaked source code that most TF2 mods at the moment use.

In short, their response stated that, while the Software Service Agreement allowed for modding to a certain extent, it both does not apply to the leaked code, and forbids the use of reverse-engineering. As such, they asked us to "stop distributing reverse engineered or leaked code, including anything compiled using that code or otherwise derived from it."

In the same email, Valve made it clear to us that they recognize and appreciate the creativity and motivation of the TF2 community, and were internally discussing the best way to let us express it. They asked us if we were interested in releasing our projects in the form of a mod on Steam, which would have required work from both parties.

We sent them a response confirming that we would suspend downloads, alongside stating that we were very much interested in a Steam release, along with a few questions.

Unfortunately, Valve has not responded to us in any form, despite us trying various ways to contact them after this initial email. Due to the lack of response, we've tried contacting them in multiple different ways, including through Steam support. On March 10, around 6 months after their last reply, we decided to send a final email announcing that we plan on opening our downloads back up until they re-affirm that they want us to keep them down. So our reasons for re-opening are due, in short, to the lack of response from Valve.

HOW THIS AFFECTED US
It's very important to let everyone know this has been very hard for our developers. Everyone's been worried that all the work we've done would be for nothing. We've been hard at work on a proper content update that includes new weapons, maps, quality of life changes, and the likes. We plan to show off some content at some point in the future, though getting the assets in a presentable state is currently proving difficult for us, over at Eminoma.

For context, we'd like to let everyone know that for the past two years or so, we've run dry on finding team members who can create assets for the mod, such as: weapon concepts, weapon models and textures, map textures, and map art-passing. We could really use some help in being able to get weapons and maps done. We had tried reaching out in the past, but only had a handful of applicants who could help us out.

This all said, we're incredibly thankful for the developers on our team who've created what they can for the mod, even when times have been tough for us. We'd just like to have more folks who can help carry the weight of asset creation. We'd also like to express our gratitude to Valve for giving the TF2 Sourcemod community the chance to create these projects to begin with.

We don't want to push any blame onto Valve. We mean Valve no ill will, and we'd appreciate if the TF2 mod community would do the same. As stated before, we do plan to take our downloads back down, if and when Valve replies back to us with anything concrete.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
Thank you all for sticking with us through these last 8 months. It's been hard on everyone - both our developers and you guys. We hope to share some of what we've been working on with you sometime in the future.

Remember that the only official news regarding our mods will be coming directly from us and not anyone else. Please do not harass Valve over anything that has happened, we don't believe they meant any harm in trying to help us out. Thank you.

Happy birthday, Team Fortress 2 Classic! We sure hope you weren't celebrating the anniversary of anything else today, because the official release of TF2 Classic, along with The Death & Taxes Update, dropped exactly one year ago! It's been a long year for all of us, and while we're still hard at work on future content, we appreciate that so many of you have stuck around since release, and that so many more have trickled in this past year.

As a show of appreciation, we've gone back on the only unpopular update we've ever released: changing the VIP variant of Badwater from night to day! That's right, Badwater is night time once again! Originally, we brought back daytime to address visibility issues; some parts of the map, especially outdoors and under cliffs and balconies, were too dark and muddy without a strong source of natural light, and players' team colors could get lost in the shadows. With help from Savva (one of our community contributors), we've lit Badwater up enough to make players stand out, without ruining what made it look special. Below are example comparisons of each version, in order of when they were changed.


We know this isn't much on its own, and we can tell you're eager for more content. With our next update, you'll be seeing some proper new weapons and overdue quality-of-life features. Here's an album of sly teaser pictures, as if to say, "We promise we're working on stuff, please don't leave!"


And don't worry, we're still working on maps. Do you love Four-Team, but find you've grown numb to Hydro and Flask? Then we've got bad news: between its freezing temperatures and its broken, mercenary-sized air duct system, this Antarctic map will probably leave you numb to the core!


Let's be clear, again, the only content being added with this anniversary update is night-time Badwater. Everything else shown today is just a little taste of our mod's future. Happy birthday!

As far as future game-modes go, we're working on things internally, but we aren't ready to release any future plans or a road map yet. (This means "don't ask the developers about it when you see them in-game!") Just know that we haven't started work on the "Overpowered" game-mode yet. First, we want to drop a big update with content that'll last; we don't want to start working on Overpowered until we know that we can dedicate ourselves to it long-term, and that the community can be left alone for a while with the content they've got. With that in mind, stay tuned.

Here's to many more years, and many more updates, for Team Fortress 2 Classic. Thanks for being a part of this, and we hope you continue to be a part of our community while we work on future updates!