I think that in the future there will be less freedom, we probably won’t be allowed to buy any films, music or games which we’re too young to buy thus shrinking the industry. Even today things are hard as governments refuse to support the gaming industry claiming that it’s nothing but violence causing brilliant talented young developers to struggle finding somewhere where they can express their ability to create fantastic games that we play and enjoy. But for me games are far more than just running around killing people, they are a display of today’s technology, art and media combined! We remember each experience and enjoy every bit of it. Today many games are violent and this is apparently now crossing the edge, but what effect would a violent game even have on someone? Why is this even important? Thousands of people have watch SAW and it’s many sequels, probably far more than the number of people who have played violent games and yet I have never seen a game as violent as SAW.

Lets think here a little actually… if I was 12, I went into a store and picked up the film SAW. What would you think? Personally I’d be a little worried about how he’d react to a film that violent. However if I was 12, went into a store and picked up Grand Theft Auto IV for example, I’d then be thinking more about the fact that he shouldn’t be buying it as he’s too young however I wouldn’t really think about how he would react to the violence within the game. That’s just my personal view on it anyway.

However something I find is strange is that “Why?”, like why do we enjoy killing people in games and it’s quite simply because they arn’t real, they’re just a lump of code that wants to kill your virtual player which will never truly die so there isn’t any consequence however anyone wouldn’t confuse that in real life (unless they’re a complete nut head). Thats why I think these talks about violence in video games fucking people up in the head isn’t quite right.
But whats even more strange is that they would see what effect it has by studying it’s effect on the brain… but we DON’T understand how the brain completely works, so while information goes in it’s not like the result will be the same for every person!

Anyway that’s just some random bullshit right there about my view on the whole violent video games stuff…

Hi guys, this is part three of the TF2: 2003 – 2007 post.

If you missed any of the other parts then you can find links and other information here…

http://www.betaarchive.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=12980

GAMEPLAY

So this time I’m skipping right over to gameplay as there is very little on the alien team (I will get to it another time).
For this one I will go through each item/object that can be found in the code and describe what it is.

Vehicles:

The battering ram is one of the stranger vehicles from this time. It would have held up to 4 passengers and would probably have been quite a large vehicle.

Another strange one, this would have apparently been used to carry “multiple stationary objects” whatever that means. It would only have carried on passenger but interestingly the sounds for it can be found in Half-Life 2 Beta.

This one is quite interesting. It would only have carried one passenger but when he would give the command to make the vehicle deploy it would have stopped, run a deploy animation and then allowed you to aim to where you wanted to fire. You could then fire your mortar and as the bomb fell it would of began to emit a falling sound. In my oppinion this would have been a fantastic vehicle but I imagine it would have required a large map to have been actually usefull. Once again some of the sounds for this can be found in Half-Life 2 Beta.

Yet another non-combat vehicle. Strangely this motorcycle could carry up to four passengers although this could just be a mistake.
Sounds can be found in Half-Life 2 Beta.

This is a strange one. This could be deployed to release a ladder (to the vehicle?) and It would have carried up to four passengers.

You will probably start seeing the strange thing about how all these vehicles seem very unbalanced with each other. A tank with 800 health and a siege tower with only 600 health. But anyway the tank would have been able to carry up to three passengers and thats about the only interesting thing, this would have worked like your everyday tank.

This could carry up to four passengers and would of had it’s own VGUI upon it’s deployment. Upon this vehicles deployment flares would have been created on some attachements on the model.

Another non-combat vehicle which could carry up to four passengers.

Continued on part 4…

So let’s continue this thing!

There was very little leaked of Team Fortress 2 in 2003 (or very little released to the public) but the most interesting of things that was leaked are indeed the models. There are two models, the alien commando and the human commando.

Human Commando concept

As you can see from the concept above, the human side was dark and bulky (if thats the right word). Very different to the style of Team Fortress 2 we have today and extremely different from Team Fortress Classic, especially the whole gameplay (which we talk about another time). The other class styles are slightly different (and I might be wrong about what they are or if they are from the same development time). Let’s first of all look at the Pyro…

Human Pyro concept

Yes this really stands out if you compare it to the Commando but I am certain that it’s from the same development time.
So let’s pull out our magic magnifying glass and study this a little closer!

Next up we have the medic…

Human Medic concept

This concept seems to also stand out a little but is a closer style to the Commando concept than the Pyro. Sadly unlike the Pyro concept there is no writing on this one so it’s all down to how it looks.

And the last concept we have of the human side is the infiltrator (although that’s just a guess)

Human Infiltrator concept

This one is certainly interesting a note the style of his face with the original Commando concept.

To end part two I have two final things to show (as I’m very tired right now)
First up is the actual human commando model…

Human Commando model

This is the human commando model which was leaked in 2003, there are obvious changes which have been made from the concept like the addition of his red arm bands, the addition of grenades and some size changes. He is fully animated along with a ragdoll too (signs of a playable build at the time?).

Last up is something which I was shown quite recently and it’s apparently concepts for the Pyros face. I’m very unsure about what period of development these come from but I will put them here anyway…

Thanks for reading part two and I promise for the next part to try and give you guys more info!

- Haruhi

Hello guys! Haruhi here with a new post.

NOTE: Before you read this please understand that I am not an expert on this stuff and might be wrong!

I decided to do this post while talking to Banshee about the 2003 version of Team Fortress 2.
Now incase you don’t know, in 2003 an early version of the Source engine was leaked and with it were Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Source and Half-Life Source (and some other early crap like Steam) all in the early phases of development.
There are a lot of talks to what people should call these early versions… a beta? an alpha? or just a leak? Well calling it a leak is fine but the stage of development of this build seems to be beta (Counter-Strike Source would be an alpha build). Anyway I could be wrong but from what I have learnt this should be right! Anyway it’s hard to say what stage Team Fortress 2 was at this point but let’s say for now this was an alpha too.

So from what we know from this alpha is that Team Fortress 2 would have been in a WW1 themed world mixed with Sci-Fi (interesting yes?), quite dark in comparision to the final Team Fortress 2 we have today and it’s interesting to note that the final Team Fortress 2 is based in the 1950s. There is evidence to suggest that before this WW1 theme Team Fortress 2 was going to be based on more of a magical/mystical theme, the evidence from this comes from the following textures:

and a slightly more complex version which was probably created later on…

Interestingly the second picture possibly has the word “RED” on the outfit… but then the first picture also has the word “RED” on it yet it’s clearly blue!

Apart from those textures there is nothing else known about the mystical theme.

To be continued