Progress Report, August 2025 - Phonics, Portraits, Pulaski

[hr][/hr][p]Happy August 32nd! This month, project funds were embezzled to take a vacation to Chicago, wasting time during our most crucial phase of development. Gratefully, we're still on schedule, and the developers in question have been put to death.[/p][p][/p][h2]STATE OF THE GAME[/h2][hr][/hr][p]For a lot of developers, August was a return to college, or their time to go on holiday, so raw throughput went down. Volunteer projects are always at the whim of how much time people have left over after they're done with their real lives, but we're happy with how much we accomplished regardless.

Most features are now in and usable. We're working with community server hosts to help them migrate, and the first Engineer Fortress playtest was a roaring success. Beyond launching with all of our major content, we also want to make sure that your favorite community servers are still available.

Just keep in mind that the outward progress is going to appear to slow down as we inch closer to release. The smallest details and fixes can take the most time, and we try to show what's interesting instead of what works as expected.

We're not ready to share details yet, but an interesting opportunity has come up that may force September to have a lot more to show, stay tuned![/p][p][/p][h2]MAGNUM OPUS[/h2][hr][/hr][p]Our in-house orchestra (one-man band) is back with a new track to bless your ears, an expanded version of the theme from Meet the Sniper.[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]We'll be shipping a longer, full-quality version alongside the release of the game upon release.[/p][p][/p][h2]HEARING WITHOUT LISTENING[/h2][hr][/hr][p]We're also excited to show off the set of sounds we've been prototyping for the Damage Feedback system we mentioned last month. Our goal for this system is to help players navigate combat by giving them more information on the type of damage they're dealing or receiving.

As such, we're designing these to feel more subtle and intuitive compared to hitsounds, and these are still being adjusted in response to playtester feedback and inevitably now, your feedback. Get commenting.[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][h2]REFRIGERATED[/h2][hr][/hr][p]We've revisited one of our original multi-team maps, Frigid, to touch it up in advance of the Steam release. This includes designing original, custom soundscapes and giving a few areas a small makeover. These changes are meant to help the map feel more consistent and believable to players.[/p][carousel][/carousel][p][/p][h2]ACUTE ANGLES[/h2][hr][/hr][p]SVG support for crosshairs was another item we mentioned in passing last month. While finished in code, we were still figuring out how we wanted to execute the visuals.

We're happy to say that this has now expanded to killfeed icons! To all players rich and privileged enough to own a 4K monitor: the answer to your struggles now has a clear and worshipable visage.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]SCHOOL PICTURE DAY[/h2][hr][/hr][p]Right now, if you Google "sniper tf2" and look at the second image, he is green. Our old class renders have gone further than anyone could've imagined. They've been used to represent TF2's classes on thousands of posts and videos all around the internet. It is humiliating.[/p][p]We've wanted to revisit these for a while to address some persistent testimonials from our players, such as "Scout looks like a chipmunk" and "Why is Scout like that" or even "Please fix that creepy Scout portrait". [/p][p]As such, we've been taking the time to redo all of our class portraits from the ground up, painting over them to help them feel like true portraits instead of mere 3D renders.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]WHAT ELSE?[/h2][hr][/hr][p]In between moments spent ducking under beds and couches, hiding from the aural assault of the Chicago Air & Water Show, our developers have also squeezed these changes out:[/p]

• [p]Reimplemented the Shock Therapy[/p]
• [p]Reimplemented team-exclusive healthkits dropping upon killing enemies in Arena mode[/p]
• [p]Bots have gone through the necessary re-education to play VIP gamemodes without immediately throwing the round (be nice to them, they're new to this)[/p]
• [p]Overhauled the medal system for testers, contributors, and developers[/p]
• [p]Countless improvements and fixes to the LUX shaders[/p]
• [p]Implemented Global Team skins for character models, ensuring they show up as intended on 3D HUD elements (& other potential uses in the far future)[/p]
• [p]Spent multiple slow and agonizing days of developer time on investigating and miraculously fixing a one-line oversight in our FGD files that caused all map instances to be mysteriously misplaced and/or unable to compile properly, driving our level designers to threaten acts that we agreed should never be put to print[/p]
• [p]Many smaller fixes, cleanups, incremental work on larger features, and minor polish passes[/p]

[p]We really are sorry for the late post this month, but we hope what we have in the pipeline makes up for it soon. Thanks!

~ newgreenshoot, with loving help and feedback from Azzy, Nito, Waugh, Boba, abp, and ultr4nima[/p]