I checked the email this morning, and an anonymous source at Valve has mailed a few ideas that they’ve been working on at various points (that unfortunately have been dropped now).
Anyway, I’m sure everyone has heard by now about the new map “Goldrush” coming out for TF2. I thought about posting it as a news item, but then I figured that it was announced as a popup news item on Steam and the only people in the world didn’t know about it already don’t play TF2 and certainly don’t read this site (not that this fact stopped the blogosphere echo chamber).
This email doesn’t specifically contain any new info on the Goldrush game mode, but it does talk about a few ideas that were explored at Valve that never saw the light of day during its development. Its always interesting to get an insight into their game development process.
From: <removed to protect the innocent>@valvesoftware.com
To: madlep@ubercharged.net
Subject: Unreleased TF2 Design Concepts
Hey madlep
Here’s a bit of insider gossip for you from Valve. During our design process, we come up with a lot of cool ideas (and a lot of not so cool ones…). Some of which get included, some of which don’t.
Here’s a few of the more “out there” ideas we’ve had for TF2 while designing the new Gold Rush game mode. Thought you might be interested in them 
TF2 Video Hero
With Guitar Hero and Rock Band being the latest gaming crazes, we were interested in introducing a similar play mechanic into TF2. We brainstormed some ideas for a bit, and came up with the idea of doing something with music videos.
The basic idea was to recreate some famous videos in TF2. Players would get points for how closely they replicated the timing and patterns of the events in the videos (kind of like the music games, except with actions and positioning in the map).
We didn’t get too far on this. Although the Orange Box has been a great seller, we didn’t have an unlimited budget for the new game mode. And this kind of game means licensing music and videos (which don’t come cheap!). This meant we were pretty much limited to a company that packaged a “golden hits of the 70s and 80s” license. I think it usually only gets sold on discount karaoke machines.
It was mostly all pretty week, but there was some decent Queen and David Bowie stuff in there that the older guys liked. Here’s some of the in game shots we did with it:
The Portal guys were helping out with the design on this one. They are all a bunch of young kids who are into that emo crap, and they weren’t so keen on the old fogy music. They’ve got a lot of design sway after Portal has done so well, so that stopped progress on that one.
Drunken Demoman Escort
This is the game mode that is the closest in spirit to the way Gold Rush is shaping up. The basic concept is the same (escort a slow moving object etc), but the premise is somewhat different:
The BLU TF2 crew has had a big night out on the town. It’s 3am, and they haven’t been able to find a taxi. So they decide to walk it home. The demoman has been on the sauce a little more than the other guys (as usual), and he’s not in good shape. The blue team must prop him up and help him to walk home.
Basic game play breaks down as follows:
- The more BLU players that are around him, the quicker he is able to move.
- If you get enough, you can even carry him for a speed bonus
- However, if there are no BLU players escorting him, he lays down in a gutter and goes to sleep.
- If there are any RED players around, the demoman will stop moving, and will begin to yell obscenities at them.
- If he is alone for too long, he may choke on his own vomit. If this happens, the BLU medic has a limited amount of time (a couple of minutes) to revive him and the team carries on.
We came up with this one Friday night over (more than a few) beers, and were all quite excited about it. However, when the play testers sat down to try it, they didn’t like it so much (although they did like the gameplay). We also played it sober, and realized it was only funny when we were all trashed. So we sat down and polished it up into Gold Rush (which we’re pretty happy with by now!)
Airport Security
We’ve got a few guys on the team who are (or were) big into Counter Strike. We all remember playing that map with the airport and the 747, and wanted to try something similar with TF2.
We played around with a few ideas, and came up with the idea of an airport security rush mode:
- BLU team plays as the passengers, and have a minimum 3 hours to board their flight.
- RED team plays as airport security staff. Their job is to stop the BLU team from boarding their plane and/or make the process as unpleasant as possible.
- RED team’s secondary task is to stop the blue team smuggling weapons or other dangerous devices onto the plane. However this is optional, and the RED team won’t be penalized at all if they fail at this.
- The RED team can arbitrarily change the game rules during play to slow and frustrate the BLU team. Some examples:
- Decide to ban liquids
- Require an extra form of identification that doesn’t exist
- Strip search random players
- Randomly evacuate the terminal area
- Maintain a watch list of banned players, and refuse entry to the server. Players may be added to the list with little or no reason, and players cannot find out if they are on the list, or remove themselves from it once on.
- Randomly close check in counters, and security lines - causing players to have to start queuing all over in another line
- Force players to unpack everything to search
- To make things a little easier for the BLU team, any team member can dress up as a RED player (not just spies), and pose as airport security staff. These players won’t undergo any security checks at all and can pretty much walk around and do what they want.
- Additional achievements would be added for this game type. Players that have played a certain number of games would be eligible to join the business club program. This would allow you to skip to the front on some lines, and then access separate, exclusive waiting areas with better pickup items once you get past security.
The programmers loved this one. They had all this cool dynamically structured game logic that could be coded by the users in real time in the game using a scripting language based on legalese.
We were thinking of setting up in-game duty free stores where players could buy virtual in-game merchandise. The businesses we were looking at partnering with were quite excited about the prospect of players stuck in one place behind security for 3 hours with nothing to do but spend money on their stuff.
However, once again, our playtesters realized that it was crap to play. No, actually, they all enjoyed playing as the security staff. Its just that it was universally unpleasant to play as the passenger team. So ultimately that one got dropped as well. I heard some playtesters got so pissed off with the whole process they just when and played Chris Sawyer’s Transport Tycoon instead - which gave us our next idea…
Crowded Commuter Train Trip
This idea was somewhat similar to the airport security game mode.
The basic idea is that the BLU team has to board a train, and travel to a specified destination.
Sounds easy? Not when you add some interesting obstacles provided by the RED team into the mix:
- Trains randomly canceled
- Trains turn up late
- Excessive crowding. BLU passengers will struggle to board any given train that arrives. The RED train controller team can chain together combos of late and canceled trains for crowding bonuses (this is inspired by the critical rockets already in TF2).
- Some services will mysteriously end up at a totally different destination. Passengers don’t get notified until it is too late to get off and change to a correct train
- RED players can fine players with feet on seats. Griefer players who use offensive language over voice comms can also be fined
- Some maps will require players to connect a bus trip with a train trip to reach their destination due to poor coverage of the rail network. The RED team can mess with how these connect, causing the BLU passengers to be further delayed
- Climate control on the trains will be the opposite of what is required - air conditioner will be off on hot days, and set to full on cold days
Another one where the RED team had a ball during play testing. We implemented this whole controller interface where you could switch tracks etc around with real levers. Heaps of fun. However the BLU team still wasn’t so keen on it. So we shelved that idea as well.
Anyway,
hope this stuff is kinda interesting. Feel free to post this on ubercharged.net, but don’t mention my name. (Doug Lombardi would murder me 
)
Cheers from <removed to protect the innocent>
Yup. Definitely some interesting stuff in there. I kinda wish they had the drunken demoman now 
