<img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/kongking.jpg" width="420" height="263" border="0">

Were you thinking, "I really like playing TF2, but I wish there was a King of the Hill map set in a Chinese cityscape"? Well, your oddly specific and scarily prescient dreams have come true! Introducing Kong King - TF2’s first city-themed map! - created in collaboration with Sleeping Dogs and community member Valentin Levillain, aka 3Dnj.

We’re a little disappointed that Valentin is spending all of his time making TF2 maps and not fulfilling his true destiny as a roguishly handsome super-villain, but it gives us a chance to finish our costumes for our inevitable battle atop a snowy mountain where we will fight for the love of Cassandra Prosciutto.

You may be able to capture her physical form with your hyper-advanced laser-traps, Levillain, but you will never capture…her <b>heart</b>!

Were you thinking, "I really like playing TF2, but I wish there was a King of the Hill map set in a Chinese cityscape"? Well, your oddly specific and scarily prescient dreams have come true! Introducing Kong King - TF2’s first city-themed map! - created in collaboration with Sleeping Dogs and community member Valentin Levillain, aka 3Dnj.

We’re a little disappointed that Valentin is spending all of his time making TF2 maps and not fulfilling his true destiny as a roguishly handsome super-villain, but it gives us a chance to finish our costumes for our inevitable battle atop a snowy mountain where we will fight for the love of Cassandra Prosciutto.

You may be able to capture her physical form with your hyper-advanced laser-traps, Levillain, but you will never capture…her heart!

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/triad"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/triad.jpg" border="0" width="420" height="263"></a><br /><br />

Interesting China Fact: Did you know China has a mafia? Did you know that, not only do they exist, they'll loan you money? And not even a little -- as much as you want! We hadn't even heard of them until last week, and now we're treating them like a cash machine. Seriously, these guys are nice. They've even started calling us all the time now, probably to ask how we're getting along with all that free money they gave us.

Anyway, the Chinese Mafia made their own game, Sleeping Dogs, so we've added some <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/triad">all-new items to TF</a> in honor of our new best friends. Also, if anyone's seen Robin Walker, tell him somebody mailed us his hand, because he's probably looking for it.



Introducing eight new items available in the Mann Co. Store, or FREE when you pre-purchase <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/202170/">Sleeping Dogs</a> on Steam before August 14th.

Interesting China Fact: Did you know China has a mafia? Did you know that, not only do they exist, they'll loan you money? And not even a little -- as much as you want! We hadn't even heard of them until last week, and now we're treating them like a cash machine. Seriously, these guys are nice. They've even started calling us all the time now, probably to ask how we're getting along with all that free money they gave us.

Anyway, the Chinese Mafia made their own game, Sleeping Dogs, so we've added some all-new items to TF in honor of our new best friends. Also, if anyone's seen Robin Walker, tell him somebody mailed us his hand, because he's probably looking for it.



Introducing eight new items available in the Mann Co. Store, or FREE when you pre-purchase Sleeping Dogs on Steam before August 14th.

It isn't often documented, but there tends to be a lot of cross-pollination of ideas across the various teams here at Valve. There are a lot of talented folks walking around the halls here, and it's incredibly helpful to show them things and get their feedback, because with each round of feedback we'll manage to solve a problem or even find some new inspiration. Case in point: When the Source Filmmaker team was working on ideas for what the "Meet the Pyro" would look like, one of the ideas stood out. Not only were we amused at the proposed world of the Pyro, but immediately were thinking of how much fun it could be to play inside it.”

Of course, one of the immediate issues with this was how to bring the pastel color scheme and various whimsical storybook elements that made up Pyro's dream world into the textured world of TF2, with its more naturalistic palette and real-world setting. Achieving the Pyroland look would not only require creating a completely new texture set, but would have to be constrained both by texture memory and artistic resources.

Some of the things we ended up creating to solve this included, firstly, a replacement system that let us override the default textures in the game with an alternate version; and secondly, a new graphics shader system that we called "Pyro Vision". Here's what the final result was, but it took a few tries to get there.

<a href="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/tf2/blog/pyromania/pyroland_10_large.jpg"><img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/tf2/blog/pyromania/pyroland_10.jpg" width="420" height="240" border="0"></a>

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=8502">Read the full blog post</a>

It isn't often documented, but there tends to be a lot of cross-pollination of ideas across the various teams here at Valve. There are a lot of talented folks walking around the halls here, and it's incredibly helpful to show them things and get their feedback, because with each round of feedback we'll manage to solve a problem or even find some new inspiration. Case in point: When the Source Filmmaker team was working on ideas for what the "Meet the Pyro" would look like, one of the ideas stood out. Not only were we amused at the proposed world of the Pyro, but immediately were thinking of how much fun it could be to play inside it.”

Of course, one of the immediate issues with this was how to bring the pastel color scheme and various whimsical storybook elements that made up Pyro's dream world into the textured world of TF2, with its more naturalistic palette and real-world setting. Achieving the Pyroland look would not only require creating a completely new texture set, but would have to be constrained both by texture memory and artistic resources.

Some of the things we ended up creating to solve this included, firstly, a replacement system that let us override the default textures in the game with an alternate version; and secondly, a new graphics shader system that we called "Pyro Vision". Here's what the final result was, but it took a few tries to get there.



Read the full blog post

<img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/summer_sale_2012.jpg" width="420" height="240" border="0">

To celebrate the <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/" target="_blank">Steam Summer Sale</a>, we’re having our own Mann Co. Store Sale on some of this year’s Workshop items, along with other goodies such as name tags, description tags, and various paints, weapons and hats. We’ve also added new summer bundles, featuring new items from the Pyromania update in various packaging flavors. The sale runs today through July 22.<br /><br />

To celebrate the Steam Summer Sale, we’re having our own Mann Co. Store Sale on some of this year’s Workshop items, along with other goodies such as name tags, description tags, and various paints, weapons and hats. We’ve also added new summer bundles, featuring new items from the Pyromania update in various packaging flavors. The sale runs today through July 22.

<a href="http://www.sourcefilmmaker.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/sfm_engy.jpg" width="420" height="245 border="0"></a>

Thanks for your patience, everybody! And a <i>really</i> big thanks to our first round of testers, who were instrumental in helping us make the SFM a better user experience.

They were SO helpful, in fact, that we're happy to announce that SFM Beta is now open to everyone, for free, as of right now. We've also provided a new <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/sfm">SFM-specific page in the Steam Community</a> where you can view, rate and discuss all the latest user-created videos.

Plus, just so we don't all overdose on "Meet The Heavy" shorts, we've decided to release a new session, to give all you folks'll something new to riff on. So get out your guitar (and some audio recording equipment) and prepare to "Meet The Engineer".

You can download the Source Filmmaker <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/1840/">here on Steam</a>.

Thanks for your patience, everybody! And a really big thanks to our first round of testers, who were instrumental in helping us make the SFM a better user experience.

They were SO helpful, in fact, that we're happy to announce that SFM Beta is now open to everyone, for free, as of right now. We've also provided a new SFM-specific page in the Steam Community where you can view, rate and discuss all the latest user-created videos.

Plus, just so we don't all overdose on "Meet The Heavy" shorts, we've decided to release a new session, to give all you folks'll something new to riff on. So get out your guitar (and some audio recording equipment) and prepare to "Meet The Engineer".

You can download the Source Filmmaker here on Steam.