September 16, 2009 - Robin Walker

As with the first Left 4 Dead game, most of the TF2 team has moved over to help out Left 4 Dead 2 get through its final shipping steps. This time around, though, we've improved our process a little to ensure we can keep some people on TF2, enabling us to continue doing TF2 updates. We've been a bit slow on updating here, and there's plenty of stuff to talk about, so we might as well jump right in.



First off, a quick update on where we are with the character model and animation sources. After we got over our excitement of releasing them, we ran into a couple of problems:





All the character modelers & animators are incredibly busy working on L4D2.

None of our new .DMX file format tools have been released in the SDK yet, which are integral to working with these sources.

As a result, it's taken a bit more work than we'd originally intended. And to make sure that the work is being done right, we decided it'd be best to get one model out, if only so we could get your feedback on it before we went ahead and got the rest done. So today we're updating the Source SDK to include all the model and animation source for the Heavy. Take a look at it, and be sure to send us your thoughts.



Secondly, some community updates:





The Dead Workers Party just released their 88th (!) TF2 podcast over at the Control Point podcast, the longest running TF-related podcast in the universe. There's a wealth of information there on updates, class strategies, new maps, and player shoutouts, as well as plenty of fun community stuff you can get involved in, like fan videos and art.

The folks over at Ubercharged.net have finished their fantastic introduction to competitive TF2.

The SourceOP guys keep working away on their nifty TF2 Backpack Viewer. It's great if you ever wanted to see what items your buddies are toting around. Or if you wanted to see Gabe's weapon that bans your Steam account if he kills you with it.

Finally, we've had a lot of requests to release the official set of "Ubercharged" avatars that Dhabih did for our internal TF2 clan. You can buff up your community profile by getting them from the Official TF2 Community page or grab the zip of them here.



