EDIT 1: The Steampipe is now live!

EDIT 2: After you have done with transition to Steampipe I recommend forcing Steam to Verify integrity of game cache. You can find the button in TF2 properties in steam.

The official release of SteamPipe will arrive on 30th of April (Valve time). As pub player you might not care too much, but as competitive player you might want to make sure you are ready for transition because if your TF2 is customized a bit more than simple addition of chris’es config, then you might lose some of the “stuff” when transition happens. If you don’t want to read too much, just scroll to bottom Q/A part, I will go in more detailed steps in following thread. So here are few things to know:

* Backup ALL configs. Just doing simple copy paste to your /cfg folder will do, save it on desktop or anything really, as long as its copied somewhere NOT inside /team fortress 2/ folder. I don’t know if this is bug atm, but some configs get deleted when going SteamPipe, so atm I’d advise to better be safe than sorry and just making sure you don’t lose your loved duckjump scripts.

* Backup your HUD’s, especially if custom made. Although they do get moved to /tf/download/ location, backing them up will save time for you trying to search them!

What about maps/materials/sounds/etc? When transition happens they will be moved to /download/* folder. This is your new location for files downloaded from server. But this IS NOT where you put your hitsounds, config, hud or any other custom content! Keep reading!

After your TF2 will be transformed into SteamPipe, your new folder for everything custom is ../steam/steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/tf/custom/ Anything you want added needs to go in /custom/custom_dir/*. I will show how:

* Reinstalling configs: To keep it simple, you want to make another folder inside /custom/ for your custom things to load, so I created /custom/userstuff/. You CAN then dump any huds, configs and all the stuff you have in /custom/userstuff/ while keeping same folder structure as you had before or you CAN keep it dapper and use the VPK tool if you are nerdy (at the moment vpk file loading is very bugged so I’d avoid it for now), but I wont go into it, the info how is in link on bottom.

So to reinstall my backed up /cfg/ I ended up making my file structure look something like this: /tf/custom/userstuff/cfg/spy.cfg

* Reinstalling HUD’s: Same thing as with cfg – make custom folder under /custom/ It can be the same /userstuff/ as for your cfg, or you can simply make /hud/ folder under /custom/. So /custom/userstuff/* and /custom/hud/* are both acceptable. The final file structure for me looks like /tf/custom/userstuff/resource/clientscheme.res

* Reinstalling plugins: looks like they still are in /tf/addons so no change there, you can also put them in /custom/userstuff/addons*

* Installing custom maps for local hosting or custom content to play on sv_pure 0 (like models): Same as previous – Put everything in /custom/mystuff/. So it might look like /custom/mystuff/maps/mge_v8.bsp or /custom/mystuff/materials/naked_models.vmt

* Installing hitsounds: In newest Steampipe version game allows only single hitsound file. To install it you need to rename your sound file to hitsound.wav and put it in /custom/userstuff/sound/ui/hitsound.wav

You can local host maps that are in /download/ location if you type map mapname in console, but the names wont come up from GUI main menu. Any custom models need to be in /custom/mystuff/ folder though for them to work!

Also this https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7388-QPFN-2491 is an official article about the change. Read it if you feel nerdy…

TLDR Q/A:

Q: I transitioned to SteamPipe, Where are my files?!

A: New TF2 folder is under /steam/steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/tf and old custom files can be found under /download/ and your config is still under /cfg/ Some class configs probably got deleted..

Q: Where do I put my configs/huds/etc?

A: /tf/custom/mystuff/* example: /custom/mystuff/cfg/autoexec.cfg

Q: Have loading times improved?

A: Yes, noticeably, on any system.

Q: Can I install TF2 on different drive(SSD?) than Steam is on atm for ultimate speedyness?

A: Yes, just reinstall TF2, upon pressing install steam will give you choice where to install it!

Q: PREC doesn’t work?

A: Download a new version.

Q: What about validation problems?

A: This update is addressed to fix this problem. So fingers crossed and we hopefully wont see it anymore!

Q: My texures,hats,content is missing!

A: You need to Verify integrity of game cache. You can find the button in TF2 properties in steam.

Q: My main menu/other hud elements are broken!

A: Remove resource/SourceScheme.res file and wait for hud update. Some hud’s ain’t even broken.

Q: My TF2 crashes on start!

A: Verify game cache. If it keeps crashing delete everything in /custom and install cfg,hud, etc one by one to see what makes it crash.

Hope it helps, pew pew!