Half-Life 3 is the only thing that Valve fans really care about at the moment, with various insiders teasing incessantly about a potential announcement that could happen at any minute. No, really, tomorrow is definitely the day guys. This time for sure.
Despite the Half-Life 3 fever going around at the minute, it’s worth noting that there are other Valve games that exist, one of those being Team Fortress 2. Over the past year, rumors have been building about Valve potentially revisiting the series at some point, spurred on by a mysterious ‘TF’ codename found in datamines for other Valve games like Deadlock and Counter-Strike 2.
Even though I’m personally hoping that this is a sign that Valve has secretly purchased Titanfall from EA and is making a third game, this codename almost definitely refers to Team Fortress, and earlier this year, it was revealed by dataminers that ‘TF’ got a new feature overhauling the decal system, and that it was pushed to the base engine of Source 2. In English, that essentially means that Valve is almost definitely working on something Team Fortress-related, whether it be a new game or a tech demo.
Team Fortress 2 Is Seemingly Being Ported To Source 2
However, a new discovery by dataminers appears to suggest that Valve may be attempting to port the entirety of Team Fortress 2 into the Source 2 engine. First shared by Valve YouTuber Tyler McVicker, a datamine into Counter-Strike 2 revealed that Valve had updated Source 1 import to give it the ability to import the func_respawnroomvisualizer entity (the fancy red wall that stops enemies entering your spawn room, specifically in Team Fortress 2), as well as “improvements to map splitting between prefabs.”
This means two things. Firstly, it pretty much confirms that TF is actually referring to Team Fortress as was already expected, but it also seems to suggest that Valve is porting Team Fortress 2 maps into Source 2.
“This is, effectively, direct confirmation that, yes, there is a team at Valve that is, for some reason, working on porting Team Fortress 2 into Source 2.”
That’s a pretty exciting discovery, but the question still remains as to exactly why Valve is doing this. McVicker speculates that this could be anything from a remaster of Team Fortress 2, to a brand new game being made. However, thanks to how long that Valve has been tinkering with this ‘TF’ project, McVicker reckons we can safely rule out this game being a tech demo, as previous tech demos made by Valve have released within a much shorter time frame.
Finally, McVicker has a more sobering reminder that due to how little time this mystery ‘TF’ project has been in production for, it’s very possible that Valve could just decide to shelve the whole thing and not bother with it. Nothing is guaranteed at the moment, with most of the info we have at the moment being speculative. However, this is a sign that Valve is still working on something Team Fortress related right now, so fingers crossed we actually get to see what this thing is down the line.
- Released
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October 10, 2007
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence
- Engine
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Source
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op, Online Multiplayer
