<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!

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

• Added new map Koth_King
  
• Added the Ready Steady Pan tournament medals
  
• Added new promo items
  
• Fixed a Medigun exploit that could leave players indefinitely invulnerable
  
• Fixed sentry gun sometimes placing wrong, being rotated into the ground and pointing upward
  
• Renamed "The Huo Long Heatmaker" to "The Huo-Long Heater"
  
• Updated the localization files
  
• Updated the Neon Annihilator
  • Materials now animate
    
  • Damage penalty only applies to players (not buildings)
    
  • Can damage sappers

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

• Fix server crash bug caused by setting tf_mm_servermode before map command
  
• Increased The Red Tape Recorder's downgrade speed from 1.6 seconds to 3.0 seconds.
  
• Fixed The Huo Long Heatmaker not consuming additional ammo while firing
  
• Fixed building health compounding after being downgraded
  
• Fixed direction arrow showing on teleporter exits
  
• Cleaver is now available in Medieval mode
  
• Fixed missing Lollichop taunt sound
  
• Fixed item conflicts with The Champ Stamp
  
• Fixed item conflicts with The Triad Trinket
  

<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.

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:


Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Marked mem_force_flush as a cheat to prevent client exploits
  
• Fixed %n console crash in the client
  

Team Fortress 2

• Added new items:
  • The Red-Tape Recorder
    
  • The Huo Long Heatmaker
    
  • The Flying Guillotine
    
  • The Neon Annihilator
    
  • The Triad Trinket
    
  • The Champ Stamp
    
  • The Marxman
    
  • The Human Cannonball
• Added new promo items
  
• Fixed sappers attaching incorrectly to teleporters that are still building
  
• Improved reliability for finding a coach
  
• Fixed Engineer training shotgun and pistol images being swapped
  
• Fixed GetPlayerItems web APIs not respecting inventory privacy settings
  
• Quickplay beta: Fixed bug causing game servers to sometimes stop receiving traffic upon victory condition
  
• Quickplay beta: Added more status information while in the matchmaking queue
  

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

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:


Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Fixed dedicated servers not being able to set sv_region
  

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed Replay/SourceTV clients getting kicked when quickplay servers hibernate