Howdy, since joining the development team of Pre Fortress 2, there’s been a lull in communication between us and you as the player. I’ve been working to close the gap between internal discussion and with players.

The following articles are designed to bring y’all up to speed with what’s been happening behind the scenes!

End of Beta Accuracy

Earlier on in Pre-Fortress 2’s development, we felt a strong sense of obligation to stay as close as possible to TF2’s beta. The further along we got into development, the more evident it became that it was a hinderance to the quality of the game, the quality of development and our identity as a source mod. We still believe strongly in capturing the essence and spirit of the beta, but as a team we are moving towards creating a more complete game rather than what is essentially a collection of unfinished ideas and concepts that the beta really was.

A visual example I like to use is with the Soldier’s beta model. The grenades on his chest are placeholder “eggs” and it’s representational rather than a finished design. In the next update we’ll be replacing these egg-shaped orbs with actual frag grenades. This is more in-line with his model from the release of TF2. We feel that changes like this were inevitable and those egg grenades were never meant to be permanent. However, concepts like Heavy’s vest texture will remain as it’s a unique identity of his beta model.

Henceforth, we are no longer a beta accurate mod, but a mod built pulling great influence from the beta era of TF2, as source material.

Parting ways with Concussion Studios

On the 16^th of May 2021, shortly after the release of the previous update 0.6, we parted ways with Concussion Studios. Some of our developers are still a part of Concussion Studios, but we will no longer be using their imagery in any of our future material.

The partnership was not working out, and ended up costing us more development time then we hoped for. We wish Concussion Studios well in their endeavors.

Pending Update

It’s been almost a year since 0.6 was released and we’re excited to announce that 0.7 is nearing a releasable state. There’s still lots of work to be done but the following major changes will be coming to Pre Fortress 2:

• Grenade view models and major changes to grenade gameplay
• Fixes to various bugs leading to server crashes
• Soldier Nerfs
• New models, textures, animations, particles and sounds
• New main menu system
• The usual various bug fixes

Note: Features listed are of course, subject to change.

We have no definite date for a new update and we appreciate your patience!

EDIT:

End of Beta Accuracy does not mean we will be entirely foregoing beta concepts and gameplay.

Think of it as rather then preserving the beta in a broken and unfinished state, we are fixing these unfinished concepts and designs. We have actually been practicing this game design philosophy for some time, it was just never officially stated.