The main menu is influenced from a wide variety of Source engine games. It draws most directly from the TF2 Orange Box Menu and the TF2 Menu from c. 2012. These are the versions of TF2 I grew up with. I would play Orange Box in the morning before school and TF2 on the home computer when I got home. These being nostalgic for me, it was important to incorporate them into the new Pre-Fortress 2 main menu, loading menu, and pause menu.

I joined the PF2 development alongside my friend justyn, a developer of the beloved Team Fortress: Source 2, who briefly was a part of the PF2 Team. We were unable to find a download for other similar Source mods, and so we decided to try playing PF2 again. I have an affinity for web domains and when I noticed the team was still using prefortress.ml, I knew what I had to do. I quickly purchased the prefortress.com domain and offered it to the team to use for free with no strings attached. I was invited to the development team, and from there I found small projects to help with. Where Justyn took a liking to updating various particles, I found a fondness for design projects and asset development. We weren’t expecting to join the PF2 Team but we have had a lot of fun working on the mod.

Coming back to the menu, it was high time for change. The original menu can still be found with the launch option -oldui, but the menu is in line with our progressive new ideology with PF2. The mod has been held back for years with the paradox of “beta accuracy”, and it was time to let go of that archaic mindset. We’re dropping unfinished designs like Soldier’s egg grenades, and working on refining and reintroducing early Team Fortress elements.

The modern influences of the PF2 menu come from our sourcemod family members and the new Half Life 2 Steam Deck UI. One of my most ambitious endeavors with PF2 development was asking a former team member if I could design the new UI. He told me, “Only if you can design a menu that is unique and doesn’t resemble any other TF2 source mods”. I took that to heart and set out to make something with its own voice. The colors draw from our “pizza” colored icons, which prompted our 0.7 update to be codenamed internally as “pizza”. This menu has unique features, including a team specific pause menu and a block that tells you how many servers are online. I will continue to update this menu in the future as I already have some color changes I will be adding soon.

I am so proud of this design and I hope that you enjoy playing Pre-Fortress 2’s 0.7 Update!

Concept Art