First Bit of News - The Great Class Dash mod for Team Fortress 2

Welcome everyone to the ModDB site for the Great Class Dash.

The game has been in development for quite awhile now (since last November). Luckily, I'm currently putting the final touches on it, and it should be out very soon... so keep checking back.

With that said, I don't have much to say at the moment, so I thought I'd post an older post I made on my portfolio site. I also did an interview which you can read here : Kotaku.com

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In December, the Interlopers website hosted a mapping contest with a Platformer theme. I took this as an opportunity to branch from level design into full out game design, and began work on a mini-game for Team Fortress 2. While searching for gameplay inspiration, I stumbled across the fantastic flash game Canabalt (Link). The game mechanic was very simple, in that the player only has a jump control. The Team Fortress platform provided a chance to expand this idea, with the nine easily identifiable classes. I created a template level where each class had their own specific obstacle. The result was frustratingly fun. I quickly polished off the first two stages in time for the contest deadline.

The subsequent feedback encouraged me to continue the project, and recently I finished the first build of the third stage.

The final game will have four stages, utilizing all nine classes.

Stage 1 - Canada

• Scout - Double jump ability allows him to clear large gaps.

Stage 2 - Egypt

• Heavy - The Heavy can break through walls.
• Sniper - The Sniper (a notorious hunter) scares any animals in his way into hiding.

Stage 3 - Volcano

• Pyro - The Pyro's suit protects him from steam as well as clouds of mosquitoes.
• Spy - The Spy is able to slip past enemy sentry guns.
• Medic - The player will encounter teammates requesting a heal.

One of the biggest problems in the game's creation is special abilities for each class. Valve has done a fantastic job of endowing each class with a unique identity, and for the most part I have tried to use abilities that fit. The Heavy's wall smashing ability, for example, was taken directly from the 'Meet the Spy' video, where he breaks down the door in the opening scene.

The challenges occur due to the reliance on the inability to work outside of any entities or scripting included with Team Fortress. For example, the Heavy's wall smash seems simple enough, and the original plan was to use a func_breakable as the wall prop. This quickly became problematic when I realized the func_breakable could not be reset without a full map reload. Any player who passed the breakable wall, then failed further on would return to a checkpoint, only to find the wall already broken. This problem was resolved by using a combination of a wall_toggle and a particle system which simulates the gibs. This solution was preferable to creating a cinematic physics model due to the ease in which the wall_toggle could be resized to fit any area needed, which would have required multiple models.