TEAM FORTRESS UNIVERSE - Part 1: "A Six Year Project"

[› FRaGiMuS_MaX]

I did some custom art for KritzKast listeners, but I still need to wait for my desk to be worked on to finish up and post the digital versions... so I decided to discuss my six-year long TF2 project.

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TEAM FORTRESS UNIVERSE - Part 1: "A Six Year Project"

My addiction to Team Fortress Classic (ported from the original mod for Quake) was brought to a boiling point when TF2 was finally released after going through a constantly evolving visual process and being teased about for years. As soon as the beta had been released, I saw small story points being presented in the game. Most of all, modern things being mixed with items from the past made my brain swirl and I started to create a background story to use as a creative springboard.

Over the years, the characterization has been presented on an official level from Valve - and if Robin Walker and John Cook were working on it - I didn't want to introduce something that didn't co-exist with what they were writing.

Thus far, TFU has gone through close to five versions of what you'll finally see in mid-2014. Focusing on some of the TF2 classes and TFC characters (some of which were represented in the officially released comics) along with unknown details about a multi-universe syndrome... it's a nice way to take what they've worked on and allow space for fan-fiction to co-exist in the same context. Much like Valve, I often don't release my projects if I feel they're not ready.

So, as I was working on TFU, I became friends with a fellow fan... Chris Lancaster. Like me, he loves creating game-related material. To test his abilities, I gave him a storyline to follow and worked together on "Another Day At The Office". After some info and clips went back and forth, we now had the main theme to the first planned event of TFU. A monotonous day, mixed with interruptions and eventually the battle. It's really good, so if this project goes well, he'll be my composer. (https://soundcloud.com/fragimus_max/team-fortress-universe)

Since 2008, I've owned and run the RED, BLU and Spytech sites. Some people may have seen the advertisements from Google Adwords as a bad thing, but considering that every drop of those earnings have financially supported the community in donations - it's been positive. I never spent a dime on myself and will eventually be turning those ads into cross-links leading to the other TFU-related sites. Brought to you by Spytech.

Now, just so you know: Spytech Industries was my way of taking Team Fortress Industries - and not overwriting what the team was working on during the games growth. After years of leaving it be, I went ahead and grabbed the teamfortressindustries.com domain, along with http://industries.tf/ when the domain extension became available. For true fans, "industries.tf" is the name that's always been mentioned within the TF2 player manual. Mann.co was taken way too soon by someone who just wants to sell it. I thought it was originally a purchase from Valve, but I was wrong. So, when I release TFU - Spytech, Mannco, and additional corporate/affiliated websites will be made into sub-domains ("spytech.teamfortressindustries.com", "mannco.teamfortressindustries.com", etc.)

RED (http://www.reliableexcavationdemolition.com) and BLU (http://www.buildersleagueunited.com) are currently being overhauled. Including the secrets they have contained from day one. On RED, there's the fake banner that leads to a fake convention flyer (with Robin pointing to a teleporter entrance, as opposed to the table surface he was originally using.) Since day one, I've received a ridiculous amount of e-mails to the e-mail addresses listed on RED (which will eventually be used as some oddball content that I won't yet discuss.) On BLU, the database error is actually another mention of Spytech, as well as TFC. The missing image is not real, either. Notice the TF symbol as the "missing image" icon. Click it and go to a fake error page. Click the mention of Spytech at the bottom and go to the "support page" that I originally created. That web-browser error page is dedicated to Gabe Newell and his Microsoft years. Showing Doom working on a laptop, eventually paid off for the man. :)

While I work on setting up some more stuff over the next couple of weeks and going live with some updates, we'll go through the overall structure of TFU... and, all the additional active domains you may have no idea about!

To Be Continued...