Team Fortress 2 Invasion

Team Fortress 2 Invasion is an FPS/RTS hybrid that combines RTS elements with classic Team Fortress gameplay. It was developed mostly during 2002 to 2003, and a little bit more in 2005 before eventually being cancelled. It's code lives on through games like Day of Defeat: Source and Team Fortress 2.

Overview

Team Fortress 2 Invasion is a "steampunk", Tesla and War of The Worlds inspired first-person shooter developed by Valve Corporation, one of the proposed sequels to Team Fortress Classic. Like with multiple other early designs of TF2, it was cut for varying and unclear reasons.

Gameplay

There are two teams, the Humans and the Aliens. Gameplay is primarily based in collecting resources, which are gained through collecting from Resource Pumps, killing enemies, and destruction of enemy buildings.

Invasion does not have rounds, but Acts, which besides the name is basically the same thing.

Maps revolved around classic Team Fortress gameplay setups, such as attack/defend and control points. Often the focus of maps were Control Zones, which function pretty similarly to Control Points in the final game. However Invasion had side goals that helped fuel the "core" objective of attacking/defending Control Zones.

Resource Zones usually are areas that both teams focus on. This means that in attack/defend, attackers could have a few allies trying to keep control of the Resource Zone so the team has a constantly flow of resources to help fuel the objective. This means that players who may prefer defensive action could defend something even without being on the defending team. This made sure that regardless of which team you're on, you will always have to keep control of something.

Classes

There are several classes present in this incarnation, most of them are evolved versions of their respective counterparts from Team Fortress Classic.

The Recon: (Evolution of the Scout) Only has one weapon, Dual Semi-Automatic Pistols. And right-clicking would launch a stickybomb. Focused highly on being incredibly mobile, at the cost of not having very accurate weapons or anything to build besides the basic Resource Pump and Respawn Station. It's the fastest class in the game. It can double-jump and stick onto the sides of walls, but you can't climb them or double-jump while sticking to walls. Usually good for getting a nice position over the enemy.

The Commando

Buildables

There are some buildable objects, including

Resource Pump A device used for harvesting resources from a resource zone. Gives one-hundred resources every twelve seconds, and divides this amount by the amount of players on your team, and then distributes it to each teammate.

Dragon's Teeth Used for blocking vehicles from driving into areas.

Sentry Guns An sentry gun that comes in two types; plasma, and rocket. You could unlock technology that would upgrade it's AI and make it more accurate, increase trigger radius, and faster response to the laser designator.

EMP Generator A device that disables any enemy equipment it is attached too. An offensive building.

Sandbag Bunker A weaker version of the bunker that was meant to give players minimal cover.

Bunker A defensive building meant for giving cover for players.

Resupply Station A device that could be used to resupply ammuntion, health, and grenades in exchange for Resources.

Respawn Station A replacement for the teleporter. Crucial for a huge attacking push or getting defenders on the Zone quickly after they have respawned.

Vehicle Boost When applied to a vehicle, it would boost the speed of the vehicle which it was applied too.

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Releases

2003 Leak

In 2003, a German hacker gained access to and released the password for Valve's file server and took Valve's development files, which reportedly included a full build of TF2. In the leaks, he unintentionally released some of what he had to the public, which amounted to the Human and Alien Commando models and the full source code at the time.

Although the only two models that remain released to the public to this day are only the Human and Alien Commando models, a look at the source code clearly hints that many more models were done during the development of the game. Such model references, include, for example:

• models/objects/vehicle_battering_ram.mdl

• models/objects/obj_manned_plasmagun.mdl

2012 Source Engine Leak

In Adamix's 2012 leak of the Source Engine's source, there is still a large amount of code leftover from this incarnation of TF2. The code is changed and modified, showing that Invasion was worked on a little after it's code was leaked. Most of which are dated 2005 in the headers.

It's very similar to the 2003 variant but has several code fixes or some better code.

Moby Francke, ~2005-2008

Sometime between April 4th, 2005 and June 14, 2008, Moby Francke created a new portfolio to replace his earlier HTML-based one. It is not entirely known what was contained within, as the Flash-based introduction page seen at the start prevented web crawlers from getting past it.

Though normal web-archiving services failed to grab it, the Half-Life wiki has some images from before the later portfolio with "mobyfrancke.com" as the stated source. A few of these are not seen in the later portfolio.

Gallery

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TF2Portal.de, 2009

On September 18, 2009, and September 30, 2009, TF2Portal.de released three otherwise unseen alien designs from "2000-2003".

Gallery

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Robin Walker E-Mail

On June of 2016, Robin Walker was contacted about this particular set of sketches, and revealing that this release is from an earlier "Humans vs Aliens" stage:

Images

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  Part 1

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  Part 2

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  Part 3

Teamfortress.com, 2011

With the Uber update came a new site with several additional sections, including a new art section. Among the concept art placed there is some (at the time) new Invasion-era concepts, with some informative filenames. These reappear in Moby's portfolio, but the filenames here aren't lost, and the comments on the commando aren't present on the Moby counterpart.

Gallery

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Moby Francke, 2013

Around July of 2013, Moby Francke left Valve and overhauled his portfolio with several bits of new art, with among them several early Invasion-era concepts. The art was mainly silhouettes and concepts for human characters, with a few concepts for larger aliens included.

Gallery

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Chuck Jones, 2014

In August of 2014, Chuck Jones posted a large collection of concept art from this version of TF2, which depicted a multitude of weapon designs with a cyberpunk theme. Unlike Moby's exclusive releases of character concepts, his varied art depicted various, environments, renders, and even included a partial screenshot, with a wealth of informative captions included with the gallery. Some higher-resolution versions of his art appear on his ArtStation. A snippet of text about the project was included alongside:

Early TF2 explored multiple pathways in art direction and game design. It first started with Modern warfare TF2 then to Space TF2 with aliens. After more exploration, War of the Worlds TF2 was getting some traction. We had a steampunk flair to all the designs. This version had a truck with a big battering ram driving around. And we were using Striders from HL2 as the Tripod aliens.

Gallery

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  Early TF2: Alien recon character

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  Early TF2: Space marine soldier comp

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  Early TF2: Technician (Sapper) suit

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  Early TF2: Heavy weapon comp

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  Early TF2: Alien comp

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  Early TF2: Alien artillery

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  Early Tf2: Rough sketches for soldier

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  Early Tf2: Helmet comps

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  Early Tf2: Alien rifle design

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  Early TF2: Concept for Power Shield, illustrating its deployment.

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  EARLY TF2: Various devices to build in TF2

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  Early Tf2: Concepts of alien devices and vehicles.

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  Early Tf2: Limpet Mine concepts

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  Early TF2: Powered Tommy gun (Plasma Rifle) concepts

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  Early TF2: Ditto.

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  EARLY TF2: Ditto.

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  Early Tf2: Random devices with steam punk influence.

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  Early Tf2: Building PDA

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  Early TF2: Healing medical devices

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  Early TF2: Hand held devices for interacting with equipment.

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  Early TF2: Devices that repair or give ammo.

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  Early TF2: Healing devices

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  Early Tf2: Soldier concepts

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  Early TF2: Spy robot in disguise mode.

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  Early TF2: Resource Carrier

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  Early Tf2: Soldier concept

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  Early Tf2: Environment concept of space junkyard. (Possibly an early Vehicle Bay)

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  Early TF2: Screen shot of level with character and power device (buff station) overlay.

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  Early Tf2: Motion comps for power devices. (Buff Station)

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  Ditto.

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  Early Tf2: Motion comp for EMP suit behavior.

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  Early TF2: Powered Tommy gun (Plasma Rifle) View model. Fire animation.

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  Early TF2: Ditto. Reload animation.

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  Early TF2: View model of Power Shield cycling deploy animation.

Recreations

GabeN

From around 2006 to 2008, Team GabeN actively attempted to remake this game from the code. A direct release was never made, but a large amount of information about it is present on their wiki. The TF2 page was last edited in 2008, so it can be presumed that the project fell into inactivity around that time. An early build from 2006 called the "X-Mas build" is the only build that was ever released, which is incredibly early and unpolished.

Descendants

• Project Beta Build
  • A modification of the GabeN build with a new custom 2fort-based map, and some other modifications. It is available on Project Beta.
• Mine / TFI Team
  • A modification of the GabeN build with some improvements, started near the end of 2015. The first release was on October 1, 2017, and development is ongoing. Although there minimal progress has been made.

Invasion:Source

A port of TF2 invasion's source code to Source SDK 2013, led by hogsy. It can be found here, and downloaded here. It is still in active development today.

Descendants

• Team Fortress: Invasion (NextWizard) - Discontinued
  • A continuation of hogsy's build. Only difference is that the Recon class doesn't crash and a few custom models. ModDB or GitHub.

The Axel Project's Invasion

A few unlisted videos have been discovered of a build of Invasion being worked on by the team behind the Axel Project. The Source Code and Assets have been released, so it is possible to compile it.