In Mann vs. Machine (commonly abbreviated as MvM), a team of six players (all wearing RED uniforms) must stop hordes of robots divided into waves from deploying a portable bomb into their base. When a robot is destroyed, it drops an in-game currency known as "credits." Players can pick up these credits before they disappear and use them to buy upgrades for their weapons and themselves. Some weapon upgrades include more damage, faster firing speed, more ammo, etc. Some player upgrades include faster speed, higher jump height, health regeneration, etc. There are different kinds of robots with different weapons and abilities. Some robots are known as "Giants." A giant normally has far better weapons and abilities than their normal counterparts.
There is a special type of MvM known as "Mann Up" mode. In Mann Up mode, players complete "Tours" using "Tour of Duty Tickets" or "Squad Surplus Vouchers" they have bought from the online store, known as the Mann Co. Store. Each "Operation" has a specific number of Tours in them. Finish all the waves in a Tour and all the Tours to complete the Operation. Different Tours are for different skill levels and have different robots. Completing Tours and Operations will give the players "loot" or special in-game cosmetic items players use to customize their character. In Mann Up mode, the gameplay (upgrades, maps, robots) are the same in standard MvM.
Valve Corporation posted several animations using their Source Film Maker (commonly abbreviated as SFM) program from 2009 to 2012. Each one of these videos are short skits using humorous depictions of the 9 Team Fortress 2 classes in their real lives, and out in battle. Some of these videos have been viewed many times with, "Meet The Medic", at 57 Million views. And, "Meet The Spy", at 30 Million views, and more.
The original "Team Fortress" was developed by Robin Walker and John Cook. This early version of "Team Fortress" was a free mod for the 1996 PC game "Quake". In 1998, Walker and Cook were employed by Valve. At the time, Valve just released its first game, "Half-Life." Valve began developing "Team Fortress 2" as a separate retail game using one of Valve's own game engines, GoldSrc. In 1999, Valve released "Team Fortress Classic," a port of the original "Team Fortress," as a free "Half-Life" mod. "Team Fortress Classic" was developed using the publicly available "Half-Life" software development kit as an example to the community and industry of the flexibility of the "Half-Life" game.
Unlike the original "Team Fortress," Valve originally planned "Team Fortress 2" to have a modern war theme. It would feature a command hierarchy including a Commander class, parachute drops over enemy territory, networked voice communication, and many other unique features. The Commander class played similarly to a real-time strategy game, with the player viewing the game from a bird's-eye perspective and issuing orders to players and AI-controlled soldiers.
"Team Fortress 2" was first shown at the trade event E3 1999. At E3 1999, Valve had showcased new technologies that they had developed while making "Team Fortress 2". This included parametric animation, which blended animations for smoother, more lifelike movement. The game also showcased Intel's multi-resolution mesh technology, which increased performance for the game by reducing detail of on-screen elements that are far away from the screen. The game earned several awards including Best Online Game and Best Action Game.
In mid-2000, Valve announced that "Team Fortress 2" had been delayed for a second time. They stated that they delayed "Team Fortress 2" because they were going to make Team Fortress 2 run on an engine they own, the Source engine. After their official announcement of the delay of "Team Fortress 2", Valve stopped releasing information about the game. Later, the game entered six years of silent development. Walker and Cook worked on various other Valve projects; Walker was project lead on "" and Cook became a Steam developer.
"Team Fortress 2" became a prominent example of vaporware. It was a long-anticipated game that had seen years of development, and was often mentioned alongside another much-delayed game, "Duke Nukem Forever." Walker later stated that Valve built "three to four" different versions of "Team Fortress 2" before settling on their final design. Shortly before the release of "Half-Life 2" in 2004, Valve's marketing director Doug Lombardi confirmed that "Team Fortress 2" was still in development. Valve reintroduced "Team Fortress 2" at the July 2006 EA Summer Showcase event with a much different visual design"."
Valve reintroduced "Team Fortress 2" at the July 2006 EA Summer Showcase event with a much different visual design. Instead of having realistic visual design like other Valve games, "Team Fortress 2" features a cartoon-like visual style influenced by 20th-century commercial illustrations and the artwork of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and Norman Rockwell, achieved through a visual technique called Gooch shading. "Team Fortress 2" was first launched with the Source engine's new dynamic lighting, shadowing and soft particle technologies, and gave the same visual enhancements to "", another one of their games. "Team Fortress 2" was the first game to use the Source engine's new Facial Animation 3 features.
Valve abandoned the realistic style when it became impossible to balance it with the unrealistic gameplay. For example, it is not realistic to have opposing armies to construct heavily detailed bases directly next to each other. The Commander class was abandoned because players would simply refuse to follow the player's orders.
Valve designed each character, team, and equipped weapon to be easy to identify, even at long range. For example, the coloring draws attention to the chest area, bringing focus on the equipped weapon. The voices for each of the classes were based on imagining what people from the 1960s would expect the classes to have sounded like, according to writer Chet Faliszek.
The map design has an "evil genius" theme. In typical maps, there are colored enemy buildings on opposite sides of the two enemies. Enemy buildings have a complex set of pathways that the player must go through to reach the objectives. These buildings are often concealed within various other constructed objects in between. Between each enemy side, maps are usually separated by a neutrally themed space. The bases hide exaggerated super weapons such as laser cannons, nuclear warheads, and missile launch facilities, taking the role of objectives. The maps are designed to have little visual clutter and have a theme, as well as have enough careful attention to effective visual design while still allowing enemies to be spotted more easily. This is achieved by using "impressionist modeling". The textures used in-game are based on photos that are filtered and improved by hand, making them look visually appealing and giving "Team Fortress 2" its distinct look. The bases are designed to let players immediately know where they are. RED bases use warm colors (e.g. red), natural materials, and angular shapes (e.g. circles). On the other hand, BLU bases use cool colors (e.g. blue), industrial materials, and orthogonal shapes (e.g. squares).