PropHunt

PropHunt is a TF2 gameplay modification originally written and released by Darkimmortal with a set of accompanying maps developed by various authors, the unranked copy of the SourceMod plugin is currently available for server administrators through AlliedModders, the ranked copy is available on request from the Geit or Darkimmortal via GamingMasters.co.uk.

There is also a SourceOP LUA rewrite of the plugin that is used privately on the SourceOP servers.

Gameplay

On the Red team all players are forced to play scout. The Blu team remains restricted to Pyro, Heavy, Sniper, Demoman, Engineer,Soldier and Medic. Many however, choose to play as Pyro as it is the default and most useful class. As with Arena mode on which PropHunt is based, no respawns are allowed during the round. At the end of each round the teams are swapped; Blu to Red and vice versa. At the beginning of the round, during setup time, each member of the Red team takes the appearance of a "prop". These may be a hay bale, a length of fencing, a stack of wood, an ornamental frog or any one of any other items used to decorate the map. The player is allowed 30 seconds to find an appropriate place to start. During this time the Blu team will have been rooted in place at their own spawn. Some maps have open spawn doors, resulting in pyro's being able to see certain parts of the map and any props that decide to hide there. When the Blu team is finally released it becomes their job to find all the members of the Red team and kill them. To all players, the Red team appear only as props. It is not uncommon to see a Pyro running after a box while a Heavy shoots at a bucket.

There are various conditions with dictate the game play:

• The Blu team is granted full use of most of their weapons however each use will result in a loss of health to the Blu player. Thus the Blu players need to be conservative about the use of their weapons.
• Taunt Kills are permitted and incur no loss of health to their users.
• Blu team receives a minor speed increase for every kill or assist they make
• Props are permitted the full use of scout's movement; ie. double-jump, fastest running speed.
• Blu Pyro's are given extra "flight" capacity by firing their flamethrower while they jump, effectively blasting them up in the air.
• The Red team have no weapons until there is only one red player alive. At this time the announcer indicates "last man standing" and the final Red player is granted the use of all his weapons.
• Health packs appear very sparse throughout the maps. The only other way to restore health is to run over the control point. The control point acts as a full med pack for each player. It restores health and puts out fire but can only be used once every 55 seconds

Maps

These maps are the current official maps that have been approved by the mod's authors and are distributed with the plugin to potential server hosters, it is up to the host to whether they use these maps or not.

• Basalt - S.W.A.T.Y
• Brawl - Jazz
• Canyon - Albatross (Modified by Shinkz)
• Cliff Face - gRiMrEaPeRsco
• Concord - zephyrak
• Cyberpunk - Xenon (Modified by Spykodemon and Shinkz)
• Desolation - Jamie "Mr. Happy" Lea
• Devils Canyon - Soylent Robot
• Farm - Geit
• Farm Feud - Archanor
• Goldtooth - Chuck "Atrocity" Wilson
• Grassland - Mr. Late (Modified by Shinkz)
• Harvest - Heyo
• Headquarters - Combatfetus
• Lumberyard - Valve (Modified by Shinkz)
• Maze - LabelMaker (Assisted by Geit)
• Mountain - Austria_Phantom
• North Ural - Flanker (Modified by Shinkz)
• Oasis - Tyb00 (Modified by Shinkz)
• Other Side - Vincent (Modified by Shinkz)
• Range - Pascal
• Ravage - Mehby
• Sawmill - Valve (Modified by gRiMrEaPeRsco)
• Spooky Ravine - Valve & Malachi
• Storm - Ikem
• Timbertown - Unknown (Modified by Shinkz)
• Train Set - Johnny
• Warehouse - Geit
• Watch Tower - Joshua ‘JoshuaC’ Shiflet (Modified by gRiMrEaPeRsco)

History

TF2 PropHunt was first shown to the public on 22/07/2009 after a GamingMasters user posted information on CS:S PropHunt a day earlier and Darkimmortal took it upon himself to convert the game style to TF2 using his brother, Bluepanther, as a source of information while he was coding it. There was almost an immediate roadblock as the map that the mode should use was undecided and most of the TF2 stock maps were completely unsuited to PropHunt due to their size or their lack of props, then Darkimmortal tried arena_sawmill and it was an instant hit, the arena base reduced work required to make the plugin work, the map was a perfect size and had the perfect amount of clutter. Work was then started on finding other suitable arena maps which was easy enough and those that did not already perfectly suit PropHunt were slightly modified to be so.

PropHunt was kept in closed beta for 3 months with Geit working on getting other servers involved in the beta with Alpha-Omega becoming the US host and various clans becoming hosts for other parts of the world. On the 7th of October PropHunt's big break came as it went viral due to Criken's youtube video being posted on many news sites such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Shack News. After this event many clans attempted to obtain the plugin for their servers and the Mod's Creators were flamed for their apparent "greediness" and "selfishness" after being unable to respond or accept all of the requests and release the plugin publicly, This resulted in a final development rush to iron out all of the Closed Beta bugs and PropHunt 1.0(Officially known as v0.0.6) was released to the public via AlliedModders on the 22nd of October. Development Continued on PropHunt and to date there have been 18 major version upgrades including bug fixes, feature additions and code clean ups. Version 1.8 is currently under development and is expected to be the final major release and the end of PropHunt's active development cycle, nearly a year later.

External Links

TF2 PropHunt Official Steam Group

TF2 PropHunt Stats pages

AlliedModders plugin release thread

Appearances and References

• [1] - Shacknews (Oct 2009)
• [2] - Interview with Dark Immortal and Geit on Kritzkast (Episode 36, October 2009)