Team Fortress Wiki:Archived discussions/File talk:HL2 TF2 Invasion.jpg

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it.

Legitimacy of the image

Hi, so after watching this video at 9:44 mins, Ritcher made a remark that prolly should be addressed.

The image in question is indeed fan made, as he pointed out, the models uses Halo CE's Assault Rifle and CSS' Riot Shield.

I suggest that, in order to keep the authenticity of the Wiki, perhaps removing this image would be better, and instead use an official image from Valve.

What do y'all think?

Yossef | Talk | Contributions 17:17, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure, it could be placeholder models (perhaps someone at Valve was a Halo fan, the timeline of the game's development and the port of Halo CE line up pretty well) that were leaked at some point. Unless it can be proven that it's fan-made, beyond a YouTuber saying it is, I'd say keep it. The person who uploaded this image is still around, may also be worth asking around cut/unused content places to see if the image is fan-made or not.
GrampaSwood (talk) 17:25, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't know that the image is fan-made, even if the video was talking about the fan-made mod. "Clearly unofficial" also applie to the two characters as well. Aren't that paintins, not texture renderings? Could we have ClockworkSpirit2343 weigh in on the origin of the image? M I K A D O 282 ⊙⊙⊙⊙⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ (Talk with Mikado282 (SM)) | (contribs) (Help Wanted!) 20:10, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Hey there, just did a check on where the image might have originated. Given it was almost 10 years ago that I uploaded it, I don't really remember where I originally got it from, but I did find an old article on Unseen64 from 2008 here that appears to use the same image. It's possible that I could have grabbed it either from said article or from some other site that also use the same image, or maybe the article itself borrowed it from another website that existed back then that I could no longer find. On the same article, there is also a video from 2009 uploaded by TeamGabeN that appears to show the human soldier holding the same weapons from the image for a number of clips. It's important to remember that the article could have been altered post-release to feature the image and video as well. Either way, nothing in the article nor in the video makes clear note of the legitimacy of those specific models actually being used by Valve or not, so make of that what you will. I'm in favor of the image being removed if needs be. ClockworkSpirit2343 21:13, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

The images seem to originate from this (www.teamgaben.com - Archived) website. I do know that Team GabeN was responsible for something related to the TF2: Invasion thing. According to the article, it mentions that Team GabeN themselves made the assets, either by them or using from various mods available at the time. The Human_alien.png (www.teamgaben.com - Archived) file was uploaded 1 year before the Unseen64 article, so I think the image originally came from here. Based on the images on the article and some videos around the web, I think these models were directly taken with the model viewer and doesn't seem to be official renders, especially how the dude's shield look really similar to how it looks in the gameplay. It seems that Invasion was based from a leak too, so I don't know where this stands for the entire Invasion article to be featured on this Wiki.

The original leak contained some assets and some source code, but a lot of it was non-functional, so the Team GabeN build had a lot of things changed for it to run, possibly they had to add new models to add things that weren't on the leak. Moreover, the TCRF Article for TF2 Invasion (not sure if I can link it considering there's leaked stuff) shows what was inside the leaked content (not the Team GabeN build), and there doesn't seem to be any gun models outside the one at the bottom of the page, the only time the gun is being held by the main dude is on the "Concept Art for the Energy Shield" image and it looks different. Back to the Team GabeN page, the same gun featured on "HL2_TF2_Invasion.jpg" can be seen on the very last image (www.teamgaben.com - Archived), I wanted to check the Laser Rifle page, but it was not archived so I can't check if it mentions anything about using the model from Halo. It's probably possible to check if comparing the files from the leak to the GabeN build and see if the gun was really there on the original leak.

One last point I want to make is that, it's common for developers to use assets from other games in their prototypes, so having a model from another game is not entirely unusual. But, I don't think that's the case here. - ▪ - 22:30, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Gabrielwoj and ClockworkSpirit2343. With Gabriel's information, I personally think that it is safe to say that the images/models were not made by Valve, and that some measures should be taken, not only for being a non-official art, but also because the models were leaked. Perhaps deleting/replacing the image from the main article would be a solution. Yossef | Talk | Contributions 06:34, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

The preceding discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it.