TF2 PropHunt — April 2010

PropHunt is the most popular custom game mode for Team Fortress 2, created by Luke Foreman in 2009. It has an official player base of over 400,000 people worldwide . The game mode was popular enough to prompt recognition from Valve Software, creators of Team Fortress 2, in the form of specialised in-game items recognising our contributions to the community.

For PropHunt, I was in charge of global statistics and partner servers: A network of servers owned by us directly or our partners in other countries such as the USA, Singapore, Australia and Italy. I maintained the primary collection database, and designed the web panel in conjunction with Luke.

I was also responsible for balancing the game mode using the collected statistics and redesigning large parts of the game mode to ensure it was future proofed against any changes Valve might make to the game in the future.

I also dabbled with level design at the time and ended up making two of the most popular PropHunt maps.

##Warehouse Warehouse, as the name implies, is an industrial themed level based primarily in a warehouse. The map was the first map to utilise random prop layouts, with over 256 possible layouts within the level. It is currently the most played PropHunt map, played by over 200,000 people.

##Farm Farm, continuing the tradition of uninspired names, is a set of barns arranged around a central point, unlike Warehouse, Farm largely focuses on aesthetics but is still one of the most played PropHunt maps, consistently ranking within the top 10 maps.