The Team Fortress 2 community mapping site Hammer.tf has announced its first Art Pass Contest, and the event puts a prize pool of 60+ Keys on the line. The news appeared on the official Team Fortress 2 blog in a post titled “Hammer.tf Art Pass Contest.”
The contest tasks participants with art-passing an existing King of the Hill (KOTH) map that was donated by a community member. An art pass is the stage of map making where a level gets its finished look, and Hammer.tf gives entrants total creative control over that direction. As the announcement puts it, there is no theme to follow. The official Team Fortress 2 blog names jungle, city, swamp, Halloween, and “Uncle Jerry’s house” among the possible directions, and any visual direction is allowed, so entrants can go wild with their ideas.
The map was donated by a community member, and the VMF and BSP files for it can be found in the Hammer.tf Discord server. King of the Hill is one of Team Fortress 2’s core game modes, and the contest lets map makers put their own visual style on a level that already works.
Prize pool and deadline
The prize pool for the Team Fortress 2 Art Pass Contest is 60+ Keys, split among 3 winners. Keys are the Mann Co. Supply Crate Keys that act as Team Fortress 2’s trade currency. To qualify, all submissions must be made in the Hammer.tf Discord server, and the submission deadline is November 26.
The official Team Fortress 2 blog directs mappers to join the Hammer.tf Discord server for more details, the full rules, and to participate.
How to enter
Valve’s official Team Fortress 2 blog states that the map files are available in the Hammer.tf Discord server, the same place where submissions must be made. Mappers can join the server, retrieve the VMF and BSP files, and prepare their art pass ahead of the November 26 deadline. From there, entrants complete their art pass and turn the finished map in through the same server before the cutoff.
The contest follows other community-run Team Fortress 2 events, such as the Operation Lithium Lunacy charity event. The announcement closes with a short note to the mapping community: happy mapping.
