@Rodney Buckentime - Unfortunately that's an issue that is beyond my personal control. It has to do with the fact that this effect uses something called "position on model", and the loadout screen is broken. I made a note of this in the description above when I posted it, but I also recently reached out to Valve about a potential fix. They said my complaint would be forwarded to someone who might be able to address this issue, but I'm not confident that it will be fixed soon or at all. Sorry about that though, I do understand how annoying that is and I want it to be working as well :(

this effect literally doesn't exist when previewing it on hats. who thought this was a good idea

Thanks! I'm so glad to hear that :D

Love it! Again!

@specter - Of course! Glad to hear it's working again :)

Fixed! Thanks!

Hahaha! It's been the scariest part of sand being included in the Scream Fortress update, I'll tell you that much lol

No problem, that must have been quite a scare

I appreciate your understanding, RGB :)

No worries, mistakes happen!

Hey all! I want to address the latest changes that y'all have reached out about. Tobbby's comment was the problem, and it was completely my fault. In an attempt to find a reasonable solution to the problems people were having with the effect occluding the player model while moving, I tried changing the movement sprite to a non-additive version of the existing sprite. It didn't make any difference, but I managed to keep that file active on accident while I was testing and forgot to remove it before the most recent fix. I feel extremely dumb, but I did just upload a hot fix to the TF Team that will immediately address the missing texture issue, and I also reversed the idle state change that made the effect near invisible in some circumstances. I'm hoping that this is the final change needed and that everything is working as it should. Again, thank you so much for reaching out about this! I greatly appreciate it, and am deeply sorry for the mistake.

Thank you so much, y'all! I'm working to fix the issue now, I appreciate that!

i checked the particle file, it has effects\workshop\sc_smoke1_nodepth_noadd.vmt in the properties for the move particle, but only effects\workshop\sc_smoke1_nodepth.vmt (-noadd) exists

My best guess is you only sent the files that changed and they deleted the sand texture thinking it was included in you patch.
Anyways cool effect really underrated imo

I'm looking into it now, and will see what I can figure out to address this. Thanks for letting me know!

They botched something, the big particles have the missing texture on the loadout screen and big particles are invisible in game

The changes from the recent update were mine, I had submitted them to Valve directly. There's nothing different about how it functions, it just doesn't occlude the character model as much in darker areas of maps. Is there a specific issue with the changes that you found that isn't intentional?

VAAAAAALVE YOU BROKE IT

@Zoom, Tilt and PAN - Thank you! I totally agree, that was my intention for it. I'm thankful it was accepted either way, and have surprisingly found quite a few good loadout potentials for scream fortress items. That being said, I think there's only really one good combo with it in the case it dropped in, sadly

I'm glad this got accepted, though it should have been in the summer update and not Scream Fortress.

at least it's not neon color stuff. Would look excellent with desert themed hats

@Michael Przerwa Tet-Myers kinda normie opinion tbh.
Comparing different tier effect is already stupid, tho this effect is actually decent. We need more low-tier subtle effects(example:Sizzling) and less average "neon aurora purple space sky" stuff.
I used to own burning flames all-class hat and got bored with it very quickly, so not everyone
enjoys very cool "epic" and "edgy" effects. Also you can make cool themed loadouts with Sandy, I really don't get the hate for it, after all I think it's the best effect we got this update (Candle Flame looks too realistic and a bit cluttered for tf2. The less is more after all)
P.S I kinda agree with you that valve should stop adding new effects to the game tho

It's just fucking sand and people like this, i get people liking burning flames because fire is cool but fucking sand? Please stop making more unusual effects 90% are dogshit anyway we don't need this, we only had 1 good effect in the summer update which says alot.

@Burning Mann - I don't believe the effect slider will change anything since it's position on model, no. It should just scale to the size of whatever hat model without changing, as far as I'm aware.

just unboxed this on a hat and was curious, does adjusting it affect anything? or is the slider just useless

Thanks y’all, I appreciate the positive comments, it means a lot :) Also Hollowed Helm would be awesome with it, congrats on the unbox! :D

Got a Hollowed Helm with sandy, it's great!

Lots of haters. Don't listen, I love it. Keep up the good work.

Huh why would Zesty hate it? It s litteraly oposite to neon-crap. + It make sens + fits tf2.

Good subtle effect, don't listen to those zesty followers

@Valve is it possible to remove effects from the game after they've been added?

Finally, curse of Ra effect

Anakin skywalker would have a heart attack seeing this.

how do you make an effect that's worse than smoking

@[SYN] ❆ ed edd eddy ❆ - That's awesome! It was intended for summer, so I hope you enjoy it :)

my first case and I got this effect on Summer case 2025.

Sounds good! Yeah, there were definitely some solid additions! :)

Count on it, this might just end up being the most expensive cases yet, the lineup is amazing

That's awesome, I'm so glad you enjoy it that much hahaha! :D If you end up getting a hat with it, please let me know :)

Yeah dude, I have had this effect in my favorites I think since you had posted it? I absolutely love it

Genuinely so happy with this item drop update, a mostly immaculate item selection

@Mbarthemuel Jollyiest II - Thank you so much!! I appreciate it! :D

Holy hell congratulations

Absolutely deserved, incredible effect

Wow, thank you so much! I appreciate it, and I'm glad that you enjoy it!

With the feeling the update is around the corner I just wanted to leave my piece. I really hope this gets into the game, I feel it has an almost unique and old-school approach, while introducing new tech that has emerged in the past few years. Your content is very good too, sincerely, thank you for going for a simple concept and presenting it in a more complex fashion. God speed, you magnificent bastard.

genuinely sick

@the silly - Thank you! :) I had considered making it a taunt effect as well, but I realized that it would really only look good on moving taunts because of the way the effect operates. I might try to make one separate without the movement tech at some point, though :)

I wouldn't mind seeing this one as a taunt effect as well, it looks very nice

@Orange Thanks for the clarification re. idle animation. I guess more "compact" headgear will make the randomised positions less obvious with the added benefit that it's more natural for sand to accumulate in it (rather than e.g. the horns).
I did not notice the scaling with the hat size here, my b.! I would love to get this on sth. like the mooshanka - sand caught in the fur would be great. (also IMHO this could work for Mad-Max-like aesthetics).

I’m glad you like the motion element, though! I figured since you’ll be moving more of the time than not, that should be prioritized. As far as there not being enough grains of sand, this was a difficult balance. The movement animation also utilizes position on model, so I had to be careful with how much sand I was emitting because it scales based on the size of the hat. There had to be enough to work on bigger hats, but not too much to be intense on small hats. I think if it does get accepted, I could slightly increase the size of the sand particles for readability, but we’ll see what happens :)

@Zoom - Thank you for the detailed feedback! The idle animation utilizes position on model random, so it will spawn all over a hat model at random, and is not confined to just three points. Unfortunately, all hats handle this differently and won’t always lock to the hat perfectly as intended, and I don’t have control over that :(. It’s really just hat dependent, but most of them handle this well and will spawn as intended depending on the size/shape of the hat. Source spaghetti at it’s finest lol.