Image credit: The Toastening, by ToastPlusScience.

After kneading the community into a yeasty mush of excitement, Valve have finally pulled their update out of the oven. Love and War is available now, bringing a selection of new taunts and weapons. In addition, they've slightly tweaked their long-standing secret recipe. By which I mean they've seriously altered the balance of the Demoman's Sticky Launcher.

The primary themes of Love and War are, in no particular order, guns, bread and dancing. The new taunts can work across the team divide, and as such, the game is currently filling with impromptu conga breaks.

The new weapons have somehow caused everyone in our office to reinstall the game, despite it already being packed with weapons. Chiefly, I suspect, it's because we want to try out the Soldier's new parachute. Although, I'm just as interested in the Scout's new back-critting shotgun. (I hold the unpopular opinion that Scout is the best stealth class. Other people would say Spy, but he can literally turn invisible. That's cheating.)

But here's a thing: a couple of balance changes will cause dramatic shifts to long-standing loadouts. For one thing, there's the Sticky Launcher with this update, its bombs now have a damage ramp-up. It's a big nerf to air-sticky attacks, as it'll take two seconds from shooting for a bomb to do full damage. It's an attempt to shift the weapon to its original trap-setting purpose. It's just weird that it's taken this long to happen.

Also changed: the Pyro's Axtinguisher. That will now only do mini-crits on burning targets if attacked from the front. It makes me a sad Pyro.

See the full patch notes below.

Love & War Update


Added 5 new weapons, 15 new taunts, and 43 cosmetic items for the Love & War update
Partner Taunts can now be performed with the opposing team
Added a new Taunt Loadout with 8 slots so multiple taunts can be equipped at the same time
Taunts are no longer equipped in the Action Slot
Pressing the Taunt key in game now brings up the new Taunt Selection menu
Pressing the taunt key while the Taunt Selection menu is open performs a weapon taunt, or joins a partner taunt


Mann Co. Store


Added 15 new taunts and a taunt bundle
Added 5 new weapons and a weapon bundle
Added 44 new cosmetics and a cosmetic bundle
Added "Taunt" category into the store
Added Mann Co. Stockpile Crate Key
The "Hats" and "Misc" categories have been merged into "Cosmetics"


Items


Added the Mann Co. Stockpile Crate to the droplist
Each Mann Co. Stockpile Crate can be repeatedly shuffled to contain a set of 4 possible items
Added the Mann Co. Audition Reel. Contains taunts and a rare chance at an unusual taunt
Updated Mann Co. Crates to display which Unusual Series they can potentially output
Added Bread Box Special Crafting Recipe. This recipe will no longer be available after July 9th, 2014. Items from the Bread box have a chance to be strange.
Added crafting recipes for newly added weapons
Added Killstreak Kits to MvM for newly added weapons
Added OzFortress Season 11 tournament medals


Weapon changes and updates


With The Hitman's Heatmaker, pressing reload now activates focus when it is full
The Axtinguisher now does mini-crit damage from the front and full crit damage from behind to burning targets
The Bushwacka can no longer randomly crit
All mini-guns now have damage and accuracy ramp up after they start firing. Full accuracy and damage is reached 1 second after firing.
All Demoman stickybombs now have damage ramp up. Full damage is reached 2 seconds after firing.
Updated Loch-n-Load reload animation
Sentry bullets are now affected by damage falloff outside of sentry scan range
Sentry bullet damage has been changed so it calculates damage based on the sentry's position, not the Engineer's


Misc Changes


Updated the Halloween holiday to automatically be enabled when the server runs an _event map
Added a check to prevent achievement announcement spam
Converted several weapon models to use the c_models system
Updated the localization files
Bug Fixes
Fixed an exploit where charging Demoman could turn more than allowed
Fixed a bug where Halloween spellbooks were overriding PDAs and Disguise Kits
Fixed The Director's Vision taunt not playing both variations for the Pyro
Fixed the Pyro's spell audio not sounding like the rest of the Pyro's audio
Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause items to unequip themselves
Fixed a dedicated server crash related to using 'mp_forcecamera 0' with one player on the server
Fixed a regression with the trigger_gravity entity not correctly applying its settings
Fixed another exploit where Engineer buildings could build up a large amount of health
Fixed a server performance issue related to the item_teamflag entity
Fixed the itemtest command
- Fixed cosmetics shared between multiple classes not rendering correctly
- Updated the cosmetic item list to sort by name


Map Fixes


Updated cp_granary
- Removed collision from lights and small props protruding from walls
- Fixed collision on fences
- Fixed the tire props near Blu's forward spawn so players may no longer jump up to the spawn door platform
- Fixed players shooting through gaps around forward spawn doors
- Fixed door protruding through roof on Red's forward spawn
- Fixed a collision bug that gave players access to the roof above Red's spawn door
- Prevented players from building inside spawn room doors
- Adjusted area portals to improve rendering and performance
Updated koth_harvest_final
- Added metal panel prop to Blu building, which now mirrors the jump up on the Red side
- Small performance increase through prop fade adjustments
- Players can no longer build inside spawn doors
Updated pl_upward
- Fixed physics debris triggering the payload cart s finale explosion


Image credit: The Toastening, by ToastPlusScience.

This week s mysterious Team Fortress 2 Love & War campaign has so far spawned a fifteen minute movie and a handful of new emotes, but Valve has gone further today with the announcement of a huge drop of new weapons and items. Among the lucre is a new level 1 Scattergun called The Back Scatter, a level 1 Shield dubbed The Tide Turner and a new parachute called The B.A.S.E. Jumper which slows your descent when falling.
Most important though, is the arrival of a handful of new bread-themed buffs and attacks, obviously inspired by yesterday s hilarious and, let s face it, very moving Expiration Date short film. The only condition is that these are limited edition items: you ll need to craft the all important Bread Box before it expires on July 9.
Once you ve done this you can use the Bread Box to craft a host of advantages including The Self-Aware Beauty Mark which punishes coated enemies with mini-crits. The Snack Attack is a sapper, while The Bread Bite rewards the player with 30 per cent faster move speed when worn. Watch out though: you ll incur 25 per cent more damage. Finally, the Mutated Milk rewards 60 per cent of the damage done to an enemy covered with milk . Full details are listed on the Team Fortress 2 site.
Here are all the new, non-bread weapon and item details for your pleasure. There's a bunch of new achievements as well. We're expecting two more announcements this week so be sure to check back.
The Back Scatter (Level 1 Scattergun)
Minicrits targets when fired at their back and at close range
-34% clip size
No random critical hits
20% less accurate
The Tide Turner (Level 1 Shield)
25% fire damage resistance on wearer
25% explosive damage resistance on wearer
Full turning control while charging
Kills while charging refill 100% of your charge meter
The B.A.S.E. Jumper (Level 1 Parachute)
Press 'JUMP' key in the air to deploy.
Deployed Parachutes slow your descent.
The Classic (Level 1 Sniper Rifle)
Charge and fire shots independent of zoom
No headshots when not fully charged
-10% damage on body shot
The Air Strike (Level 1 Rocket Launcher)
Increased attack speed while blast jumping
Clip size increased on kill
-25% damage penalty
-25% clip size
-15% explosion radius

The first day of Team Fortress 2's countdown-teased update was light on game content reveals but heavy on entertainment. A 15-minute short film titled "Expiration Date," embedded above, follows the Scout's courtship of Miss Pauling (a character who's appeared throughout TF2's many comics) alongside the TF2 crew's discovery of the dangerous effects of teleportation on bread.

The first day of the Love & War update did reveal five new emotes, but it looks like Valve is saving any hard details on what all this mutant bread is about until later this week, with more reveals likely coming on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. If we had to guess, the monster shown at the end of the video could be a new variation on TF2's existing, co-op "Mann vs. Machine" mode, a new boss encounter in a new environment.

For additional theories, visit the TF2 forum on Steam.

The Team Fortress 2 blog has updated with a brief and mysterious message. It leads to a countdown page, called "suspense.html", ticking down to... something. Whatever that something is, it'll happen in just over 13 hours, at 1am BST.

Those are the facts, all that remain now are questions. Questions like, what do Valve have planned? Why are Reddit's TF2 community suddenly obsessed by bread? And how are Valve managing to reignite my interest in TF2 for the first time in almost a year?

Whatever is planned when the countdown hits zero, I doubt it'll be the update just yet. The filename of the countdown's test card GIF is "day0_testcard", which suggests multiple days of teasers something that was standard back in TF2's update-heavy heyday.

Valve have previously hinted at the contents of future updates. Back in April, they posted some concept art of a Moonbase, alongside the sentence, "we're also working on a Moonbase". It's a pretty strong hint that they might be working on a Moonbase.

Then there's the End of the Line community update, which will accompany the full release of James McVinnie's upcoming Source Filmmaker animation.



All of which are possible avenues for this update to take, but none of which explains why Reddit is so bothered about bread. Bread was added into TF2 last week. There are currently nine different types in the game, all of which have a small chance of popping out of a Teleporter seconds after it's used.

Currently, then, there are no obvious answers, other than that TF2 continues to be a weird game. One additional point, though: if the update is due later this week, it'll coincide with the predicted date of the Steam Summer Sale.

It's bad form to be vulgar in your opening paragraph, and so I'll save my natural reaction to this video for the untamed wasteland below. In the meantime, it's just the facts, sir: a new Source Filmmaker video recreates the spectacular top-down action of Hotline Miami 2's most recent trailer, only in three-dimensions and with Team Fortress 2. It is fu- no, no, save it for the next sentence Phil.



Holy shit this thing! I have an almost uncontrollable reaction to well-made SFM flicks, and, at times, have sat watching the End of the Line trailer on repeat. This has the benefit of drawing from some already exciting looking source material, but the choreography and animation has been pulled off perfectly. All credit to its maker, "Nonamesleft".

For comparison, here's the original Hotline Miami 2 trailer:

Counter-Strike creator Minh Le has been talking to goRGNtv about Valve's most anticipated projects. He's seen artwork of Valve's next Half-Life game, and more of Left 4 Dead 3, which has been rumoured since the Valve database leak late last year.

"I don't know if I can talk about that, to be honest," says Minh of the new Half-Life, "but I think it's kind of public knowledge that people know that it is being worked on. And so if I were to say that yeah, I've seen some images, like some concept art of it, that wouldn't be big news, to be honest." Sorry Minh.

"But yeah, I guess I could say that I did see something that looked kinda like in the Half-Life universe. It wouldn't surprise anyone if I said they're doing it, they're working on it, yeah. So to go on a limb I'd say I did see some concept art for Half-Life 3."

Minh doesn't sound entirely sure, there. The artwork could have been for Half-Life 2: Episode 3, which Valve promised a long, long time ago. Everyone assumes that Valve have dropped the episodic structure to start a full sequel, but Valve have never commented on those specifics. Gabe Newell has repeatedly confirmed that Valve are still working on Half-Life, though, sometimes in code.

Valve haven't talked officially about Left 4 Dead 3, however. "The one thing I'm really excited about is Left 4 Dead, the new Left 4 Dead," says Minh Le. "I saw it, it looks great. I was really excited when I saw that. I was like 'wow, this looks great'.

"I really enjoyed Left 4 Dead, it was just one of those games that really just changed the industry. I think at the time there wasn't many good co-op games, so it was like yeah, this is a great co-op game."

Mihn Le left Valve years ago, so it's not clear when he saw the work he's talking about in this interview, recorded last week. He was hired by Valve to work on Counter-Strike, but he left in the late 2000s to work on Tactical Intervention. Valve, meanwhile, are also supposedly working on a new iteration of the Source engine. Will L4D3 take advantage of that new tech? Will we learn more at E3 next month?

Thanks to Total XBox for the heads up, via the many eyes and ears of GAF.

In the UK, most arcade machines are gaudy, flashing money-sinks, designed to trap the arms of extra-strength-beer-swilling drunks as they attempt to pry loose change from the coin return slot. They are places of hellish despair, rich with unique smells and suspicious stains. In other countries, they also contain the promise of fun, friendship, and not stepping in a puddle of sick. Nowhere is this more the case than in Japan, where an array of popular arcades can still attract the interest of developers. Valve, for instance, are now collaborating with arcade specialists Taito on an arcade port of Left 4 Dead.

An informative trailer has surfaced on the port's official site:



Titled Left 4 Dead: Survivors, the concept will likely be similar in scope to Valve/Taito's previous collaboration, Half-Life 2: Survivor.

That's right, there was a Half-Life 2 arcade game, and it looks amazing. Terrible, sure, but also amazing.





In fairness, those are modes designed for arcade. The game's story mode is... sort of Half-Life 2. If you squint a bit.



If we're all very lucky, Left 4 Dead: Survivors will be similarly terribrilliant.

Have you played every single game in your Steam library? No? Neither have I and that accomplishment is apparently just a small sand grain in the over 288 million games in Steam collections that have never felt a press of the Play button. That's a surprising figure from a new report by Ars Technica researching the most active and popular games on Steam straight from the recorded statistics of some of the platform's 75-million-strong community.

Ars' method for its number flood involves sampling registered games and their played hours via profiles and their unique Steam IDs. With the help of a server for computational muscle, Ars randomly polled more than 100,000 profiles daily for two months to pull together an idea of which games see the most time on everyone's monitors. In other words, your Backlog of Shame (don't deny it, everyone has one) probably took part in some SCIENCE at some point. Exciting.

Some caveats exist, though. The data Ars looked at for its research only extends back to 2009, when Steam brought in its "hours played" tracking system. Owned and played/unplayed games are thus slightly skewed to not account for older releases from the early noughties, and any length of time spent in offline mode wouldn't get picked up by Steam either. Still, Ars claims its results deliver a good picture of Steam gaming trends for the past five years albeit with some imperfections.

Predictably, Valve's personal products stack high on the list in terms of ownership and most played hours. Dota 2 takes the crown with an estimated 26 million players who ganked faces at some point in the MOBA, but free-to-play FPS Team Fortress 2 follows closely behind with a little over 20 million users. Counter-Strike: Source rounds out the top three with nearly 9 million players, but it's also collecting dust in over 3 million libraries.

As for non-Valve games, Skyrim wins in activity, barely edging out Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with 5.7 million estimated active owners. Civilization V kept 5.4 million players hooked for Just One More Turn, and Garry's Mod boasts 4.6 million budding physics artists.

Want to know what the most unplayed Steam game is? It's Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, the Source tech demo given free to pretty much everyone on Steam who bought or fired up Half-Life 2. It hasn't been touched by an approximate 10.7 million players. I guess that old fisherman is feeling pretty lonely right now.

My favorite stat is the total of played hours divided by game mode, more specifically the separate multiplayer clients of the Steam versions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops. The single-player campaigns for each respective title sits modestly within the mid-20-hour range, but the multiplayer side balloons well into the hundreds of hours. It's a pretty obvious indicator of where the biggest chunk of popularity resides in FPS gaming, but it's not like you wouldn't get weird looks for claiming you play Call of Duty for the story anyway.

See more of Ars' results in both number and pretty orange graph form in its report.

For some reason, the Source engine is lodged in my mind as the default baseline for what a game looks like. It's almost ten years old now, but because its characters aren't the angular blockmen of older engines everything since feels like an improvement on that default unit of Graphics. Until, that is, somebody decides to post screenshots of their Unreal Engine recreation of the opening map from Half-Life 2, at which point I'm reminded that we live in 2014 and have access to exponentially more Graphics.

That somebody is environment artist Jeannot "Logithx" van Berlo, whose UDK remake of City 17's train station is a beautiful thing. And as good as these shots look, van Berlo is now considering converting his recreation to the newer, sexier Unreal Engine 4. Ultro-Graphics!

"Still tons of stuff to do like creating all the exterior stuff, train interiors and some smaller models (monitors and props) but then Epic released UE4 in all its glory," van Berlo posted to the Polycount community's "What Are You Working On?" thread. "Please note that there's lots of placeholder models/textures/lighting and general derpyness in these pics," he writes. "Can't wait to get going with UE4."

See all three shots below.







Thanks, Dan Marshall.

Photo by Dan Tab r, from "Faces of Virtual Reality." Click for gallery.

Three days after Oculus announced that it was being purchased by Facebook for $2 billion, the VR company has hired programmer Michael Abrash, who has worked at Valve since 2011. Abrash has been working on Valve's virtual reality technology for the last couple years, and regularly posts deep technical discussions of VR on his blog. Abrash is joining Oculus as Chief Scientist, and in his introductory post on Oculus' website, he cites the Facebook acquisition--and Facebook's deep pockets--as "the final piece of the puzzle" necessary for VR to achieve greatness.

"A lot of what it will take to make VR great is well understood at this point, so it's engineering, not research; hard engineering, to be sure, but clearly within reach," Abrash writes in his introductory post. "However, it's expensive engineering. ... That's why I've written before that VR wouldn't become truly great until some company stepped up and invested the considerable capital to build the right hardware and that it wouldn't be clear that it made sense to spend that capital until VR was truly great. I was afraid that that Catch-22 would cause VR to fail to achieve liftoff.

"That worry is now gone. Facebook's acquisition of Oculus means that VR is going to happen in all its glory. The resources and long-term commitment that Facebook brings gives Oculus the runway it needs to solve the hard problems of VR and some of them are hard indeed. I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can."

Abrash previously worked with John Carmack at id on Quake. He's also worked on Windows for Microsoft and on software graphics rendering.

Just last year, Abrash gave a talk at the Game Developer's Conference about the challenges of VR and showed off Valve's experiments with adding VR support to Team Fortress 2. At the time, Abrash claimed it would take years, or decades, to help VR overcome the limitations of technology. But when Valve showed off its VR technology at Steam Dev Days in January, attendees claimed it was even better than Oculus' Crystal Cove prototype. With Abrash and Carmack now both working at Oculus, Valve's hardware likely won't maintain that edge for long.

Check out our predictions for the future of Oculus Rift in the wake of its acquisition by Facebook.