Apr 29, 2010

Team Fortress 2 - Valve

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

Fixed several issues with the Source SDK
Added new items to commemorate our 119th (or so) update
Scout's "Retire the Runner" achievement updated to be
- "Kill a Scout while they are under the effect of Crit-a-Cola."
Added a 20% damage bonus to The Backburner.
Fixed the Flare Gun's afterburn duration being lowered by the Flamethrower's duration reduction.
Fixed the teleporter exit using the wrong particle effect.
Fixed HUD damage indicators not appearing.
Fixed Teleporters not reverting to level 1 when their other side is destroyed.
Fixed receiving damage not causing view-kicks on players.
Fixed Engineers & Spies being able to circumvent build restrictions.
Fixed Server Browser not saving filter settings properly.
Fixed a client crash in the targetID on clients running custom HUDs

Apr 29, 2010

Team Fortress 2 Update Puts A Medal On Your Chest

Team Fortress 2

Flush with pride over the game's 119th update, Valve today released another update for online shooter Team Fortress 2, designed to honour those that have been with the game since its launch all the way back in 2007.

Along with a few minor tweaks to the mechanics of the game, it introduces three types of medals players can wear on their chests, which reflect how long they've been playing the game. If you played your first game of TF2 twelve months (or later) after the game's release, you get a bronze "Weekend Warrior" badge.

Those whose first game was between 3-12 months after the game first came out, you get a silver "Soldier of Fortune" badge. And those lucky few, the pioneers who played their first game within the first three months of the game's launch? You get the gold "grizzled veteran" medal. Wear it with pride, soldier. You deserve it.

Sounds paltry, but for a community so passionate and loyal (not to mention vain) as Team Fortress 2's, they'll be seen as valuable commodities. And rightly so. If you're still playing an online shooter nearly three years after it came out, you deserve that medal.

To read up on the 119th update - and a great rundown of the 118 before it - hit Valve's blog below.

119 [Team Fortress 2]

Apr 29, 2010

Valve Launches Collectible Line With TF2, Half-Life & Left 4 Dead Statues

Half-Life 2

Valve Launches Collectible Line With TF2, Half-Life & Left 4 Dead Statues We've been complaining about the lack of Team Fortress 2 collectibles for months now. We even did it yesterday. That complaining stops today, however, with the reveal of a gorgeous statue based on the game's "Heavy".

It'll stand a whopping 12 inches tall, and come in both red and blue flavours (with exclusive variants with different facial expressions), so as not to have anyone feeling left out.

Best part? It's just the first in an entire line of them, so hopefully we'll see each and every member of the Team Fortress 2 team represented.

Actually, no. That's not the best part. The best part is that Gaming Heads, the studio responsible for the statues, is also releasing a line of statues based on Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead, as well as "life size props". The presence of a Portal logo on the company's website has us thinking "life size portal gun".

Life size props? Half-Life 2 statues?

Goodness me.

Pre-orders for the Heavy begin at 9am on May 3. Get in line.

Apr 28, 2010

Team Fortress 2 Update Released

Team Fortress 2 - Valve

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

Added new community map cp_freight
Added missing physics models for several items
Added jiggle bones to the Sam & Max items, and The Buff Banner
Added Crit-a-Cola

Dedicated Server

Linux optimizations.
Fixed Linux servers not relisting correctly after a master server restart
Fixed a case where servers could have "ghost" players consuming player slots

Engine

Marked the "snd_show" convar as a cheat

Gameplay Changes

Pyro changes
- Flamethrower direct damage reduced 20%.
- Burn duration reduced (10 -> 6 seconds).
- Airblast re-fire delay reduced by 25%.
- Airblast ammo usage reduced by 20%.
- All reflected rockets/grenades/arrows now mini-crit.
- Airblasting enemies into environmental deaths now awards the death credit to the Pyro.
Heavy changes
- Minigun spin-up/down time reduced by 25%
- Minigun firing movement speed increased to just under half-normal (from 80 to 110).
- Throwing a sandvich to a teammate now earns a full bonus point (was half a point).
Bonk! changes
- Post-use movement penalty removed.
- Now has a re-use cooldown time, like The Sandman.
The Chargin' Target changes
- Direct charge hit now does 50 damage + 10 per head (up to 5 heads).
- Capped the turn rate from +left and +right while charging.
The Huntsman changes
- Removed restriction that arrows need to be aimed before they can be lit by a Pyro.
- Bow can now be lowered without losing the lit arrow.
- Changed bow so you can start charging it while you're jumping, but you can't fire until you're on the ground.
- Fixed bug where flame effect would get stuck on if you change weapons with a lit arrow.
Backpack changes
- Moved Crafting button out to the root class/backpack selection panel.
- Dragging and dropping items in your backpack now makes appropriate sounds.
Bot changes
- Bots don't retreat to gather health as readily if they are in combat.
- Bots no longer retreat when moving to block a point capture.
- Bots should now equip an appropriate combat weapon and fight while moving to collect health.
- Bots who are roaming the map and hunting now chase down their victims, following them around corners.
- Bots That fire projectiles (ie: rockets/grenades/etc) don't hold down their fire button for a minimum time. This was causing Soldier bots to fire rockets into nearby walls as they strafed, killing themselves.
- Soldiers bots now switch to their shotgun after firing all four rockets when engaging an enemy.
- Added a few more bot names from community suggestions.
- Fixed a behavior loop with Engineer metal gathering.
The Sandman change
- Added a slight speed reduction to stunned players.
Community requests
- Added ConVars log_verbose_enable and log_verbose_interval to report player positions in the server log at regular intervals
  - log_verbose_enable default: 0
  - log_verbose_interval default: 3 secs
- "Last-weapon" initialization on respawn now sets itself to be the melee weapon if you donâ€™t have a selectable secondary weapon (like The Razorback).

Bug Fixes

Fixed an case where The Gunboats didnâ€™t apply their damage reduction properly.
The amount count in the HUD now flashes red when youâ€™re low on ammo.
Extinguishing a burning teammate now earns a full bonus point (was half a point).
Fixed a permanent overheal exploit involving dispensers.
Fixed a bug in spectator mode where the user aborted out of freezecam, setup a spec mode (like IN_EYE), and would then have the setting stomped after the freezecam timer expired.
Fixed bug with disguised spy sometimes seeing his own name in the disguise status HUD.
Fixed a client crash that could result from players with arrows embedded in them.
Fixed items that can be worn by any class having the wrong model when worn by a disguised Spy.
Added missing map prefixes to server browser game types.
Killing yourself with your own sentry no longer increments the sentry's kill counter.
Fixed dropped hats sometimes having the wrong team color.
Fixed crit-boosted players not getting critical hits if their weapon has custom no-crit behavior.
Fixed the achievement dialog taking a long time to pop up, and completed achievements now sort to the bottom of the list.
Fixed Spies disguised as Medics hearing the autocaller sound.

Apr 27, 2010

Team Fortress 2 Action Figure Has Many Faces

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 Action Figure Has Many Faces Renowned custom toy creator Jin Saotome, who you've seen before, is back and telling Valve how it should be spending its merchandising budget: on action figures.

Jin's custom Spy figure, from online shooterTeam Fortress 2, may have ridiculous knees, but everything else about him is spot-on, from his stupid grin to the "masks" he can wear to sneak around behind someone braver and shank them in the ribs.

If you're up for an online adrenaline rush it's available on eBay. Failing that, you could just head to Jin's DeviantART page and check it out in detail.

Spy vs Pyro vs Scout vs etc [Jin @ DeviantART, via Tomopop]

Team Fortress 2 Action Figure Has Many Faces

Apr 20, 2010

Thanks for standin still, wanker.

Team Fortress 2 - SZ

<img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/loadout.png" width="420" height="204" border="0">

Today we're shipping some significant changes to the item drop system.

<ul>
<li>Previously, we rolled randomly at intervals to see if you got an item drop. Now we roll to determine when your next item drop will occur. So you're guaranteed to find items at fairly regular intervals. The bulk of drop complaints we've received in the past have been from players having unlucky streaks, where they didn't find any items for weeks. That won't be possible now.</li>
<li>We've significantly increased the rate at which item drops occur, compared to the previous average interval.</li>
<li>There's now a maximum amount of playtime per week in which you get item drops. Playing beyond that amount won't find any more items. The amount varies, but if you play an hour or so a day you're good. Some of your unused time will rollover to the following week, so if you're an intermittent player you'll also be fine.</li>
</ul>
What are the net effects of these changes? Here's the quick summary:
<ul>
<li>If you're an idler, you're going to find fewer items than you were prior to this change. Sorry. On the bright side, there's less reason to idle, because it won't earn more than players who are playing regularly.</li>
<li>Everyone else will find items more frequently, and with greater regularity.</li>
</ul>
We're still thinking about how to allow you to influence your drops. When we see discussions on the forums, people often ask why we don't tie it to some in-game performance (like your scoreboard position, or number of kills, etc). Many players understand that if we did this, idle servers would simply change into servers running plugins that generate those in-game events frequently (as we saw in the Soldier & Demoman WAR!).

There's another side of it that we care about just as much, which is the message it would send to all the players who don't want to idle. Any in-game performance metric we chose would result in there being specific maps, classes, tactics, and so on that resulted in more drops. We really don't want that to happen. When it's simply playtime, you're free to play the game however you like. If you love Payload, you can play Payload maps without worrying about whether you're earning less drops than the guys playing Arena maps. Community mapmakers don't have to worry about whether their maps earn item drops fast enough. Similarly, server operators can configure their servers however they like, without worrying about reducing the rate at which their players are earning drops. In short, while it's far from perfect, not tying to in-game performance is a lot less poisonous to your minute-to-minute game experience.

Apr 20, 2010

Thanks for standin still, wanker.

Team Fortress 2 - SZ

Today we're shipping some significant changes to the item drop system.

Previously, we rolled randomly at intervals to see if you got an item drop. Now we roll to determine when your next item drop will occur. So you're guaranteed to find items at fairly regular intervals. The bulk of drop complaints we've received in the past have been from players having unlucky streaks, where they didn't find any items for weeks. That won't be possible now.
We've significantly increased the rate at which item drops occur, compared to the previous average interval.
There's now a maximum amount of playtime per week in which you get item drops. Playing beyond that amount won't find any more items. The amount varies, but if you play an hour or so a day you're good. Some of your unused time will rollover to the following week, so if you're an intermittent player you'll also be fine.

What are the net effects of these changes? Here's the quick summary:

If you're an idler, you're going to find fewer items than you were prior to this change. Sorry. On the bright side, there's less reason to idle, because it won't earn more than players who are playing regularly.
Everyone else will find items more frequently, and with greater regularity.

We're still thinking about how to allow you to influence your drops. When we see discussions on the forums, people often ask why we don't tie it to some in-game performance (like your scoreboard position, or number of kills, etc). Many players understand that if we did this, idle servers would simply change into servers running plugins that generate those in-game events frequently (as we saw in the Soldier & Demoman WAR!).

There's another side of it that we care about just as much, which is the message it would send to all the players who don't want to idle. Any in-game performance metric we chose would result in there being specific maps, classes, tactics, and so on that resulted in more drops. We really don't want that to happen. When it's simply playtime, you're free to play the game however you like. If you love Payload, you can play Payload maps without worrying about whether you're earning less drops than the guys playing Arena maps. Community mapmakers don't have to worry about whether their maps earn item drops fast enough. Similarly, server operators can configure their servers however they like, without worrying about reducing the rate at which their players are earning drops. In short, while it's far from perfect, not tying to in-game performance is a lot less poisonous to your minute-to-minute game experience.

Apr 20, 2010

Thanks for standin still, wanker.

Team Fortress 2

Today we're shipping some significant changes to the item drop system.

Previously, we rolled randomly at intervals to see if you got an item drop. Now we roll to determine when your next item drop will occur. So you're guaranteed to find items at fairly regular intervals. The bulk of drop complaints we've received in the past have been from players having unlucky streaks, where they didn't find any items for weeks. That won't be possible now.
We've significantly increased the rate at which item drops occur, compared to the previous average interval.
There's now a maximum amount of playtime per week in which you get item drops. Playing beyond that amount won't find any more items. The amount varies, but if you play an hour or so a day you're good. Some of your unused time will rollover to the following week, so if you're an intermittent player you'll also be fine.