Yes like Panda mentioned below we are indeed on our way back. I was originally going to postpone this until early September since I’m on a laptop with horrible hotel internet for a month, but one high FPS config and a late night scrim made me change my mind. I’ll reveal who’s joining the new roster in a few days once I get confirmations from everyone, but most of the old crew will be back (and maybe that will be motivation to update our About Us page…)!
For those of you interested in the Engy update and some GotFrag drama I’ll try and make some posts later. For those of you interested in comp TF2: give it a try you won’t be disappointed CEVO Season 6 is around the corner (deadline is Aug 8th so sign up by the end of the week!), and they’ve already posted a tentative map rotation and weapon bans.
P-Rec 1.5 is out. It fixes the crashing since the last tf2 update.
Here’s the update log:
* fixed game crash.
* fixed screenshot (score and status) crash
* renamed prec_show_stv_status to status_stv
* status_stv prints result in console
Big update from Valve (according to AIgaming’s control panel, they recompiled the entire engine): lots of balance tweaks to heavy/pyro, addition of cp_freight_final (boo!) as an official community map, FIXED the dispenser exploit (LOL I actually emailed Robin Walker a few days ago), broke the Charging Targe script with +left and +right, and some others. Read all about it here!
Try these things if you’re having problems (and check back on these links in a few days to download updates for these addons):
1) Disable sourcemod from the server (rename your server addons folder to something else like addonsbkp)
2) Disable P-Rec in your own addons folder (again, rename it to something else).
3) As of 9pm EST, if you use directX 8, you won’t be able to join servers without crashing as well. Not a surprise – they used to break dx8 all the time last year. Just have to wait this one out.
EDIT: as of 11pm EST, directX 8 is FIXED.
4) disable your custom HUD until they release updates for the new ammo count flashing.
5) servers will take quite a while to update – took about 25 minutes for our AIgaming server.
There are a few fairly new custom maps coming into the rotation for both ESEA and CEVO. The ones I’ll highlight today are cp_obscure (week 6 of CEVO) and cp_coldfront_rc2 (week 3 I think for ESEA).
The first map is obscure, made by Byte who plays for an European team, TCM (and used to play for FakkelBrigade). You can get the rc3 version HERE, or check his website for the latest releases. This is a map we will have to learn for CEVO. After Valve released the snowy themes for TF2, it feels like a lot of the custom maps use them now, which is sad because my frames drop horrendously on maps like koth_viaduct. Maybe it’s the weather (which I have to remember to turn off…), but in 24 player pubs I get maybe 10-20 fps.
The next map is cp_coldfront, which is on rc2. You can also download it here, or check the TF2maps thread for the latest updates. This came out fairly recently, but has already been approved to be in the ESEA rotation for this season. Comments are mostly positive for the map created by the same person who made cp_waste, a map that most people are iffy about because of how slow it plays out (similar to cp_well). Unfortunately, waste has been in the TWL rotation for 2 seasons now, maybe they’ll take it out this season?
This post is kind of silly because I’m sure most people follow the TF2 blog, but I assume that I am not the only one that no longer checks it regularly and consequently hears about all the updates on a later schedule. Anyway… I kind of suspected something was up when our server dispensed quite a few more item drops than usual last night, and of course the Valve blog confirmed it: item drops now happen on a regular basis! I don’t particularly enjoy the items/hats aspect of the game, but at least now they have made it regular and reliable. Now there will be fewer disappointing moments of “let’s go join Baldy’s TF2 game! Oh no wait, he’s idling. ” and “how can that dude have played more than 200 hours in the last two weeks?”. So, yeah, it’s cool. Someone on GotFrag (sorry, I can’t find the link) suggested that people could idle all night for one night a week, so they can get all the drops possible that week just in case they are unable to play for whatever reason. It’s an interesting idea!
ALSO, Reddit pointed me to this interesting post from the TF2Stats forums that details graphically (read: with graphs!) the changes in the item drop system. It’s an excellent read! FireSlash neatly sums up the consequences of the new system with “This [item drop system] doesn’t eliminate idling from the game, nor does it in any way punish those who have idled. Instead it merely eliminates the effectiveness of it, since anyone who regularly plays won’t get any more items if they idle.”
I might have some video to post later (pro engie moments), if I manage to get my Spanish presentation put together efficiently tonight. EDIT: Sorry, looks like I won’t have time tonight. I’ll do it soon, I promise. Only two more weeks of classes for me! Then I’ll be able to spend all my free time writing verbose essays about this video game. It’s going to be awesome.
First off, on our end, a big welcome to Synthos, our newest soldier after Panda decided to move himself to backup. A week or so in and we are making some progress getting settled down, and we should be good to go once CEVO picks up and TWL starts. We played VIR evenly in our qualifer match for TWL, so expect us to move up to Div 2 (since 90% of Div1 and 2 teams currently are dead or not doing TWL). As for CEVO, we may get a forfeit win against Infinite Rage (which died a few weeks back), which works out since we are still getting used to scrimming together.
ESEA teams are finalized and ready to go, with 40 teams in Open and 8 in Invite, 2 (or 3?) of which are sponsored by Blight this season, who is also sponsoring an Open team as well (!). A lot of last minute roster changes, with some familiar names coming back after a break from competitive TF2. Viaduct is the first week’s map, so hopefully we will get a chance to learn the map as well.
CommFT has put out two good articles, one is a roaming soldier roundtable with some good comments about what to think about as a soldier playing away from the medic during holds and some pushes; the other article is put out by Sigma talking about things to consider before deciding on a push. Both are very, very enlightening especially for teams who are looking to improve their chemistry and become more aggressive in their playstyle; check them out!
Finally, a couple of good frag videos from the Invite teams, with Area 51 (Muscle Milk and Moolians) putting out a team-oriented frag vid, and Pandemic (who is now sponsored by Blight I think) with some sweet frags in their vid as well. Both are very professionally done, worth a watch just for some of the movement and coordination from the A51 vid.
Mumble. Superior than Teamspeak in every way. Version 1.2 brought lots of nice things as well, most importantly superior voice quality.
PVHUD. A really good HUD that has a auto-update feature. Whenever a tf2 update comes out, all you need to do is run the .exe file, and your HUD updates to the latest version. Excellent for lazy people like myself. Another great feature is the way it shows damage dealt. It displays it above your enemies head, and near the bottom of your screen, above your health. It’s often helpful to be able to glance at damage done on your last shot. m0re’s HUD and communitytf2hud are other great options. Try ‘em all.
tf2compconfiguration A really good all around config. I know some people like to manually code their config, but even if you want to customize your config, this is a good starting place to do so from. Some of the features I use often are:
start-stop demo with f8
view ping, interp, loss with f7
N to forward spawn
autoheal toggle
changing interp with – +
weapon visibility toggle
key bound to rcon_password, as well as the different .cfg’s
POV Record automatically starts recording a demo from your POV when in tournament mode, and both teams become ready. It stops the demo when the game ends. It records the demo with the map, date, and time so you can easily find it later. You can set it so that any killstreaks [user defined number of kills in a life] get recorded with the tick number in a .txt file.
For your server, there’s no reason to NOT have SOAP DM installed. Especially good for warming up while the other team makes up excuses for why their sixth isn’t coming in.
My name is Peter aka Synthos aka Offensive. I’ve played tf2 for a while now I’m not even sure when I started. I’ve been in and out of TF2 while I was kicking my WoW addiction . Now I’m here to stay and finally take my TF2 to the next level. I’ve played roamer mostly, but I believe I can make a strong pocket as well. Just give me a little time and I’ll get the mindset down.
IRL, I’m just finishing my undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering and going straight into working at an optics company doing programming. Here’s my schedule as it stands I don’t know that it will change much over the summer.
Mondays: Soccer (varying kickoff times from 6EST to 11EST), and during the summer I will be back earlier because there would be no lights.
Tues/Wed: free
Thursdays: Going to be pretty booked, but can come on later like 9:30/10 EST
Fri/Sat: Free sometimes, other times I’m out with friends
UPDATE3: Videos are up check the bottom of the post
Yep it’s finally the weekend to go to PAX East 2010 in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center. The TF2 tournament is in the freeplay area on the 3rd floor, starting at 6pm. Details are limited, and it’s hard to tell who’s even going to be there, but it should be interesting to watch even if I can’t find a team to join If there’s a decent team looking for a medic or soldier to ring for them, contact me!
EDIT: Updating live from PAX, about 10-12 teams it seems have signed up, mostly casual, (the rest of the pug team I’m playing with hasn’t even heard of competitive TF2 -- ‘can we have 2 medics?’ XD) but I did recognize a few famous faces, see if you can recognize them below! Start-time is delayed until 7PM due to steam issues, I’ll have more photos of some matchplaying later. I kinda wish I had bought a BYOC ticket now, they gave out a free copy of Battlefield Bad Company2 =O and a Nvidia bathrobe…?
UPDATE2: Congrats to ‘Snuggies’ for taking the tournament, 16 teams in total (!!!), with a bunch of (I assumed) PA guys (aka FARTS) facing off against them in the final on gpit (2-0). Snow Bear University had a tough granary match against them in the semis which was a pretty intense game to watch (5-1). The TF2 cosplayers also had a decent pug team going and made it to the semis, sorry I didn’t catch your ingame tags The rosters:
Overall I think it was a very smoothly run tourney (except for some steam issues in the beginning). Despite many people not having played comp 6v6 before, everyone seemed like they had a lot of fun, and the comp players had their good games in the later runs. There were quite a few chuckles when it was announced that cp_well was the first map, and that an admin had to be present to watch you turn mouse acceleration off, but I think it was a pretty big success, with 16 teams signing up in the end. Double elimination would have been fun, but would have taken quite a long time
And now for more pictures and videos after the break!
orzTF2 is now sponsored by SavageGaming! ESEA Season 8 registration ends Jan 3rd, make sure you sign up!07:10 AM December 14, 2010from web
CEVO is over! 1-2 loss vs. natures on gpit. best of luck to everyone else. orz is looking for a solly and scout for next season!07:13 PM November 09, 2010from web
ESEA Season almost over - 3 losses in a row :( but 2 last badlands matches vs. carnal gaming and the terribles. Hope to finish strong!11:52 PM October 22, 2010from web
CEVO Season 6 is around the corner (deadline is Aug 8th so sign up by the end of the week!), and they’ve already posted a tentative map rotation and weapon bans. 
” and “how can that dude have played more than 200 hours in the last two weeks?”. So, yeah, it’s cool. Someone on GotFrag (sorry, I can’t find the link) suggested that people could idle all night for one night a week, so they can get all the drops possible that week just in case they are unable to play for whatever reason. It’s an interesting idea!
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