TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

Hey, new stuff!

1. Halloween/Full Moon is in effect for the next seven calendar days.
2. “Limited” is now an item quality, to stand for items that were once craftable or purchasable and no longer can be.
3. There are five promotional Halloween/Full Moon restricted items that can be earned if you purchase the game Alien: Isolation from the Steam Store before October 7th, 2014. This one-player survival horror game is $49.99, with a $17.99 upgrade to Season Pass.
4. The following new items and changes to the item drop list are thus:
   • Two new crates, the Director’s Cut Reel and the Limited Late Summer Crate (#86) are added to the drop list.
     • The Limited Late Summer Crate cannot yet be opened, required a yet-unreleased special key.
     • The Director’s Cut Reel is like a combination of the Strongbox and the Audition Reel: It will drop one of four taunts when opened with a standard key, but you can input words to use to “roll” for different items. It drops from the same drop list of taunts as the Audition Reel.
   • The Audition Reel is removed from the drop list.
   • Items from the all-cosmetic Strongbox Pack, released back in February, are now craftable and buyable from the Mann Co. Store.
5. The rest of the patch notes.
   • The taunt for the Scorch Shot now shoots a projectile.  Apparently that was a bug!
   • New sounds for the Boston Basher.

1. Halloween Mode On for the Next Week

Why? Probably has something to do with the Alien-themed promotional items (see 3.).

2. “Limited” Item Quality

Items that cannot be crafted or bought in the Mann Co. Store (but had once been craftable or purchasable) are now given a new item quality prefix of “Limited” Quantity. This item quality doesn’t change the color of the item text, but the prefix is assumably added to all items to let people know that Valve seem to be making two promises: 1) More copies of a discontinued item will not be available, thus preserving the rarity (and thus the market value) of those items; and 2) Valve are helping the fanbase to easily identify items that are rare, or at least, cannot simply be bought or earned again.  Hopefully Valve remembers to tag all applicable items with the prefix!

3. Alien: Isolation Promo Items for TF2!

Now you can be Amanda Ripley, looking for your mama and trying not to become alien food and/or wear new Alien-themed hats in Team Fortress 2!   There are five items; three for the Scout, and two for the Pyro.  The Scout items dress him up in an Alien costume:

Scout cosmetic

Scout cosmetic

Scout cosmetic

Pyro cosmetic

Pyro cosmetic

Here’s the nifty part: one of the Pyro’s two items is a reskinned flamethrower! And a Pyro wearing both of his promo items will do more damage to Scouts that are wearing a set of three-Alien-promo items! But I don’t think that the three Scout items count as a set (like the Pyro’s), nor do they have any special effect.  All five items are Halloween/Full Moon restricted.

4. New Crates!

Yay!  But they can’t be opened yet.  Boo!

I’ll post an item list here when we can open them….

5. Full Patch Notes

• Added Alien: Isolation promo items^[1] and enabled Full Moon holiday for one week
• Added Limited Quantity Item attribute on items that can no longer be crafted or purchased through the Mann Co. Store
  • Limited Quantity Items can be placed on the Steam Community Market
• Removed Audition Reel from crate drop list
• Added Director’s Cut Reel to crate drop list
• Added Limited Late Summer Crate to crate drop list
• Fixed the Festive Bat using the lowest LOD for the first person view
• Fixed the Scorch Shot taunt attack not firing a projectile
• Fixed incorrect bumpmap setting for the Frenchman’s Beret
• Updated the equip_region for the Mustachioed Mann
• Updated sounds for the Boston Basher

Undocumented changes

• Changed the cosmetic items from the Strongbox Pack to be craftable, and added them to the Mann Co. Store.
• Fixed the incorrect description on Horace.
• Corrected the name of Community items on the web.

[N] Obey

Hark! Yet another minor TF2 update, again adjusting the two beta maps!  But wait–there is some other stuff going on….

1. Demomen can no longer detonate sticky bombs while taunting.
2. Strange ranks are no longer displayed on the web.

Also, Terraria now has an updated official website, which has some spoilers for the upcoming Lunar Update!

TF2 Full Patch Notes

• Fixed a client crash related to the robot destruction HUD
• Fixed an exploit where players could circumvent successful kick votes
• Demoman can no longer detonate sticky bombs while taunting
• Strange Ranks are no longer displayed on the web (Trade, Steam backpack, Market) and only show ‘Strange’ as a prefix
• Default value for convar sv_vote_issue_scramble_teams_cooldown has been increased to 20 minutes
• Fixed sound clipping issue for the Demoman’s Spent Well Spirits taunt
• Added Jarate lightwarp preset to the Steam Workshop importer
• Updated the model/materials for the Neckwear Headwear to fix a lighting issue
• Updated pl_cactuscanyon
  • Increased amount of time the middle gates remain open before and after a train passes in stage 2
  • Adjusted spawn times at end of stage 2
• Updated rd_asteroid
  • Removed env_sun from the skybox
  • Optimized skybox performance
  • Lowered Scout/Sniper damage against robots
  • Fixed doubled-up health kits on the bridge
  • Added area portals to the base interiors to improve performance
  • Continued art-pass process
  • Fixed zebra-style art on static props on systems that used lower texture quality
• Added experimental cpu_frequency_monitoring convar to detect thermal throttling. If you have TF2 performance problems on Windows, add “+cpu_frequency_monitoring 2” to the TF2 command line to see if CPU thermal throttling is an issue. If the displayed CPU frequency percentage drops below about 80-85% then you may have a problem with your CPU slowing down due to overheating. If it drops below 50-55% then you may have a serious problem. CPU overheating can be caused by overclocking, insufficient cooling, insufficient airflow, failing or dirty fans, or other causes. The CPU frequency results are displayed with cl_showfps or net_graph. For more detail see https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2715-YIPD-6873

[N] Obey

[EDIT: All servers are now back up.  Any stats you earned while playing were logged and will automatically update on the next map reset, even though it didn't notify you in-game.  As you were, soldier!  --[N] Obey]

Oh look!  More bugfixes!  Here’s the short version:

1. More changes to pl_cactuscanyon and rd_asteroid.
   • Asteroid now has more bots to kill than before.
   • Power core pickups now restore some ammo and health on pickup.
2. Apparition’s Aspect is now paintable!

Yeah, just a bunch of little stuff.  Here’s the long version:

Full Patch Notes

• Added taunts to the items that can be uploaded to the Steam Workshop
• Added new “Taunt” and “Halloween” tags to the Steam Workshop
  • Previous entries marked with the “Halloween 2013″ tag will automatically be updated to use the new tag in the coming days
• Added tournament medals for the ETF2L and RETF2 EE22
• Client/server performance improvements
• Improved client memory usage by updating weapons to only be loaded on demand
• Improved edict usage on servers to help eliminate “out of edicts” errors during round restarts
• Fixed a server crash caused by using the “map” command in the console while the server is running
• Fixed a client crash when switching between windowed-mode and fullscreen for Mac OS X and Linux clients
• Re-enabled HTML MOTD support for Mac OS X and Linux clients
• Extended the server’s “status” command to display edict usage and player/bot counts
  • status output also includes basic class stats…not fully implemented yet
• Fixed custom content not being shown while watching .dem files that were recorded on servers running with sv_pure
• Fixed an exploit that involved players killing teammates via telefrag by switching to Spectator
• Fixed bad LODs for The Angel of Death coat for the Medic
• Fixed push triggers applying push values twice when lag compensation is being done
• Fixed a Hammer crash related to changing entity types for an existing entity
• Fixed Strange flamethrowers not getting kill credit for deflected projectiles
• Fixed mini-crit and taunt-invite icons being orphaned in the world
• Fixed the Festive Force-a-Nature using the wrong taunt animation
• Fixed the difficulty value not displaying correctly in the Mann vs. Machine scoreboard
• Fixed Mann vs. Machine bots floating in the air when they die from an explosion
• Fixed the Pyro’s clap sounds clipping the voice lines during the Party Trick taunt
• Fixed the Short Circuit creating its firing effects when being deployed
• Fixed Mini-Sentry collision hull being scaled smaller than it should be
• The Frying Pan can now accept Kills While Explosive Jumping strange parts
• Updated the equip_region for the Mining Light and Lord Cockswain’s Novelty Mutton Chops and Pipe
• Updated the materials for the Apparition’s Aspect and made it paintable
• Updated the Eternaween vote so it cannot be initiated by clients without using the Eternaween
• Updated the localization files
• Updated pl_cactuscanyon
  • Completed permanent removal of previous stage 2 from the map
  • Removed the rollback hill in stage 2, and adjusted neighboring u-turn
  • Adjusted the right-hand spawn exit for Blu in stage 2
  • Reworked Sniper window above underpass in stage 2
  • Adjusted spawn times in stage 2
  • Added flatcars to the train in stage 2
  • Blu side path from cart spawn to underpass is now a drop-down in stage 2
  • Widened a doorway along the cart-path in stage 2
• Updated rd_asteroid
  • Removed spawn advantage for attackers that die in the enemy base
  • Moved health and ammo above the front door stairs further into the base
  • Increased bot count. Summed total health and points in each section remains the same.
  • Power core pickups now give health and ammo to the collector
  • Removed small health kit above cave exit
  • Added medium ammo kit in the caves near the medium health kit

   

Hey, you read this far!  Good for you!  By the way, the rumor is that Terraria’s Lunar Update is expected sometime in November 2014!

[N] Obey

As you may have read on the forums here and here, admin |N| Jib is hosting a Stats Contest on server #15, which is a fast respawn 24/7 Hightower payload race server! You can win prizes and honorz for being the top ranked player at the end of the month, having the most dominations, and more!

This contest will also help push usage of this all-Hightower-all-the-time server.  The following recent changes were also applied:

1. Engineer sentries are disabled (destroyed when built) when the active player count is less than six players.
2. Engineer mini-sentries are disabled when the active player count is less than sixteen players. When trying to repopulate a server, playing against sentries without a team tends to cause people to give up and leave the server.
3. Server #15 is now its own category on our HLStats page.
4. “Fast respawn” should mean a five-second respawn.
5. Stats were reset on August 30th.  The contest runs through the end of September.
6. Prizes! We’ll be giving away prizes for: Most Points – Most Time Played – Dominations – Deaths – Godlikes (12+ killstreaks)

And hey, if you want to be a TF2Newbs admin, this is an opportunity to get involved!

[N] Obey

Not a whole lot going on with this latest patch:

1. rd_asteroid was changed, and then repatched to the previous version.
2. pl_cactuscanyon temporarily removed its second stage.
3. Snipers can no longer jump immediately after firing a scoped shot.  This will change the dynamics of counter-sniping.
4. One new promo item: Horace!  It is not yet available.

Patch 1

• Added a new promo item^[1]
• Client/server memory improvements
• Fixed ragdolls not applying the ice/gold effect for cosmetic items
• Fixed the Australium Scattergun material looking pixelated
• Fixed some issues with clipped text in the localized versions
• Fixed the difficulty of the current challenge not displaying correctly in the MvM scoreboard
• Snipers can no longer jump immediately after firing a scoped shot
• Updated the materials for The Dalokohs Bar
• Updated the equip_region for The Dashin’ Hashshashin
• Updated the Stout Shako to fix a lighting problem
• Updated the localization files
• Updated rd_asteroid
  • Added line of sight blocker to the front doors to prevent Snipers on battlements from shooting into the bases
  • Removed reduced spawn time bonus for players that die in the enemy base
  • Moved interior battlements health and ammo further into the base
• Updated pl_cactuscanyon
  • Stage 2
    • Removed from the sequence so stage 1 links to stage 3
  • Stage 3
    • Added rollback to cart while in the train collision zone
    • Cart is now unavailable to push for a short period at the start
    • Adjust spawn times during the final push-pull
    • Pushed spawn gates forward in the right-side exits of Blu spawn
    • Adjusted cover surrounding the middle exit of Red spawn

Patch 2

Rolled back the previous changes to rd_asteroid

[N] Obey