TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

Grey Devil reporting in. Newbs’ resident crab-of-many-names.

A lot of members from Newbs have been spurned by the new item drop system (I know I have). And while the system may not be perfect, Koans decided on Sunday to give users what they wanted. No, not the new unlocks (but I’m sure he would if he could), he went one better over Valve. He threw another (in)famous Newbs Instant Contest: Win Koans’ Money!

Nothing gets people motivated more than cold. hard. cash.

What kind of depraved, whorish, insane shennanigans did Koans’ twisted mind come up with this time around? He challenged the #4 2fort server engineers to build a full setup in the other team’s sink room. Having to build a lvl 3 sentry, lvl 3 dispenser, and working teleporter (exit in sink room and entrance in the home base) proved to be quite difficult and Koans kept everyone motivated by doubling the prize.

There were a few people who got very close (Scott, Ggg, Steven and a few others) but in the end Waffle Frohman rose to the occasion and was victorious! Congratulations. I do hope everyone had a good time, keep an eye out because you never know when and where the next instant contest might be.

On a related note: I’d like to personally thank Koans for putting the time, expense and effort in keeping the community a great place to be. You dont have to be an admin to make these contributions; so if you’d like to donate money, complete something in Octo’s to-do list or anything else you can think of that benefits Newbs you’re welcome to do so.

You like girls right?  Wanna know whats better than a girl?  A girl giving you free stuff!  -

For immediate Release

Tara Wants You To Win cool stuff!

The Newbs T-shirts have been widely coveted by all the Newbs.

See: http://www.tf2newbs.com/forum/index.php/topic,2789.msg47582.html#msg47582

So… your chance to win one has started today with Tara’s Payload Pimps’ First Official Contest.

Play on #7 (Payload Rotation) and for each 60 minutes of play, you earn one e-ticket into the drawing.

Three winners will each receive:
Custom TF2Newbs.com T-shirt
Custom TF2Newbs.com Mousepad
Reserve Slot on #7
honorz

Newly added: Mini-contests.

Chances for you to win more tickets doing specific things.

The first mini-contest is for designing a new MOTD (that’s the screen you get when you join a server). Due date is Thursday for this one.

Details here:
Contest Details are Great!!! Win Stuffs playing Payload Maps

As always, the most important things are to play nice and have fun!  Oh yeah, and join TPP here: Taras Payload Pimps Steam Group (tf2newbs)

Its been a little while since I’ve wrote anything. We have quite a few upcoming events / special nights / etc planned.

First off – the HlstatsX:CE Stats will be archived and reset May 1st, they will be restarted sometime on May 4th.

This week:
Saturday Apr 25th – ‘No Spies Saturday 2Fort’ Where: Server #5 (69.12.37.15:27015 ) 3-6PM PDT

Sunday Apr 26th – ‘Stats Free Sunday’ Where: All Newbs servers with HlstatsX – No stats after first map change on Sunday, until first map change on Monday.

Monday Apr 27th – ‘Melee Madness 2Fort’ Where: Server #5 6PM?-8PM? PDT (This will be posted on the forums)

Tuesday Apr 28th – ‘Payload Playtest/Special Stats Night’ Where: Server #7 7PM-??? PDT Event Details

Coming Soon:
Friday May 1st – ‘Stock CP Speed Rotation’ Where: Server #8 6:00-9:00pm PDT.

I’m also working on bringing some new custom events to server #4, these should take place sometime in the near future – I’d like to do a play test of both of the mods done by Cmptrwz before we open them up to the ‘public’ =)

We have added an ARENA Rotation server due to popular demand – we’ll be testing it for a month to see how popular it ends up. Its based out of Chicago. Its ip is 69.12.91.12:27015 – I’ll try to schedule a few planned sessions for the regulars to see if we can boost the popularity of it. If you’d like to be a part of the server start up team please let one of the following people know: Grey Devil, Ggglygy, irlubomirsky, or octo-dhd :)

In other news I’ve been informed by YOU’RE ALL SPIES!!!!! that he is retiring from TF2 / Newbs Server Administration.  Many of you know SPIES, and have had him help you out on the jump maps, or played with him on the payload servers.  SPIES has contributed a great deal to the Newbs Community both by bringing in new quality players, and for proposing some of the community changes that have brought us to where we are as a community today (Such as the jump servers).  You will be missed, good luck in whatever you decide to do heading forward.  I do still plan on having the Newbs San Diego meet-up though, so please remember to post in the thread so we can schedule a date that works for the most people.

-octo

Since the inception of the TF2 Newbs server (a stock rotation server) on the first day of beta one of the challenges has been to keep the server full, or at least populated enough where I don’t have to sit there for 6 hours by myself.   Unfortunately due to things outside of my control we’ve had to change the IP addresses of our servers a couple of times, combined with our rapid expansion in total servers (currently we have 8 maintained by me + 2 donated to the community by others) early in the day its common to find the servers empty, requiring people interested in playing to sit on an empty server waiting for those first few people to join.   When I have time, this would be me. Oh how I yearned for a way to easily invite my friends who were around to come play too. Once in a blue moon I could hit shift-tab, bring up the overlay pick a friend, and invite them to the game I’m in.  But most of the time the option just wasn’t there.  I then learned from someone very very smart, that all you need to do in order to get the invite option to come back is to change your ‘status’ on steam, and it’ll magically reappear.

Here are some non-resized pictures to help.

Oh look no invite

Lets go change our status

Oh yay! I can invite now

You know you want it, I know you want it, so get me the picture. Huh? Oh yeah, I started that backwards huh. Okay, heres the deal – We all love scouts, especially scouts with bats right? And what better way to show how much we care about scouts (and their bats) than to let everyone know that our belts can bonk with the best of em. In order to get this wonderful, rare custom belt buckle all you’ll need to do is win a little contest.

You like games right? Well the name of this game is death. The next time you get killed on a Newbs server (Not those Newbies only servers, I’m talking about the servers named ‘NewbsTF2.com #’ ) pay close attention, if the freeze cam of your killer looks badass, press F5. Gather your best 3 deathcam shots, and send em in (details will follow in a future blog post). Be sure to keep the screenshots a secret, you’d hate to tip off the other competitors about how badass your screenshots are right? :)

Oh btw, a protip; if you hate tga’s, in console type: bind F5 jpeg
My screenshot directory is listed below, yours is likely very similar:

C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\octodhd\team fortress 2\tf\screenshots

Simple huh? Yup it is. All screenshots must be from TODAY forward, and only pictures from the Newbs servers are eligible to win!!

The grand prize (the belt buckle) was donated by our very own dingo… Shes a girl, so if you report on this be sure not to call her a guy.  The contest will be decided by me, octo-dhd.  I am very sad to have to part with the belt buckle, but my loss is your gain.  So be sure to take advantage of my great sorrow.

Valid servers for screenshots:

#1 24/7 Dustbowl                    113.212.76.18:27015
#3 24/7 Bad Water                   113.212.76.6:27015
#4 24/7 2fort (Octo-land)           69.12.37.3:27015
#5 24/7 2fort (Koans Kingdom)       69.12.37.15:27015
#6 Custom Rotation (Koans Kingdom)  69.12.37.16:27015
#7 24/7 Payload Rotation            69.12.37.14:27015
#8 New York Rotation (Octo)         69.12.108.39:27015

For complete contest details check out: http://www.tf2newbs.com/contests/2009-Team_Fortress_2-Deathcam_Screenshot_Contest/