TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

TF2Newbs is proud to announce something badass and wonderful that makes the world a better place.

Newbs Daily – The TF2 Comic of win.

What we need -

Artists – Duh
Inkers – convert the hand drawn picture scans into vector images
Image Colorers – take the ‘inked’ image and add the coloring and shadows
Writers – Someone has to come up with the ideas and the jokes.  This can all be observations of trends, things that were said in game (that wouldn’t be inside jokes)

The Newbs Daily strip will be released at a frequency of.. Hmm, we are still working on that detail, it will depend on responses and how fast the scripting goes.  We would like to have several recurring artists that are interested in having their comic run at a regular interval.  We plan to also include guest artists in the rotation if outside people become interested.  The goal here is to have a fun time and have a funny / light hearted strip that can help bring some joy to the world.  The current plan is to rotate through the artists to keep things fresh and poppin’ and to remove any unnneeded pressure on participants :)   Artists will be able to do short series of strips on consecutive release days if they’d like to.

We are hoping for a healthy mix of styles and methods.  We don’t want to put limits on peoples creativity so if you have the skill to do hand drawn, computer drawn, machinima (think screenshots with word bubbles) creative work than we want you on board.

If you have any interest in being a featured artist or helping out with any of our other jobs please drop me an email: [email protected]  Be sure to put ‘Newbs Daily’ in the subject line so it isn’t considered spam, or hit us up on the TF2 Newbs Forums – TF2 Newbs Forums – Comic Helper Thread.

Stay Tuned – I’ll be posting additional information soon!

The August 13th Update brought joy, hate, and new hats to the land of Team Fortress 2. The goods news is that Valve fixed a hand full of problems, added a handful of features and gave all the classes 2 (and in some cases 3 if you count ‘no hat’) new hats. The excitement surrounding the release wasn’t nearly as wild as a typical class update, but I did see a bump in user counts and saw less bitching about the FaN.

Now onto the meh – Each afternoon I look at my friends list and think “oh wow, TF2 is poppin’ today” until I realize that its just a bunch of people idling for hats. So I began to think how I could save myself from this daily disappointment. After many hours, and countless reams of paper with scrawled notes and calculations I finally had achieved my goal. I had formulated a plan to make the world a better place for everyone. Well at least Newbs.

The plan is simple. Reward people who play on the servers with hats. Yup, you got it – TF2 Newbs is giving away the New Team Fortress 2 hats for free to players. But wait, theres a catch :( I know I know, you’re expecting me to say that you need to sign over power of attorney before you get the hats right? No? Oh.. Hmm. Anyways… So, the catch is that the hats ONLY work on the tf2newbs.com servers. Thats right, you can come in, hang out, borrow a hat, but when you leave you have to leave it with the coat room clerk.

I know what you’re thinking, how can I afford to give away hats to everyone? The answer is simple, I can’t. So I’m going to have to do this as a limited offer. How is this going to work you ask? After much consideration I decided that the lifeblood of the community are the players that are determined to play on a Newbs server, regardless of who is on, and even more importantly even if there aren’t other players on. Yup – I’m rewarding the true heroes of each day, the server starters!

From now until I say otherwise, the players that are on a server when the player count (on teams) reaches 6 will be rewarded with access to our new hats command ‘ !hatme ‘. So if you want hats, join an empty server, get 5 of your friends on, and BAM hats. The hats will be available to you by menu until you leave the server, or the map changes.

There are probably a few players out there that have played on other servers that do have ‘hats’ as a feature, some of them might even be available to everyone that joins, but they probably don’t have a feature that we have (Unless you’re on the nNn clan server). Our hats work on all classes. Yup, you heard that right – you can be an scout with an engineer hat, and you can be a demo with a ushka. Any combination works, and they mostly all look good :)

What you don’t believe me? Well heres some previews..

I’ll update in a couple days with some more pictures, maybe some without me taunting. Oh yeah, this offer is good on servers 3-8 + Arena currently, servers #1,2,2.5 and #10 will be added when possible.

Servers:
#3 24/7 Badwater 113.212.76.6:27015
#4 24/7 2fort (Octo-land) 69.12.98.121:27015
#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 Stock Rotation (Octo) 69.12.37.3:27015
Arena [Chicago] 69.12.91.12:27015

Forum Discussion: http://www.tf2newbs.com/forum/index.php/topic,3745.0.html

Hey guys,

Scott here after a brief hiatus that saw me get addicted to World of Warcraft, drive across Canada, and buy and return a laptop. None of these events were related, but I’ve been a busy little fat man.

So anyway, as I was sitting in a meeting today I had an urge to doodle. And then I had a better idea. I wanted to see what the creative sorts of the Newbs community could draw. We’ve all seen Forte’s arts (and t-shirts and mousepads and such), and we know Dingo can forge stuff out of pure refined awesomeness, but I don’t really know what other people are capable of.

So I propose a contest. A recurring contest, where I am the only one who can’t win.

I propose… an art contest.

“But Scott,” you say, “I have no artistic skills!”

Well, neither do I. And you don’t need them, exactly. See, I won’t be judging these on quality. Oh no. I’m looking for whatever picture tickles me juuuuust right. To quote Family Guy, “That tickles me in a way that if Loretta tickled me in that way I’d say ‘Oh yeah, that’s nice’”.

It can be funny. It can be cool. It can be so mindbendingly awesome it reduces me to a puddle of goo and I have to spend the rest of the life having some annoyingly perky nurse mop the drool off my chin so I don’t gurgle. I’d obviously prefer one of the first two.

So, enough of the preamble. What’s in it for you?

Well, prizes obviously. I haven’t quite worked out the details, but I possess the rare ability to purchase items through Steam and deposit them into your account. It’s like voodoo, except it works (zing!). I can also possibly wrangle up a reserved slot, or if you want I could twist Octo’s arm until he coughs up a t-shirt. The choice could be yours.

Intrigued? You better be.

Now for the important bit. What you have to draw.

For the inaugural Scott’s Ultimate Art Newbs Contest (aka the SUANC), you will draw me…
…

a ROCKET CAKE

Interpret that however you want. It doesn’t have to be TF2-related if you don’t want it to be. The picture I like best wins.

You have 2 weeks. Deadline for submissions will be August 21st. A winner will be announced and contacted not long after.

The winning entry will be featured on the blog, and possibly elsewhere if I can get a gallery organized. I might post all the entries just for fun, depends on how I feel on the 22nd.

You can submit entries by sending me a link to where it’s hosted (I’m on Steam, look me up), or by emailing them to me at “scott at qv7 dot net”. Just convert that into a real email address. Put something about the contest in your subject line and also include your Steam ID if you’re not already on my friends list.

I look forward to seeing what your twisted little minds can come up with :D

Update:
1) If you enter multiple times, your second picture is compared to your first, and I get more critical.
2) Your entry doesn’t have to be a hand-drawn thing, it could also be photoshop, or a picture of a thing you made, etc

For those of you who don’t know, Jigen wants a beanie. Like, REALLY wants a beanie. Beats me why, seeing how he’s a spy.

But anyway, Valve is being a bit of a jerk about this. They don’t want to give Jigen a beanie. And that makes me, among other things, sad.

See, Jigen’s a good guy. And I hate when good guys can’t get stuff.

Luckily he has a solution. Money.

As mentioned in this thread, he’s going to be buying a real beanie, and will most likely wear it everywhere, all the time. And take pictures to share with us all.

So, who would like to help donate to the Get Jigen a Beanie fund? You’ll be helping a great cause, and a great source of potential hilarity.

You’re on your favourite map. It’s full of people, shooting, exploding, taunting, whatever. Everywhere you look, there’s someone. friend or foe, doesn’t matter.

So why am I asking where everyone is?

Well, I’m not talking about players. I’m not talking about our 9 valiant heroes and their 9 scum-sucking worthless doppelgangers. I’m talking about everybody else.

Who?

You know, everyone.

Let’s take Well, for example. You are likely familiar with it. Spawn behind a rocket, wander out through a warehouse, fight in the middle while dodging trains. However, what you might not notice as you run off to kill and be killed, is that there are areas of the map that should be full of people. Meeting rooms, offices, computer terminals, that sort of thing.

And yet, those places are empty. Devoid of life. So, where is everyone?

For example, here’s an office visible in an odd corner of the BLU base on Well.

There’s a desk, a clock, even a phone. But there’s nobody in that office. Nobody to answer that phone should it ring. Which it won’t, because there’s nobody to make a call on it.

Or how about this room? It looks like a shipping/receiving office, complete with a keg of beer (the bases on Well are a distillery and a brewery, after all). You can see plenty of empty chairs and a door leading deeper into the base, but you know what’s not in those chairs? People.

This room (or at least the RED version of it) also contains the loneliest lunch in the world.

I think the BLU version has a thermos in it. Which makes it the loneliest thermos in the world. Does it contain soup? Or coffee? Or some unholy combination thereof? Maybe it’s a good thing we’ll never find out.

Now, the easy explanation for why these rooms are empty is probably that the RED and BLU corporations cleared out their non-military personnel for the duration of the armed conflict. But if that’s the case, why is there bulletproof glass everywhere?

Nobody can shoot the distilling equipment. Which I guess is a good thing. Horrible waste of perfectly good booze otherwise.

In theory, these places could be maintaining their operations during the conflict. Maybe with a slight risk, but they look to have enough defences in place to ensure the workers are at least somewhat safe. Otherwise, they’re clearly protecting themselves from themselves. And that only makes sense if friendly fire is on.

It actually makes more sense to maintain at least a light crew of workers. The brewing business is very profitable, and most everybody likes to imbibe now and then. These companies are just taking money out of their own pockets. Rockets, teleporters, and $200 custom-tooled cartridges aren’t cheap, and all of the above get expended in large amounts. I weep for RED and BLU’s accounting departments.

This theory also involves some bouts of reasoning. Were the 9 bloodthirsty warriors brought in specifically to fight? Are they always stationed around the bases, even when production is ongoing? Is that why there’s bulletproof glass, to protect the workers from a bored heavy? And how awkward must the watercooler conversations be for the workers?

“So, good weekend?”
“Affirmative!”
“What’d you do?”
“Pushups. Situps. Beat a man to death with a shovel. You know, regular Saturday afternoon.”
“Oh, um, well. How bout you, big guy?”
“I ate sandvich and cleaned gun. Puny neighbour tried to tell me I park too close to curb, so I introduce him to Sasha. Then cleaned her again.”
“Screamin’ eagles!”
“Well, look at the time… Back to work… Later guys.”

Worker turnover must be pretty high if they have to spend their whole shifts wondering if today’s the day they trip over a sticky bomb, or the sentry recognizes them wrong.

Another theory is that the workers are, in fact, our 9 most hated enemies. Have they been pulled away from their regular duties to defend the base against the invading army? Or to take over the other side of the map in a bizarre corporate acquisition gone wrong? Are they just fighting this war so they can get back to work (and had it spiral ridiculously out of control in the process)?

Or, maybe nobody’s there because nobody wants to be there. A war that’s dragged on far too long, with the entire civilian population killed or displaced. Maybe there’s nobody in the office, nobody in the distillery, nobody to eat the lunch or coffee soup, nobody anywhere because there’s nobody left.

At least they enjoyed themselves on their way out.