First, on the blog, Valve has created two exciting new posts. The first gives the numbers for the top 20 cheaters in the Soldier-Demo war. As they point out, one spectacular player managed to score a soldier kill every 2.7 seconds. No way he was cheating, right?

The second post contains all the propaganda contest runners-up. Wow, are there a LOT. Many of those would make great sprays. Make sure you have a bit of time to read them, because there are WAY more than I thought there were.

I also want to point everyone toward tf2lobby.com, a new site for forming pug (pick-up-game) groups. It’s set up primarily for 6v6 matches, though it also supports highlander (9v9 with one of each class). Players register, set up and join lobbies, and the site launches your game and automatically connects you to the server. Really awesome, and much easier to use than any previous form of pug set-up. If you have been thinking about competitive play but don’t know where to start, GO THERE. It’s great.

Also, the comic continues. The soldier’s name is “Jane Doe?”

And an another free weekend! Invite all your friends! Demonstrate to them firsthand the awesomeness that is TF2!

But not as exciting as the revelation of the long awaited CRAFTING SYSTEM! Finally, your eight Razorbacks will be useful for SOMETHING.

The system seems pretty simple: certain combinations of items will craft certain other items. Apparently, there will be ‘blueprints’ everyone will get right away (I’m guessing for the normal unlocks as opposed to hats) describing what combinations to use for some items. Others, however, will have to be worked out on your own (well, really, you plus the entire TF2 community).

Also, a propaganda contest for which the reward is a unique (!!!) item and a continuation of the Announcer comic which follows Saxton Hale. Speaking of Saxton, who is that in the middle of the crafting page?

Edit: As Melon pointed out, there is this “secret” mail-in order form for some commemorative plates (which includes a fake P.O. box, don’t bother mailing anything). Also, from the chalkboard in the most recent WAR newspaper:

Very simple and temporary tutorial.

Riot Shield Mod, using scrapped melee weapon models, when Locally Hosting or Playing as Singelplayer, it has a chance to show up in all games.

Note: While looking through the models myself I found an unused w_didgeridoo.mdl, currently working on a weapon mod to see what that is.

Daed: Meanwhile, here’s the censored version of the L4D2 trailer. Notice it’s on EA’s official German channel, even though the quality of the trailer would lead you to believe that it’s a fan-made machinima vid. Hint: Valve probably didn’t take part in making this.

Now, you may be asking yourselves just what the hell CSS weapons are doing in L4D2. Apparently, the German censored version will have half-assed exclusive DLC to make up for the lack of gore. Nah, that’s cool, it’s not like the censored versions of the game had their immersion ruined in the first place.

But apparently the Australian version doesn’t get the aforementioned weapons. Censorship sure is great, huh?

For this demonstration I will be using our friendly drunken Scottish Demoman as an example.

Alright, so what do we know about the Demoman? He’s the only class that doesn’t have a weapon that shoots bullets (Beside the Medic) so his weapons are entirely explosive related and in the hands of a good player can wreak plenty of havoc for engineers and anyone else unfortunate enough to fall into a sticky trap. He is labeled as being a Defensive class but can be played Offensively as well. He can use his sticky launcher to launch himself to high and far places if he is in a rush and willing to sacrifice the HP. So that is the Demoman alone, what about his weapons?

The grenade launcher is a fearsome weapon. A normal hit can be up to 132 damage, enough to take out a scout in one hit and a critical grenade can do as much as 300 damage, enough to take out a heavy in one shot! This is great if the target is some distance away but if the Demoman is in close quarters combat using his grenade launcher he can take up to 64 damage from self-damage which means in 3 hits, he’s done for.

The sticky launcher is the Demomans defensive weapon but it can still be a real hard hitter out on the field. The main feature of the sticky launcher is the ability to explode and shoot the Demoman to high places and far distances, a key ability for the Demoman. It can cause as much as 153 damage (And that’s per sticky!) and a critical can cause as much as 353! Enough to take out a heavy and then some. As far as damaging himself it can take away as much as 114 HP, nearly ¾ of his health. It’s best times are when used to lay down devastating traps or to take out a sentry around a corner. It can fire up to 8 sticky grenades before a reload is needed and the Demoman can only have 8 laid out, anymore and the other grenades start to explode. To put this in perspective, 8 sticky grenades exploding onto a single target can do 592-1224 damage and with criticals 2824. That’s enough to take out roughly 9 Heavies at once while leaving the tenth Heavy heavily wounded. (Heh, Heavy heavily)

The Demomans third and final weapon is his bottle. A simple melee weapon that has the ability to break. When it does break it is a critical hit that can do 195 damage.

Alright, so those are the Demomans vanilla weapons. What are their disadvantages? This is the key part when thinking of new weapons because in order to improve something you have to now WHAT you’re trying to improve but at the same time you have to be fair and give the weapon some real disadvantages. You can’t simply have a weapon idea and not give it any criticals to make it balanced (Valve learned this with the Medics Blutsauger.)

The first disadvantage and by far the most obvious one is that the Demoman is pretty crippled in close combat. Unless he is able to get away from the enemy and into friendly territory fast his only two options are to use his bottle or use his explosive weaponry. The first option is the best option but in times of panic many will rely on the grenade launcher or in rare cases the sticky launcher to dispose of the threat but these weapons damage the Demoman and if he has happened to have already been involved in some combat the self damage from his explosives will only hinder him more.

The second disadvantage is that his weapons, other than his bottle are entirely projectiles like the Soldiers rockets. This means that they can be easily dodged by anyone who happens to have the eyes to spot the incoming grenade and dodge it. This is even more so with the sticky launcher, if the Demoman didn’t lay his trap down perfectly hidden away then the enemy can easily pick off the stickies and the only thing you can do is detonate them, hoping to do some kind of damage or run over to the trap and handle the culprit face to face.

Another disadvantage, this time concerning the grenade launcher, is that if the Demoman is not dead-on with his grenade launcher and a grenade happens to pass his intended target there is hardly a consolation prize. It’s either a hit or miss as far as being out in the open goes but if it’s indoors the Demoman may be able to do some splash damage on his intended target but the most splash damage can do is 64 damage and that’s not enough enough to take out a Sandman wielding Scout. So unless the player has trained with the Demoman mastering the art of flinging explosive projectiles through the air the Grenade Launcher can be a frustrating weapon at times.

Alright so we know the disadvantages and you may be thinking “Well, these problems can be mostly solved by just giving the Demoman some weapon that shoots bullets.” But this ruins what the Demoman is all about and that of course is explosives. Giving the Demoman a shotgun not only ruins his image but seems lazy and makes him like all the other classes. It’s just plain lazy. So now that we know the disadvantages and advantages of each weapon let’s examine each one and try to come up with a possible unlockable.

First up is the grenade launcher. Let’s briefly review, the grenade launcher can do high amounts of damage when it hits a target dead on but if it doesn’t hit the target the splash damage simply cannot compare to the direct hit damage meaning it’s only truly effective with an experienced player. It’s a terrible weapon for close combat because although the chances of it hitting the enemy are higher, so is the possibility of self-damage. Let’s address the latter issue first. So the grenade launcher lobs these somewhat slow projectiles that can be easily dodged (Unless the target is a Heavy) and when it misses, the splash damage is a very small consolation prize. Perhaps a weapon that increases the splash radius as well as the damage it deals? But what about a direct hit from this weapon? Sounds more like a buff of the grenade launcher. Make it so a direct hit from this weapon does little to no damage and instead bounces off the target. Now what about ammo? You cant have such a powerful weapon firing off in groups of four at the rate of a normal Grenade Launcher. Depending on the power of the splash radius it would be a good idea to reduce the clip size to either one or two and add a minor cool down time between each shot. Now think about this weapon idea. It would be very useful to clear out a sentry nest or a group of enemies holding out in an area. However for one on one combat it’s not as effective which means when using this weapon the Demoman would have to be a team player using this weapon to clear the way for his fellow team mates instead of running forward with the ability to kill any class in two hits. But the cool down leaves him open for attack again, making it so he can’t charge forward for the team. It may also be a good idea to make it so once it’s fired the cool down time prevents the player from switching to another weapon or at least have it not cool down when another weapon is wielded so it’s not possible to use this powerful weapon and use a secondary weapon to continue charging ahead.

Now, that is just one idea. Take it as you may but it’s only one of many one could come up with. It addresses the necessity of hitting a target but also can’t be abused. Although admittedly it does not address the issue of close combat but perhaps most importantly, it keeps the identity of the Demoman being an explosives expert intact.

I could go on for another two pages talking about the sticky launcher or the bottle and how you could change them but I wont. I wrote this so people have a general idea of how to think of a serious weapon unlock idea before spouting off something that is either just aesthetically appealing or sounds cool. Now hopefully people will think before the spout off what they have to say and Valve can take the community seriously when they hear these ideas.

Now one final note before I wrap this up.

BAD FORMULA FOR WEAPON IDEAS

Think of why the class is cool => Weapon showing of personality => No crits for balance

GOOD FORMULA FOR WEAPON IDEAS

Think of vanilla weapons good and bads => What area of combat could be improved? => What would be a fair thing to take away? => New weapon idea

The dogs were a “fake update” that garnered Valve’s recognition. Pretty cool idea, but not balanced by a long shot. Still, everything new’s fun for at least a while, right?

Blog post here.

Daed: Didn’t want to make a newspost about this because everyone already thought that Valve was actually going to implement something like this. That just made me flabbergasted at everyone’s gullibility.

I’ll post all the update info below, but here’s a few important things I see:

-Sanvich now heals the heavy to full when he taunts, and he can drop it, giving it to other people.
Daed: 75hp/tick, 4 ticks.

-Medic regenerates faster, but having the blutsauger reduces that passive regeneration.
Too bad the blut is bugged right now and it doesn’t inhibit regen properly.

-Grenades and pipes now have a wider explode radius.
This is a bit of a myth. They’re wider in some places, shorter in others. They just made the explosion a sphere instead of a buggy bounding box.

-Spies can’t be seen with the halo anymore.

-Changed idle player check to include spectators & players who haven’t chosen a team (hopefully this means idlers who simply join a server and sit there will be noticed and kicked).

Full update:

Engine

• If the installation is an HLTV relay we allow clients to connect as HLTV clients even if tv_enable is set to false. A recent exploit fix made it such that we ignore the flag indicating that the client is an HLTV client if tv_enable is false, but it is possible that relays won’t have this ConVar set

Additions / Changes

• Backpack improvement
  • Added support for 100 slots in the backpack
  • Backpack can now be sorted by type
  • Multi-selection in the backpack is now done by holding down the Ctrl key
• Alt-fire on the Sandvich now drops sandviches
  • A single sandvich can be dropped at a time. Dropping the sandvich removes it from the Heavy
  • A Heavy can regain his sandvich by collecting a healthkit while already being at full health
  • Eating a sandvich using the taunt method now heals a Heavy to full health
  • Dropped sandviches heal 50% of the collector’s health
• Medic regen changes
  • Base regen amount increased from 1/sec to 3/sec
  • Regen amount increase since time of last damage decreased from 3x to 2x
  • End result of above: Old healing scaled from 1/sec to 3/sec based on time since being damaged (maxed out at 10 seconds). New healing scales from 3/sec to 6/sec
• Blutsauger
  • Replaced “No critical hits” negative attribute with “-2 health drained per second on wearer”
  • Health drain stacks on top of the above Medic regen changes, lowering the base regen by 2h/sec
• Added “mp_windifference” server ConVar (default to 0)
  • When set to X, matches will be considered won if a team gets X points ahead of the other team
• Added a “Remember the active weapon between lives” option to the Multiplayer->Advanced options dialog
• Added “Disable weather effects” option to the Multiplayer->Advanced options dialog
• Added “Show non-standard items on spectated player” option to the Multiplayer->Advanced options dialog
  • If set (default), it’ll show non-standard items being carried by the player you’re spectating
• Tournament mode changes
  • New item whitelist allowing tournaments to control what items can be used by players
  • Added “item_whitelist_example.txt”
  • Added “item_show_whitelistable_definitions” command to get a list of whitelistable items
• Added Tournament mode Spectator HUD
  • Added “Use advanced spectator HUD in tournament mode” option to the Multiplayer->Advanced options dialog
  • Shows all the members of your team (or both if you’re a spectator) at the top of the screen, along with class/health/respawn time/charge level
  • Spectator indices are now shown on the team members, and hitting the corresponding weapon selection key (slot1-slot12 commands) will spectate them
• Changed idle player check to include spectators & players who haven’t chosen a team

Bug Fixes

• Fixed explosive radius detection using an axially aligned box instead of a sphere
  • Compensated by increasing the radius of grenades, pipes, and rockets to 50% of what they lost at the corners of the OBB
  • Grenades/Pipes radius change: 132->159
  • Rocket radius change: 121->146
  • End result of above: Explosives have had their radius reduced at some angles, and increased at others. Radius is now consistent, angles are now irrelevant
• Fixed Sniper using the reference pose if he has the Huntsman deployed when his team loses
• Fixed Spies speaking their response rules lines after killing a player as the class they were disguised as
• Fixed Medics getting MedicCallerPanels in their HUD for cloaked enemy Spies disguised as their team
• Fixed the Huntsman not firing crit arrows when the Sniper is being CritBoosted
• Fixed being able to fire the Huntsman under water if you jump into the water with the arrow charged
• Added check to prevent clients using the “firstperson” command to get out of thirdperson view while they’re phasing, taunting or control stunned
• Fixed Halo glow effect not being hidden for cloak/disguised enemy Spies
• Fixed wearables not destroying their attached particles when they’re removed
• Fixed several player & viewmodel simulation issues that occurred when the game was paused
• Fixed a DX8-based exploit that allowed modified particle effects to work under sv_pure 2

Community Requests

• Added the entindex() of the object being built to the “player_builtobject” game event
• Added flag to allow CTF map authors to turn off the Overtime mode when timers expire
• Added IgnitePlayer input to TFPlayer

Robin’s rocket launcher sure looks neat, doesn’t it?

“Overtime! OVERtime! Oovertiime! Overtime!”

At the time I heard many people saying things along the line of “I kinda hope Valve will leave this in but they wont.”

Well never fear. In tonight’s patch notes:

-Fixed Announcer overtime bug on KOTH servers using mp_timelimit

–Due to many requests, added server ConVar “tf_overtime_nag”. When set to 1, it keeps the broken announcer behavior