Little bug I found:

Weird lightspot, in the perfect place:

Funny deathpose 1:

Funny Deathpose 2:

This was really cool, until I broke that record :´(

This just looked funny:

This just looks cool:

So, that was it for today, I have now all Heavy unlockables, so I can box with gloves in my boxing ring map I'm creating. Spy skins are still delayed, as I can't find anything to do with the sapper.

pikuwayjay a member of Points2Shop posted proof when received this The Orange Box by Electronic Arts for PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3). It’s a 5 Games, One Box - The Orange Box is the ultimate collection of innovative action games for console, and an amazing introduction to the Half Life series for console gamers.

Two of the games included, Half-Life 2 and its first expansion, Episode One, were previously released as separate products. Three new games are also contained within the compilation: the second expansion, Half-Life 2: Episode Two; the puzzle game, Portal; and Team Fortress 2, the multiplayer game sequel to the Quake modification, Team Fortress. So not only do you get Half-Life 2 and the two episodes, you also get Portal and Team Fortress 2.

Do You Want To See Proof :

I got my first prize from p2s. It's the Orange Box for PS3 (the game is awesome by the way and totally worth it. It's 5 great games for a good price or, in my case, FREE). I love p2s!!!!!!!!

pikuwayjay

If you want FREE STUFF you have come to the right place. Points2Shop Will Give You Free Stuff From Amazon.com. I will update this blog daily with items received by Points2Shop members. Please leave a comment if you visit!

Once, when a group of REDs were traveling to the payload entrance together by the same engineer's nest, it happened that their teleporter struck near the payload late at night. Five or six REDs from the nest leapt to defend the payload and loudly demanded that BLU give up the bomb, in accord with the Corporate Manifesto. Hearing this, BLU ran forward yelling, "The RED Corporate Manifesto is something for people like you! Do you think that we warriors are going to let you take equipment from a payload carried by pyros? We will burn you down and throw you underneath the payload cart to the last man!" With that, all the RED agents fled back to the engineer's nest.

A BLU pyro once said, "What is called winning is defeating one's allies. Defeating one's allies is defeating oneself, and defeating oneself is vigorously burning the dross from one's own body.
"It is as though a man were in the midst of ten thousand allies but not a one were following him. If one hasn't previously mastered his mind and body, he will not defeat the enemy.''

One cannot accomplish things simply with enthalpy. One must take a broad view. It will not do to make blazing judgments concerning good and evil. However, one should not be cold and sluggish. It is said that one is not truly a pyro if he does not make his decisions quickly and break right through to completion.

Soldier pengu!

I played for only three rounds on badwater, since I haven't played much of that map. I had a great start, on team red I managed to get about 5 kills per death, which is pretty good. Before long I was in the thirties, but not quite at the top, since this was a 24/7 server, there were some people who have been playing for a few hours before I joined, with over 100 points. Anyways, we won that round, and it sure was glorious.

Then the teams flipped, so now we were blu. My team conisted of 3 snipers, 3 heavies, a demo, a scout, a spy, and a soldier or two. And hence, I had a bit of rage start to build inside of me. Snipers are not useful on pl_ maps, especially on offense, and so I continued to try to get them to switch classes, to a medic or something useful. The round began, and we did a full out rush. Our snipers were nowhere to be seen, and our heavies were being rather useful. In under a minute we made it to the first cp, making wonderful progress as opposed to the enemy team, who last round nearly lost before making it this far. We continued to push, with  me clearing those far away pyros and spies (who were pretty good at revealing themselves.

We made it all the way to the second to last cp, where we had held at that chokepoint, before the downhill slide to red's base. There we fought for nearly ten minutes, where neither team made any progress, as we held for what felt like eternity. I decided to go down this corridor, after avoiding a spy trying to facestab and a pyro with his axetinguisher. I found what appeared to be a sniper hideout, which looked down upon the final cap, where the bomb was meant to be dumped at. I walked up to the window, and found a level 3 sentry staring right at me, pushing me back. I wasn't able to get a good look on things, but luckily I was a demoman, and a demoman was built for this kind of situation.

I lobbed my grenades out the window and down towards where I expected the sentry to be. I had killed three people who were using a dispensor, which I also took out. I wounded the sentry to the point where it no longer fired at me (although this could be from my team finally pushing the cart downhill). The smoke and fire was quite a site, and I launched the grenade that I expected to be the one that takes the sentry out.

Then, a soldier popped in my way, rocket jumping to destroy me from this sniping window, and launched two rockets in before falling back down. He had taken my grenade damage, instead of me happening to destroy the sentry. luckily, I had a friendly medic healing me, which he then decided to leave after what he thought was me killing the soldier. All of a sudden, the soldier pops up to replicate what he had just recently did, but this time, a crit rocket happened to land in my face. Turns out to be a friend who happened to be on this server.

All in all, our team lost, and next game was rather bland. I quit the game due to snipers, and decided I should post about how much I hate snipers.

Doesn't look like I had made much progress.

I'm off to make ramen and do my laundry now.

It was a lot of fun to work on this one. Also the first time I worked with real actors on a server. Even if they made a lot of bullshit, the scenes were pretty good.

The server was provided by Larry from Atomic Spark... special thanks from me. Also a special thanks to my team for the ideas, some posing and for the 2D Artwork.

And of course a special thanks to Master Chris, Xanatos and Slamex for the good voiceacting in this project.

The big news is of course the work put into the Heavy.  Valve stated via their awesome TF2 blog that the goal was to make the Heavy more viable when not paired up with a friendly Medic, and in this regard they have managed to accomplish this pretty well.

The first ‘sidegrade' (as these weapon unlocks are not supposed to be upgrades, or better than the originals, just different doncha know) you receive is the ‘Sandvich'. Now for those who just said that out loud in their best faux-Russian accents, you will realise that this is, quite literally, an actual sandwich; two slices of bread, meat, salad, the whole works.  Following one of gaming's greatest conventions, the Sandvich naturally gives you health, 120 of it to be precise. The flipside is that it replaces your shotgun, completely removing the ability to defend yourself when on the move, and it takes four seconds to consume the Sandvich...during which you cannot move or cancel the animation, even when you're watching a Scout bat you to death (minds out of the gutter people). 

The Sandvich is quite successful in giving the Heavy a ‘Medic-lite' ability, as it allows a lone Heavy to stay in the fight longer provided that he can safely retreat for a couple of seconds and doesn't get ambushed along the way.  I've found this ability helps to make the Heavy good at the style of flanking attacks that are usually the specialty of Scouts or Pyros, but if you get caught out without your minigun spinning up, you are right royally screwed.  It also makes you a little less effective in the vanguard of an attack, as running out of primary ammo leaves you completely unable to finish off opponents or backup your friends on the move. 

In short, the Sandvich is a well balanced unlock which works well in making the Heavy play differently without necessarily being better; in fact, considering that I tend to play Heavy as more of a front-on attack kind of class, I find the Sandvich usually gets left at home in favour of the shotty. The Sandvich is earned after getting 10 achievements, and also has the greatest animation and sound effects ever conceived.

Meet the Sandvich!

The second unlock (earned at 16 achievements), is a new minigun named Natascha (as opposed to the original, Sasha).  This gun is an interesting unlockable, as it trades damage (it does 25% less in fact) in favour of the ability to slow down anyone it hits.  It is obvious to see the benefits this can have when coming up against Scouts (a nemesis of the unaware or slow to react Heavy) and other fast opponents, but the tactical abilities of this weapon really become apparent when it is used in conjunction with the firepower of your teammates.

Yes, despite the stated intention of making the Heavy more useful when alone, Natascha is definitely more viable in group situations, especially when on defence.  Your slowing ability, for example, can slow down an enemy rush enough that they will be decimated by the firepower of your other teammates; an example of this occurred just a couple of days ago, where most of the team was dead while defending the final point on Dustbowl.  One of my mates used Natascha to fire indiscriminately into the approaching angry mob, slowing them down and clumping them up enough that I managed to use the compression blast on the Pyro's flamethrower to knock the Medics off the bridge while the surviving Sniper and Demoman absolutely went to town on their defenceless targets, decimating the entire team. 

Many people have already been complaining that Natascha is too underpowered when compared to Sasha, stating that the slow ability isn't pronounced enough to counteract the lack of damage.  Despite the fact that I think the new unlock is pretty viable in many tactical situations, I would still somewhat agree with the sentiment; a Heavy with Natascha causing opponents to slow down is not so useful to the team that you wouldn't necessarily prefer to have your Heavy doing more damage instead (especially against Sentry Guns or Sasha-wielding Heavies, which rarely fall to Natascha).  Perhaps now that the there are less people playing Heavy with the frenzy caused by the update dying down, the tactical uses will become more pronounced, as it is hard to get a good feel for the gun when half the enemy team is also playing Heavy (and who cares if you slow them down?). 

The final unlock is the K.G.B (Killing Gloves of Boxing), which are unsurprisingly boxing gloves which replace the standard bare fist melee attack of the class.  Earned at 22 achievements, this upgrade provides another ‘Medic-lite' ability, giving a bit of simulated Kritzkrieg action to the Heavy by giving him five seconds of guaranteed critical hits for every opponent he kills with the K.G.B.  Naturally, the gloves hit 20% slower (which is surprisingly noticeable), but the ability is still incredibly awesome.

The secret to the K.G.B. is to understand its limitations; five seconds of critical hits means that you would have to be quite talented to get more than a second of shots out of your minigun after one melee kill, but the shotgun on the other hand... Suffice to say, the Heavy is truly scary as an ambusher when he gets amongst the enemy, punches one, and then blasts the rest point blank; pity anyone that's there when the Heavy melees more than one opponent to death, as the string of critical hits is frankly terrifying, especially to weaker classes.  The slowness of the Heavy means that running into the front of an attacking wave with your gloves raised probably won't end well, but if you can get in amongst them from behind, your large amount of health should see you live long enough to do some damage; if you are paired with a Medic when you rush in, well lets just say that an Ubered Heavy with the K.G.B. out can drop an entire team in no time flat.

Valve have pretty much accomplished what they set out to do with the Heavy class with this update; they provided unlockable items that make the class more viable when played without a Medic in tow, whilst also ensuring that the nifty new items don't completely outshine the originals.  Natascha is the only item that I am slightly reluctant to endorse, but I refuse to have a whinge about it until I have more experience with it in general play. Besides, Valve have shown that they are willing to alter unbalanced items if necessary, as the recent Backburner nerf and upgrade to the Kritzkrieg have shown.

Onto the maps then.  Badwater Basin is the second release for the Payload game type (the first being Gold Rush), and is quite different to its predecessor, seeing as how it is one large stage with multiple checkpoints (Gold Rush is separated up into stages, ala Dustbowl).  The first thing you notice when loading up Badwater Basin is that it is huge; bloody gigantic in fact.  The second thing you will notice is that there are some surprisingly punishing defensive positions that a good Red team can make use of to make Blu bleed for every metre they push the cart.

The secret to Badwater Basin is momentum; if Blu can really break through Red's lines in a convincing fashion, they can usually capture two or three points rapidly through sheer numbers. If, however, the attack halts for any reason, Red have many great places to rebuild Sentry Guns and ambush Blu from multiple angles, especially considering the long walk from the Blu spawn to the middle points of the map.  This emphasis on momentum often sees control of the map seesawing back and forth, as Red finally manages to break the push against them and locks down a chokepoint, only for the eventual clever rush to push them back again.  The last point especially is an absolute death trap for Blu, but can still be cracked with some clever tactics and a bit of luck.

Badwater Basin is a terrific map, managing to capture everything it is that makes TF2 such a great game to play.  The emphasis on teamwork is huge in this map, and one underperforming team-member or poor class choice can make a big difference; in the same way, having players apply pressure in just the right way can break a seemingly impenetrable defence wide open.  As you can tell by my gushing, I really dig this map, and hope that all of Valve's upcoming maps are as fun as this one.

Intro video for Steel

Following in the footsteps of Turbine and Fastlane, Steel is yet another community made Capture Point map deemed to be worthy of official release.  Unlike the previous two maps, however, Steel is really quite unlike anything else found in TF2.  For starters, this map is about as complex as anything you have seen in the game, consisting of numerous capture points that radically alter the layout of the map.

The attacking team has the option of picking a path leading straight to the final point if they so choose, but this will allow the defensive team a great deal of room to halt them.  If the offensive team instead go after some of the non-essential points, they will give themselves more routes to attack from (and shut down some of the routes the defensive team can take), but will also be diluting their offensive strength and risk being strung out and annihilated by canny defenders.

Steel is a very interesting map, and one that is certainly worthy of inclusion with the game.  However, due to the complexity of just how the map works (it is very easy to get lost, especially at first when you don't really get which capture points do what to the layout), many servers (in Australia at least) have already removed it from the map cycle, due no doubt to the whinging of people that didn't give the map enough of a chance (ala Storm and Torn in Counterstrike).  This is a shame, but hopefully it will still find a place amongst the more hardcore players, and it would certainly be pretty awesome in a proper competitive match.

Finally, we have the all new Arena mode.  Arena is something very different for TF2, as it is essentially a randomised team-deathmatch-style game, designed for smaller teams and short bursts of action on tiny maps.  When joining an Arena game, the player is randomly assigned to a team.  You choose your class, spawn, and go and fight; it's that simple.  To discourage camping, a central Capture Point unlocks after 60 seconds, and if you die you're dead for the round.  The winning team stays together until they lose or win five in a row, the losing team is reorganised from the spectating players who missed out on playing last time.

The game mode is fast and furious, and really quite fun.  While there is an emphasis here on clever class choice and good teamwork, individual brilliance is also far more important here than in a typical TF2 map, as the maps are designed to allow you to get the jump on your opponents with a bit of planning.

Speaking of the maps, three of the five included with the update are taken from existing levels (Well, Granary, Badlands), modified so that only the central area is used.  The two new maps are Ravine and Lumberyard.  Ravine takes place on three different levels of elevation, with a tunnel system, ground, and buildings all providing interesting ambush and rocket-jumping potential.  Lumberyard marks a first for TF2, as it uses an alpine environment (i.e. no more desert!) which is really quite great looking.  Aside from the graphical differences, Lumberyard is also built around a rather larg...errr, lumberyard which has multiple levels, numerous windows, and some open space around it. 

Generally speaking there is little-to-no health and water on these maps, making Medics and/or Dispensers highly important, and causing Pyros to be even more devastating than usual.  The designs have obviously been carefully thought out to prevent camping and encourage constant movement and ambushes, and in this regard the design works brilliantly.  Arena is definitely a very fun diversion from the normal game, but I don't see it displacing the traditional game modes any time soon; rather, it is the kind of thing you can play in short bursts, especially with smaller groups of players.   No doubt some people will latch onto the game mode and play nothing else, but I prefer the large scale and objectives of the normal game.

And that is just about all I can really say about this latest update from Valve to the already-phenomenal Team Fortress 2.  While there are a couple of things in this update that I think will need to be looked at in coming weeks (Natascha in particular), the level of support Valve is providing for this game is amazing, and something I think the whole community is very thankful for.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must push little cart!        

- Tim "the Corsair" Sweeney

P.S. Om Nom Nom Nom

[gallery]

Of course I have to get them all, but they are not so easy to get. I'm not close to finishing the medic stuff now that they have announced the new heavy update.

Anyone else have thoughts on the achievements of Team Fortress 2?

balloon_race_v1 for Team Fortress 2! Click on more for the details.

Explanation: This map is a race map with a twist. Your goal is to win the map when your team has the most treasure chests and you've crossed the finish line. I think there will be five treasure chests to collect in a round.

Players will get on board of their balloons and try to slow the other down by keeping the other team's players from the wheel. (There will be one person at the wheel to "push" the balloon, sort of like in a payload map.) The balloon will speed up when someone's at the wheel and slow down when someone's not. Each speed "step" takes three seconds. When a team captures a treasure chest a flag will go up and the treasure chest will unlock. (I will make the flag a bit bigger though)

As an extra note: There's a dispenser in each balloon ship. I might make this desctructable/respawnable, but for now you can't destroy it. There's also a ladder on the side of the balloon in case you fall off. Oh, and there will be special objectives like opening doors, but I don't know the details about that yet.

Overall, I think this map (the first version!) is about 40% done now.

Once XXXXXXX XXXXX BLU Executive 67-63-0 gamed nothing in a battle, but in a later judgment it was said, "XXXXX 67-63-0 is a general of great courage. Of his men who died in battle, not one of them died with his back burned. They all died with flames pushing towards enemy lines." S ince a pyro' s daily frame of mind is manifested even after death, a mislit fire can be burned into his mind as shame.

Presumably it can be said that a man who has been burned to the ground was lacking in ability and had run out of luck as a warrior. The man who ashed him, compelled by unavoidable circumstances and feeling that there was nothing else to be done, also put his life on the line, and thus there should be no evidence of cowardice. Being wasteful of fuel is inappropriate, but it cannot be said that two men who face each other are cowards.

However, even if one's fuel were to be suddenly cut off, he should be able to gain one more kill with certainty. The last moments of XXXXXXX XXXXX BLU Executive 67-63-0 are proof of this . Had his fire been weak, he would have fallen the moment his fuel was severed. These actions occurred because of simple determination. With martial valor, if one becomes like a revengeful phoenix and shows great determination, though his pilot light is off, he should not die.

What valve has done in the past is not fix the characters weekness, but buff their strengths.

The medic had the ubersaw, which gave the medic the ability to up an uber faster. He had the kritzkrieg, which made his subjects more powerful. He had the blutsauger, which allowed himself to steal health.

The medics previous weaknesses were damage dealt, and quick death. These weapons sort of made those weaknesses more dangerous, with the uninvulnerability of the kritzkreig, and the reduction of damage of the blutsauger.

The pyro had the backburner, which let his ambushes mean more. He had the axtinguisher, which made his prey run fast after his first strike. He had the flare gun, which made his enemies cower in fear, even at a safe distance.

The pyro's previous weaknesses were, well, nothing. The pyro doesn't have any weaknesses I can think of at the moment, and that's why I don't really care for them.

The heavies weaknesses were moving slow, and being big. Did valve fix these? No, because there is no flaw with having weaknesses in a balanced world.

Making enemies run slower, and inflicting more damage after a kill. (the sandvich is only good for medic-less servers).

so why not make the scout have something that can benefit him, instead of just buffing him?

The scout currently is the fastest character, the thinnest character, fastest melee, longest range for melee, and fastest reload times for a weapon (excluding pistol).

Hes fine as it is, and I really want to see what valve themselves come up with.

From zzzdude:
Ok, after hearing and reading of all these subtle hints of your next project after the half life series, I have grown interested in Prospero.
Like, what kind of game.
As in, the genre; sci-fi, fantasy, etc.
And a brief description of some ideas that would represent it.
I have read a lot of interviews, and read about it in 'half-life; raising the bar"
I need to know.

From Greg Coomer:
Hi.

Thanks for writing. Gabe forwarded your question to me, but unfortunately we can't discuss unreleased games (even ones from years ago, like Prospero).

Someday we hope to shed more light on what Prospero was like, and revisit its ideas in future products.

It's nice to know that you enjoyed Half-Life: Raising the Bar.

Take care,

-Greg

From zzzdude:
Got any tips on curing insomnia?
I have had it for the past few weeks, quite annoying...

From GabeN:
Don’t drink any caffeine at all.

Swim.

Don’t play games or browse the web after 8:00 pm.

From zzzdude:
Just an odd question:
Do vinyl records have stereo output, or just mono?

From GabeN:
Depends.

From zzzdude:
I normally don't need to file a tax return. How do I know if I'm one of those people who may be eligible to receive an economic stimulus payment?

From GabeN;
I have no idea.

jul 29
From zzzdude:
Hey gabe, just checking in on your health, making sure your fine and stuff.
You haven't been responding to some of my emails, so I was a bit worried that something might of happened.
I really hope nothing did happen to you, because that would really suck.

From GabeN:
I’m fine. Been on the road.

From zzzdude:
A penny for your thoughts?

From GabeN:
I am not a vegetarian.

From zzzdude:
Hey gabe, I just wanted to compliment everyone working on TF2 for doing such a good job at deciding a good community map, and a good heavy weapon. The art for the achievements are also really great.
Good job Valve, keep up the awesomeness!

From GabeN:
Thanks!

There are some stories behind these, but those are for another time...

my blog write up: http://www.tf2newbs.com/newbs_blog/2008/08/25/build_a_2009_crab_spy_calendar/

or the calendar itself: http://www.tf2newbs.com/build/crab_spy_calendar

Con su política referente a contenido descargable, Valve quiere hacer crecer la comunidad al rededor de sus juegos, dando impulso al contenido gratuito y sobre todo al creado por los usuarios.

Cabe mencionar que ésta noticia no afecta para nada a los usuarios de la consola PS3 de Sony, ya que en Leipzig, Valve confirmó que Team Fortress 2 de PS3 no recibirá actualizaciones ni contenido de ningún tipo.

Fuente: GameproTV

Tuesday, August 19

Never before have I seen so many stray bullets fly across any TF2 battlefield. The early achievement glitches had me thinking that I’d be obtaining “The Sandvich” early but those hopes were soon dashed, not to mention I missed the first two hours of the update, and therefore prime achievement farming time, do to some computer maintenance I chose to partake it moments before the update dropped. I haven’t yet felt the effects of the “Natascha” minigun despite playing with several people already using it. My brother is convinced it needs balancing though I’m not sure. It seems too specialized to me at this point to warrant a major nerf. After achieving the Sandvich late in the day, I’m firm in the opinion that it’s a positive addition. I was initially resistant to it because it seemed too gimmicky, but now I see it as a balanced solution to the Heavy’s health problems. The new Arena mode is 100% fun. It’s like little Counter Strike-marshmallow bits in my TF2-Lucky Charms. I love it.

Wednesday, August 20

Had my first real experience with the new “Natascha” gun today. Overall, it doesn’t seem to be earth shattering. While it does improve some of the Heavy’s one-on-one interactions significantly, like with the Pyro and Scout (although those weren’t really much to worry about in the first place), it doesn’t do much for the rest. See, in one-on-one situations, Natascha only makes a real difference if your opponent’s offense is movement based, so Demoman, Engineer, Spy, and Sniper don’t really have to worry all that much because their methods of taking out enemies are, in general, indirect or instantaneous, leaving the Heavy with nothing to shoot at. Medic and Engineer are in trouble to an extent, but they didn’t really stand much of a chance solo against a Heavy anyway. Heavy versus Heavy, the slowdown is a non-issue, so it’s back to whoever starts spinning up first, or, because of Natascha’s lowered power lever, who has the Minigun equipped. Instead, Natascha seems more like a good support weapon; helps insure kills when double teaming, can save your teammates from incoming pyros, stall scouts, etc. Still, the weapon seems worth having regardless, and I’m going to do some extensive testing tomorrow to confirm these observations…

Thursday, August 21

My suspicions about Natascha have all but been confirmed. The slowdown effect is interesting, but I find myself wishing I had the extra damage of the Minigun more. Natascha’s uses are, it seems apparent to me, as follows: to help new players or those who don’t set their sensitivity high enough to follow fast-moving players, to cinch kills on retreating enemies, and to make killing Pyros easier. None of these, in my opinion make it a standard weapon suitable for all around use. Following enemies’ movement at full speed with the Minigun is something a player can learn with a some effort, retreating enemies can be killed faster with the increased damage of the Minigun, and as a Pyro gets closer to you, the more damage you’ll do to him, and you’ll be able to kill him before he kills you anyway. Natascha, then, is a weapon that offers specific advantages in specific situations, and it’s up to the player to judge those situations and implement it, and I’m sort of disappointed that we didn’t get something else that actually increased the potency of the Heavy—but then again, isn’t a weapon that can only shine in the hands of a skilled player the hallmark of a good competitive unlockable?

Friday, August 22

Missed a day. I got a chance to hang out with a friend I don’t see often because I live out of town and I took it.

Saturday, August 23

Played a lot of Arena today. As I said before, it’s like playing Counter Strike, but more fun. The persisting class-element plus the established “cartoony” atmosphere of TF2 take the “BOOM! HEADSHOT!” edge off the Counter Strike-style setting, while the action maintains the intensity; it’s intense but not intimidating. While there was an understandable torrent of Heavies earlier in the week, the community has quickly embraced the value of diversified teams in the new mode (as it should) and the result is a welcome option for a change of pace. The short, sweet bursts of action sprinkled into the average map rotations break up the often long, hard-fought wars of 2Fort’s capture the flag or Dustbowl’s inch by inch offensive crawl. It’s good. It’s real good.

Sunday, August 24

Well, it’s been a hell of a week (well, six days), and I’m very happy with what the Heavy update hath wrought. The new achievements are fun and don’t require going too far out of your way to complete. Instead, they focus on perfecting valuable skills and showcasing new additions to the game, like an effective update should. The Heavy’s new weapons complement his style and add another level of amusement with their gimmicks, like an effective update should. The new maps and “Arena” mode build on the standard style of action while introducing a new element that changes the game, like an effective update should. Valve has done a spectacular job with this content update for Team Fortress 2, and my hat’s off to them. I’ll have no problem occupying myself until the next update pack is released.

Heres how it went:  At exactly midnight I turned off logging on my 2fort servers and turned of the hlstatsx daemon on my webserver.  Oh how peaceful it is to be able to actually look at console without seeing a constantly scrolling mess of announcements and 'status' outputs.  At 12:30am I ran my script that grabs, sorts and cleans the logs so that I can feed them back into the daemon.  At 2am I started the stats rerun.  It ended up taking 9 hours to reprocess the ~19days of log files.  Normally there isn't a huge difference in points when I do the Sunday rerun but due to the heavy update coming out in the middle of the day I was not accounting for the new weapons for a few hours.   =)

I also made a policy change on my server.  When someone is banned for cheating I will be stripping all refences to them out of the log files.  So all the points they steal, and all the points earned from killing them will never have happened (once a rerun happens).  This seems fair.  I decided to do this after seeing a guy with a 100% crit hack rack up 1500 points before someone reported him to me.  :-/

Oh yeah, yesterday I made some minor changes to a sourcemod plugin called observe client by WhiteWolf.  Some people had said that it wasn't working right under TF2.  Since I always wanted something like this for sourcemod I set out to fix it.   You can find the fixed version below....

http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=62324&page=4

I also started work on the other side of the map:

I think the map is about 60% done now. Just adding details now... and a second balloon... and a 3d skybox.