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An epic struggle

Wow. Me and my team felt dumb after this one.

It was one of those satisfying, hard fought dustbowl battles. An epic struggle where you’re hanging on by the skin of your teeth, constantly pushing back and forth, where the teams are evenly matched and everyone is putting in everything they’ve got. In short, a pretty damn good game.

It was the last stage. We fought hard to hold the first control point, and we managed to for a couple of minutes before inevitably losing it (as you do on dustbowl, because it’s designed that way). So we fell back to defending around the next corner after that.

I was playing medic, and it was one of those great random public server teams where it all just gels. We had a good mix. There were the couple of obligatory soldiers, a demoman, a pyro, a bunch of heavies, and a couple of engineers keeping sentries up behind the front lines to handle the odd enemy push that drove us back a bit far. Our guys took the defense back on the offense and were doing a great job driving the attackers back. They knew just how much to push back to slow the enemy’s advance. They’d judge it just right when to fall back to get healed up, and with all the intense fighting (and healing), the ubercharges were coming thick and fast.

It was smart play. A couple of times one bright soldier even ducked out repeatedly to get hit by an enemy sentry round the corner while I was healing so I could build uber quicker.

This was going great. We were pushed back from the first point with about 8 minutes on the clock - not too shabby. We then managed to push back and hold their advance steady. We were still holding it nicely till about 2 minutes to go and were feeling confident. We were co-ordinating over voice comms, and spirits were high. We were gonna do this.

Yeah we rock, BUT…

In all the excitement, we all kinda forgot about doing any defense of the actual point. Seeing as we were forward of the door to the alternative underground passage to the last cap point, we figured no one could get through - not even a spy. Hah.

Somehow though, this one god damn Houdini ninja spy did manage to slip past the constant rocket spam, pyro checking, and even the 3 lard ass heavies that were physically blocking the entire width of the path! I’m not sure exactly how, but I’m picking some kind of advanced portal use. Possibly involving flinging…

And he plonked himself directly on the cap point catching us with our pants down so to speak. Meanwhile we were all defending the bottleneck half way across the map blissfully ignorant of any problems until Ellen McLain sneered that our control point was in trouble. So we all did a 180 and bolted for the control point to try to somehow get there in time and salvage the game. We managed to get to the last corner with less than second to spare…

I know you’re all expecting a happy ending where madlep saves the day (again), but it was not to be so. A couple of rockets were fired, but the point was capped before they hit. The last thing we saw was the spy taunting us before the cap timer finished. Then he charged our mob and killed us all with the butterfly knife as humiliation time kicked in.

Did we feel stupid? Yup. Very.

On the upside though, I’ve managed to sneak this one in a couple of times since then. Its great if you can pull your own Houdini and quietly slip past the current point being contested to wait patiently near the next cap point. I even spent 3 minutes deep undercover patiently standing next to an enemy demoman pretending to be a sniper. I backstabbed him at the last second and did my own sneaky cap to win the game. Was crapping myself. I was sure him or someone else would try spy checking me at some point - but random displays of incompetance are a hallmark of public servers (don’t expect to get away with that in any form of organised game).

I love it when that happens now.

After producing the excellent How To Play Spy tutorial video, Daedalus has pumped out a new video on how to play pyro.

Like the spy video, this one is excellently produced and edited, and even had a few useful tips for experienced players - I didn’t realise you could take out sentries that way!

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll get more hate mail from all the pros saying that this stuff is all obvious, and isn’t worth mentioning. Well, if you’re in that boat, you can give it a skip and leave me alone. Everyone else should enjoy it.

Elvis! linked to this video from the Spy Highlights video I posted the other day.

It’s another sniper ownage video, but without the usual “I shoot, You shoot” 2fort wankery. There’s some nice offensive sniping in there.

We’ve had a couple more submissions to the clan stacked archive.

Jerry Fuselier (aka Fuseman) sent through our first 6 deep stack, and another 5 deep stack.

And Jeff Olson dropped in a 5 deep stack. Although he did say

That having been said, this doesn’t happen often, and it’s an awesome server.

Still, a 5 deep stack on a 6 player team is an impressive stack.

Yahtzee (of Zero Punctuation fame) tripped over to the offices of Valve Software for a bit of an Orange Box love in. Apparently Valve were so impressed by his recent Orange Box review (or at least glad they didn’t get flamed too bad) that they had him and a few other angry video game commentary people along as well. Notably Jerry “Tycho” Holkins from Penny Arcade.

The interesting bit he let slip is this nugget regarding the future “Meet The Team” videos for Team Fortress 2:

I witnessed the Cabal System in action today when a roomful of rowdy animators asked me to take a look at the prototype for the newest “Meet the Team” Team Fortress short, about which I’ve probably already said too much. After I was forced to admit that I had completely misunderstood the entire thing because I’m kind of thick, the team spent the next three or four hours loudly arguing possible ways that props and character movements could be subtly changed to make it easier for thickies like myself to “get.” Watching it all unfold makes it easier to understand why there’s always such a long wait time between the releases of Valve games and products, but I guess history has proved that this makes for a higher-quality output than the more conventional routine of whipping the code monkeys with leather straps to make a strict publishing deadline.

Not all that insightful I guess, but its good to know they are still coming. Its just Valve’s usual “its done when its done” approach to releasing stuff. There were rumors doing the rounds a little while back that said the sniper was the next one to get the video loving treatment. We’ll see soon hopefully.

Here’s another show off video with some nice Team Fortress 2 spy action. Some nice work in there.

I love how its not just the usual backstab wankery the whole way through, and shows a heap of spy deaths as well.

Personal favourite - the last one with the doctor at the very end (skip to that even if you don’t watch the entire thing - hilarious!)

Just spotted Team Fortress TV. It’s a newish site dedicated to covering the competitive side of Team Fortress 2 in a sports style show.

They have round ups of games that have been played, and predictions for high profile upcoming matches. All very professionally presented, and well edited. I love the in game footage from the various games they are commentating on.

Today’s episode covers CEVO Round 2 Results

The talented AgentArt has put up a new site at www.pcgameart.com/. He’s got downloads for the artwork he’s already done to use as sprays.

AgentArt did the cool TF2 spy tech styled engineer product posters (teleporter and dispenser) which I linked to last week. Both of those are there to use as sprays.

Jerry Fuselier sent in a screenshot of a 4 deep stack by [Team Croquette] to add to ubercharged’s Clan Stackers list.

Cheers Jerry

Another great post spotted on the Steam forums after the earlier one yesterday on how critical shots work.

Walking Target described an interesting tactic using two medics to achieve a 20 second uber rush.

Seen this yet? Two medics work together and charge up to 100%, then both charge in bonesawing. First one ubers for 10 seconds while the other attacks and then when that runs out, second one pops theirs and their partner does the same. 20 straight seconds of charging melee uber.

Could work pretty well for charging a defense turtled behind a bunch of sentry turrets. Although they can’t do as much damage, the medics would be able to move faster and probably achieve more than a slow moving, knock back prone, ubered heavy in some cases. If they manage to take out any engineers repairing the turrets, its all downhill from there for the defenders. Sentries don’t have that much health without an engineer backing them up, and 20 seconds is a LONG time to hack into them.

Would be interesting to see in practice. Gotta give this a try.

redcomet has posted some excellent experimentation and analysis into how critical hits work in Team Fortress 2 over at the steam forums. Finally we’re getting some light on this touchy subject. I’m still not a big crit fan, and I think I side with the camp that says they are too random and unbalance the game (except when I’m playing soldier. Then they rock).

This work definitely adds evidence to show that critical shots do in fact become more common the better you are doing.

Heres an excerpt:

Phase 4

Me shooting the bot mob 80 times consecutively. Picking up extra ammo as I go.

First Set
39 / 40 crits

Second Set
40 / 40 crits

Yes thats right, 100% crit rate after the first couple deaths. I could have kept going forever and consistently gotten crits. It seems that after you kill 2 or 3 players in a row, and very close to each other time-wise, you get a crit ‘booster’ which increases you crit chance by a certain amount for a few seconds. I did some more testing, killing two bots right away and firing at a wall and I was able to get 8 crits off, including reload time.

How cool would it be if there was an alternate history version of half-life. Except instead of the combine spilling through and invading earth between half-life 1 and half-life 2 - it was the Team Fortress 2 guys…

So rather than having to fight masses boring combine soldiers in a dark dystopian future, you’d be fighting all these guys with  cool weapons and taunts from TF2. That would rock.

Breen would be pissed though…

Yeah, too much spare time and a copy of Garrys Mod, and this is what happens…

Valve has pumped out another update.

Pretty lengthy set of changes. Looks like granary has had a major work over. And there are also unconfirmed rumours floating around on the forums that the pyro stealth nerf from a few patches back has been stealth unnerfed. Will have to check this out when I get home. I want my old pyro flame back, so if this works I’m gonna be a happy man playing this weekend.

Team Fortress 2/Source Engine Update Released

November 15, 2007, 5:30 pm - Jason Ruymen

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Updates to Team Fortress 2 and the Source Engine have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:Source Engine

• Fixed a bug in networking that would cause long stalls (up to 10 seconds) when a split packet would not be reassembled properly, which forced a full update to all clients
• General optimization to tracelines
• Fix for broken .dem file playback
• Added backward compatibility code to allow demos recorded with protocol 12 to continue to be playable under protocol version 13
• When showing “WARNING: Connection Problem”, now indicate the number of seconds remaining before an auto-disconnect will occur
• Fixed a bug that would cause NULLNAME to be shown as the player’s name in the scoreboard for a short time

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed exploit where spectators could spawn into the world without actually joining a team

Hydro map changes

• Fixed an exploit that would allow players to jump out of the map

Granary map changes

• Cover changes to the first capture points of both teams. Reduces some of the sight lines for defenders, and should make the area easier to capture
• Teams that are holding more points will receive a greater spawn time bonus (spawn timer reduced for the winning team). This should help attacking teams build momentum
• Minor visual tweaks to the BLU side between capture points 2 and 3
• Clipped off a super high (demo pipe jump) perch in the middle area
• Increased base round timer to 10 minutes
• Added windows overlooking the final cap from the capture point 2 building (via new room next to conveyor route)
• Minor changes to lighting in the middle area
• Moved the middle spawn points farther forward (saves 6-7 seconds off a Heavy’s run from this spawn to enemy capture point 2)
• Reduced spawn advantage/penalty to a total of -/+ 6 seconds when on the final cap (from 10 seconds)
• Fixed material alignment and model interpenetration issues in home spawn rocket rooms

SourceTV

• Increased default bandwidth rate from 5 to 8 KB/sec for spectator clients
• Increased SourceTV demo buffer size for table class descriptions from 64 to 96KB. Team Fortress 2 was running over this
• Performance improvement for copying unreliable data buffers to SourceTV clients
• Updated the list of events in TF2 tagged for the director to play

This one is pissing me off more and more. Threads like this one over at the official forums where the stackers try to defend their stack action have pushed me over the edge, and I’m taking matters into my own hands.

So, after my rant the other day against clan stacking, I’ve started collecting screenshots and have put up a permanent page here at ubercharged to document their crimes against humanity.

You can find it under Clan Stack Hall Of Shame - which is permanently linked from the top banner.

If you happen to spot any blatant stacking, send them in to madlep@ubercharged.net and I’ll add them with credit. Happy hunting.

Yesterday, I posted about agentart’s very cool teleporter parody ad.

Today more good stuff is delievered at Team Fortress 2 Fort forums

I love this stuff. Great style, and really high quality. Fits right in with the art style of the game.

ubercharged.net regular Zarathustra runs a cool site at TF2 Sprays.

There are some great portal sprays that were recently added.

You can download the full set from tf2sprays.com

Nice

The guys from Deadworkers Party have pumped out another episode of their Team Fortress 2 podcast “Control Point”. We even got a mention

Episode 4 - The Soldier

Maggots! YOU HAD BETTER DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST TODAY AND LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE THING!! *Clunk, CLUNK, CLUNK*. TWICE! Er… well, that’s what I’d say if I was playing the soldier.

Topics Include:

• The Soldier Class
• Rocket Jumping!
• More on our CP Server (come join us!)
• SDK is out!
• Patch Notes
• Warsong Gulch Conversion Started!
• What is Source Filmmaker?
• TF2 Face Poser & map making
• Garry’s Mod works with TF2 (check out these pics!)
• Let the Heavies use the damn teleporters first
• And Much More!

Download - Episode 04 (72:07)

BTW - I’m actually a New Zealander. I just live in Australia.

Thanks to the lovely “Britney” who decided it would be cool to exploit the clipping bugs on gravelpit, and build a sentry to buff his stats a little.

DIE PLS

(that photo is just a random one I found demonstrating the exploit, not a screenshot from that particular game)

When everyone on the server started yelling at him to quit cheating his response was just

get raped

Times like these I wish Team Fortress 2 had a vote kick system.

The very talented agentart posted this pic over on Team Fortress 2 Fort.
He’s also got a page of his own stuff at deviant art.
I’d buy one.

You’ve probably seen this by now, but there are some kick ass pictures made with Garry’s Mod over at NeoGAF forums. They are really funny. Go check them out now.

If you haven’t heard of Garrys Mod before, its basically a sandbox game (although its closer to a tool), for manipulating objects and scenes in source engine games. The new beta of it works with the orange box games.

The team stack picture in my last rant on team stackers was made by me using Garrys Mod. I’m still pretty n00b, but you can do some pretty cool stuff with it. Its surprisingly easy to learn, but getting the characters into the exact pose you want is a little fiddly.

Still, I’m quite happy with the way my first attempt turned out.