Team Fortress 2 Message Board older than one year ago

Just a friendly reminder to anybody planning on submitting an entry to the Second Annual Saxxy Awards that the deadline is November 15, 12:00 AM GMT. This means that we won't accept entries after this date. Those of you planning on waiting until there's a single adrenaline-gorged second on the countdown clock, remember: You're not Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker and there's absolutely no need to do this. If you want to ensure your entry gets submitted, do not wait until the last minute.

Also, once your entry has been submitted, don't forget to double-check it. (You can find it in the Videos tab of your Steam Community profile.) Note that if you’ve uploaded your video to YouTube before, you may encounter a duplication issue. Learn how to fix it here.

One last thing: We've received some questions about using music. Just to clarify: Using royalty-free music in your entry is absolutely okay, but you should submit a source link in your entry's description as proof of the music's royalty-free-ness when possible.

#teamfortress Team Fortress 2's new Mann vs Machinme mode gets surprisingly thoughtful in this series of pieces done by artist biggreenpepper. More »

#screengrab Photoshop artist Valentin Baguirov used a combination of Photoshop and Valve's Source Filmmaker to create these movie poster beauties. Drag the slider over to compare and contrast. More »

#valve It was Valve boss Gabe Newell's birthday on November 3, and to mark the occasion, some kids from 4chan's /v/ (the board's video games group) went and paid him a visit in the flesh. More »

Sure, his resolve in battle may not be the best, but the Nerd in Team Fortress 2 has to have one of the most calculating minds we've ever seen.

The Steam Linux closed beta, which called for applications late last month, is now live. The Linux beta is available for installation on Ubuntu 12.04, since an "overwhelming majority" of experienced Linux applicants use Ubuntu, Steam says.

The Steam for Linux beta supports Team Fortress 2, though Steam has 25 games in total that run on Linux. Despite reports to the contrary in September, the beta includes Steam's controller-friendly Big Picture mode, which is also still in beta.

"This is a huge milestone in the development of PC gaming," Valve president Gabe Newell says. "Steam users have been asking us to support gaming on Linux. We're happy to bring rich forms of entertainment and our community of users to this open, customer-friendly platform."

Valve received more than 60,000 applications for the beta, and all beta rounds will come from this pool.

#adultswim On the one hand, I'm extremely excited to see an Adult Swim/Valve mix that doesn't just involve a sign-up sheet and a hat. More »

Or a BLU soldier’s quest for murder. -Tina Amini

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Fixed a bug that was causing intermittent lag spikes for Linux dedicated servers
• Fixed a crash while command-tabing on Mac in fullscreen
• Fixed not running on Mac OSX 10.5.8

Team Fortress 2

• MERASMUS! has leveled up at WizardCon!
  • "The Skull Island Topper" now tracks the highest level of Merasmus the owner has helped defeat
  • Increased Engineer, Scout, Pyro and Heavy damage against Merasmus
  • Increased Soldier and Demoman damage against Merasmus while he is in hiding
• Saxxy Awards submissions are now being accepted for the Replay category via the in-game YouTube™ uploader
• Fixed the Heavy not playing the correct audio when equipping all of the Grand Duchess items
• Fixed the Grand Duchess items not being groupped as an item set
• Fixed a bug that allowed spells to be applied to base items
• Added zombie character images and a new Halloween background for the main menu
• Beta version of new item import tool, available in game in the Steam Workshop submission process
• Fixed Mann vs. Machine robots not taunting when they level up while carrying the bomb
• Updated the health bar for Merasmus and Monoculus
• Added more credits to Caliginous Caper, Wave 666

Good news! Submissions are now being taken for the Second Annual Saxxy Awards! The event where we celebrate the world's best short films exclusively about ME, SAXTON HALE! No other subject will be considered for hold on, Bidwell's trying to tell me something. What is it, Bidwell. Of course I can listen to you and type at the same time. Look. Still typing. What? What do you mean they can make the films about anything? Why would they want to do that? No, it's not arrogance, Bidwell, it's just common damn sense. If you can make a film about anything, make it about me. What? Because I'm Saxton Hale, that's why. Why are we still having this conversation? You're lucky my hands are busy typing.

New paragraph! I'm going to go pull some strings with the mayor, see if I can't get the rules changed about what the films have to be about. In the meantime, feel free to upload your submissions.


As of 12:00AM GMT today and for the next two weeks, we are now accepting submissions for the Second Annual Saxxy Awards! Click here to find out how to submit!
(Note: Replay category submissions will be accepted starting tomorrow, via the in-game Replay Browser.)

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Fixed a regression in the Mac's minimum system check

Team Fortress 2

• Added new audio lines for Merasmus to use when he attacks
• Fixed a Linux dedicated server crash related to Mann vs. Machine mode

Team Fortress 2's fourth-annual "Scream Fortress" festivities have begun, bringing with them the usual blend of spooky items and ghastly baddies. This year's event, which runs until November 8, is also accompanied by a now-customary comic book, which explains how such terrifying circumstances came to be.

Said circumstances include haunted King of the Hill matches, during which players must battle the powerful ghost/wizard Merasmus and his book of bomb magic, the Bombinomicon. Additionally, control points have been booby trapped and now trigger the "Wheel of Fate" with each change in power, which has as much potential to harm as it does to help.

Item-wise, the ghoulish update adds magic spells in the form of potion bottles that can be applied to other inventory items; changing their colors, summoning ghosts or performing any number of other possible magical happenings. "One of the spells might even give you Glenn Danzig's eldritch phone number," Valve's announcement reads.

Mann vs Machine isn't left out of the fun either, gaining a brand-new mission called "Wave 666," which replaces the usual robotic enemies with those of an undead variety.

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Added mat_viewportupscale and mat_viewportscale to enable rendering the world at a reduced resolution. ("mat_viewportupscale 1" and "mat_viewportscale 0.5" will downscale world rendering by 50%.)
• Added a new convar mp_mapcycle_empty_timeout_seconds to trigger a changelevel when the server is empty
• Added positional audio support for Mumble clients
• Fixed a bug that prevented consecutive clicks on scrollbar buttons
• Performance and stability improvements

Team Fortress 2

• Scream Fortress Event 2012
• Fixed a bug where buildings would be invisible during their setup time
• Mann vs. Machine
  • Added the map Mvm_coaltown_event with a special Halloween mission
  • Fixed a bug where players money would not be set properly when restoring a checkpoint
  • Fixed server crash on vote to restart mission

This year’s Team Fortress 2 Halloween event has been been stripped of its cobwebbed shrouds and revealed to be one of supernatural shenanigans: there will be spells, there will be zombies, there will be spooky achievements, and there might owls. (I can’t tell if that’s just for illustrative purposes.) Relevantly: there’s a new King Of The Hill mode featuring a wizard, and a new Man Vs Machine mode where the robots are “800″ zombies, which is called Wave 666. Both look enticing, in a “don’t touch that green glow!” sort of way.

You can read more about it here. And there’s a comic here. And the event kicks off today. Good luck, freemarines!

#teamfortress Okay prepare for something a bit incredible, but also very, very strange. This is a scene from Toy Story, reanimated and rebuilt using Source Filmmaker. It starts off weird, then it gets kinda hilarious, then it gets weird again. More »

#teamfortress Just a few months after cold, unfeeling automatons came to Valve's hit co-op shooter in Mann vs. Machine, the publisher's unleashing waves of the undead on Team Fortress 2. More »

Welcome to your DOOM... AARON A. AARONSON!

Yes, we're talking directly to YOU, Aaron A. Aaronson! This prophecy of your death is coming from INSIDE YOUR OWN COMPUTER! AWOOOOOO!

Hello, everyone else! What you just experienced was a brave new frontier in Halloween scaring technology: personalized terror! Rather than generically scaring all of you a little, from this Halloween forward, we’re going to scare one specific person... TO DEATH! Admittedly, much like the Human Genome Project, this is going to take some time. So everybody be patient - you'll all be scared eventually. Also, if any of you know Aaron B. Aaronson and don't want to deprive him of the thrill of dying of terror next year, don’t tell him about this blog post.

But just because we’re all now living in the amazing far future of scaring, being frightened in ways that until moments ago seemed impossible, that doesn’t mean we don’t have some more traditional Halloween horror planned for you. First of all, we’re happy and scared to announce the Fourth Annual Scream Fortress Halloween update, dedicated to the loving memory to Aaron A. Aaronson. It doesn’t ship until tomorrow, but you can read all the eerie details here.

Secondly, we’re pleased to present the first in our new series of Halloween-themed release notes. It’s a terrifying little tidbit of fearful fact reporting we call “John Carpenter’s Changes to the Functionality of Halloween Gifts”! Last year, gifts spawned publicly and could be claimed by whoever got there first. This year, players will receive private gift spawns that they can grab at their leisure without having to race everyone on the server for them. The end. Directed and programmed by John Carpenter.

#teamfortress Like clockwork, the coming of Halloween also signals the coming of some special Team Fortress 2 stuff, heralded today by the release of a new comic and teases for a showdown between the mercs and Merasmus. More »

Those of you who follow the private lives of TF2's mercenaries might be aware that Soldier's had an ongoing roommate problem. Specifically, his problem is that his roommate is a powerful magician. Things reach their logical, terrifying conclusion in a comic we call... "Doom-Mates!"

Today marks the second anniversary of Valve's introduction of the Team Fortress 2 Mann Co. Store into the hearts and minds of Steam users everywhere. To celebrate the occasion, Valve is doing what it does best: hold a massive sale.

While not all encompassing, the sale does drop discount bombs on a large portion of Team Fortress 2's microtransaction-based hat/weapon/sundry shop ecosystem, reducing prices on fan-designed fedoras and other miscellany by 25 to 75 percent. Let's be honest, this is probably the best deal you're going to see on pretend hats for a while. Also, we know a guy that can get you an incredible deal on a bridge, if you'd be interested.

Since 99.9999% of you probably read that title and went directly to the Mann Co. Store, we assume we're now speaking to the three of you who don't believe in reading titles. And now that we've restated the importance of reading the title, we assume those three are gone too. We're essentially talking to ourselves right now, but Valve has a minimum word count for all blog posts that we haven't quite reached yet. Did we mention that items will be anywhere from 25% to 75% off? Well, we have now. Also, the minimum word count is 100 words. Bam!

#teamfortress It's never cool to bail from your multiplayer game mid-match. It may mean that you won't get another "L" on your record, but it also means you're a quitter who lets his or her team down. More »

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Fixed the "disconnect" command regression from the previous update
• Fixed tools like vbsp working with new model format
• Fixed a con_logfile ConVar exploit

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed a common "FindModel" crash for replays
• Fixed the Crafty Hair not using styles for the yellow and brown hair
• Improved the "Restore" UI for customizing items in backpack
• Fixed floating arrows on carried objects
• Mann vs. Machine
  • Added a penalty system to deter players from repeatedly abandoning Mann Up games
  • Corrected the respawn time for the Mannslaughter mission
  • Updated MissionCycle behavior. Servers will always cycle to a mission listed in the MissionCycle file.

There are some words that, if I have to use them to describe a man, mean that man is dead to me. Also to everybody else. Because I will kill that man. One of those words is "hatless". The other is "coward".

I gave you mercs one simple thing to do: Defend Mann Co. from an unstoppable robot horde. Now Bidwell's telling me some of you are abandoning the fight in the middle of attacks. Firstly: What am I even paying you in found money that falls out of robots for?

Secondly — actually, put this first, it's more important — I am coming for you.

But thirdly, Bidwell's drummed up some penalties for any coward he catches running away from the frontlines. If any of you cowards out there find these penalties too harsh, don't worry about it, because see Point #1 (I am coming for you). Whatever penalties you get will seem like a day at the Being Afraid store (or wherever it is cowards like to shop) when I get my big angry hands on your beady little heads.


For more information, visit the updated Mann vs. Machine FAQ.

ETF2L is starting up its third season of Highlander next week. Last year they had over 300 sign-ups and are hoping for even more this year! Signups start Monday, October 15 and are open through the week until October 23. The season is slated to start the first week in November.

As an added bonus, to help promote the new season, on Sunday October 14 there is a Highlander match scheduled between one of the best teams in Europe and North America: Teams SNSD and The Syndicate. The match will be broadcast on VanillaTV at 9:15PM CET and is a joint effort between VanillaTV, ETF2L, and eXtv who are all going to be covering the event. More details are available here about that match.

Valve has released a big update to Team Fortress 2's 'Mann vs. Machine' game mode this week, which of course pits human players against an army of invading robots. The update adds two new difficulty settings called tours, one tougher and one easier than the current mode, along with some new loot found throughout the two tours.

Players will also be able to search for multiple missions or tours at a time. Matchmaking updates should make it easier to find and keep groups while playing: once you find a team and defeat a mission, teams will stay together. Good thing, too - those robot hordes aren't going to destroy themselves.

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Fixed HTTP downloads on Mac not sending an HTTP referer

Team Fortress 2

• Updated materials/models for the Champ Stamp, King of Scotland Cape, Stovepipe Sniper Shako, and Freedom Staff
• Fixed a server crash that could occur if a Spy was disguised holding the Gunslinger
• Fixed the Lacking Moral Fiber Mask being tagged as a misc item instead of a hat
• Fixed the Gunslinger not accepting "Sappers Removed" strange parts
• Overhealed players that are bleeding or on fire can now pickup healthkits to remove these conditions
• Added tf_dingalingaling_repeat_delay (default 0) which limits how often the dingalingaling sound can play
• Removed outdated tip about the Spy's Enforcer
• Updated the localization files
• Vote system
  • Allow kicking of connected players that haven't joined a team in Mann vs. Machine
  • Added sv_vote_issue_kick_spectators_mvm (default 0) which allows players to kick anyone that isn't team invaders, as long as they've passed the sv_vote_issue_kick_min_connect_time_mvm timer, if enabled
• Mann vs. Machine
  • Added two new tours of duty, each with new unique loot:
    • Operation Oil Spill, with 6 new intermediate skill missions
    • Operation Gear Grinder, with 3 new expert skill missions
  • If a player connects to a MvM game through matchmaking and loses their connection, their spot will be held for a brief duration and they will be given a chance to reconnect
  • After victory on a Mann Up server, the players will be put into a lobby together.
  • Improved matchmaking searching status screen
• Mann vs. Machine balance changes:
  • Explosive Headshots
    • damage is now 150 regardless of upgrade level
    • damage is done in one tick instead of the previous six
    • added a slowing effect based on upgrade level (50%-80% slow, 2-4 second duration)
    • radius still scales with upgrade level (unchanged)
  • Marked For Death duration reduced to 7 seconds from 15 seconds when the target is a giant robot
  • Reduced the "effect bar recharge rate increased" upgrade from 20% increments with an 80% cap to 15% increments with a 60% cap

New Tours! Much like in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, specifically the part where Goldilocks broke into a bear's house looking for a place to sleep, some of you thought the one Tour of Duty we shipped with Mann vs. Machine was too hard. Others of you found it too soft. A lot of you thought it was just right.
In the fable, of course, Goldilocks held the defenseless bear family at gunpoint until her boyfriend Chet got there, at which point things turned truly grim. This is where our story diverges from that true crime drama, because we've sidestepped the issue by adding more Tours of Duty to MvM mode. Now, in addition to Operation Steel Trap (hard), we've got Operation Oil Spill (less hard) and Operation Gear Grinder (very hard). As Chet might say, "You goddamn bears are in for a lonnnnng night."
New Loot! In the same way that Goldilocks and Chet drove off covered in bear blood and honey with a flatscreen TV and fourteen dollars in cash, we've cooked up some tour-specific loot you can take to your hideout in Florida. Just like the Botkiller heads awarded to survivors of Operation Steel Trap, we've got some brand new spoils of war you can only get in these new tours: rusty, blood-covered 'bot heads for the intermediate-level Operation Oil Spill, and some 24-carat diamond 'bot heads for the expert-level Operation Gear Grinder, so those of you players who survive the tour can show off a little bling to prove it.
(Remember: as always, loot is the only difference between MvM on the unofficial "Boot Camp" server and official "Mann Up" servers. Otherwise the gameplay is identical.)
Improved Matchmaking! You can now select multiple missions you'd like to play, to maximize the chances of finding compatible players as quickly as possible. We’ve also added some handy buttons that'll let you select all missions of a particular difficulty level, or all missions not yet marked off on a Tour of Duty.
Lastly, like when Chet and Goldilocks beat a retired cop to death in Boca Raton and were sent to separate federal prisons, when your MvM group beat a mission, we used to disband the group. Now we've made it so that when you beat a mission to death in Boca Raton or elsewhere, party the other players on the server are sent back to the matchmaking screen as a group, so you can keep playing together.

In just under a month, we'll start accepting entries for five-minute shorts made with the Source Filmmaker, Valve's filmmaking tool. You'll be able to submit in five different categories (Best Action, Best Drama, Best Comedy, Best Original Universe and Best Overall) with the hope of taking home a Saxxy at the star-studded Second Annual Saxxy Awards. So if you've got an SFM opus in you, crack those knuckles and get creating — November 1st'll be here in no time.
Also, a couple of quick changes for entrants:
We've Added a Replay Category The Source Filmmaker is the perfect resource for creators looking to dramatize the TF2 mercenaries' off-hours — but after we announced the Saxxy rules, we realized we'd under-represented some of the great dramatic, comedic or just plain violently entertaining moments in-game. So we've added a new category to celebrate all the creators out there who'd rather make their movie magic on the battlefield.
You Can Use Non-SFM Tools for Post-Production Because the SFM didn't ship with a few post-production features, like titling and transitions, we've decided to let people use other effects and editing tools for this year's contest.
Remember, though, that nothing makes us happier than people using and giving feedback on the SFM. We want this tool to keep getting better and better, and to do that, we'll need creative folks like you pushing the SFM in new directions.

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Shared Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Improved the performance of the libraries used for in-game HTML display

Team Fortress 2

• Added new promo items
• Fixed hats sometimes appearing multiple times in incorrect locations when changing classes
• Fixed Demoman shields not reducing explosive damage in non-MvM games
• Fixed the tf_bot_add command using the same name for all of the bots when adding multiple bots simultaneously
• Updated the localization files
• Moved map descriptions into the localization files
  • Map descriptions will still be loaded from the maps folder first if they exist
• Updated Mann vs. Machine
  • Fixed a bug where players could only buy 1 upgrade at a time from the upgrade station
  • Fixed a bug where the Victory dialog would sometimes show during incorrect times