ubercharged.net

The ever alert Elvis! sent in another Team Fortress 2 video (dude you’re welcome to a login if you want to post stuff yourself! Email me if you want )

This time its the pyro rocking it up with a custom Gibson Firebird electric guitar model in place of his normal axe weapon (yeah, all that time I spent hanging out with guitar geeks in the music department at high school is paying off now that I can recognize famous classic guitar models in my old age…)

From the video’s youtube page:

This is an updated version of YellowLake’s pyro rockstar guitar for Team Fortress 2. This includes Phong and Rim Lighting! It makes the model look outstanding!

Elvis! recommended another great tutorial video. It’s produced by RandomEngy, and is in a similar style to the great How To Play Spy and How To Play Pyro videos made by Daedalus.

A lot of people think the heavy weapons guy is a basic class with no tricks to know. While he is often simpler to play than other classes, there is more to the heavy than just dumb charging while firing your big gun. There are still a lot of tactics that people on public servers miss which this tutorial goes over.

Yes, there is more to it than charge + fire your big gun + pray for an ubercharge.

Theres also some nice footage of a heavy owning an entire enemy team while maniacally laughing and yelling at them. Seriously, the heavy has the funniest lines Team Fortress 2.

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.