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Spaded! from 3lazydogs has put together this vid splicing Saving Private Ryan footage with Team Fortress 2 sounds and music.

Much hilarity ensues, and the pyros rock (as always).
I think I like the Allied team better on this one.

Oh man, this one is hilarious. Apparently Digital Jedi is being targeted by a sophisticated online organised crime gang threatening to send clan stack pics to me if DJedi doesn’t meet their demands.

REV6StingraY`d5: wire me 50 dollars or I will send a clan stacked picture of djedi to ubercharged.net… what will he think about djedi then!
REV6StingraY`d5: meet my demands or this image - http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/2553/djedistackedkg5.jpg will be sent to every news orginazation in the biz

This stuff is priceless.

The always reliable guys over at Digital Jedi have linked to the Team Fortress 2 stats collected from the last weeks play.

Whats notable are the “death heat maps” showing where most people have died on each map. In particular the deaths for 2fort:

Most of the deaths are happening RIGHT IN THE TWO SNIPER NESTS! These weighted companion snipers are exactly what I was talking about the other day. Snipers killing snipers killing snipers killing snipers, and no one really doing anything else. Now we have scientific proof that the weighted companion snipers suck the life out of 2fort.

Does anyone actually play Team Fortress 2 on that map, or just a point and click adventure?

johnmazz has been digging into the Team Fortress 2 models that ship with the game over at the dead workers forums. He has spotted a few extras that were designed at some point, but didn’t make it into the final version of the game.

Looks like class specific grenades wern’t totally out of the question at one point in development.

I’d noticed a few of these while poking around in Garrys Mod as well, but hadn’t taken the time to look into them. Its cool to see how the game evolved, and the remnants that are left from an earlier design that are still lurking in the game library files.

OK, this kind of stuff drives me mad when it happens to me. But this compilation of griefing is hilarious - if only for the voice comm recordings of the griefees bitching about the griefers. Thankfully a lot of these are from beta, and have been fixed since [edit - apparently this was all done in the last 2-4 weeks - I'm pretty sure the Gravelpit exploit at least has been fixed.].

It’s made by the Team Roomba guys. I spotted over at Digital Jedi.

I have to admit I was ignorant to the horrors of meatspin before this vid. Now I’m scarred for life after googling it (don’t worry, its pixelated out in the video). Truly the cultural successor of our time to goatse.cx :(…

TEAM ROOMBA PRESENTS: Team Fortress 2 Griefing from FLOOR MASTER on Vimeo.

Update: - Team Roomba has another video of more their shenanigans.

Kaede has a great medic how to guide. Excellent overview of weapons, healing, ubercharges, and general tactics. Great stuff!

It is acceptable to call for a medic when:

• You are wounded, preferably MORE so than the person I’m currently healing.
• You want to be buffed for protection.
• You want to make a push and require healing support as you go.
• You are damaging yourself in order to help your team’s medics build up uber.

Please do not:

• Call for a medic unless at least ONE of the above points is true.
• Yell at me for not answering your medic call - find out why.
• Spam “MEDIC!” for no reason, for fun, or to annoy me.
• Spam “MEDIC!” when I’m surrounded by wounded teammates - I’ll get to you.
• Spam “MEDIC!” when you’re already being healed. Honestly, why would you?
• Spam “MEDIC!” when you know your team doesn’t have a medic.

They just stand there shooting at each other. They don’t actually do anything. They may as well just be a part of the scenery. You could drop them into a blazing, metal melting furnace, and no one would even notice they were gone. I’m not talking about the soldier-crit-shot reformists populating the steam forums, or the anonymous clan stacking apologists from OCAU or Whirlpool.

I’m talking about the god damn weighted companion snipers.

Circular Reasoning

You know who I mean. Those guys that hang out on 2fort (but can be found in most places). They each camp out a sliver of the balcony on either side of the map, nervously edging out to expose the same sliver of balcony on the opposite side, and try to take out the opposing sniper. And the opposing sniper’s only task - to nervously edge out and take a pot shot at them. And repeat ad-infinitum.

I’m sure some of these guys are talented Counter-Strike players. But that crap doesn’t fly in Team Fortress 2. Its useless at best, and a drag to the entire team at worst. If you’ve got 2 or 3 guys just standing there shooting, that’s 2 or 3 guys that aren’t helping you win.

Yeah fine, you can argue that they are controlling territory or helping with defense. I call BS. They are so universally cowardly that they can barely handle exposing themselves enough for a quick shot at the other sniper nest, let alone taking a look at what is going on below. They are dead to me. A waste of space.

And then you could argue that the snipers help the attackers by neutralizing the opposing sniper who would otherwise make life hard for your team. WHICH IS STUPID BECAUSE ALL THEY ARE DOING IS FIRING BACK AT THE FIRST SET OF SNIPERS WHO ARE FIRING BACK AT THEM! The circular logic fallacies of the whole thing makes my head hurt. I’ll leave chicken/egg debates to the intelligent design crowd setting science curriculum in our schools, but I’d hope TF2 players had a bit more common sense than that.

If you want to control snipers on the balcony, just lob a few stickies up there. Its amazing how quiet the whole deck gets once the snipers think they might get a scratch on their fresh nail polish.

The Aussie Battler Image

The characters in Team Fortress 2 are a bunch of shallow stereotypes, and I love them for that. They are hilarious. The sniper is no exception. He’s the type of solitary, isolated Aussie outdoorsman who spends weeks camped somewhere in the outback stalking a kangaroo or a dingo or something. He’s the guy made famous by Crocodile Dundee and the late Steve Irwin. Unfortunately, a few too many recent Counter Strike migrants have taken that to heart and embraced that proud ideal of standing around for HOURS not doing much. Croc dundee spent weeks in the outback because it is big and it is not filled with anything particularly interesting apart from flies, sand, and an occasional lost American tourist in a bathing suit. It takes a long time to do anything. Even going to the local pub for a beer is a week long expedition. 2fort has a slightly higher target turnover rate.

Just you know, hurry it up a bit huh?

(Hint - most Australians are actually much like anyone else in the world, except with a twangy accent that you get used to after a while. No, they don’t ride kangaroos to get to school here. Yes, they do drink a lot of beer. No, Australia doesn’t want Russell Crowe back)

The Good Snipers

I’m not ragging on snipers in general here. There are some great snipers out there, as OSI showed us the other week. A good sniper will pick a good spot to help the team and make life easier for the attackers and/or defenders, and will generally avoid the stupid “I shoot, you shoot” sniper duels, because they know they are ultimately unproductive. If you watch great snipers they are constantly moving explicitly not to get into those situations.

I’m not a good sniper (I’m just not patient enough, and my aim sucks - pyro was invented for uncos like me), but I do appreciate the good ones when they are on my team. The weighted companion snipers though… well hopefully they get kicked cause the server thought they were inactive (or dead), after not moving for 5 minutes.

Its the weekend again, so that means the stackers are out in force messing with YOUR game time.

Luckily the message is getting out, and our army of anti-stackers are doing their bit.

SO. We’ve got a massive Clan Stacked update with a whole bunch of nice shots this week.

First up, Jerry Fuselier (Fuseman) has a 5 deep shot of <CC><

Zen has a 4 deep shot of Turmoil *

Boian “neau” Alexiev has a 3 deep shot of noPantz.

deadlock has a 5 deep shot of [WP]

LavaGod Sacrifice has our second ever 6 deep stack done by [UoY]

Jonah H. has a 3 deep stack of [DAD]

And last, but not least, driver_800 send in another 6 deep shot, with this interesting note:

Here’s one I picked up last night. I pointed out via allchat that they would likely set the record on the “stacking hall of shame,” and they reacted, so maybe your wall is gaining some currency. Anyhoo, they were steamrolling every round in dustbowl in under two minutes. Twitchy and illiterate juveniles.

Nice. Good to know we’re getting a name for ourselves

As always, you can see the full list at the Clan Stacked page.

We’ve already seen 30 heavies try to take on a train (without much luck). Now it seems that Custom Pc Clan has figured out how to stop one with a bit more success.

Thanks to Elvis! again for another great video find.