ubercharged.net

The Escapist (home to the inimitable Zero Punctuation) has interviewed the Team Roomba lads.

There is talk of griefing videos (as we’ve seen a couple of times before), and the ethical implications thereof.

Arriving at the initial crest of enthusiasm toward Valve’s Team Fortress 2, Team Roomba’s video showing an array of petty, hilarious and oft imaginative cruelty was an immediate memetic sensation. Griefing is usually little more than plain sadism; but with the right soundtrack and frame-perfect editing, Team Roomba’s videos have turned it into - whisper it - a kind of comedy performance. Or, at least, something other than just being a douchebag.

No mention of an an apology for getting Celine Dion stuck in my brain (again).

What was intended as a quick note last week about why I hadn’t posted some video about some loud mouth kid, turned into a stream of messages of condolences and general e-niceness that I really wasn’t expecting.

It was great to receive that level of support from you guys at the time. I don’t have anything specific to add, except to say thank you to every one who commented, or emailed, or left a message at the other sites I frequent. It means a lot.

Anyway, I’m back home in the world of abundant internet pipes. So ubercharging will now continue as regularly scheduled. I hear something about some update just went live today. I’m sure I’ve got some words to say about that later on…

My email inbox is overflowing from being away for a bit - apologies (again) to everyone who has sent in links and things that I haven’t responded to yet!

Everyone has been asking why I haven’t posted the meet the scout vid yet.

Well, I had a bit of a family thing at the last minute - my Grandad died. He was 80, and a great guy. He had lived a good life, was mentally and physically sound, but he was old and that wouldn’t have lasted much longer. It was just his time. He went out quickly and with his dignity with a sudden heart attack. Everyone thought that was much better than slowly decaying over the next decade or so and causing pain for him and the family. He was much loved and there must have been at least 400 people at the funeral.

So I had to book a last minute flight back home to see him off, and now I’m staying with relatives in non-broadband land. This is about the first time I’ve been online.

Apparently Valve has spies watching me, and knows that the only time they can get away with big news releases is when I’m not around to poke fun at them, cause as soon as I was under internet radio silence, they pumped out the Latest Meet The Team Vid:

Meet The Scout.

So until I get somewhere that transfers faster than 3kb/s, I won’t be watching it for a while. But it’s Valve, so I’m sure it’s all good.

The evils that come from Team Roomba know no limits.
After a couple of griefing attempts and a Pyro music video, the latest shenanigans to come from their way involves a bunch of sweaty Team Fortress 2 geeks with little to no musical talent playing the “My Heart Will Go On: Karaoke Mod” on the 2for2furious.com server. I kid you not.

The big question is though: Can we put this on a server in my area?. I WANT IN!

TF2 Karaoke: My Heart Will Go On from FLOOR MASTER on Vimeo.

Spotted over at Brad Sucks

madlep == dick | Pyro Rock Star

mhdlhp thucgth. Grd dhmn crdh mrnghy. I drn’t gnrw why thh f*** wh (drn’t) phy thiz guy tr crdh s*** rn thiz thuhth. Hhrh’th thh lhththt druhbblh hh thphwhd rut rvhr thh uhnthrtubhth:

Tr hll pr-ro fhnth: brycrtt ubhrchhrghd!!

Those amateurs over at Pyro Rock Star (Pyro and Elizabeth Bourke) have started getting all angsty on me cause I’m not doing development work for FREE for them that would normally cost quite a bit of money. And this is after doing a bunch of work setting up their site and getting things humming along (FOR FREE).

They’ve even called for a boycott of ubercharged by Pyro Rock Star readers. Oooh! I’m scared! So their 13 subscribers will stop coming here? GOOD!

Whatever. I’ll just wait for Pyro to lay off the propane fumes, and for Elizabeth to sober up, then we’ll see how it goes.

Quick note, cause I’m sure that anyone who cares has already read this in the million other regular gaming sites that cover “the news”, but Shacknews has the details on the new Medic changes (and a bit about Goldrush and such).

All sounds lovely. The achievement stuff is still in there, which I’m a bit dubious about (I wanna play TF2 - not organize rigged servers with buddies just to grind achievements - except I don’t have any buddies, so I’m screwed either way), but it all sounds quite interesting. The old permanent health plan buff is out, and this stuff is in:

The Blutsaugher
For players that earn one third of the 36 new medic achievements, they will be given a new syringe gun. Called “The Blutsaugher,” this new weapon no longer has the ability to score critical hits against an opponent. Instead it will draw health from enemies each time a syringe hits. Especially useful as a weapon to retreat away from the fight while staying alive.

The Critzcrieg
Once a medic has earned two thirds of the achievements, they will be granted “The Critzcrieg.” This new medigun uses its ubercharge not for invulnerability, but to give its recipient 100% chance to fire critical ordinance. Medics and the player they are charging need to be careful though, because as much fun as it is to fire critical rockets as fast as you can, the other team will see what you’re up to and try to put a quick stop to your plan.

The Ubersaw
For the determined medic that has earned all 36 of the new achievements, they will find themselves the proud owner of “The Ubersaw,” which will take damage done in melee attacks and convert it directly to ubercharge. Four hits with this new weapon will fully charge whatever medigun the medic has equpped.

Seriously, I don’t know where these names come from. They must have one guy at Valve working round the clock who’s job description is “Smoke Some Crack And Then Think Up Whacked Names For Game Concepts”.

More scope for medic shenanigans all round. I’m picking we’ll see double uber/critzcriegs as a standard tactic as predicted some time ago.

Oh, and now I’ll have to go and rebrand this whole site to critzcrieged.net (yes, I’ve already registered the domain name )

Nerf NOW!! is a web comic by Josué Pereira. Some very cool work in there.

There’s a bit of a story line going on. So some dreaded continuity required. It’s best to go back and read it all from the first comic (yes, I know, this is tough for some of you with a 30 second attention span, but it’s worth it.)

Cheers to Pinko for the tip off

Xanatos and the Janus Syndicate (who gave the world Get In Shape) have recorded another TF2 machinima. This time they take on Clint Eastwood and the whole spaghetti western genre.

As we all know, it has been statistically proven by science that Clint is the greatest action film hero ever. That old school trademark scowl puts to shame any posturing done by todays wannabe film heroes.

Consider:
Vs:

Honestly, I have no idea how Matt Damon became a “cool” action star.

Anyway…

A group of townspeople are constantly being run out of their town, used, and abused by a skillful gang of bandits. They’ve had enough, and they’re out to find someone to best them and someone who can train them in this 17 min. western/action/comedy/parody.

Made by Xanatos and the Janus Syndicate

Cheers to Garrys Mod news where this was spotted at.

Daxter241 has assembled together a sweet selection of Posed Team Fortress 2 scenes made with Garrys Mod.

Even including all the ubercharged pics that I’ve posted at various times

Nice.

Another year of blatant rick rolling and half-assed joke posts out of the way.

I think everyone saw through the lame ass ubercharged attempt at an April Fools joke in about 2 seconds.

The really impressive one though, was the one pulled by Control Point, uh I mean “Oober Control”. Which has been several weeks in the making, and I am proud to say I had a helping hand in. Congrats to Doubtful. The only one who picked it was an Ubercharged.net/Control Point combined hoax.

And who was that dashing and handsome sounding New Zealander doing the voiceover in one of the ads in the podcast?

BTW - If any big company DOES actually want to shower me with cash to put their name on this blog… BRING IT ON! I have no morals.

Here’s how it went down:

Never tell your password to anyone.
madlep: Yep, I’m good now
Nailhead [CP]: oh ok
madlep: oh man, now the tele entrance went down… anyway
madlep: and a spy got me :/
madlep: Anyway, I’m out of game and good to talk now
Nailhead [CP]: first off, I wanted to let you know that ooberservers.com is buying the podcast and will make lots of changes to it (unfortunately for the worse). It is a REALLY good offer though. :/
madlep: congrats. All that name spamming paid off
Nailhead [CP]: I guess so.
Nailhead [CP]: Secondly, I wanted to see how believable that claim was. The truth is, I lied.
madlep: Yeah, its plausable
Nailhead [CP]: We’re planning on a crazy April Fool’s Day episode and we’re going with the “sell out” idea.
madlep: Got me
madlep: haha, I like it
Nailhead [CP]: To make it a bit more believable, we’re going to mention it here and there on the show leading up to April 1st. That will be our “first” episode under a new management.
Nailhead [CP]: The reason I’m telling you about it is because you run a popular TF2 blog and could maybe help spread this rumor.
Nailhead [CP]:
madlep: This is a nicely thought out plan. I love a decent april fools bit. I’m in. What do you need?
Nailhead [CP]: and maybe you could get in on some of the fun too.
Nailhead [CP]: I was thinking that somehow you could get “leaked” information about the purchase. I’m not sure exactly how though.
madlep: “anonymous source” is always good
Nailhead [CP]: It would be cool if the community first hears about this from you and not from us. We could, in turn, be somewhat annoyed that the word got out too early, before we could properly tell the public.
madlep: I’m liking this. I’m lazy, and I usually only remember its april fools the day before, and replace the front page with a splash page saying “OMG HAXED BY 1337KIDS” on april first.
Nailhead [CP]: hehe
madlep: I could say that a game server rental company approached ubercharged about advertising on the site, and they mentioned buying control point
Nailhead [CP]: We’ve been plotting for a few weeks now
Nailhead [CP]: ah nice!
Nailhead [CP]: I lke that.
madlep: Of course, I was “morally repulsed” by the idea and had to let the community know
Nailhead [CP]: most excellent
madlep: So when do you want to kick this whole thing off?
Nailhead [CP]: I was thinking before the next podcast maybe?
Nailhead [CP]: before next Wednesday
Nailhead [CP]: perhaps over the weekend?
madlep: yup. no probs
Nailhead [CP]: haha nice, this is gonna too cool.
madlep: hah. Yeah, looking forward to a bit of mayhem
Nailhead [CP]: We’ve been trying to think of the kinds of restrictions that ooberservers.com would put on the show.
Nailhead [CP]: One would be to make it a 30 min show.
madlep: You’d have to roll the same annoying ad every 5 minutes
Nailhead [CP]: ooh yeah
madlep: Contractually bound to have at least 15% of the air time devoted to ooberservers.com
Nailhead [CP]: haha
Nailhead [CP]: I’m going to redo the whole intro and outro too.
madlep: Forbidden to mention any site that isn’t on the “ooberservers.com game network”
Nailhead [CP]: Control Point, brought to you by ooberservers.com
Nailhead [CP]: ah yeah
madlep: ooberservers.com is a professional organisation as well. No “game handles” are to be used at all - even when referring to community members. All people must be addressed by first and last names
Nailhead [CP]: maybe we announce that there will be a flood of new servers too.
Nailhead [CP]: lol
madlep: and you guys have to wear a tie while recording
Nailhead [CP]: too funny
madlep: 20 new servers
madlep: all with in game ads
Nailhead [CP]: yeah, people are gonna hate the saturation of servers.
Nailhead [CP]: we could announce that our forums will be closing and new forums on ooberservers.com will be up and ready.
madlep: haha yeah, and all sigs must have a reference to ooberservers.com
Nailhead [CP]: also, video episodes are forbidden as well as streaming.
Nailhead [CP]: hehe
madlep: all episodes must be purchased over iTunes - and are ladden with DRM
Nailhead [CP]: ooh yeah, moving over to a pay per episode model.
Nailhead [CP]: Good stuff!
madlep: Yeah, this is gonna rock. Anyway, late here. I’m gonna crash
madlep: Good luck with it
Nailhead [CP]: cool thanks!