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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.

It’s getting to prime time. Around about 9pm. You’ve been playing for a few hours now, and having a good time with the regular crew. But you know they aren’t far off. They’re getting ready. Waiting. One by one, they arrive. They blend in at first, but before long they’ve overwhelmed the server population. The quality of gameplay goes down - yet they scream and demand more of you. As if you are there to personally entertain them. Who the hell do they think they are?

They’re the middle aged player with precious few minutes on their hands. They’re on an urgent mission to sneak in a few minutes idle gaming in between getting kids off to bed, or watching TV, or after getting home from a long day before crashing and doing it all again.

I’ve been half way through writing this post for a while. I get a certain way through, then lose momentum and hit the delete button. I think people have come to expect exaggerated tales of outlandish stereotypes on this site. The middle age whiner just seemed too… familiar. I’d be trying to come up with funny anecdotes, but they all seemed fairly ho-hum. Is it because middle aged players just aren’t that interesting?

It’s… me?

A couple of weeks back I hit the bit three-O. And it hit me. The reason it is so hard to find anything extreme because - it’s me I’m talking about. I have slowly become one of the middle aged work/life balance whiners I was so trying to mock.

I just get cranky. I get an hour max to play most days. Crammed somewhere in between getting home from work, making dinner, doing dishes, chilling out, and going to bed. This explains a few of my outbursts of recent note. MY TF2 SESSION IS PRECIOUS DAMN IT. You kids are screwing with my tightly planned out leisure time. IT’S ON THE SCHEDULE STUCK TO THE FRIDGE. IT’S SACRED!

Yes. I have finally admitted that I don’t like teenagers’ music. I like watching the same lame TV shows my parents liked. My hair is getting grayer by the week. And my fitness levels get harder to maintain. Yup. I’m a cranky old man with cranky old man views on how things should be. And I will tell you about it - as is my need and want as a white, middle aged male.

So what’s your problem anyway? Just play more if you really want.

So why exactly am I like this? Lets look at a photo essay of my life commitments which contribute to my lack of quality TF2 time:

• Acting in an ecologically sustainable and socially responsible manner
  Getting face-crammed next to some fat guy with body odor on the train.
  
• A challenging and rewarding career
  Updating this blog from work, and trying to look busy (Just kidding if you’re reading this Adam and Mark - You know I’m good )
  
• A rich and rewarding social life
  This mainly just involves drinking really
  
• Spending quality time with my significant other
  No seriously, this bit is actually pretty good. We enjoy ourselves and are happy .
  

So what can you do about it?

Well, not much really. But I’m pretty harmless. I’m not into it enough to really cause any harm. I’ll mostly just whine at people who I think are more incompetent than me on my team. I have a tight little window to play every night. It’s gotta be casual games, cause I don’t have time for clans. I am expecting quality. If you don’t give it to me I WILL bitch about it on voice comms.

So… just mute me if you want.

Project Transmissions has collected a few pics of the Team Fortress 2 guys butt kicking the Counter Strike Source kiddies from the Steam Forums.

Anything involving ritual humiliation of the plebs inhabiting that game is all good.

“Team Fortress 2 Wins”

The boys from over at Digital Jedi have uncovered what is potentially the single most awesomefully excellent set of TF2 wallpapers.

Kill Death Ratio has kindly mirrored the whole lot.

Personal favorite has to be the standout group shot of the Team Fortress 2 crew rocking out to a packed mosh pit. After messing with Garrys Mod for a bit, I’ve got a lot of appreciation for setting up this kind of shot.

More proof the pyro is a born rock star

I checked the email this morning, and an anonymous source at Valve has mailed a few ideas that they’ve been working on at various points (that unfortunately have been dropped now).

Wow, seems not everyone at Valve hates me yet, despite me calling Gabe Newell “Chief hate monger, and corrupter of innocence”, and calling for everyone associated with Valve to be imprisoned a few posts back. I cross posted that one on the official Valve TF2 forums, but it got deleted after about 5 minutes. Seems the heavy word has come down from the top.

It was a joke guys.

Anyway, I’m sure everyone has heard by now about the new map “Goldrush” coming out for TF2. I thought about posting it as a news item, but then I figured that it was announced as a popup news item on Steam and the only people in the world didn’t know about it already don’t play TF2 and certainly don’t read this site (not that this fact stopped the blogosphere echo chamber).

This email doesn’t specifically contain any new info on the Goldrush game mode, but it does talk about a few ideas that were explored at Valve that never saw the light of day during its development. Its always interesting to get an insight into their game development process.

From: <removed to protect the innocent>@valvesoftware.com
To: madlep@ubercharged.net
Subject: Unreleased TF2 Design Concepts

Hey madlep

Here’s a bit of insider gossip for you from Valve. During our design process, we come up with a lot of cool ideas (and a lot of not so cool ones…). Some of which get included, some of which don’t.

Here’s a few of the more “out there” ideas we’ve had for TF2 while designing the new Gold Rush game mode. Thought you might be interested in them

TF2 Video Hero

With Guitar Hero and Rock Band being the latest gaming crazes, we were interested in introducing a similar play mechanic into TF2. We brainstormed some ideas for a bit, and came up with the idea of doing something with music videos.

The basic idea was to recreate some famous videos in TF2. Players would get points for how closely they replicated the timing and patterns of the events in the videos (kind of like the music games, except with actions and positioning in the map).

We didn’t get too far on this. Although the Orange Box has been a great seller, we didn’t have an unlimited budget for the new game mode. And this kind of game means licensing music and videos (which don’t come cheap!). This meant we were pretty much limited to a company that packaged a “golden hits of the 70s and 80s” license. I think it usually only gets sold on discount karaoke machines.

It was mostly all pretty week, but there was some decent Queen and David Bowie stuff in there that the older guys liked. Here’s some of the in game shots we did with it:

TF2 Does David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes

TF2 Does Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody

The Portal guys were helping out with the design on this one. They are all a bunch of young kids who are into that emo crap, and they weren’t so keen on the old fogy music. They’ve got a lot of design sway after Portal has done so well, so that stopped progress on that one.

Drunken Demoman Escort

This is the game mode that is the closest in spirit to the way Gold Rush is shaping up. The basic concept is the same (escort a slow moving object etc), but the premise is somewhat different:

The BLU TF2 crew has had a big night out on the town. It’s 3am, and they haven’t been able to find a taxi. So they decide to walk it home. The demoman has been on the sauce a little more than the other guys (as usual), and he’s not in good shape. The blue team must prop him up and help him to walk home.

Basic game play breaks down as follows:

• The more BLU players that are around him, the quicker he is able to move.
• If you get enough, you can even carry him for a speed bonus
• However, if there are no BLU players escorting him, he lays down in a gutter and goes to sleep.
• If there are any RED players around, the demoman will stop moving, and will begin to yell obscenities at them.
• If he is alone for too long, he may choke on his own vomit. If this happens, the BLU medic has a limited amount of time (a couple of minutes) to revive him and the team carries on.

We came up with this one Friday night over (more than a few) beers, and were all quite excited about it. However, when the play testers sat down to try it, they didn’t like it so much (although they did like the gameplay). We also played it sober, and realized it was only funny when we were all trashed. So we sat down and polished it up into Gold Rush (which we’re pretty happy with by now!)

Airport Security

We’ve got a few guys on the team who are (or were) big into Counter Strike. We all remember playing that map with the airport and the 747, and wanted to try something similar with TF2.

We played around with a few ideas, and came up with the idea of an airport security rush mode:

• BLU team plays as the passengers, and have a minimum 3 hours to board their flight.
• RED team plays as airport security staff. Their job is to stop the BLU team from boarding their plane and/or make the process as unpleasant as possible.
• RED team’s secondary task is to stop the blue team smuggling weapons or other dangerous devices onto the plane. However this is optional, and the RED team won’t be penalized at all if they fail at this.
• The RED team can arbitrarily change the game rules during play to slow and frustrate the BLU team. Some examples:
  • Decide to ban liquids
  • Require an extra form of identification that doesn’t exist
  • Strip search random players
  • Randomly evacuate the terminal area
  • Maintain a watch list of banned players, and refuse entry to the server. Players may be added to the list with little or no reason, and players cannot find out if they are on the list, or remove themselves from it once on.
  • Randomly close check in counters, and security lines - causing players to have to start queuing all over in another line
  • Force players to unpack everything to search
• To make things a little easier for the BLU team, any team member can dress up as a RED player (not just spies), and pose as airport security staff. These players won’t undergo any security checks at all and can pretty much walk around and do what they want.
• Additional achievements would be added for this game type. Players that have played a certain number of games would be eligible to join the business club program. This would allow you to skip to the front on some lines, and then access separate, exclusive waiting areas with better pickup items once you get past security.

The programmers loved this one. They had all this cool dynamically structured game logic that could be coded by the users in real time in the game using a scripting language based on legalese.

We were thinking of setting up in-game duty free stores where players could buy virtual in-game merchandise. The businesses we were looking at partnering with were quite excited about the prospect of players stuck in one place behind security for 3 hours with nothing to do but spend money on their stuff.

However, once again, our playtesters realized that it was crap to play. No, actually, they all enjoyed playing as the security staff. Its just that it was universally unpleasant to play as the passenger team. So ultimately that one got dropped as well. I heard some playtesters got so pissed off with the whole process they just when and played Chris Sawyer’s Transport Tycoon instead - which gave us our next idea…

Crowded Commuter Train Trip

This idea was somewhat similar to the airport security game mode.

The basic idea is that the BLU team has to board a train, and travel to a specified destination.

Sounds easy? Not when you add some interesting obstacles provided by the RED team into the mix:

• Trains randomly canceled
• Trains turn up late
• Excessive crowding. BLU passengers will struggle to board any given train that arrives. The RED train controller team can chain together combos of late and canceled trains for crowding bonuses (this is inspired by the critical rockets already in TF2).
• Some services will mysteriously end up at a totally different destination. Passengers don’t get notified until it is too late to get off and change to a correct train
• RED players can fine players with feet on seats. Griefer players who use offensive language over voice comms can also be fined
• Some maps will require players to connect a bus trip with a train trip to reach their destination due to poor coverage of the rail network. The RED team can mess with how these connect, causing the BLU passengers to be further delayed
• Climate control on the trains will be the opposite of what is required - air conditioner will be off on hot days, and set to full on cold days

Another one where the RED team had a ball during play testing. We implemented this whole controller interface where you could switch tracks etc around with real levers. Heaps of fun. However the BLU team still wasn’t so keen on it. So we shelved that idea as well.

Anyway,

hope this stuff is kinda interesting. Feel free to post this on ubercharged.net, but don’t mention my name. (Doug Lombardi would murder me )

Cheers from <removed to protect the innocent>

Yup. Definitely some interesting stuff in there. I kinda wish they had the drunken demoman now

More HL2 junk after Gordon’s prank call the other day.

Apparently this is a Half-Life fan fiction story written by a six year old. Some Garry’s Mod masochist then went and made it into a video.

It’s one of those videos that is so bad, it’s good.

retarded Fan Fiction by: squirrelking Narration by: blind51de

In the hazy recollection of an evening of alcohol and marking the passing of the earth around the sun (again), its time to reflect on all the good intentions we all have for Team Fortress 2 in the new year. Hopefully for most in the world, the hangovers are lifting, and you’re feeling better than the TF2 crew after their wild night.

So here are my resolutions for Team Fortress 2 in the new year:

1. Give up random pointless taunting during warm up. “Put dispenser here!” is only funny for the first couple of thousand times you do it. After that its a little irritating, even for the person mashing the keys.
2. More pyro taunting. This never gets old though.
   
3. Actually try to play the game on 2fort. I usually end up going for the most crazy, experimental, offensive turret positions I can manage. I admit it, I just can’t take that map seriously. Whenever it comes up, I give up on actually playing and contributing to my team. I roll engineer and see how far up I can build turrets to piss off the enemy team. For real giggles, you want to aim for the enemy ramp room, or even outside their spawn. It’s fun, but not in a good way. Its fun in the same way that prodding the fat kid at school was fun - you have a few laughs, but you really just end up feeling mean and dislike yourself a little bit on the inside. Not that that stops you though.
4. On second thoughts, just give up playing 2fort altogether. Now I think about it, it’s a horrible map that just turns into a tiring spam fest on most servers. 2fort always feels like too much hard work. I’ve had a solid upbringing of tribes to give me a real taste of what capture the flag intel should be like. CTF should be about quick easy grabs, on an open and hard to defend stand, followed by intense chasing. The slow, pokey, frustrating basement you have to descend to in that map just slows down the gameplay. Most players just seem to give up even trying and start goofing around in various ways. I’ve bitched about snipers before, but to be honest, I’m really not much better when it comes to 2fort with my engineering shenanigans.
5. No more swearing at random people on voice comms. Even if they are dumb asses. In terms of absolute numbers, there aren’t that many stupid people in Team Fortress 2 (at least when compared to other games). However, the very nature of stupid people is that they stick out and appear more populous than they actually are. At the end of a long day, it can be all too easy to give them an earful on voice comms - especially when their imbecilic nature costs our team the game (seriously - even the most clueless newbie should realise something is up when that spy you just ubercharged starts backstabbing your own team). There may be kids around, and it just makes me feel angsty. Plus if anyone is around, I get funny looks and possibly get told off.
6. Sleep more. The problem with this game is that it can be quite difficult to stop for the evening when you get on a good team. It’s always “one more map…” and then one more, and then one more. Before you know it I’m yawning through the next day, and inhaling too much coffee (I’m trying to give that up too as a non TF2 resolution - not so much luck so far…). Being tired makes me cranky, which doesn’t help me stop swearing at people either. Gah, 12:30 am and I’m still writing this. So much for that one…
7. Play something other than dustbowl. This is by far my most favourite map. So much so that I’ve got my server filter set to display just dustbowl servers most of the time. You’ve got 6 long, hard stages to push through. A win on dustbowl really feels like an achievement. Theres nothing wrong with playing it, but its just that it can end up becoming a little stale after a while. The problem then, is that I’m out of practice on the other maps, and so I don’t feel like playing them either. Plus in this part of the world, there aren’t that many servers, and they often get full up at peak time. Waiting for a spot to free up on a 24/7 dustbowl server could be better spend getting some love out of some of the other fine maps in the game (except 2fort…).
8. Play more dustbowl. I know what I just said, but that map rocks.
9. Stop joining the team that is already winning. As ubercharged regulars already know, stackers unbalancing a game are a pet hate of mine. However, I’ve always figured “if you can’t beat em, join em” when its actually happening. See - I can be all judgemental about it outside of the game, but still make the situation worse in game. Mainly because I don’t see much point helping in getting my ass kicked if its inevitable that it’ll happen anyway, so why bother? This moral relativism is great. Its the same reason why I can laugh at Team Roomba with a clear conscience but still get pissed if that stuff ever happens to me - the actions end up being for the greater good, so any immediate indiscretions are excused… Hmm, I’m not even convincing myself with that one. Anyway, I’ll try to buff up the losing side in future when I join a game in progress.
10. Get out of the favorite class rut. Medic/engineer/pyro are my 3 most played classes in that order. I like them all in their own way (although I’m trying to minimise engineer as most of that time was spent goofing off on 2fort…), but its the same staleness issue I get with dustbowl. I know that I’d have more fun if I varied the classes I play when I get bored, but I’m so out of practice at them that I just get frustrated having my ass handled to me repeatedly on a plate, and go back to “creative sentry placement” as engie. I do enjoy a good demoman run, but I really have to be in the mood for it.
11. Play more TF2. Nuff said.

So what are your TF2 new years resolutions?

Mike F writes in with this complaint:

I play pyro defensively, ie. I set people on fire and run away, sending them running back to their lines for a medpack. Sometimes I get a kill out of this. But what makes me angry is what some smartass soldiers and demomen have realized they can do with their splash damage. Say I commit to a kill and run after a guy, flaming all the way. The victim turns a corner, sees no medpac and dies. Okay, tough shit I killed you. Well here is where it gets just plain ugly.

I was dominating a guy as a pyro on dustbowl. Every time he ran into the tunnels I ended up flaming him. Apparently, he got fed up and decided to flip a bitch on me. First he gets revenge. Next time I see him I set him on fire, and, angry at his insubordination, decide to hunt him down. I follow him to a dead end, and put his back to a wall. His health hits 25 and I know I have him. I keep him in his corner, and keep my distance, enjoying his slow burning death. The guy looks at me, then at the ground. He shoots one solitary stickybomb, AND DETONATES IT (sorry caps are necessary). He gets a suicide, and I lose a hard earned point. I know it doesn’t help him and it doesn’t hurt my team, but that’s just poor sportsmanship. After that his entire team catches on too and I have to change class just to get some points so I don’t end up kicked for sucking after the game. Sorry, rant over.

Mike F.

Hell yeah. Fair enough to get annoyed I say. But is there anything you can do about it? Nope, not really. It sucks, but there are jerks online. After serious consultation with my shrink, it turns out that the only thing you can alter in this situation is your own attitude.

This is important when you are playing the pyro. The pyro is a rock star. A born rock star. To get in the mode and rise above the plebs, you too have to be a rock star!

Don’t give a damn about what everyone thinks

A real rock star does his own damn thing and doesn’t let anyone sway his thinking. He’s a rebel, an original thinker. So some guy decided to suicide and deny you a point? Who cares?! You can set the world on fire! Why should you care about one lame ass soldier? Just do a pyro taunt, rock out, and carry on. Show the world you don’t care what it thinks.

Ultimately though, the guy is dead, so at the end of the day, you got what you wanted. Sure, you didn’t get the points and your position on the player list didn’t go up, but lets face it - that would just be selling out. The best rock stars languish in obscurity and do their best music while they are unknown and playing in seedy highway reststop bars. As soon as they get the success it all goes to their heads and the music goes to crap. They start pumping out self-indulgent turd-fare set to vast orchestral scores. And before you know it, they are selling concert tickets to 60 year olds for $300 a pop to play in some upper class vineyard so all those pensioners can relive their pathetic privileged youth. Blech.

Set the world on fire, trash your hotel room, then leave town in a hurry

Life on the road while touring is tough, but it’s in a pyros blood. A rock star is in a new town every few days. They turn up, do a blazing show and burn things up, trash their hotel room, set their TV on fire and throw it out the window, leave town in a trail of dust. F**k yeah!

Then do it all again somewhere else tomorrow night! You don’t even know where you are half the time. You’re moving around so much, going at full speed the whole time it all blurs in together.

Pyros have to be the same way - you gotta get in quick. Do a killer rock show, set everyone on fire, party hard, trash some stuff, then get out and try to recover a little from it all before doing it again. Pyros and rock stars both have a hard life from all their partying. Finding a good doctor can help prolong the ride in both cases.

(I wish someone would do a hotel room mod for TF2 with destructable TVs. PYRO HEAVEN!)

Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse

Pyros really don’t have a long life expectancy. By their nature, they are forced to get down and dirty up close. This fits perfectly with the rock star ethos. You’re pushing things to the limit. Living on the edge. Taking risks, and to hell with the consequences.

Of course, the consequences are that you end up eating a lot of rockets at point blank range. So you die a lot and spend a lot of time in respawn. Its a scientific fact that pyros have the shortest life span after medics (who are #1 target for most players) and spies (90% of whom suck and die quick anyway). SO WHAT? That is what being pyro is all about. Party hard, and keep going till you burn out. If you rock out hard enough you might just do enough damage to change the world and leave a lasting legacy (like messing up an entire attacking party, giving your team enough time to group up and win the match).

Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Jim Morrison all died by 27. On the other hand, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart, and Barry Manilow are all still going strong. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions there.

So what was the point again?

I don’t actually think there was a point to all this rambling. I guess its really just to say that other people are dicks. Especially anyone on a public server. You can’t really do much about it except to just go with the flow and rock out. Playing pyro is all about rocking out. Anytime you forget that, just do a pyro taunt, and it will all come back.

Max wrote in discussing the problems around landing the scout’s doublejump when going from the bridge onto the enemy sniper deck in 2fort.

His plan is sound. However, if the team you are playing is employing more devious means to prevent you landing the jump, you’re still in trouble. There have been rumours of disreputable clans using banned Combine force field technology to defend the battlements. Note that this is considered an exploit by Valve, and will result in immediate re-education at Nova Prospekt if caught. Hopefully it’ll get ironed out in the next patch.

The enemy intelligence lies on the enemy sniper deck after a failed attack. The time indicator is nearly empty, it be returned in a couple of seconds.

You are a scout trying desperately to save the intelligence. You run on the sniper deck of your base, jump on the roof of the middle bridge. A sniper tries to kill you, but you dodge all his shots. A soldier stands directly in front of the briefcase you want to get. While dodging his rockets you are able to fire enough lead into his stomach to kill him.

With 50 HP remaining are on the end of the bridge - only 2 meters between you and the intelligence. You smile - the intelligence is yours. No enemies in sight. You make the first jump - only some inches between you and the enemy files. You tap spacebar another time and prepare to turn by 180° after picking the the intelligence. Nothing happens, you fall on the ground. The enemy intelligence has been returned into a room full of Sentry Guns and Stickies.

Why did that $#&? doublejump not work? Everyone else is able to jump on the sniper deck without problems, but your doublejump on 2fort fails most of the times. No, it’s not a bug and it’s not because of your keyboard. It’s because you start your first jump too late:

Make sure you jump for the first time, while your feet still on the bridge, or elsewise, you run past the bridge, fall, but jump instantly - you don’t feel any difference, but when jumping too late, your doublejump is already used up. You don’t have to jump directly on the
edge, with a double-(crouch)-jump, you can always easily reach the sniper deck.

Cheers Max. I’ll just add to also angle your first jump out at a 45 degree angle from the bridge, toward the centre of the deck entrance. Then re-orientate in the air, and do your doublejump when you’re directly facing the deck opening. Remember that scouts can change direction mid-air when they doublejump. The first jump gets you into position, then the second jump lines you up and takes you home.

I’m crap at scout, and I always forget this stuff. Scout is easily my least played class.