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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.

Alex Petraglia from Primotech has reported on the talk given by Jason Mitchell, one of Valve’s leading graphics engineers, on Team Fortress 2’s art style and visual technology. There is a lot of interesting stuff in there, especially if you’re interested in the game development side of things.

The real payload though, are the details on the “Meet The Scout” video that should be out in the next couple of weeks from Valve. There is even an MP3 recording of the whole session. Although you can’t see the Scout video, you CAN hear the audio of it - albeit a little muffled. Skip forward to about 43:00. They play it again a little later in as well.

There is a separate write up just on the Meet The Scout video as well.

“Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother…I hurt people.”

There seems to be a lot of Heavy abuse by the sounds of all the screaming.

Daedalus (or EvilDaedalus, or whatever he goes by officially) has been at it again with his prolific tutorializing of the black arts of Team Fortress 2. After showing us how to play Spy, and how to play Pyro, he has pumped out a feature length schooling on being a cocky, obnoxious, little brat playing scout.

Finally here. After a tf2 update rendered all of my footage useless, I had to recap a lot of footage, and ended up with more than I could manage. Anyway, I couldn’t fit everything into 10 minutes, so I had to split it up into two parts.

Music credits are in the second video.

There’s also a merged stage6 version here:
http://www.stage6.com/user/EvilDaedalus/video/2209604/

I’m just glad to get this out into the open so I can get working on other projects and free up disk space. It’s somewhat rushed but I still hope you can learn something from it.

I’ve also started a public steam group centered on my new server:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/MantaEngie/

And yes, I know the quality is horrible. I tried uploading it 3 times with 3 different codecs. Go watch the stage6 version

I was umming and aahing over whether to embed the stage6, or the youtube version. In the end I went with youtube, cause the stage6 one was 300mb, and my ISP plan gets capped real easy. What is everyone’s preference for future reference?

Elvis!, Brent, and D4rkone all emailed me to point this one out before I was slack enough to get around to posting it. Cheers guys

With the most romantic pagan festival/rebranded Christian event of the calendar year just around the corner, we thought we’d throw up some Team Fortress 2 valentines that have been floating around the intertube.

Alexandria Neonakis over at Nuts and Beavers (oh god, google is gonna have a field day with search results when it indexes that URL…), has put up a bunch of kick ass TF2 valentines images.

As a gesture of love, I decided not to send one of these to my wife…

Spy / Engineer

Medic

Heavy

Scout

Spotted at various places, but first at CS-Nation

The ever helpful Elvis! linked to a VERY nice scout game play video.

It’s of T6 PanFrie }svny{|DF| again. Thats same player with the crazy scout trick jumping skills that I linked to yesterday. The vid was posted by PointlessPunk. This shows that there are some genuine tactical benefits to the show off jumpy stuff in yesterdays vid.

T6 PanFrie }svny{|DF| At it again, playing as a Defensive scout on cp_gravelpit. Dies rather quick into the start of the round, but makes up for it for getting 29 kills, and not dying the rest of the defense. (youtube hates me and kills audio… so im just gonna give up on sound for now… put on your favorite music while you watch it )

Some of this stuff is nuts. I can’t handle scout playing scout. I used to be ok at fast paced twitch stuff back in the day, but I’m old now, and my reflexes have atrophied from that dark patch where I spent a couple of years playing MMORPGs. Screw you WoW.

Pointlesspunk has posted a kick ass scout trick jumping video. After the ultra-newbie discussion on 2fort bridge jumping the other day, this stuff is uber-jedi-master-cool level. We’re talking Parkour for Team Fortress 2.

T6 PanFrie }svny{|DF| Jumping around on all the stock maps (except for hydro… cause it suck), showing faster ways to get places, and just different ways around the maps in general

There is some serious molestation of the gravel pit towers going on in this one. I had no idea you could get up that high in that map as a scout.

Fazer linked to a great scout 2fort technique video in the comments from The Evil Force That Makes Your Doublejump Fail On 2fort. It was made originally by bassdass.

A little video i put together for those that are new to the game and maybe needs some help on this particular map. Hope it will inspire you to practice this class.

By the way, using the bat isnt the most effective way to go, i just did it in the vid to show you a “funny” way to take down snipers, but its far from the most effective. To increase your chances of getting them i would simply recommend the “scattergun”.

Music by “Porcupine Tree”, The track is called “Orchidia”.

Please comment, they are well appreciated, and tell me if there is anything i could do better, or forgot.

I’m all for anyone who messes up a sniper’s day.

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.