Clan C-YA

A lot of people wondered what is the meaning of Team Fortress 2 shifting out of Beta – Well apparently one major difference is that updates don’t come once every two days, but once every two weeks. Today’s update brought us:

• Some crash fixes
• An improved death cam
• Improvements to player avoidance code – the one that make me slip off the top part of Dustbowl point one
• Improvement of the code that decides who to move in auto balance – Was usually me
• Fixed “Very High” texture detail not being saved
• Fixed the am-I-cloaking-or-decloaking-whats-going-on thing when Spy runs out of cloak
• Fixed the random Spy backstab even when enemy is facing away (the swing and pray method)
• And lots more

Here’s the full list:

• Improved compatibility for direct sound
• Deathcam screenshots now move the player id panel to the lower right,
  and hide other hud elements until the freezecam fades
• Improved autobalance calculation code when determining who to switch
• Improved networking compatibility for some routers
• Fixed a crash during level init related to model loading
• Fixed issues on Dustbowl and Hydro that could occur when a server
  emptied in the middle of a round
• Fixed a bug in the clientside player avoidance code, and smoothed it a
  little more
• Further crash fixes related to paged pool memory usage
• Fixed scoreboard team scores label getting cut off
• Engineer buildings now explode when the Engineer dies during sudden
  death
• Fixed a spy backstab exploit where you could stab a player who was not
  facing away from you
• Fixed flailing at the low end of the cloak meter when the player gets
  uncloaked automatically
• Fixed texture detail level setting “Very high” not being preserved
• Improved various error messages, and added links to steampowered
  support pages
• Fixed scoring problem where destroying a buildable added a phantom
  point, not attributed to any scoring bucket but still included in total
  score
• Fixed honeypot server problems
• Fixed a rare crash caused by a medigun losing its owner
• Fixed an exploit that allowed disconnected medics to continue
  ubercharging their target until they timed out
• TeamMenu now disables the spectate button if mp_allowspectators is
  zero
• Added a missing “cannot_be_spectator” localization string
• Re-added class count numbers above class buttons for non-zero classes,
  in addition to the class images
• Removed prefixes (tc_, ctf_, etc.) from map names in various places
  where they’re printed
• Fixed some edge cases where grenades could go through player or
  buildings
• Fixed rocket/grenade explosions being able to impart damage through
  thin ceilings
• The Engineer’s “build X” commands will now behave properly when bound
  directly to keys

Rules in Germany prohibit advertising and shelf presentation of video games that glorify violence, or display violence.

In Half Life, the German version, everybody bled Green, and marines were robots.

In Team Fortress 2, the Gibs turn into this:

(click image for full picture)

This is basically VALVe saying, this is how exploding non human robots look in the TF2 universe – Hamburgers, springs and rubber duckies flying about.

(Note: the above picture was taken by only substituting very few of the gib models into the low violence ones – in full low violence mode there is no blood)

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Some people actually favor these humoristic gibs to the not-so-pretty bits of bones that are usually rendered, so this is how you achieve that:

First, download and install GCFScape.

Second, locate your SteamApps directory – It should be in D:\Program Files\Steam, or at the location you installed Steam into. In that directory you should have a file named “Team Fortress 2 Low Violence.gcf”.
If such a file does not exist, try changing your steam language into German, restart Steam, and set it to English again.

Open two windows – One of GCFScape, and one of your native TF2 folder (SteamApps/username/Team Fortress 2).

It should become immediately apparent that the folder trees are very similar, and are parallel – The basic system is that when the game needs to load a file, it will first look for the file in the real folders, and if it does not exist it will try to get the file from the GCF files.

That is how we can hook the Low Violence gibs over the ones the game wants to display.

In the Low Violence GCF there are three folders under the main “tf” folder:

• materials – This folder contains all the files that eliminated red blood.
• particle – This folder contains non-red blood particle effects, further removing blood.
• models – This folder contains all the funny gibs.

Each of these folders can be put under the native “tf” folder in order to achieve its effect.

Extract the files by selecting a folder, right clicking it and selecting “Extract”. Should be very native to whoever used a windows program before.

Load up the game and voila – you now have rubber ducks and license plates instead of intestines!

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Please tell us if you succeeded in following this tutorial, or ask for help in case you didn’t!

Perhaps you think these should be the default gibs for the game, more fitting the art style? Share your thoughts.

The map was Well, our spy was disguised as a medic, and was “helping” the enemy to hold the top point 3 ramp.

One of the enemy’s players then said in chat: “Goddammit medic! Heal me already! Stop standing around like a fool holding the syringe gun!”.

I saw the whole thing, spectating the spy while waiting for spawning, and burst out laughing – That player actually listed the entire method, of how to know when a medic is not really a team mate, and more generally how to spot a spy.

A medic:

• Will always have an Ubercharge percentage under his name.
• Will usually hold his medigun, and not syringe gun/bonesaw.
• Will heal nearby teammates.
• Will stay out of the line of fire.

A spy disguised:

• Will hold the default weapon of each class:
  • Scout: Scattergun
  • Soldier: Rocket Launcher
  • Pyro: Flamethrower
  • Demoman: Pipe Launcher
  • Heavy: Minigun
  • Engineer: Shotgun
  • Medic: Syringe Gun
  • Sniper: Sniper Rifle
  • Spy: Pistol
• Will not be shooting.
• Will not be doing what he’s supposed to be doing in the game (smart players will make you believe they are in fact helping your team, but can still be spotted by various discrepancies, such as the capture multiplier not counting them as helping the cap when stepping on a point).
• Will block your path, unlike teammates which you can partially clip through.
• Will do his best to stay away from Pyros.
• Will call for a medic, even when his health is high, or even full.
• If disguised as a scout, will be noticeably slower.
• Will not have an Ubercharge percentage under his name, when disguised as a medic.

A cloaked spy:

• Will shimmer in his team’s color for a brief moment when either hit by a weapon, or bumped into by a member of the opposing team.
• Will leave a visible trail if he has recently used a teleporter.
• Will have visible droplets of water falling off if he has very recently been underwater.
• His health will not fill while being healed by a medic (Thanks BaronHVG!)

However, the best way to reveal a spy is to simply trust your intuition. After enough time playing, you can gain a “sense” of when someone is acting a bit suspiciously. The best way to then confirm your suspicion is to try to walk through the suspicious player. As stated above, if he is a spy you won’t be able to partially clip through him. If this is the case, you are more than welcome to dispose of him, preferably with your melee weapon as to add insult to injury.

Goober asks us:

Is there a list of what all they keys are officially named?

I mean… what IS the middle mouse key official bind name?

The list is as follows:

• tab
• enter
• escape
• space
• backspace
• uparrow
• downarrow
• leftarrow
• rightarrow
• alt
• ctrl
• shift
• ins
• del
• pgdn
• pgup
• home
• end
• kp_home
• kp_uparrow
• kp_pgup
• kp_leftarrow
• kp_5
• kp_rightarrow
• kp_end
• kp_downarrow
• kp_pgdn
• kp_enter
• kp_ins
• kp_del
• kp_slash
• kp_minus
• kp_plus
• kp_multiply
• capslock
• joy1-4
• aux1-31
• mwheeldown
• mwheelup
• mouse1-5
• pause

The middle mouse key is “mouse3″. Scorlling it will give you mwheelup and mwheeldown.

Source: VALVe Developer Community