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News: Q&A 2 – the Engineer, resupplies, and some AvD lovin’.

Here’s this week’s Q&A, brought to you remarkably late on account of every dev is too damn busy to talk to me. As always, remember to hop over to the FF Q&A thread and ask more questions: http://www.fortress-forever.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16481

Question 1 (Rutabeggar):
What would you say are the most stark contrasts between 2.1 and the mods previous patches as in are there any new game breaking/making things being added such as the heavy becoming important again?

Answer 1 (Circuitous):

For starters, the HW is much more useful now. We are still working on some of the finer points of the class but overall it is better than the 2.0 HW. The Engineers will be able to resupply a bit easier. (This is expanded upon in Question 2.) The Pyros are slightly less spammy, and the flamethrower’s push has been notched up a bit. Snipers are more efficient than their 2.0 predecessors.

Question 2 (Agent Buckshot Moose):
What’s going on with the Engineer in 2.1?

Answer 2 (Circuitous):

This is an interesting list.

- Dispensers now start with ammo and armor, regenerate twice as much per tick, dispense twice as much per tick, and dispense faster than before.
- Carrying your Railgun regenerate rails.
- Railgun Charging is quite different,
— each charge level only takes 1 second and 1 rail,
— after fully charging, you can continue to hold it for up to 3 seconds,
— after 3 seconds, the Railgun overcharges. This costs an additional rail, but gives you 40 Cells. Great for SG spots that don’t have handy resupplies.
— overcharging in this way does not hurt you anymore.
- lastly, and this may not make it to patch time, we want dispensers to “pick up” any bags dropped nearby.

Question 3 (Gwarsbane):

Will there be more no build stuff put into all the official maps to stop people from building stuff in the spawn rooms and in doors? Will all the spawn areas in official maps that don’t have them get the no grenade code? Well and Aardvark come to mind as they seem to be the ones spammed the most.

Answer 3 (Circuitous)

They absolutely should, but it’s a matter of what we have access to now. All of the new maps, and any maps that are actively being worked on or reconstructed, have nobuilds and noannoyances where needed. We’ll see what we can do.

Question 4 (Gwarsbane)

Will spawn bags ever heal broken legs, medic infections, tracer tags, put out flames and stuff like that? That would help in most cases against people spamming the spawn room with spy gas, or a medic running in, or a scout concing the spawn room.

Answer 4 (Circuitous)

Will they ever? I think they should. Do they now? Not yet.

The good news is this should just be a Lua change – it’d be quite easy to do. Assuming no one finds a reason not to, this should be in the next patch.

Question 5 (Tsukasa)

Whats the status on all the AvD maps?

Answer 5 (Circuitous, squeek., Nezumi)

Dustbowl has been re-optimized, and now includes HDR and a slew of bugfixes.

squeek. is working on the updated version of cornfield. There are some minor changes to the map that should make gameplay a little more interesting: the cap triggers are now 1 unit above the cap point, and the defender’s spawn points are moved forward.

The AvD crowd will be glad to hear that they will be getting a brand new map in 2.1. Nezumi has an awesome new AvD map called anticitizen. It’s currently being playtested to death and it’s a lot of fun.

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July 28th, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments


TF2 Trading Cards – Part 3

For this week’s update, we’ve got another set of trading card images to take a look at. The focus of our most recent achievement update, the Pyro is a character that players may have seeing a lot of lately – making life a nightmare inferno for both the Spy and Medic.

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July 24th, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments


Dev. Journal: Sh4x

Hi everyone,

I’ve been destroying, rebuilding, plastering and painting walls lately in my new apartment. Still got alot of work ahead but it’s been going great so far. I did not cause a flood or fire nor did my neighbours called the police yet. Hurray!

Needless to say I haven’t had as much time as I would have liked to work on FF since my last journal but I still managed to make some progress on this map where fatties and doctors play dirty games together until one side puts the other to sleep. This map will probably be interesting in the future once the hwg is fixed (coming in 2.1) and the medic finally gets his medigun (coming when I’m done convincing everyone that a medigun is so much cooler than a medikit).

For now, you can drool over this fantasmagoric art piece below. Be careful though, by looking at this image you are agreeing to be bound by the terms of this agreement. This image appearing below is my exclusive property and is protected under international copyright treaties. It is made available for your personal viewing enjoyment only. It is not within the Public Domain. This image may not be copied, reproduced, redistributed, manipulated, projected, used or altered in any way without my prior express written permission and payment of a fee or arrangement thereof. Violators will be prosecuted and their flag capped.

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July 20th, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments


TF2 Blog Updated! (7/3/8)

If you head over to teamfortress.com, you’ll find that the blog has been updated with more class playing cards. This time, it’s the heavy and medic that are featured

TeamFortress.com

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July 3rd, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments


TF2 Trading Cards – Part 2

To continue from the previous week, today we have some additional finished trading card images for you to take a look at – the Heavy and the Medic.

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July 3rd, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments


A Heavy Problem

As Gabe mentioned in his lengthy response to an email recently, the next class pack will focus on the Heavy. For the Medic and Pyro packs we kept our goals for the pack pretty close to our chest, but for the Heavy we’ve decided to open up the process a little.

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July 1st, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments


TF2 Blog Updated!

TF2 Blog Updated!
Well, we touched on this in our last podcast, hopefully the folks over at Valve will keep the TF2 Blog updated more than once every month.  Daily would be ideal, but weekly would be nice too, and to that end, we can be pleasantly surprised that in less than a week after the last post, we have a new post on the TF2 Blog.

It’s all about the medics medigun ramping up the longer a player has been out of combat for, and it’s a good quick read, so head over and check out the new post!

You can also check out our own Control Point podcast when we first discussed the medic class in depth!  Listen to Episode 2 – The Medic.

Then you can discuss this post on our forums.  Post Title: Official Team Fortress Blog

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June 25th, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments


The Medigun Healing Ramp

In any game there’s often a bunch of hidden complexity behind some of the simplest looking features, and TF2 is no exception. One example is that of the Medic’s medigun. From a player perspective, it appears simple enough: point it at a team mate, press the button, and it’ll heal them. After playing with a bit, most players notice that they have to stay near their target and maintain line-of-sight to their target. After playing with it a lot, some players notice that there’s some variability in the rate at which they heal their targets. I thought it might be interesting for Medics to explain what’s going on here, and why.

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June 24th, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments


Short update report- Medics rejoice!

Valve released a small update today modifying the medic updates so that they can be unlocked with the same number of achievements required as the Pyro’s new weapons to be unlocked. The other fixes were just small bug fixes. Full update text after the break.

Team Fortress 2

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June 24th, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments


June 18th Tournament Coverage: CP-N vs ASJS on gravel pit!

Starting this match N was having severe problems fielding a team due to the late time of the night and the recent rash of phishing based steam account thefts. They ended up starting the match with a team of 7 ninjas and F-Panda and Thervold rounding out their

allotted 2 replacement slots. Still leaving them running a team of nine next to ASJS’ standard 10 squad members.

First half of the first round Ninja’s start off on the attack. ASJS sets up at B with a sentry on the front ramp of the point of B, facing the spawn tunnel. They send minor harassment to stall N at A but stay mostly on B. The Ninja’s cap A quickly at 54 seconds.

ASJS mops up some pushes from CP-N from various directions but has trouble keeping their sentry up with any reliability, eventually N sends an uber through the back door of point B and manages to slog out a capture at the five minute mark.

ASJS quickly puts up a defense on C. Using one sentry on the point and one sentry on the tip of the ramp in the middle of their spawn and the closest outlet to A (this position will be referred to as B sentry for brevity from this point on). N meanwhile focuses on building ubers in the tunnels from A to C. one is wasted by ASJS pushing an uber in to force an early pop, the other N uber tries to uber to the point but is cut short by the defense. N keeps moving through A to avoid the B sentry but is harassed constantly inside the tunnels, eventually falling all the way back to A area itself to charge ubers. N then sends an uber soldier to try and kill the sentry on the point but the soldier just cant deal enough damage to get it down. On a second try a bit later the point sentry is taken down and N tries to send an uber through B but it’s stalled too much by B sentry to be of any use. N ends up not taking C with the final tally being N captures 2 points in five minutes.
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second half of the first round. ASJS on attack.

N focuses on A section, setting up one sentry just behind A point near where the metal spawns. ASJS takes b with little to no resistance and pushes through C, ubering a demo in to take out the metal sentry and roll over the defense, easily holding them at bay for a cap with about half the time needed. ASJS wins first round.

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Round 2 half 1 N on attack once again.

ASJS sets up the same ramp sentry as before. Once again their focus is on defending B. They send a pyro and a heavy to stall on A. The Ninjas push primarily on B first, killing the sentry and slipping in with a heavy and medic. Also pushing A with a decently sized force, managing to contest both points at the same time and win the fight on B during the confusion to cap it at 1:55, pushing over into A to mop that up at a little under three minutes with some continued fighting.

As N pushes toward C one of N’s soldiers manages to kill the B sentry that ASJS utilised so well last round while it is still level 1, giving N plenty of time to swarm the point with people, but ASJS manages to beat back all comers and soon has the B sentry and the sentry on the point up and well and begins their harassment of the N team at the A-C tunnels once again. Eventually after a struggle N puts a push together, killing the sentry on the point with demo fire as the B sentry goes down similarly, the push loses steam for a bit and ASJS rebuilds however. After a pause in the action then the ninjas jog an ubered heavy up to the point and finally establish a hold on the point, killing the sentry and eventually capping the third and final point at 10:01

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Round 2 second half. ASJS on attack to attempt to take all three points in under ten minutes and a second.

The ninjas set up the Rock sentry (sentry on the top of the rock between the two outlets from the attackers spawn room leading to A) to supplement their strategy of the sentry on the metal behind the point of A and completely ignore B. B is taken quickly but as ASJS tries to move through C to A they are met hard at the C to A tunnels and nearly wiped out.

The two of them that survive are easily cut down by the defenses at A. After a failed attempt to take out the metal sentry by a ASJS spy the attacking team sends out two ubers at once and takes out the rock sentry, but the push flounders in the distance between their victory over the rock sentry and the point and they are wiped out by defenders without reaching the point. Some good harassment by ASJS’ pyro keeps the rock sentry from going back up a push through the side at the C tunnel and the B to A tunnel manages to get only a single demoman through to the point but he buys time as the teams fight outside the point and eventually a spy and scout make it through to the point as well. After that a medic and soldier make it to the point and that seals the deal ASJS captures A with 3 minutes left to capture C before they lose. ASJS pushes forward, it’s pyro keeping the ninja’s from putting up the B sentry at C and the engie doesn’t find another comperable place for it but the Ninjas put up a tenacious on point defense to run out the clock, blocking a medic heavy uber as well as a healthy rush of enemies to defend at C giving CP-N the round.

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third round first half. Ninjas on offense.

The ninjas get a stroke of luck and dogmeat manages to come in to round out their team in the final round. ASJS sets up the ramp sentry at B like previous times while keeping a pyro and heavy on A to stall that cap. The Ninja’s push B first, managing to take out the sentry with an ubered demo, meanwhile ASJS’ small defense at A eats a scout for lunch. Soon the ninja’s respond by sending a sizable force to A, rolling into it and capping at 2:05 on the way to B through c the Ninjas take some time to harass ASJS’s spawn and then moves through the back to B. The first uber attempt by the ninjas is beaten back but the second pushes through to kill the sentry and in short order B goes down for a time of 4:03, the Ninja’s don’t rest on their laurels however, pushing through to C and capping it before ASJS can put up any useful defense. In the end of the half N caps at 4:42. Leaving ASJS with quite a time to beat to stay in the match.

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Third round second half. ASJS on offense.

The ninja’s go with what they know. Using the rock sentry and metal sentry on A again as they ignore B. ASJS comes in serious and takes B quickly, managing to uber through to kill the metal sentry and pushing through the front to kill the rock sentry as well in short order. The defense manages to get the metal sentry back up however, and defends it from a heavy uber with an uber heavy of their own blocking the way. The second uber heavy coming from the other direction manages to do in N’s defense however and ASJS sweeps through the point to take it without much further resistance. The one minute they have left on the clock proves far too little time to even put a dent in capturing C however and The Ninja’s defense holds without a struggle on point C for the minimal time left. The Ninjas win.

Final tally is one round to ASJS two rounds won by the Ninjas and CP-N’s patchwork team takes home the win.

After that the sheer lateness of the night emptied the server but quick. I got to rest myself *yawn*

CP-N wins on Gravel pit. This is your sometimes reporter sometimes in the spectator box

Meyeselph signing out.

We hope you enjoyed Control point’s coverage of the June 18th match of it’s squad tourny in team fortress 2, the sport where late hits are critical.

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June 18th, 2008Team Fortress NewsRead More >No Comments