Official Team Fortress 2 Game Nights (PC)

Yeah. I feel like I have turned the corner on my play (somewhat) over the last day. I've even lead the team (of 12) in scoring last couple of times on public servers. Medic is still a bit squishy, so going 4 minutes in heavy fire isn't easy.

I'll be back to being a newb when I switch over to the next class, no doubt. Plus, I'm still learning my way around the basic maps, not to mention all the user created ones.

Hooray for beating the difficulty curve.

Okay, now for a bunch of stuff.

The map Feeank was talking about was Warpath, a linear capture point map. It is okay, but it tends to stall out easily in my experience. It is also large and plain, though there are moving spawns so you aren't having to run all over the map every respawn. I also mentioned Science earlier, but now that I've played it, I don't recommend it. While I do like aspects of it, it seems to be confusing for most people. It also tends to degenerate in to a hectic battle at the center, while the sides are ignored.

NSMike, I'll look into making a tutorial for making transparent sprays. I think that is the easiest way to demonstrate how to do it. You do need an image editor, Photoshop, Paint Shop, GiMP, or something like that, and have some experience with it.

Here are the two sprays I've made most recently, those these exports aren't, the sprays themselves are transparent:

IMAGE(http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/6732/lovelh0.jpg)

IMAGE(http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/7468/boinkri8.jpg)

Some screenshots from this weekend as well.

Anodyne celebrated my death with a pirouette:
IMAGE(http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/9952/anodynecx5.jpg)

Fstarta started out the round pissed, especially after I set him on fire:
IMAGE(http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/7876/fstartaen3.jpg)

But after defeating a rush by himself, he changed moods dramatically, even if I set him on fire again:
IMAGE(http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/7623/fstarta2qv4.jpg)

Besides a typical scene of Jakeleg grinning over your bullet-filled corpse, it seems he mugged a Demoman for some armpads:
IMAGE(http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/284/jakelegpk6.jpg)

Took me a few seconds to realize what happened here:
IMAGE(http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/4315/ranalingi8.jpg)

A better picture of that ambush spot I found on Hydro, has worked every time so far (at least if I'm not stupid and fall off):
IMAGE(http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/5568/tchydro0001wk0.jpg)

Tannhauser wrote:

NSMike, I'll look into making a tutorial for making transparent sprays. I think that is the easiest way to demonstrate how to do it. You do need an image editor, Photoshop, Paint Shop, GiMP, or something like that, and have some experience with it.

Yeah, I use GIMP, and I can get the alpha channel easily enough, the problem is figuring out VTFEdit, and what to use there.

'oh, okay, that is the hard part of it in my opinion. Anyway, you can safely ignore most of the options in VTFEdit if you have the image properly configured beforehand. You will want an image to most likely be 256x256 (it has to be a power of 2: 64x64, 128x128, 512x512 for example, but anything over 256x256 tends to fall afoul of the 128k limit for sprays when converted to a VTF), and for transparent sprays you will want a PNG source image with alpha-channel transparency set up. After you open VTFEdit, go to the file drop-down menu and select "Import."

After you select the menu, you should get a window with all sorts of options. I can't explain them all fully, but I can tell you what I use. For the General Tab, I set both "Normal Format" and "Alpha Format" to DXT5 and "Texture Type" to Animated Texture (I know it isn't animated, but check the other options, this should be the most appropriate). I deselect the Resize, MipMaps, and Normal Map options, either because they should be unnecessary or adds to the file size (which is more important with animated sprays, but also cuts down on the complexity of the process). Don't mess with the Advanced tab, unless the DXT Compression Quality option is set to anything but "High." In the Resources tab, I also deselect the LOD Control Resource options. That is it, select OK and you should see the image in the main window. Depending on the colors you were playing with, if the transparency is working can be obvious or subtle. You can ignore the tabs to the side, though you may want to check the Info tab for the size of the VTF file.

Save it, and then to "Install" it, move it to the team fortress 2\tf\materials\VGUI folder, and then create the VTM file to accompany it. You can use another VTM file if you have one, and edit it to work. You can open it in VTFEdit, edit the "$basetexture" "vgui\logos\[sprayname]" line to reflect your new VTF file, and then save it to the same filename as your VTF. To end with you should have both a VTF and VTM file with the same name. Don't worry about creating a VTM file in the \UI folder, the game will generate that automatically. That should be it.

It should be a pretty easy process, since you can ignore or turn off most of the options.

I'd just like to add that it doesn't have to be a square, 128x256 etc. will also work.

Though as I remember it, it will stretch it out to a square image in-game. You can use it to increase the detail of an image while not going over the size restriction. It is most useful for animated sprays, as the file size limit strictly restricts the number of frames you can have.

An example from Counter-Strike Source:
IMAGE(http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/6012/attachmentgy4.gif)

I used a 128x256 (with some transparency at the top and bottom) to make this one way back. If it had stretched it to a square it would have looked horrible. Not sure what I did different, if anything.

Just found this podcast called Control Point at http://www.deadworkers.com/tf2/ and it looks pretty cool. I've just started listening to episode 2(the medic). Seems like they talk about a class per episode.

If it totally blows, I'll come back and let you know.

Ok great games last night, i was having a great time untill the power cut out.. then I realized that I just drove back to texas from california and was completly exhausted and passed out into bed fully clothed. I think I have some screenshots to share but I got to get off work to check it out.

Good games last night, but I was awful.
Terrible, horrendous, I never felt 'on' all night.
I blame it on moving from the laptop to the desktop(now functioning).

By the way Boogle, if we happen to be on the same team on Gravel Pit, do you want to try this? See if it gives you enough time to get a decent amount of stuff built up there.

There are so many weird little tricks in TF2. It makes me wonder if they were added intentionally.

Had fun last night by the way. I never get sick of playing with you guys!

Now that is cool stuff. If only I could propel myself up into the air by firing down, I'd be all set

wow! thats crazy! Medic boosting! I will be willing to try if anyone wants to help me build up there. Might even have enough time to make a level 2 gun

Well so much for that, check the latest patch notes:

Fixed syringegun projectiles sometimes pushing players high up into the air, allowing them to reach bad map locations

I just went on to have my best night yet.

I started out as a pyro and went about 60 kills to 28 deaths or so (I initially was 3-1 on kills-deaths but then they got more sentries up). Eventually sentries became such a big problem I went demoman. This is what happened:

IMAGE(http://www.mordiceius.com/media/screenshots/domination.JPG)

I broke MANY records in this spree:

Longest Life - 16:27
Damage done - 7,380
Dominations - 5
Destructions - 8
Assists - 13
Kills - 27
Points - 41

Tannhauser wrote:

Well so much for that, check the latest patch notes:

Fixed syringegun projectiles sometimes pushing players high up into the air, allowing them to reach bad map locations

I'm pissed.
I was ready for another Tannhauser/Boogle experimentation night.

Jake, could you fix the server rotation? It keeps throwing us into Hydro, and the map vote NEVER appears. Plus the map vote only displays 4 choices. And we'd like to be able to call up a map vote ourselves. Basically Stan's was unplayable tonight.

nsmike wrote:

Jake, could you fix the server rotation? It keeps throwing us into Hydro, and the map vote NEVER appears. Plus the map vote only displays 4 choices. And we'd like to be able to call up a map vote ourselves. Basically Stan's was unplayable tonight.

Indeed, the map rotation tonight was:

Hydro
Gravel Pit
Hydro
Hydro (this map was the only time a map vote appeared)
Castle
Hydro

I've removed the mapvote mod as it is not working correctly. The server will now run a normal map rotation.

OHH COME ON GUYS!

So what if we played Hydro for teh 8th time that night what do you do?!?!

MELEE ONLY! It was 2v2 and it was melee action! ax's and fists a flying! Fun time regardless of the wacky rotation. Also tonight we discovered that scripts not only help but they make you look weird as Keyboardnotpresent showed us by screaming out "place dispencer here!" and looking around.. over and over again

Here are a mass amount of screenshots

IMAGE(http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/7059/lastsneakingfs1.jpg)
What do you do when your low on health and a heavy? Sneak up on em! Lastexile showing the way its done..
IMAGE(http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/515/mordiceiusboogletw2.jpg)
Mord killed me, I was upset until I noticed Boogle (said like google)
IMAGE(http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/3662/pregamegrouphuddlepv4.jpg)
Pre-game huddle to ask the gaming gods to insure our Sniper rushs success
IMAGE(http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/2246/shyndarklyislookinggoodxx0.jpg)
Now you will look at this and see its just Shyn that has just killed me, then you will notice the game is over, then you will notice my team won :\ This is like 3 seconds after we won....

That was fun last night. Too bad I had to join in so late, but glad I got to run around with Pharacon and bloody some fists.

Great times last night everyone. I started the night pretty weak (was having trouble just holding 1:2 Kill/Death ratio the first few rounds) but was having a blast by the night was out. The sniper rush on castle was great fun, and the 2v2 Heavy boxing matches had me nearly falling out of my chair laughing. The voice work for the Heavies never fails to crack me up.

I finally got back in the swing last night.
I figured out I just needed to up my mouse sensitivity to what it was on the lappy, from 3.0 to 16.0.
Made quite a difference.

16? Wow that is insane!

thats like move a millimeter and your done with a 360 hehe... i think i play at 6 or 7..

Gaald wrote:

16? Wow that is insane!

Yeah.....I'm a twitch guy. Bad.
It comes from years of Source clanning.

Pharacon wrote:

thats like move a millimeter and your done with a 360 hehe... i think i play at 6 or 7..

It's actually about an inch to do a 180.
If you notice me spinning its because either I did something neat and twitched out or got surprised.

Is there any interest in playing the TFC version of 2fort at all I got the map and was checking it out, it's just as I remembered it. Well minus the conc jumping of course.

boogle wrote:
Gaald wrote:

16? Wow that is insane!

Yeah.....I'm a twitch guy. Bad.
It comes from years of Source clanning.

What kind of mouse and pad do you use? Anything special?