Powerlord

BLU will auto-update shortly. RED... well, the event version of RED doesn't auto-update, so I need to manually update it when BLU is done.

Just got this:

Forgot to mention this yesterday: RED is set up as a Prop Hunt server again.

Valve really screwed something up. It appears a number of users (possibly everyone whose Steam ID starts with "STEAM_0:1:", which would be approximately half the users on Steam) have no loadout right now.

I added it several days ago. I don't post about every person I add, only if I add them and they have no way of knowing I added them.

I may not get around to the server changes today. Having said that, I went over the top 50 players by connect time and added reserved slots for the two new people on the top 50: Miss Velociraptor and Zephy.

It goes to the next map on the map list, whatever that may be.

An update was pushed since my previous message: BLU and RED have been updated and restarted.

I've considered it, but chose not to because in the past people have complained when someone arbitrarily starts a vote. And now you're getting into the map vote issue, as it's the only one that uses 4-8. I know about the TF2 built-in map vote. I also know about its drawbacks, namely that it always raises the end of map vote when 2 minutes are left on the clock, despite TF2 changing maps if a round ends with 5 minutes or less on the clock (except on Arena). You also can't nominate maps to appear on the built-in vote thing. Believe it or not, I'm the person who reverse engineered the TF2 vote system for the SourceMod Wiki. The problem is that the Builtin Votes extension I'm writing is taking longer than expected to write due to SourceMod extensions being a PITA and several mistakes I made early on while writing it.

RED has been switched back to a normal server. Also, Valve is going to patch CS:S later today. No clue if TF2 will have a required update too or not. I may be doing some work on the server tomorrow. At present, votemelee and votescramble are not working as their respective plugins were disabled a while back due to crashing issues. I'm either going to install new versions of them or search for replacements.

BLU and RED were both restarted earlier, within 20 minutes of my last post.

So, new versions of Goldrush and Upward have been. One of the changes is a fix for Upward ending early! \o/ If that looks mangled, sorry... posting from a text web browser. I believe the update has completed on BLU, but the server may not have restarted yet... it checks twice more to see if the update succeeded before it restarts. RED is still running prop hunt, and I'll start a manual update as I leave here.

Just an FYI: Also, should I keep RED as Prop Hunt or switch it back to normal? I haven't really seen people on it since last week.

Well, sadly, days like today I'm too busy doing homework and stuff to play TF2.

I had a really weird TF2-related dream last night. For whatever reason, my house or apartment had a little U-shaped dead-end. I was carrying the Sniper's Kukri for whatever reason. As I was leaving with someone else (Melissa, I think), I told her "excuse me a second" and went to Spy-check the corner. I ran into a cloaked Spy, and clubbed him to death with my Kukri. Next thing I remember from the dream is that we put a recliner in front of the U-shaped dead-end and I was sitting in it. For whatever reason, I got up to get a drink, came back with it, decided to club the air behind the chair to Spy-check, then stabbed the Spy that was there through the heart. Then I woke up. Not really that exciting I suppose, but it's not every day one has a TF2-related dream, right?

Someone must have beat me to it, because you're already in the private group.

I see two things I consider deal breakers (one in game, one in the notes): 1. Some of the new taunts make the heads move around wildly, making headshots much harder to pull off on the person doing the taunt. The only taunts in the game that do this now are the Schadenfreude's taunt, and those stay in roughly one place after the taunt starts. The Pyro's Shoryuken taunt is by far the biggest offender here, followed by the Spy's new "dancing" fencing taunt. 2. The new taunts don't do taunt kills even when they should. This means that the Flare Gun, Detonator, Your Eternal Reward, and Big Earner all lose their taunt kills. Ironically, those are the same taunts I just complained about in #1.

Must be a really long term plan, since that post was 17 months ago and we're still on 3.8.1.

A number of people have been complaining about lag recently. I personally have been experiencing very little lag, but the lag others are experiencing may be due to changes I made in the server's minimum rate I made a few weeks ago. I've now restored it to its old setting of 3500 (or 3.5kbps). I had changed it to 30000 (or 30kbps).

That's why I sent that message... I'm the only person who is an admin in both groups, and that actually happened after the problem someone else described where it was discovered that anyone could send announcements. Also, invitation sent. Invitation sent. Invitation sent.

Jarate is extremely useful, if not to get kills, but to get assists (worth half a point each). You can also use it to expose cloaked spies. Using Jarate with a Bushwacka melee is a one-hit kill on just about every class but Heavy or Dead-Ringer Spy. Yes, they are. Valve's currently policy is to make weapons craftable the day they come out. This doesn't necessarily apply to hats. P.S. If you have a valid PayPal account, just buy a map token for $0.99 in the store to upgrade to a full account. This also gives you the World Traveler hat.

I would recommend seeing if you can trade another weapon for the weapon you want rather than crafting it. The Degreaser flamethrower is a good one to combine with the Axtinguisher and Flare Gun, both of which you already have. (Note: The Postal Pummeler is just an Axtinguisher reskin, but I use it for the comedy value). If you melee a lot as Sniper (i.e. more common for Huntsman Snipers), the Bushwacka works great. Provided you have a Jarate as your secondary item, that is. Having said that, Jarate is an achievement unlock that you don't have. The Demoman has a bunch of interesting items if you want to play Demoknight. My favorites are Ali Baba's Wee Booties, Splendid Screen, and Persian Persuader (which are all fairly new). The Demoman also has the Ullapool Caber melee weapon... which does a lot of damage to one enemy at melee range, but also damages you. Heavy... well, it looks like you have most of his best items already. Keeping in mind that Heavy is my least played class, the only two miniguns I ever use are the stock Minigun and the Tomislav. Secondary, the best items are likely the Sandvich or Shotgun depending on what you intend to do with them. The GRU is the best non-Medieval melee weapon. For Medieval mode, the KGB is the best (which is an achievement unlock). Scout... his most powerful primary is the default one, the Scattergun. Secondary is a tough choice. I tend to use Bonk Atomic Punch (an achievement unlock) so that I can use it to avoid sentries and annoying enemies that would otherwise mow me down (read: Heavies, Demomen, and Soldiers). Melee weapons is a toss up. All the Scout melee unlocks except the fish have a downside. I'm currently using the Fan O' War, just because it applies a Jarate-like effect to a single person I hit with it.

You don't want Prop Hunt on Kakariko Village?

I sent out a bunch of group invites. Everyone above should have gotten one from me. As a reminder, the Prop Hunt Weekend event that began last week, officially begins today. Except it's already been running for a week, so try to act surprised. However, I may add some more... novelty maps this week.

I sent you an invite to the Steam group.