If you have a comment about this video, post it in the Left 4 dead on Team Fortress 2 maps thread in the Team Fortress Forums.

From the HL2SS website:

We’ve launched a new website and forums, as you’re no doubt aware by now, because we’re at a new stage in the project, and felt like it was time for something different. I apologise for the inconvenience, but if you had an account at the old forums, you are going to have to re-register. We changed software and are working very much ‘from scratch’ on the forums. The site has been updated as well, so be sure to check out the individual pages.

Human Error
by Half-Life 2: Short Stories

To comment or discuss this article, visit the Half-Life Forums.

From the release of Team Fortress 2 I have disliked and voiced my opinion against the respawn delay, or “respawn wave” as valve developers call it. This is one of the main reasons why I do not play the game, expect on servers that have disabled the delay. If I wanted to wait to respawn, I would play counter strike. But this is not counter strike, its supposed to be team fortress.

Team fortress is a past paced, intense form of game play. The only thing I can compare it to is old school Quakeworld from the late 1990s. The fast action and non-stop intensity is what has drawn untold scores of players to Team Fortress Classic and Fortress-Forever.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1872

[quote]

We found respawn waves were a good solution to several problems.

* They provide a reward for the team that’s doing well, in that if they wipe out a significant amount of the enemy team they’re rewarded with a short grace period in which they can achieve objectives. Without them, we found teams felt like they’d been penalized when they cleared the enemy off the last capture point, only to have them all return immediately.
* They group respawning players together into squads, increasing the chances of strangers working together, or at the very least, moving to the frontline while maintaining some proximity to one another. Strangers aren’t pushed together into groups when everyone respawns instantly, and we’ve seen that proximity to team mates is a fundamental requirement for impromptu teamwork.
* They provide some ebb & flow in the pacing of the battle. Without some cooldown inbetween the moments of intense combat at the frontline, many players felt fatigued much more quickly. In particular, some attack/defense maps feel almost completely static without respawn waves. That lack of progress, in either direction, was a big factor in players finding the gameplay monotonous.

[ end quote]

There is one part of that quote I really like:
[quote]
* They provide some ebb & flow in the pacing of the battle. Without some cool down in between the moments of intense combat at the front line, many players felt fatigued much more quickly.

[ end quote]

That intense combat is what a lot of players like about Team Fortress. We do not want cool down periods, we do not want time outs, we want action and the more we get the better. Notice that the person that posted that article mentions the attack/defense maps. That is what attack / defense maps do, they are a frag fest.

Keep in mind that when TF2 was released, it only came with one or two CTF maps. Just about all off the maps were cap points or attack/defense maps. So let me see if I can get this straight. The people at Valve software take 9 years to develop and release a game, with just one CTF map. The rest of the maps were attack/defense maps, and then the people complain that the action is too intense?  Something does not add up there.  At least on a CTF map the player can pick defense or offense.  If the player gets tired of the action on offense, they can change positions and camp out in the flag room.

Maybe it was not a “time out” or a “respawn delay” that the beta testers needed, but a diversity of maps. If some players found the attack/defense maps too intense, then let them go play a Capture the Flag map. That way they could pick the position and level of intensity that fit them best.

But, if we take a look at the way that 2Fort is designed, we can see it is not made for large groups of people. The distance between the bases is not far enough and the ramp room in each base is too small.

Instead of the developers at Valve giving the fans a game where we can pick and choose “how” we want to play, its as if the developers wanted to force the players to adapt a certain playing style. This attitude that players “have to play this way” is helped drive part of the Team Fortress community away from Team Fortress 2.

In my opinion, Team Fortress 2 (TF2) shows a lack of respect from the developer to the player. Since the player is the person spending their money on the game, why not give them what they want. The consumer will be a lot happier with a product that they wanted, instead of a product that was forced on them.

If Billy Bob wants to play a certain playing style with no respawn delay, then he should be able to.

And its still a laughing joke that Valve software expects their customers to believe that TF2 took 9 years to develop? It more looks like it was pushed out the door with 6 months or less of development time.

But hey, that is just my opinion.

If you have something to say about this article, post your comments in this thread at the Team Fortress Training Forums.

From the Steam Powered News Page:

A Steam client update is now available. To apply the update, click the File menu inside of Steam and then select “Check for Steam Client Updates…”. The specific changes include:

Steam Client

* Fixed NAT-traversal library using too much CPU during L4D - matchmaking
* Fixed several localization issues
* Fixed install wizard forcing clients to install the full version of a game instead of the demo version, when the full version isn’t released yet
* Added l4d.com to the whitelist of chat url’s not to warn about

Read the full article at the Team Fortress Training site.

Discuss the article in this thread at the Team Fortress Forums.

Tutorial 1 - Conc Jumping

Tutorial 2 - Trimping

Tutorial 3 - Ramp Sliding

Tutorial 4 - Bunny Hopping

Tutorial 5 - Default_fov

Tutorial 6 - Flame Push

Tutorial 7 - Sharking

Tutorial 8 - Demoman

For more information on Fortress-Forever, visit the Team Fortress Training Forums.

The whole story can be found at this link.

What the Steam Cloud seems to boil down to, if you move around from one computer to another, your game settings will travel with you. This sounds like a good idea, but is it really needed? How many people play their games on more then one or two computers?

But then again, lets say the computer is shared between several people - when each person logs into their steam account, their config will download to that system. When the next person logs into their steam account, their config will be downloaded. This sounds like a good idea for places such as a cyber cafe.

The article only mentions game options and configurations, so maybe scripts will not follow the user?

For those players that do not know, a script is a small file that contains instructions for the game. A key on the keyboard is bound to execute the script when pushed. Back in the days of Quakeworld, people would write scripts to get the perfect rocket jump. Instead of actually making the rocket jump, the person would get into position, then press the key bound to make the jump. So players that still use these scripts may not have access to them on the Seam Cloud? Maybe more information will be released in the next few weeks.

To discuss this article, visit the Team Fortress Forums.

Quote:

Keyboards ready, headphones on, Chinese police moved in for the kill.

More than 300 police officers in China’s northern port city Tianjin were “mobilized” to an Internet cafe Wednesday for a three-day competition of the terrorism-themed computer game Counter-Strike.

“The competition is organized to sharpen anti-terrorist skills of Tianjin’s police force, as we find the nature of the game very similar to that of our daily practice,” said officer Zhang Bin, one of the organizers.

End Quote:

It seems that more and more law enforcement agencies (and some military) are turning to computerized training.  This offers a low cost alternative to “live fire” events that can get expensive.  It cost a lot less to fire off a few thousand rounds in counter-strike, as opposed to real life.  But of course, nothing can replace real, hands on experience.

SPOILER ALERT - if you have not played HL2, then you might not want to watch this video. But then again, you might want to know where to keep your eyes open at.

Special thanks goes to Mangwold for taking the time to make this video.

If you wish to comment on this video, either go to the youtube page where this video is posted and post a comment, or visit the Team Fortress Forums and post a comment there.