Team Fortress 2 - EPIC Updates Coming!

If you thought the Pyro update was exhausting, wait till the Heavy update gets here. Not only will you get 3 new weapons and 35 new achievements but also a NEW gameplay mode with 5 maps, a NEW Payload map and a custom community map. All we can say is Hell yeah!

We’ve been a little quiet for the last week as we’ve put the finishing touches on the Heavy update. We thought the Pyro pack was the biggest we’d be doing for a while, due to the large changes to the Pyro, but the Heavy update has turned out to be even bigger. In addition to the three unlockable weapons and thirty-five achievements for the Heavy, we’ve got a new game mode with five new arenas for it, a new Payload map focusing on more open spaces than Goldrush, and another popular community-made map. Throughout the rest of the week we’ll be giving you the details on all this, and if all goes well, you’ll have your hands on it shortly afterwards.

The community-made map included in the Heavy update is cp_steel, by Jamie ‘Fishbus’ Manson. After the Pyro update we received a lot of email telling us how wrong we were in our choices, and cp_steel was an easy next choice due to the way it dominated the suggestions. If you’re firing up your email right now to tell us that we never get anything right, please include suggestions of what map(s) we should be looking at next.

Make sure to check out the Heavy Update site as well.

Team Fortress 2 Getting New Environments

If you’re an avid TF2 player, you should be one of the thousands that have gotten tired of TF2’s same old “dust/industrial” setting. Worry not, VALVe is cooking up new enviroments for Team Fortress 2:

One of the things we’re looking at for the next update is the creation of a new type of environment for our levels to be built in. We’re pretty happy with the way our environments have turned out so far, but as we create more and more maps with these achievement packs, we want our level designers to have more to work with in terms of giving their settings a unique look.

The challenging part of this type of design process is in finding types of terrain and structures that provide an understandable, interesting set of visuals and at the same time staying within the constraints of what we want to do with gameplay. In addition to this, we want to be able to stay within the strengths of the engine that TF is built around.

They’ve also released some concept to get your engines going:

Team Fortress 2 Update, Pyro Nerfed

Valve’s team based shooter has recieved a brand new update and would you know it, the update nerfed the game. Pyro’s bonus HP gained by backburner weapon has been removed.

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed team switches on Attack/Defense maps spamming the console
• Fixed the Kritzkrieg not working on servers with crits turned off
• Fixed some clipped localized strings in various in-game dialogs
• Fixed several cases where files were synchronously loaded while the game was running
• Fixed a shutdown crash in the material system
• Cached rendering of item model panels to improve performance, in particular while weapon selection was visible
• Added a gear symbol behind the health bar for Engineer buildings, in both target IDs and freeze panels
• Players killing themselves will now give a kill credit to the last enemy who damaged them
• Fixed grenades, rockets, and flamethrower being able to fire through grates at round starts
• Fixed players being killed and creating ragdolls during team switches
• Fixed various exploits and performance problems in CP_Badlands, CP_Well, and CP_Fastlane
• Removed health bonus from the Backburner

Frontlines: Fuel of War BETA Demo

After all the wait, Kaos Studios has finally released (or rather, “leaked”) the BETA demo of their buggy fps; Frontlines: Fuel of War. Why release a BETA demo? No clue. The BETA demo includes Oilfield and GNAW maps and contains the latest v1.1.1 code. Note that this is a BETA demo and when the “final” version comes out, you may have to uninstall/reinstall it. Yeah, dumb. You can post the feedback regarding the demo here.

The PC demo has been leaked! Give it a try before it gets un-leaked. Yes, it is legit. Why should you play it, you ask?

1) It is leaked! The mysterious appeal makes it sexy AND exciting
2) More people means more fun!
3) It isn’t 1.1.0. No, it is 1.1.1. What difference does the extra 1 make? FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF.

Download -
AtomicGamer
ComputerGames
GamersHell
FileFront
FileShack
Size: 1.8GB

Day Of Defeat: Source Beta Update

Another update for VAVLe’s DoD: Source BETA version.

Day of Defeat: Source Beta

• Updates to official maps to improve lighting and fix exploits
• Fixed 4 grenade kill achievement being awarded with less than 4 kills
• Adjusted grenade trail particle effect
• Fixed achievement particle effect
• Changes to smoke grenade particle effect to increase perf
• Increased screen fade radius of smoke grenade
• Snipers can no longer sprint while zooming their sniper rifle
• Steam community avatar image now includes friend status

Get the update from Steam.

Team Fortress 2 - Pyro Unlocks/Meet The Sniper/2 User Created Maps Coming This Week!

Start your flamethrowers as Pyro achievements/unlocks will be available on thursday. Valve will also release Meet-the-Sniper video as well as 2 user created maps for everyone to enjoy.

The main event of the week is the Pyro Update, which will be made available this Thursday and contains three unlockable new weapons for the Pyro plus 35 new achievements. In addition, two user-created maps are included to highlight the great work being done in the community and distribute those works to all TF2 players..

Meanwhile as folks wait for the Pyro Update to be released, the latest in the “Meet the Team” video shorts, “Meet the Sniper,” will be made available tomorrow (Tuesday, June 17) at 11 am PDT along with a web site dedicated to the Pyro update.

Garry’s Mod Update Released

Garry’s Mod

• Fixed crash on startup
• Fixed broken particles
• Removed server crashing console commands
• Fixed ‘Touch’ Lua errors on some custom SENTs
• Spectated entities are now automatically added to PVS
• Added pl_goldrush to map menu
• Gamemodes can now organise their maps on the map screen
• Added example gamemode ‘melonracer’

As always, get the update from Steam.

Team Fortress 2 - Uber exploit permanently fixed

Valve has released yet another Team Fortress 2 update. The update fixes the perma-uber exploit (for real, this time!) and adds some other tweaks as well.

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed clients getting the “Reliable snapshot overflow” error
• Fixed another unlimited UberCharge exploit
• Fixed elevators not working in user maps
• Networking optimizations

Valve Cooking Up 2 New Team Fortress 2 Maps

As anyone who played Team Fortress 2 knows, pretty much all Team Fortress 2 maps are desert/industrial and while all of them offer something unique, the feeling of monotony is still there. Steam forum member Sindex e-mailed Valve regarding the environmental variety in Team Fortress 2 maps and got a response from Robin Walker:

New map environments are always a tradeoff between the amount of new content in a map and the amount our players want to download. Obviously, re-using assets from other maps that are already on your hard drive means the download is significantly smaller. That said, we are working on a new environment for two of our maps in development, and hopefully you’ll see some of that soon.

CTF_snowfort, anyone?

The Agency Preview

CVG got to chat with Sony Entertainment Online’s Kevin O’Hara about their upcoming MMO The Agency. Here’s a snippet:

“We’ll also have PvP maps where you can choose either side of the battle regardless of your agency,” continues O’Hara. “But if you don’t like PvP, don’t worry, you won’t ever have to do it, but hopefully it should be easy enough that everybody tries it out to see it isn’t as punishing as many MMOs.”

Check out the full preview here. The Agency will be landing on PC and PlayStation3, the release date is classified for the moment.

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