Team Fortress 2 Megathread - winter is the most chill time of year

[high current]

It seems to be some issue with the zpos, same applies to the general end-game scoreboard. It seems to draw at an effectively infinite zpos.
Not sure if that’s the original cause but that’s when custom hud buttons can’t fix it.

I’m not a fan of putting the buttons on the main menu because it looks janky. Ideally I’d put it on the end of game scoreboard.

[lone tinsel]

or it's set to an invalid index

[eternal haven]

can you 'click' a hud button programmatically?

[high current]

I think you can click certain buttons with animations.

[eternal haven]

if so that might be a way to test if it's a z index thing or if it's actually disabled

[orchid sorrel]

https://youtu.be/bl8R_ngcNes?t=719

theyre calling it the most powerful bot ai in the world

[lone tinsel]

it's really annoying that they removed so much random GC code

[eternal haven]

they kinda just ripped out anything that's not needed

for the sdk intended use case

looks like they did it kinda hastily

[lone tinsel]

yeah

very hastily

gcclientsystem seems to be the main problem

the gcsdk itself is mostly intact

they also removed the SDR ticket job :(

sleeping in an async job feels questionable

that can't possibly be correct

[left sand]

@livid oracle

total casual victory

#fixcasual

[eternal haven]

#SaveTF2

[summer steeple]

rare instance of people asking for quickplay actually reading what other people have to say and understanding it

[lone tinsel]

:(

[lone tinsel]

i don't know why I expect valve code to ever work

oh well

[livid oracle]

@left sand what even is this https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/7819

this person is suggesting that you should be able to toggle map categories to make it easier to navigate in the UI

which you can already do?

what

am i missing something

[tacit flare]

Lol.

I'm surprised low quality posts aren't just flat out rejected.

"You'll have to address it sooner or later"

https://tenor.com/view/jack-tanamen-gecky-incorporeal-gif-21102682

[eternal haven]

Maybe its Ai generated bro

[paper sluice]

Too much work to moderate I guess this is the average tf2 fan

[eternal haven]

you guys think Kisak_Valve gets paid

[left sand]

do you think the steam community moderators get paid

do you think reddit mods get paid

[eternal haven]

I heard they do it for free mate

[left sand]

so is it hard to believe that someone would moderate a github for valve for free

i dont think it is (sorry if this comes off as rude, i dont mean it that way, im just trying to make it feel more feasible that someone could do this for free)

[summer steeple]

the fish

[rare coral]

does autobalance use the mmr to determine who switches sides or player score

[left sand]

it uses the MMR

[rare coral]

ty

[cerulean gorge]

bot hoster/maker making suggestions to casual matchmaking 😭

I wouldn't pay any attention to this person either, besides being a bot hoster/maker, with the comments they leave and delete

[orchid sorrel]

https://youtu.be/5vS4awwcnZ8

[cursive peak]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEOmqGml-OY

#2 was from one of the old communities I was in.

And I adore the feel the video gets around 13:37 with that rendition of Guile's Theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A1DXYD5D5s

And that whole video is from that same community the #2 from above came from.

Kinda wished I'd joined the server that night some of those clips were recorded. I was there when they were complaining about the spawn camping in the community chat.

And I was a mod at the time.

I rarely hopped on that modded server. The creator never would do anything interesting with the concept.

Not long after that video released, I ended up sitting in spectate for like 4 hours just slapping permabans on shitters who joined. Gave me a chance to really fix up the spectator side of my HUD.

[uncut spear]

should I use ultimate visual fix pack plus or just the original?

I'm mainly thinking of using the particles from the original mixed with everything else from the plus version but the creator has stated there were still fixes they haven't implemented from the og

tbf that was said in june of 2024 when the last update was jan 2025

[magic bridge]

As the creator of UVFP I recommend to use the original UVF if you plan to preload mods with Cueki's/Cukei's preloader. UVFP have a lot of fixes from UVF, other mods and my personal changes, but I doubt many of the changes I added on top of the base UVF would be noticable by the majority of the people. Also, UVFP is heavier in terms of the file size, because at that time I was required to add model files to every single item I changed to make it work in Casual, so the load time probably will be bigger.

[uncut spear]

ok thanks alot, didn't know you were in here :3

[radiant merlin]

Team, we need a fortress too

[wintry marlin]

someone said the n word in chat and my game crashed

[wintry marlin]

just your normal dustbowl match

[wintry marlin]

it came to 9 doms

[wintry marlin]

I feel like I'm gonna invent a law.
Guys with the freakiest names can frag out the entire opposite team. That's one observation I made consistently.

[paper sluice]

Idk if I just made this up in my head but if someone has low ping like 5 or 8 range and you go into console and type status and it’s actually 32/45 does that mean anything

[eternal haven]

If you set cl_cmdrate low or something it eventually makes your scoreboard ping number go low

like to 5

but also the scoreboard ping value is just normally lower than the net graph or status or ping

[left sand]

afaik the scoreboard ping is reduced by your updaterate

so a higher updaterate will reduce it further

[eternal haven]

Idk

UTIL_GetPlayerConnectionInfo is what calculates it

so definitely commandrate comes into play

maybe update rate influences some part of it?

I'm probably missing something but it doesn't seem like the latency values measured in net chan would be skewed by updaterate

[livid oracle]

how to survive full charge sniper headshot as heavy exploit (working 2026)

[heavy solar]

@livid oracle has leveled up! (51 ➜ 52)

[balmy bronze]

The Uncletopia sniper that knows target priority:

[lime stream]

hi

:)

i'm the headshotter in question

[livid oracle]

im going to be sued for copyright infringement

[lime stream]

my screenshots are under GPLv3

[lime stream]

bro calling me an uncletopia sniper

enjoy me going "???????"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4i_5NRfqjo

[livid oracle]

that first sniper tried to do the funnyspot where you cant be headshot

[small siren]

*that first sniper tried

to do the funnyspot where

you cant be headshot*

- wget

[lime stream]

i'm funnier tho

lil bro had tried it once or twice already

[drowsy marlin]

Just use the machina wtf, probably could have collated the medic too

[lime stream]

thx for the testing wget :D

much appreciated mate

[lime stream]

i dont have a strange machina, and it sounds bad

[livid oracle]

i actually dont know why that happens other than it needs a 2nd medic on quick-fix

[lime stream]

noob game, i'd say

[livid oracle]

the healing code in tf2 is this giant function that's annoying to read

[balmy bronze]

Wasn't denouncing your skill, just saying that it isn't as op as it looks

Tho it is pretty funny

I didn't know you were the shooter when I posted that

[lime stream]

i'm messing with you mate, dw :)

i'm not even a sniper player

[stone linden]

quick fix overheal code is some huge spaghetti situation

[wintry marlin]

quick fix has reduced max overheal so it seems like a rounding error

but I'd assume GRU is the main culprit behind it

[lone tinsel]

did tf2 ever actually use steamnetworkingsockets.dll or did it always use the steamapi version

[lone tinsel]

apparently they used it to measure ping back in 2017

they were even using it for fakeip

i guess the question is now when they stopped using it

[wintry marlin]

I started getting hackusations. I'm back.

[covert saffron]

quickfix bug happens every time I heal a razorback sniper

[small siren]

*quickfix bug happens

every time I heal a

razorback sniper*

- skjesred

[covert saffron]

I do not recollect my first thousand odd hours. even though I started around the blue moon update, I'm a super newgen player

zesty is just very passionate about what he says. I've tuned into his streams every now and then, this is a frequent enough thing he says to his chat--to stop being weird, stop witchhunting, etc.

I'm sure you being in chat reminded him, but I don't think it was isolated

basically true

I've been thinking about putting in my 2 cents so,

I don't care that much about this whole casual vs quickplay thing. I personally don't think a matchmaker is suited for tf2 since 24 players is a lot, and casual does kind of fail at being a matchmaker anyways. if we somehow get the intern to do something about it, that'd be great. from what I've seen, I do not think casual's flaws are somehow better than quickplay's, but I can't exactly speak from experience so *shrug*

if I could play tf2 like minecraft multiplayer I would

[eternal haven]

It might have been with the 64 bit update

[radiant merlin]

another way to fix casual: fix the damns medals they are so ugly https://gamebanana.com/mods/639303

[livid oracle]

from what i've seen, i do not think quickplay's flaws are somehow better than casual's

[covert saffron]

from my (probably naive) perspective, I would prefer to join empty servers over joining a match that immediately ends

it's likely a similar waste of a time, but it doesn't feel as bad

[livid oracle]

that happens with quickplay as well

[covert saffron]

even if it's as often as casual, it's not as subjectively punishing. my random joining of community servers has lead to far less matches that immediately end. and even if I joined at the end, 1. I'm not waiting around as long (at least I don't think I am), 2. people stick around, thus 3. the match I'm going to play probably won't be a 5v11, 4. and the match is going to last longer than if it were casual (only applicable to some gamemodes)

then again, that's just the server browser

and also excludes skial-type servers

[livid oracle]

the server browser exists alongside casual so i dont get this complaint

in general ppl will stick around in community servers because they're more invested in having continuity with other players

[covert saffron]

because I didn't get to play quickplay. but quickplay would just send you to a server, which doesn't function like a casual server, right?

[livid oracle]

quickplay as it was in 2015 would just dump you into some official valve server

essentially just casual mode but significantly more scuffed

far earlier it would put you in community servers but valve got tired of having to moderate this

theres just a lot of bad actors

[covert saffron]

understandably

but valve servers did not behave as they do now, right? since casual is the way it is

i.e. the end of a match would not be the casual ending doors with the 3 maps to choose from

[livid oracle]

yeah

but idk why thats a huge deal

is the issue really just aesthetics

[covert saffron]

it isn't so much aesthetics when it causes people to leave, yes?

[small siren]

*it isn't so much

aesthetics when it causes

people to leave, yes*

- skjesred

[livid oracle]

ppl leave in casual at the end of the match entirely off of their own volition

it can just keep going

they did that even when it took longer to queue for a diff match than to stay

it's psychological

[covert saffron]

it does keep going at the cost of players... is there something I'm not getting here?

I am confused

[livid oracle]

what im saying is idk why you see it as like an immutable part of casual

it's an issue of presentation more than anything

[covert saffron]

valve servers of old were more akin to community servers in which this is the assumed experience

as opposed to casual

unless there was significant, related difference between valve servers and community servers then

[livid oracle]

you're saying there isn't?

[covert saffron]

I am operating under little information

[livid oracle]

well i was gonna ask like

have you done research on this? like what ppl thought of quickplay and valve servers at the time? talked to anyone that had experience with those servers?

https://old.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/2g6pvq/play_now_option_needs_to_stop_taking_me_to_empty/

thread from 2015

look at the comments

[covert saffron]

I've seen this

my thoughts behind "I would prefer to join empty servers over joining a match that immediately ends"

[livid oracle]

the general consensus for most ppl was to just play on community servers through the server browser

the main difference between then and now is not casual vs quickplay

it's more of a general playerbase mindset that has wildly shifted

this has occurred throughout all of games

there's far less emphasis on community servers, a lot of games don't even provide dedicated server software anymore

gamers today just want a big button to press that puts them in a game

[small siren]

*most gamers just want

a big button to press that

puts them in a game*

- wget

[covert saffron]

so if we had quickplay, we would have the same issues that cause players leaving and unbalanced teams?

[livid oracle]

yes

[covert saffron]

ok

[livid oracle]

idk why that's even a question

[covert saffron]

it's a clarification question

[livid oracle]

quickplay isn't imbued with some sort of magic sauce that solves random problems

i dont get it

[covert saffron]

no it's not

[livid oracle]

like what about quickplay specifically would cause players to leave less and cause less balanced teams?

[covert saffron]

I feel like I explained this

[livid oracle]

your explanation was falsely attributing qualities of community servers to quickplay

[covert saffron]

?

[livid oracle]

everyone was used to server browsers back then because that's what every game had

even moba games you would wait around in a server for everyone to join through a browser

[covert saffron]

and how does a quickplay-era valve server not behave like the community servers? I believe that's what I'm not getting.

[livid oracle]

idk

they had no community

you joined one and it's just random people

no moderation

if what you're getting at is they had similar server settings then idk why dont you just spit that out

just say that what you want from the quickplay era was adhoc joins and longer match timers

which, again, are not immutable for casual servers

casual servers and quickplay servers aren't imbued with some sort of spiritual essence that tells them apart

they're all software

just numbers

you could very well ship of theseus casual into functioning near-identical to quickplay if you really wanted to

[covert saffron]

I don't know why you keep saying that. I'm not implying that. if I somehow am, I am not intending to. I don't believe quickplay is magically better, I am just drawing what I believe to be logical links between the functions of then and why there are less of [issues with casual I already mentioned], but as you said, "it's more of a general playerbase mindset that has wildly shifted", which is not something I thought about probably because I've not payed attention (or been around long enough) over the years to notice it

[livid oracle]

im implying you are because, instead of something concrete, what im left to work with is you must think "quickplay servers" are better due to some sort of secret sauce, what those servers were were just officially-hosted valve servers that were 90% empty and populated by randoms you'll never meet again and sometimes cheaters that you couldn't get rid of because there's no admins or anything

i genuinely don't know anyone that thought of them fondly at the time

they were just the servers that ppl used because they didnt know what the server browser was

[covert saffron]

and I guess I am learning now since as I've said:

"I don't care that much" + "from what I've seen" + "from my (probably naive) perspective"

I have bystander info, and I haven't done a deep dive because what I care about is being able to play, not so much whether the solution is quickplay, better casual, or something else.

[livid oracle]

https://www.google.com/search?q=tf2+"valve+server"+after%3A2013+before%3A2016

genuinely

if you do any amount of research

you'll instantly see why this whole "bring back quickplay" thing is incredibly silly

i'd like quite a lot of changes for casual but this whole "movement" is just a lot of reactionary posturing

what i dislike the most about casual is now everyone just plays on valve servers instead of forming strong communities in their own spaces, but again there's nothing to be really done about this without just leaving game server hosting to the community (this will kill the game), the mindset and expectations of players nowadays is just completely different

the average videogamer today would see the server browser ui and it'd trigger their fight or flight response

[stone linden]

“bring back quickplay” => “put valve servers in server browser and make the server config less annoying”

yay!

[eternal haven]

low key I was telling U guys this ahead of the curve

scroll back june 3 2024

[left sand]

it was around when it was added into steam api properly

[lone tinsel]

around when was that? the documentation was added to the partner docs in around 2019 but that's before fakeip was added to tf2 iirc

dota 2 can still use the standalone library

[heavy solar]

@lone tinsel has leveled up! (12 ➜ 13)

[next nymph]

i think another angle is that this isnt necessarily what the tf2 community wants either. I was in community servers years ago. It took time. I don't really have the will to invest the time to be a part of an (ingame) community now.

if i boot up tf2 (which admittedly i haven't done for a while) i kinda just want to get into a game, possibly with some friends, and have a standard tf2 experience. I suspect that's the case for a lot of the community now, even if they're comfortable with a server browser that's just not the ideal fit for their needs

[livid oracle]

yeah i think the landscape is just different now

[high current]

Man where did all the Quickplay pushback come from? I feel like I used to be the only certified Quickplay hater.

But yeh I agree with most the sentiment I skimmed. Casual + adhoc connections + tweaking the duration of some timers = perfection

A nicer system for community servers would be neat. But frankly I don’t know that people would use it even if it were in game. I guess a checkbox in the casual matchmaking panel that said “allow community servers” would be ideal. But frankly I’ve always preferred Valve servers, even in Quickplay era I’d just connect to Valve servers via the server browser because community servers were ad and plugin slop.

[stone light]

i am scarred from the saigns.de servers

[high current]

You’d probably need to allow people to gain casual xp or add a community server rank medal to get people to play community servers.
I wouldn’t think people care that deeply but when I disabled rank medals in Xhud my most common request was for rank medals to be a customization…

[cursive peak]

I blacklisted saigns.de ages ago.

[cursive peak]

If gaming in general still leaned heavily on community hosted servers, it'd be a lot more common for the various online communities to have their own game servers with a built in community to game with on them.

[wintry marlin]

the medal is a fidget toy it must be present to keep kittens occupied

[tidal oar]

i've been playing since 2009 and even after quickplay was introduced i don't think i ever even tried using the play now button to join a server through quickplay. i always used the server browser since it was what i knew and the new option seemed like a dumbed down version of something i could do myself. i could find any server i wanted running any map that was on, whether it was empty or full, high or low ping, i had the choice and freedom to join any server, pick the team i wanted, and i knew exactly how long the game would go on for, give or take a few minutes, and all of these aspects are what i miss about modern tf2

besides the very few vanilla community servers left which aren't consistently populated

i completely disagree with round limits in general because you don't know how long the game is going to last, a round can be only a minute or two or they can stretch on for 10 minutes each if the map permits it, i'd rather have a set consistent time limit of 45 minutes like there was before so that i know what to expect just by tapping tab and looking at the scoreboard when i'm joining a server

i really just feel like the old server variables led to the most perfect and enjoyable tf2 experience, and i'm not talking about quickplay or however the game put players into the server in the first place since i don't care, i'm talking about the actual experience of playing on the servers, that is the problem that i (and probably a lot of people who want "quickplay" back, though they're using the wrong words for it) have with casual mode, it does not play in any way like the tf2 i fell in love with

[livid oracle]

every european ive talked to mentions saigns like its some sort of unspeakable horror

[livid oracle]

i think thats the common sentiment

at least for Normal people ive seen

anyone that actually wants mm stripped from the game is just batshit

and they happen to be the most vocal for some reason

[wintry marlin]

I have completely blocked out saigns out of my memory until you mentioned it

it's like it never existed

[tidal oar]

saigns is still up, i joined their 2fort a few months ago

there's 1 guy left who plays there every day who's a donator, all he does is build a sentry with his p2w perks that make it near unkillable and farm kills on bots all day

standing there wrenching his sentry for hours

so he can be at the top of the leaderboard on the server forever

and if a real person joins and stabs him or saps his sentry he leaves

which i did just to see what would happen lol

[wintry marlin]

guy found his hobby

[tidal oar]

he did he's like tens or hundreds of thousands of kills away from the person in 2nd place on the leaderboard

[tidal oar]

what is your perception of matchmaking and what would you do with casual mode if you could

because i spent all of quickplay avoiding quickplay and using the server browser, but now that casual is here i don't even have the choice to bypass matchmaking like i could with quickplay, that's why i don't care which of them is used as long as there's some way for me to just go around it entirely like i could before

[livid oracle]

i would get killed and eaten for what i would do to tf2 if i had free reign

[tidal oar]

well i won't kill you or eat you

[livid oracle]

i would be happy with just adhoc tbh

so i can join my friends

[tidal oar]

i haven't actually had many problems with that but it seems like most people have

whenever i tried to party up with a friend and join their game and i press the green join button i get put in fast

in like a minute or so

but i see a lot of people complaining about that online

[livid oracle]

i hate that you cant join a current game

[tidal oar]

i thought that's what you could do with the join game button

[livid oracle]

you cant it wont let you

[tidal oar]

i wonder if there's some setting that's messing things up because i've been able to get in friends games that way

[livid oracle]

wait what

[tidal oar]

like at the top it'll say your party is in a match or something similar i don't remember the exact words

and there's a green join button

and it queues you for the match your friend is in

i get in after a minute or so

[livid oracle]

i did not know about this

i thought you had to wait for it to be over

[tidal oar]

yeah i get in mid-game i just have to wait a little

i know because i got into a 2fort game one of my friends was in recently

[livid oracle]

since when was this a thing

[tidal oar]

it might not have always worked because i have a distinct memory of trying to come back to the game after years in like 2020 or 2021 and trying to join a friends match and i got put in an endless queue and never got in

but as of a few months ago it was working

since that's when i tried it again

because i had a friend that i introduced to the game in october or november of last year and they were in a match and i wanted to join them so i figured why not try and see if i can get in, i didn't expect it to actually go through but it did

[livid oracle]

this is gamematching info actually

so it just waits for a slot to free up?

[tidal oar]

i think so yes

they've done it too joining my match, it'll show up the green "Player connecting..." text on the scoreboard in an empty slot and then they show up

sometimes they aren't the one that shows up and they have to wait a bit longer so idk if they have priority

but they do go through eventually

the only image online i could find of it is someones phone camera picture of their computer screen but here it is

the join button works

[eternal haven]

long time ago

it's nothing recent

https://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=33661

[paper sluice]

TF2C launches on steam tomorrow

Any of yall gonna try it out?🤔🤔

[radiant merlin]

sure

[wintry marlin]

They should definitely let you ngl

I have qued for like 40 different games today and can say that most of them were near ending or ended instantly upon joining, this is a surprisingly regular occurence

dustbowl matches are the only ones I can reliably enjoy sticking around for because even dead servers get filled up quickly

This map is stupid but fun

[drowsy marlin]

I thought it was called TC2, not TF2C

[stone linden]

tf2 classified/classic

different mod

[tidal oar]

same for me, dustbowl matches are the only games i can consistently play from start to finish most of the time

[lone tinsel]

@ mcoms please rename the old version of TC2 to Team Comtress 2 Classic

[paper sluice]

4 hours,,,,

I won’t be home 😢

[wintry marlin]

I JUST REALIZED

WHY SECOND BANANA

IS CALLED SECOND BANANA

IT'S A DICK JOKE

LET'S FUCKING GO

https://tenor.com/view/warhammer40k-emperor-of-man-emperor-gif-12094981323200160207

[high current]

https://tenor.com/view/f-gif-9118360225465577606

[left sand]

https://fxtwitter.com/conorjrogers/status/2017012370724270454

Conor Rogers (@conorjrogers)

Something that is 100% real but would sound fake if you told a Zoomer is that in the 1990s, for long plane rides, the flight attendants would hold up two VHS tapes at the front of the plane and people had to clap the loudest for whichever one the whole plane was going to watch

**💬 180 🔁 769 ❤️ 42.6K 👁️ 1.40M **

FxTwitter · Jan 29, 2026, 11:09 PM

[livid oracle]

put it on the tf2 wiki trivia section

[summer steeple]

isn’t it called the second banana because that’s just… a phrase

[left sand]

this is like quickplay vs casual

[wintry marlin]

it's a multiple pun

entendre

it has so many meanings

[orchid sorrel]

Yes

Its like second fiddle, an afterthought

[left sand]

heavy also got second place

[radiant merlin]

oh tf2c has the old switch speed

[radiant merlin]

they didn't increase the edict limit lol

[lone tinsel]

you can't do that without engine modifications right

[radiant merlin]

oh right

[stone light]

edicts dont cause this the map doesnt use that much

at least in tf2

[radiant merlin]

man i want my taunts so badly

idc about the hats, but taunts

almost 10k people moved from tf2 to tf2c

[lone tinsel]

how do they handle inventory?

[left sand]

its their own

server based inventory

[radiant merlin]

i don't know how but shooting people feels very responsive, even with some lag

like if i were playing in lan

[left sand]

team comtress and their own fixes

[next nymph]

bucket of chicken = fuck-it of dickin

[drowsy marlin]

playing the new TF2 mod made me realize just how much I take casual mode for granted

finding a server on my own is tedious

[radiant merlin]

what is that fov lol

bro is playing quake

[stone linden]

i think they have 120 fov?

[eternal haven]

Is that allowed

[radiant merlin]

yeah up to 130

[jagged pawn]

yeah it's insane how much better tf2c feels than vanilla

[small siren]

*yeah it's insane how

much better tf2c

feels than vanilla*

- Grapevime

[jagged pawn]

comparable to tc2 honestly

only thing missing is null movement but I assume I can just add that with a script

[left sand]

a lot of tc2 was ported over to tf2c, but it does have its own improvements especially on the art side as well as ui and some other cool systems

[jagged pawn]

yeah I like a lot of what they did with the hud

strikes that nebulous balance of still feeling like tf2 while modernizing it

I just wish they were good at weapon balance but other than that it's an impressive mod

[left sand]

well hopefully i can do a lot with tc2, though i wish we got more players and more feedback

kinda demotivating atm

[jagged pawn]

I honestly just think the convenience of steam is gonna be a really difficult hurdle for you to overcome

like I've done a couple of the tc2 playtests and they were fun but itch is just such a hassle

[left sand]

well the new launcher i think is pretty easy

i guess i could run a steam playtest

but thats like a hassle because you cant make it public

so idk, it feels like the best way rn is to just have people try it out outside of steam

because if its on steam, its going to get launch visibility

[small siren]

*because if its on

steam, its going to get launch

visibility*

- mcoms

[left sand]

and people will get bad first impressions

because its unfinished

[jagged pawn]

admittedly did not know there was a new launcher so just went to try it and

(gtk version doesn't even give me an error message, just doesn't open)

nvm I didn't know there were instructions (you should probably link to the main github page instead of the releases)

yeah could not find the extensions

I obviously get that most people are not linux gremlins but even still from what I can tell people have to install a separate runtime just to run the launcher even on windows which is just not something people are going to do

[orchid sorrel]

Some guy in potato complaining he got kicked for cheating

“Were you cheating?”
“Yea but i stopped and made a new account”

Amazing

[left sand]

windows doesnt need the runtime installed unless you went out of your way to uninstall it

thats why its on the github page

as for linux, i figured people would be gremlin enough

but admittedly i havent put much thought into supporting it as well as i could have

it does a terminal only mode tho

./TC2Launcher --help

[jagged pawn]

ah ok fair

[wintry marlin]

Speaking of linux, it appears that by default tf2 doesn't come with all the fonts needed to show text or display at correct font size and I wonder what's missing

[jagged pawn]

I think that's usually a hud issue

most huds don't bother to make their font files compatible for whatever reason

is the default hud not displaying right for you?

[wintry marlin]

Yes but I also installed budhud and I still see missing characters in player names

And console font size is unusually small

[balmy bronze]

Tried Tf2c, the concept and ideas are cool but mann its unbalanced

but I guess thats to be expected out of a 1.0 release

Every original unlockable in the game is either a straight upgrade or a downgrade to their stock counterparts

It also made me realize that I should thank my medics WAY more often in Uncletopia

[next nymph]

we need wget

[drowsy marlin]

In my opinion TF2C is a fun mod and it's refreshing since there's no hats and there's new weapons

Plus it's a really pretty looking game

But after a while, the weapon balance gets stale, and there's some clutter with the sounds too

The text chat makes a sound; if I turn off hit sounds, theres still a fleshy type hit-sound; and I hate the sound of Heavy's AA cannon, that thing pierces my ears

[leaden dune]

The Minelayer in TF2C is still kinda terrible

[radiant merlin]

yep

[tacit flare]

Whilst first impressions are important, this is self defeating. This is an ever evolving project that needs player engagement and feedback. You shouldn't hold back the Steam launch to the point it kills the project's momentum and your own motivation.

Developing the project is one thing, but supporting and maintaining the surrounding community will be just as important, especially regarding onboarding. People will put up with unfinished projects if they can see it is moving and is actively being worked on, and I feel that should be at the core of this project's outlook.

[left sand]

i really heavily disagree with this, just because steam has such a huge permanent impact

it should only be launched when it's ready

[tacit flare]

Alright, then what defines "ready"? Because it won't become ready if there's no feedback and community involvement.

It's a catch 22.

[left sand]

when i dont have any clear idea myself on what needs fixing or improving

its really stupid to ship a full release on steam when theres actively bugs in new features that i know to solve

because all the feedback will be is "X is missing Y is broken" when i already know that

[tacit flare]

Is there no middle ground at all with Steam? Either full forward or nothing at all?

[left sand]

nope

the 3 options are early access, playtest or full release

[tacit flare]

What's the catch with early access? Cause that sounds right on point.

[left sand]

early access is basically the same as full release but it kills your game because its labeled as that and people dont play it, and steam doesnt really distinguish between the two

playtest is invite only so it would be less accessible

full release is as we discussed, has a lot of problems with killing the mod

[tacit flare]

Would playtest allow for Steam's one click install? No faffing around with setup?

[left sand]

kinda

theres multiple steps involved to getting playtest access

but ultimately it shows up in your steam library

but again, it's not possible to really do that effectively

[tacit flare]

I think that would certainly provide some significance.

Especially if everything was coordinated around playtests using it.

I remember being part of something similar for Hawken. With something tangable, it becomes a lot easier to just click play and jump on.

[left sand]

yeah but then that kills the mod

because no one can actually visit the website and play immediately

[tacit flare]

How so?

[left sand]

because it would be locked behind a playtest invite

[tacit flare]

But once you have access to it, which should be rather easy to provide, it's an easy launch after that. Visiting the website currently is not an immediate play.

[left sand]

youre really understating this barrier

[tacit flare]

Barrier of inserting a steam key and clicking install?

Far more people understand how to use Steam than mess around with exes and configuration files.

"Hey, here's this Steam key for Team Comtress's Playtest! Check it out. Just put it into the add game, and all you need to do is hit download and off you go."

New playtest announced? Sweet, just need to hit play since I've already done the setup. Automatically updates. Now Team Comtress playtest is showing up in my currently playing game for all my friendlist to see.

I used to have people asking me what the hell "Hawken Test" was, because having access to it was a rarity. Doesn't have to be a rarity, much like how Valve gave out Deadlock keys for everyone, that certainly didn't act as much of a barrier.

[left sand]

playtests dont show up in friends or any activity unless you release the store page

there isnt a set steam key that you can auto grant, each user would have to apply and then be granted a key

deadlock is entirely different

so basically, it would have to be:

"visit the discord and ask for a steam key!"

if you dont think thats really bad vs. downloading 1 exe and clicking play then idk

[eternal haven]

I think the reason is they just dont test it on linux so they never realize that windows is the only place where you can put the name wrong and it'll stlll work

[tacit flare]

Have they changed the system since I've last interacted with it? Because this looks right on the money.

[left sand]

you still have to wait

im sorry but this is just not a solution

[tacit flare]

Wait for you to click yes? That can be a very short wait, especially to have it in your Steam library ready to go.

So that completely invalidates that point.

Just set it to open signup

[left sand]

that requires a store page

again, i was talking about key grants

because thats the only solution which doesnt have a store page required

[tacit flare]

As in, why not have a store page? Unless that's going back to the idea it will kill the mod.

Which I think is a bit presumptive, considering the amount of work you've done and it's development and evolution down the line.

[left sand]

look

as it stands

people arent even talking about the mod

let alone playing it

some people think its discontinued since 2020

some people dont think it exists

the tc2 launcher is a single click to get working

it isnt a barrier rn

(besides for linux users, but thats a separate topic)

the problem is marketing

not ease of access

and again, adding more hoops to jump through by adding a playtest instead of just a 1 click launcher

it isnt going to help

people just need to be made aware of team comtress

through youtube videos

reddit posts and comments

the only reason it got popular in 2020 was tyler covered it

now, 6 years later

people think its still the 2020 version

they dont know its meant to be a continuation of live tf2 instead of just bug patches

they dont know its on the latest tf2 sdk

they dont know its being actively updated

and thats assuming they even know about it

[tacit flare]

Exactly! So what better way to dramatically shift those old assumptions than to have a store page and active playtests using it?

No faffing around with having to go to a website to download the launcher. You could roll out the red carpet with Steam and state Team Comtress is a tangible project, here to stay. For sure there's plenty that can be done with marketing, but all the marketing all points to the same entry way.

[left sand]

it really isnt that big of a difference

[tacit flare]

There's a massive difference.

[left sand]

id rather focus on marketing the website

idk how theres any "faffing"

[tacit flare]

For a lot of people, if it isn't on Steam, they're not interested.

[left sand]

okay

im not ready for those people yet

the type of people who have that little patience arent really gonna be great candidates

again, if there was another 100K view video about team comtress itd be popular

or idk 100 1k view videos

people have to keep talking about it

the most important thing to valve is player numbers

if we can get enough interest without steam, then its more likely they would be able to merge it into the main game

the more we rely on steam, the more likely it is to remain as its own mod

[tacit flare]

I wish I could convince you otherwise, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[unborn pecan]

only reasoned I joined this server

TF2C demoman is broken

so much spoam

[uncut spear]

yeah thats been my main problem with it

demo spam is NUTS

other parts of the game are fine tho

helps me get in good practice with default weapons

[leaden dune]

I've been working on the script for a TC2 video these past couple weekends. I have the first 1/3 figured out but the next 2/3rds I'm still trying to figure out how to best structure/word it.

I also still need to buy a new mic so maybe in March I can post something onto the YT machine promoting TC2

[left sand]

thats definitely going to be interesting, hopefully i can get some more content to talk about in by then ^^

[summer willow]

mcoms, your tf2 config are outdated or still using the same still? kinda random and non important

[left sand]

outdated for what? theyve been updated for any major changes made to the game

[summer willow]

aah im talking about your personal config for tf2 https://github.com/mastercoms/configs, didnt specify it enough

[left sand]

yeah pretty much the same

i think i made a few changes

but i havent bothered to put them on i think

like changing sens

and volume

yeah

[summer willow]

oh ok, thanks!

[charred thicket]

The playtest idea would work on me since everything would be done through Steam.
I'm lazy and don't want to bother with an external setup so I've had the TC2 launcher in my downloads folder for quite some time and just never bothered launching it 🫠

It'd make it feel more ""legit"" - Had to do that for the Hawken revival as well IIRC and it wasn't so bad.

(I am the lowest common denominator.)

[radiant merlin]

there's a kid screaming in my game

it feels like 2015 again lol

[radiant merlin]

team mercadolibre

[livid oracle]

i just try to shill tc2 whenever appropriate

[livid oracle]

tuah

[balmy bronze]

Really happy that tf2c finally gave demoman gunboats

Roaming demo finally possible

[limpid panther]

Omg I spat my fucking drink reading this

[tacit flare]

You shall be rugpulled.

[wintry marlin]

I spent 4 hours practicing at jump academy just now

https://tenor.com/view/miserable-tf2-team-fortress-2-jump-academy-rocket-jumping-gif-2517738336157125740

I'm gonna start using sleep supplements atp because my sleep schedule is a rollercoaster

I'm gonna start seeing this map in my dreams

[eternal haven]

Proud of U bro

[next nymph]

melatonin kinda goated ngl

[limpid panther]

In short: routinely sleeping 6 or 4 hours per night will make you stop feeling more and more tired after day 3 or 4, but your cognitive ability will continue to degrade way past thay

[wintry marlin]

I wake up way earlier than I should regardless so

[limpid panther]

Depending on the cognitive test, a sleeping for 6 hours 14 days in a row will make you as cognitively impaired as not sleeping for 24 to 48 hours

[wintry marlin]

Makes sense

I sleep like a nuke

[limpid panther]

Here is a new incentive for you to try and find a way to fix that: it will make you less stupid

[wintry marlin]

I need to be cooled and I have a sleeping aid

Oh my cat bothers me at night

[left sand]

https://youtu.be/_CZ_y3q9ow4

[radiant merlin]

fov_desired 70, viewmodel_fov 54, volume 1

[eternal haven]

cl cmdrate 20 cl updaterate 30 cl interp .1

mat_hdrlevel 2

[floral sandal]

source?

[wintry marlin]

This guy did the equivalent of entering a daycare and act surprised that he sees children lol

"what happened to this game"
It's always been like this, you changed, brother

[livid oracle]

tf2c default volume is 0.15 lol

the default of 1 in source games is really funny

[lone tinsel]

if you aren't playing at max volume are you even really playing tf2

[radiant merlin]

Tf2 causing tinnitus to new players since 2007

[green tulip]

I still find it interesting that TF2C on Steam ships with DSOAL (https://github.com/kcat/dsoal)

I never quite looked into how much of a difference this even makes with how Source uses DirectSound. I think I remember seeing people say that you need to change snd_legacy_surround to make it work well? idk

[stone light]

its bad

i tried it

compared to natively-implemented HRTF with steam audio

i noticed more dramatic reverb but the hrtf aspect wasnt noticeable, I believe the engine doesnt pass directional data into dsound

[stone linden]

lmao the most Casual Ruleset thing of all time: scary broccoli video about playing with the manmelter. he gets spawn camped. he switches to demo, breaks out, and wins the round. opponents proceed to mass ragequit

he gets immediately auto balanced to the opposite team, and then proceeds to spawn camp his original team with the manmelter since the original kritz demo combo didn’t leave. now his original team all ragequits

auto balance very smart

one player accidentally caused like 10 out of 24 of the players in a lobby to leave, evenly split between both teams. by doing nothing except playing the game mostly normally

people tend to get extremely butthurt for some reason when reverse sweeps happen

[sacred totem]

I know this was about the matchmaker or something but the manmelter is insanely underrated and effectively deletes snipers

Its genuinely my favorite flaregun behind detonator

[balmy bronze]

Manmelter is funny but Scorch Shot is way better at deleting light classes

It's not underrated, its just bad (unfortunately )

[sacred totem]

No

Darwins

[balmy bronze]

No one runs Darwin's

[sacred totem]

They do

[balmy bronze]

Atleast no one I see on uncletopia

Also doesn't Darwin's cut fire damage by half?

[sacred totem]

Nobody plays UT

[balmy bronze]

Oh but crit damage is handled funny

so it deals 75 damage, doesn't it?

[sacred totem]

63 players including 1K uncles

72 dmg

[balmy bronze]

This game man

[radiant merlin]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3897800/Poker_Night_at_the_Inventory/

Steam

Poker Night at the Inventory

Recently reopened following a seismic retrofit, the Inventory is once again the hottest gathering place for video game characters to unwind after a long day on the job. Drop in to play No Limit Texas Hold’em with four familiar faces: Max, Strong Bad, Tycho, and The Heavy.

From the archives of Telltale Games, this jokey poker game pits iconi…

Release Date

Mar 5, 2026

[cursive peak]

But will it count towards the unlocks?

[uncut spear]

apparently some stuff was changed within tf2 to the steamid of this game so probably?

it'd make sense to do so

[cursive peak]

Then I wonder if the existing Poker Night will continue to work. Never got around to getting the watch.

[paper sluice]

Unlocks will be given to you

Wonder if that means if you got both games you’ll get two of each

🤔

[fallow ridge]

dangeresque, too, 2

[drowsy marlin]

Those glasses don't fit the artstyle

[next nymph]

it is The New Face of TF2

[paper sluice]

I’m wondering what the average player count for TF2C is gonna be now
Cuz it was definitely the most popular sourcemod pre sdk so like wonder what the standard of player count is gonna be like

[fallow ridge]

my guess would be about 2-3k

[paper sluice]

Prolly something round there

I’m super excited for open fortress to come to steam cuz I’d love to have more people playing that
Would hopefully expose new people to the genre🙏🙏

[unborn pecan]

OMG

POKER NIGHT IS COMING BACK

YES

YES

YEE

YES

I want poker night 2 back as wel....

https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/1277403162357006456.webp?size=48&name=glorpie~1&lossless=true

[wintry marlin]

I'd like to replay all of the old ttg at some point

although I have full cleared both poker night games somewhat recently.

like 3 years ago.

[radiant merlin]

wish the big kill promo also returned

[uncut spear]

to anyone who uses flawhud, is there anyway I can (easily) change the loadout menu to be more like normal tf2 instead of how it is in the hud?

just not a fan of this style yet the rest of the hud looks great

(if this is a thread type of question, that's mb)

[summer willow]

i think theres an old version that is on vanilla-style, though you would have to search

i was also gonna ask a question about flawhud here now xd

how can i use the crosshair options on the hud? i dont think its working (linux btw)

[summer willow]

oh forget it works!

[paper sluice]

https://criticalflaw.ca/TF2HUD.Editor/

i think this?

loadout style

[uncut spear]

oh yoooo

[summer willow]

damn

[burnt dragon]

where mvm

[radiant merlin]

in our hearts

[charred thicket]

How often is TC2 being played? Are there constant lobbies or is it a scheduled type thing?
Still need to get around to checking it out.

[jagged pawn]

def a scheduled type thing rn since it's still in testing

[lone tinsel]

you can add yourself to the tc2 playtest role in the "channels & roles" tab to get pinged when a playtest is happening

[limpid panther]

Van Dongen et al.

[summer willow]

you like graphics dont you?

[limpid panther]

https://tenor.com/view/this-peak-is-this-peak-so-peak-peak-it's-just-so-peak-gif-1360442599844596686

[livid oracle]

this shit is so funny

even before casual nobody played that shit lol

[left sand]

wait but

quickplay didnt even have arena

there was never any arena valve servers lol

so wtf would the difference be vs now

[cursive peak]

I remember way back in '09 when I first played that Furry Pound would sometimes end up voting on arena maps. I quickly grew to hate the gamemode.

[drowsy marlin]

The only arena mode I like is pyro dodgeball

[paper sluice]

Whaaaat

Arena is super fun at least in pf2 and tf2c

Underrated gamemode

4team arena in tf2c makes it really fun, but normal arena is still super fun in both

[left sand]

i liked arena byre

but imo the other arena maps are confusing and just a huge waste of time

maybe arena nucleus or arena well is pretty okay

but the rest of them are way too large

and imo have really poor gameplay

its really sad because some of the arena maps are

really fucking beautiful

[paper sluice]

Arena nucleus and well are azz tho I do agree

I think arena could be just as fun as every other mode it just suffers from poor maps and then because no one makes maps for it so that’s all we know

[left sand]

maybe its just nostalgia but i liked them back in the day

well i guess its probably because all the other maps are super big and arent based on other maps, so its hard to learn them

i guess watchtower is okay for size but it has pretty bad routing issues

[burnt dragon]

saxton hale is so unrealistic as a rich person

someone who has billions doesnt discriminate who buys his weapons, isnt sexist, doesnt worry about masculinity yet slays every time hes on a comic panel and has a love interest that is more or less same age as him

bro just enjoys punching animals, causes animals to go extinct just like normal billionaires

[stone linden]

“quickplay helped community servers therefore it helps arena stay alive” or something ¯_(ツ)_/¯

i think a lot of it is just people attributing anything remotely positive about their experience in some community servers to quickplay

and perhaps even forgetting what was a valve server and what was a community server

[cursive peak]

Arena is super unfun when you die in the first 5 seconds and spend the next 20 minutes in spectate while 2 CnD Spies hide from each other on opposite ends of the map.

[tacit flare]

In the modern world of 24/7 instant respawn highertower servers, having only one life would be beyond torture for them now more than ever.

[wintry marlin]

cs2 players however would feel right at home

[high current]

Arena walked so prop hunt and vs hale could briskly walk

[summer willow]

its incredible how people use cheat with the most boring class i nthe game

[heavy solar]

@summer willow has leveled up! (40 ➜ 41)

[summer willow]

thanks

[paper sluice]

Engie?

[summer willow]

heavy

like its just kill aura or whatever its called

calling engie boring smh

[burnt dragon]

you can play engie extremely asinine if you try tbh

[small siren]

*you can play engie

extremely asinine if

you try tbh*

- polarite

[radiant merlin]

@left sand since you know a lot about networking, which of these should i use?

the int ping block is from the scoreboard, and the iAvgLatency is from net graph

[left sand]

well in what context?

[radiant merlin]

Well just to show latency like net graph

I guess I'll nust use that

[fallow ridge]

+1 to arena mode being cheeks

[high current]

I think people just assume since he’s big and has a minigun and a ton of health that he’ll be OP if you cheat on him. Probably some child that just downloaded cheats and knows less than nothing about the game.

I don’t recall if no spread cheats still work, I feel like I haven’t seen it in ages. If it doesn’t then heavy is arguably the worse class to cheat on.
So if they want to be too dumb to disruptively cheat then I’m not going to tell them otherwise.

[summer willow]

the 2 cases i saw was people with skins and stuff 🤷

[high current]

I see a lot of cheaters with unusuals and stuff. I assume it’s just rich, attention starved kids whose parents just give them their credit card while they’re at work. So they have cool items and cheat for attention.

As someone with a job. Ain’t no way I’d ever cheat on an account with any money on it. I wouldn’t cheat either way, but I have groceries to buy

[livid oracle]

ive been killed by a nospreading heavy not too long ago

you can tell because they just drain your health really fast from a million miles away

[high current]

Yeh it’s pretty obvious depending on distance, just hadn’t happened to me in a while.
I’m curious how no spread actually works. I’d think spread could be handled on server side but I guess it might be client side.
Might be getting into no-no discussion territory though. I think the tech behind these things is interesting even though I don’t like its application.

[paper sluice]

Wait that’s actually a thing

I thought it could’ve been I’d been getting killed my some heavies in like a second as both scout and spy and not to toot my own horn too much I feel I have pretty good movement to not be dying like that

Like one time I remember getting tapped by minigun spray and going from full to like 8hp

[stone linden]

spread is done server side for minigun and pistol and stuff, i believe

there’s a separate server rng seed for that

i believe the cheats use methods to reverse engineer that seed

floating point stuff

[livid oracle]

yeah if you know the seed then you can just have your aim adjusted by the cheat to always hit

[high current]

Is the seed not randomized? Or is it just seed cracking stuff like people did for Minecraft enchantments?

[balmy bronze]

There is only three classes in the game you can properly use aimbot with: scout, heavy and sniper

Since cheaters cheat because they want the gratification of being good without getting good at the game, imo it makes sense for them to pick who's essentially the face of the game

Which is funny because heavy is actually the worst class to cheat with

Demo shuts him down close range, dont even need to explain sniper

[stone linden]

i think it’s based on the server age or something like that. i forgot exactly what the server side spread seed is. i don’t know how they do it but people are able to crack it

[high current]

I think I’ve seen a couple radial menus in TF2. I never looked too in-depth into it because most the voice lines aren’t super useful. How was this one done?

[radiant merlin]

I took the code from alien swarm's sdk and tweaked it a bit

[small siren]

*I took the code from

alien swarm's sdk

and tweaked it a bit*

- ashewiki_tf

[radiant merlin]

My idea is to have one menu, with left click it changes to voicemenu 1, right click to voicemenu 2

So only one bind would be necessary for all the voice commands, freeing two keys

[balmy bronze]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/3897800/announcements/detail/493842084753572650

Long story short, the Poker Night remaster will not give you the original items, rather exactly identical copies of the old items but with a prefix "Reissued" in their name

Obviously doesn't matter for most people

I'm just wondering if they will be backwards compatible with the killstreak kits of old versions

[wintry marlin]

"Vintage"

Red herring

God damn it.

[balmy bronze]

They spesifically mention this

They are calling it reissued to differentiate them from the original items

[wintry marlin]

Yea

[balmy bronze]

And they aren't using Vintage because of Vintage Lugermorph

[wintry marlin]

I can go and get both then

Yea whatever

[balmy bronze]

Which was added way before poker night

[wintry marlin]

They don't want to flood the economy

[balmy bronze]

Achievement reward items, can't be traded

[wintry marlin]

Plus that has its own implications

[wintry marlin]

Regardless it would devalue them

there is not enough demand for so much supply

Traders will be kicking and screaming once more

[balmy bronze]

I don't understand, how could an item that can't be traded have value?

The original items cant be traded either

[wintry marlin]

I thought vintage ones could be

[balmy bronze]

Only the vintage lugermorph can be traded as that was a promotional item

Poker night items are achievement items

Therefore can't be traded

[wintry marlin]

Yea so

It doesn't apply to those then

The vintage lugermorph will be affected tho

Sinxe people want the actual reskin, not the blue text

[balmy bronze]

Don't think it'll be affected in a meaningful way, since it's value comes from it's rarity

Lugermorph's model looks terrible, you need a mod to fix it

And at that point you might aswell just download a mod to change the stock's model to the lugermorph

What's actually getting affected are the killstreak kits

They are getting scalped as we speak

Basic ks lugermorph kit is 40 ref rn

I bought one for 3 ref LAST WEEK

[wintry marlin]

Yeaaa

[fleet kite]

I feel like pokernight is just a TF2 DLC now

is anyone going to buy it for non-tf2 reasons?

I know its not a bad game, obviously

[fallow ridge]

even when the game was relatively new a large part of why people bought it was just for the items

[uncut spear]

im down to experience the game outside of getting tf2 items if that means anything

it'll be my first time actually putting effort into learning poker

the character interactions will def be charming

[cobalt spruce]

im like 40% tf2 items 60% the game

ill def buy it

[wintry marlin]

I have played poker night for hundreds of hours

The first game is very rough and hard mode is complete bs that weighs the odds against you

Still managed to 100% clear it.

Second game is much more thought out.

[cursive peak]

I had the opposite experience. PN1 was a breeze and PN2 was pretty hardcore.

[tacit flare]

I don't know if it was PN1 or PN2, I think it was PN1, but I remember an achievement guide for getting all the special items literally being "Just to all in every round. AI doesn't know how to handle it. You will win most games."

[wintry marlin]

You get an achievement for going all in 3 times in a row and winning

Stealing the blinds

[tacit flare]

It's been such a long time, but I do faintly remember complaints about the AI doing wierd and dumb things. Which reading the store page, they seem to address in the promo material.

[fallow ridge]

iirc you used to be able to cheese the items by just constantly going all-in early on and forcing folds

[fallow ridge]

oh wait you mentioned that already lol

[cursive peak]

And shouldn't this be reigniting the gambling discourse?

[wintry marlin]

day well spent

[wintry marlin]

I got friends migrating from discord to steam

[fallow ridge]

why would it

[cursive peak]

Literally a game that's nothing but gambling.

[next nymph]

i do kinda wonder about the whole environment now. Like PEGI now takes gambling themes and mechanics pretty seriously, and will give 18+ ratings to games that even just somewhat gambling-adjacent (ie. Balatro, though I think it's resolved now)

I guess the one thing going for poker night at the inventory is that it's so old and the IPs even older that it'd basically just be adults playing anyway

[burnt dragon]

are you guys talking about cs2?

[lone tinsel]

tf2, actually

[burnt dragon]

touche

[radiant merlin]

tested a weapon volume cvar

[fallow ridge]

this is like saying balatro should have discourse about it encouraging kids to gamble

[fallow ridge]

it's silly because there are other games that have randomised reward elements and risk associated with them (a lot of roguelike games for example) but orgs like PEGI don't care because they don't have the surface level elements of cards and suits

[wintry marlin]

If it is resembles poker, blackjack, slots or betting on races/sports I can see the issue

Counter strike has been in too deep for a long time that I draw the line at lootboxes too

Not to mention designed by child predators.

[fallow ridge]

e.g. the australia IARC rating gives buckshot roulette a 15 but gives balatro an 18+

[fallow ridge]

cs is a literal slot machine you put real money into and get monetary value out of as a reward

i think there's a world of difference between that and balatro, poker night etc

[wintry marlin]

Gray market btw

And illegal skin gambling websites contribute to that

[fallow ridge]

it's criminal how slow governments have been to crack down on it

[wintry marlin]

Coffeezilla making a series on it wasn't enough

Not to mention how those gambling website owners have feuds with each other and ruin esports matches

They pay people to run on stage and knock over the prize

Valve has put more restrictions on trading in response.

They have every opportunity to crush them under their thumb but they don't.

[fallow ridge]

putting the effort in to clamp down on sites that enable cashing out and gambling sites would be treadmill work, so they don't bother

[heavy solar]

@fallow ridge has leveled up! (3 ➜ 4)

[next nymph]

i mean yeah, the concern isnt that kids are exposed to randomness. It's specifically that they don't want to encourage actual casino gambling to kids

[fallow ridge]

I get that but I still think classifying games like balatro as an 18 is unwarranted

just as an example

[next nymph]

so did pegi: https://pegi.info/news/pegi-complaints-board-amends-classifications-balatro-and-luck-be-landlord-pegi-12

The PEGI 18 rating for the game ‘Balatro’ has been changed to a PEGI 12 following a successful appeal submitted by publisher Sold Out Sales & Marketing. The Complaints Board concluded that, although the game explains the various hands of poker, the roguelike deck-building game contained mitigating fantastical elements that warranted a PEGI 12 rating.

[fallow ridge]

actually a really nice change

I'm surprised

[burnt dragon]

putting a short muzzle rifle in your mouth and pulling the trigger risking your life? 15
funny shapes and math game: 18+!!!

[wintry marlin]

Another zesty rant hit the valve towers, he's happy that classified is goated

[orchid sorrel]

uh oh

[wintry marlin]

and that it doesn't have casual matchmaking

it just has a server browser and that's it

[wintry marlin]

https://youtu.be/XikcBV_6jaQ

This is a different style of editing

[burnt dragon]

absolute moron, when I asked him about how much he rants about tf2 and if he tried tf2 classic he was like, yeah nah its not really genuine tf2, the guns they add just dont fit the theme of the game, then started ranting about custom weapon servers tf2 classic had

he is often clueless about what he is talking about and thats what irritates me, I respect a good rant that is based on true beliefs, those dont change, often times his videos and opinions are just skimming over the general concept and then radicalizing idiots to cause problems in community

this is a fairly old game people should relax and stop treating tf2 is different than day of defeat or half life 2 deathmatch, if there is any difference its that valve milks this game for money meanwhile just doing basic life support patches for others

I can see why devs dont want to work on tf2, let alone the old janky engine, community wont ever be grateful and be toxic over WHATEVER they latch onto

[tacit flare]

Valve will be Valve. For better or worse. Though, they've at least had the decency to give us the tools.

[burnt dragon]

they done more than what most companies would have

[tacit flare]

And less, in some ways.

[burnt dragon]

true true

most companies would have done more if they had tf2 in their hands, because it makes obscene amounts of money

but there would be companies that could even kill the game, we have a neutral tf2, could be better could be worse

[tacit flare]

It's ironic, because one could argue that Valve's apathy towards TF2 has kept it where it is, in a place some people are content with. During the early days of MyM, and the absolute disaster that followed, it would have been easy to point out and say they shouldn't have bothered trying to update it at all.

I don't believe that, but the TF2 community is so diverse with so many conflicting opinions and desires. No matter what happens, Valve can't please everyone.

Though TF2C has made something abundantly clear. Something I have said for years. The future development of TF2 is in the community's hands now. Do not wait for Valve. We can do far more, faster than they ever will.

[burnt dragon]

tf2c is a gem

I am upset about some balance changes they have, but their work is great

higher performance, better reflections and shading in maps

[wintry marlin]

also in the vid his steam name is vore survivor

he is very self-aware of his reputation as a angry orange man hating minorities and stuff

[summer willow]

a little surprise not founding anything to a deadlock hud for tf2

[left sand]

zeehud?

[summer willow]

zeeshud isnt based on persona?

[summer willow]

too late to revolutionize tf2 huds

[summer willow]

hottake: shortstop is better than the scattergun

[radiant merlin]

Imo the shortstop makes you stay in the ground more often

While with the scattergun it's more effective to jump and strafe

Its fire rate is just perfect for that

[summer willow]

unrelated but tf2 could've had panorama from csgo....

[eternal haven]

That would have been awful

Thank god it didn't

[summer steeple]

panorama would be neat but i wouldn't be caught dead doing css

[wintry marlin]

If it had panorama it would need to be done in a way that doesn't compromise the style

Dota did it right

I for one actually appreciate UX porn

[wintry marlin]

https://youtu.be/XLGuP4sEQzA

new freak discovered

https://youtu.be/_X2286KP95w

come to think, I haven't seen wolfcl0ck in this server for a while

[high current]

Not really. TF2 HUDs are always being made and anytime there is more stuff of interest discovered people get more interested.
For example: People have been doing a lot more with animations in the past year or two than they ever did before. Whether in an obviously animated way or a subtle way like running scripts via animations.

[next nymph]

what's the state of the art now? I remember years ago attempting to use animations to set customization options, but it'd take custom animations to do and testhudanim was too cumbersome to use because of it requiring sv_cheats

[high current]

People have done some main menu animating, which was impossible until the last year and I’m not sure how they did it exactly.
PeachREC used hud animations to replicate the behavior of PREC which is pretty wild IMO. And recently I used a simplified version of PeachREC to detect mvm vs not mvm to apply certain settings or to enable certain customizations for PvP and PvE.
There is also just a lot more postings of stuff like people animating elements of the scoreboard to slide in or animating health / ammo when you spawn in, that sort of stuff.

Jofre and I started trying to make a list of hud animations that run on convenient times, there were some good finds but we both ended up getting busy.

Turns out if you play a game, there’s probably some random animations playing every second or so because animations aren’t necessarily exclusive to their intended purpose. Some of them are hardcoded carry overs from HL2, some are other hardcoded things, some can’t be used, but some can be and that’s pretty cool. There’s a lot more “reset” animations than I’d initial have thought.

[next nymph]

interesting, I've mostly just used MenuOpen/Close for all my stuff, never looked too deeply into others

spitballing, could you use echo logging to define your own animations dynamically via scripts? I imagine it'd require a hud_reloadscheme but might have some niche applications, like animation-driven ingame customization options I mentioned

[high current]

Not sure if you saw but a year or two ago we found that one of the tournament chat animations could actually be used to make a working stuck health fix. So that was pretty big news in the hud space.

[high current]

To my knowledge people haven’t done log-based animations yet. The main hurdle is that you can log quotation marks. I’ve had some ideas for log-based animations for a while and might use it to have scope removal locked to MvM (still debating this).
It’s definitely possible as not every event type requires quotations and even the ones that do have some work arounds, but it’d be a bit trickier.

There’s also been some hud elements found that live update, so there’s potentially a world where you wouldn’t even need to hud reload for that, if you could animate through them with RunEventChild, though not all panels allow that.

[next nymph]

argh, lemme remind myself about animation syntax

[high current]

It’s mostly just if something is meant to be one token but has spaces then you can signify that with quotation marks. Otherwise it’s tokenized with white space delineation.

[next nymph]

I was only picturing using runevent, with each different thing you might want being a different predefined animation you'd pick and compose with, so no quotes is fine

[high current]

Yeh that should be possible.
I remember looking at log-basing animations a few years ago and concluding it was too complicated. But looking into it recently seems more manageable with the limitations in mind.

I’m not sure if I was just dumb a few years ago or if I’m missing something now.

[next nymph]

i think, back when I was in the hud game, the only limitation I knew of was being unable to reset the echo log. Animation definitions didnt really work append-only. But that's been solved with sixense stuff iirc, unfortunately after i stopped being very involved

[high current]

Yeh that was a game changer. Who woulda guessed Sixense would be useful after all.

[next nymph]

i genuinely think sixense + echo logging is perhaps the most useful hud tech out there, so much potential in pretty much everything, and im really disappointed i was too early for it

[high current]

Unfortunately log-base still looks really intimidating so we don’t see many people getting into using it. There’s probably like 10 people comfortable with using it and then occasionally someone will come along and get into it.
It’s not too bad in reality but there’s a chunk of boiler plate to get over that scares off most people.

I’d agree. IMO it’s completely opened up what’s possible in HUDs. You can use it for on the fly customization or just use it to make wayyyy more fool-proof customizations. Reduces the tech support you have to provide with file customizations by like 99%. And most of it is just “click this button then this button” because people are coming from file customization.

You could probably hop back into it. I don’t think there’s much hud tech beyond that. Log-base is probably the biggest hurdle in terms of hud tech. There have been some things like faster menu reloading discovered to make log-basing the main menu more practical, but those are comparatively minor.
Though animations just have flat out incantations you can do with them that people have begun to understand, but those aren’t particularly documented at this point.

[next nymph]

I just need to finish my typeface first 😜

the big thing for me has always been the tech, and I think even now I've still got a solid enough grasp that I can go "oh, can you do <thing nobody's done before> with <combination of niche tech>" and it's got a pretty good shot of working. It's making a full functional hud out of it that takes time, and I still think about it sometimes, but I'm a lot busier than I used to be

i really liked collaborating with devamar back in the day for that, he'd ask me how to do something advanced that nobody else had done, I'd figure it out, and then he'd do the hard part of making it look really nice

[high current]

You could still do that, there are a couple of people that would just find some cool tech and share it as a “to whom ever it may concern”, sometimes someone immediately has a plan for it, sometimes someone finds it 5 years from then and finds a use for it.
Niterux did a lot of finding random potentially useful tech and I could find ways to implement them.
Jofre does kind of a mix where they will fix hud tech and implement it into jofrehud or share it.
I tend to have an idea in mind then will figure out how to make it possible then share it. But sometimes I just can’t get it to fit my purpose so I share it for other people.

I think the R&D area of hud tech is established than it was a while ago.

Solar light has been doing some pretty neat stuff with hud tech implemented into a fully themed hud.

[summer willow]

deadlock hud or something

wondering if it may be possible having animation of damage loss

[charred thicket]

Is cancelling out of the taunt menu really tied to having lastinv bound?
Was really hoping I could just tack it onto ESC and use that button instead, but it seems like the menu can't be cancelled out of unless you have a key bound to lastinv and only lastinv.

[charred thicket]

pomson viewmodel looks horrible at 61 :( back to 54 i go

[high current]

There are animations from HL2 that are called when you take damage but they seem hardcoded.
They’re something along the lines of DamageTakenNorth or something like that.

[summer willow]

tf2 squishes :(

[summer willow]

i give up trying to fix

nobody knows like an magic formula to account for this? or something else

[eternal haven]

not sure if i understand the question at hand

[summer willow]

the textures and original scope is a perfect circle

tf2 just makes it an oval for some reason

idk why im having so much issues transforming images in any image editor

i literally tried 3 different programs 😭

[eternal haven]

Oh

yeah idk I think you could just count the pixels in the original tf2 scope texture

like count the width and the height of it in the middle

then divide the width by the height and scale your custom one horizontally by that factor

[summer willow]

the thing is idk if they both have the same radius

the scope is from deadlock btw

[eternal haven]

I mean thats why you just find the ratio between the width and height of the squished tf2 one

I think that would work anyways

tbh scope mods usually aren't allowed

in pure servers and stuff

since people could just get rid of the texture

[summer willow]

im aware

but people already gets rid with a number of ways

im just adding a cool scope

most scopes out there dont even add more than 1 texture

tf2 scope is just 1 texture that rotates

and you end up with this

[eternal haven]

will this finally make me good at sniper

[summer willow]

any source wizards know if with the 64bit update, which changed the linux font system, now works the property "weight" in hud fonts?

[high current]

64 bit update may have had an affect, but it was also changed in Halloween 2024 iirc. That’s when Linux started requiring fonts to be lower case, rather than just case-sensitive with their definition.
Might help with narrowing down changes

[eternal haven]

A ton of font stuff was changed for the vgui ui scale update oct 10, 2024

[rare coral]

wait f2p's cant vote when kicking someone

someone just told me that is it true?

im seeing mixed responses of y/n when i looked it up

[stuck locust]

i think they can vote but their vote doesn't actually count towards anything

at least that's how it was after the f2p restrictions were set, i think that's still the case

[stuck locust]

https://www.teamfortress.tv/66254/the-future-of-rgl-hl

(complaints with how rgl is currently ran)

[cursive peak]

I wonder what was so different in the early 2010s that had HL explode.

[eternal haven]

tf2 is just dying

pretty slowly but it's definitely declined past few years

[summer willow]

why dynamic_background=itemtest got nuked? 😭

[summer steeple]

because everyone uses the sv_pure bypass cheat I mean casual preloader :)

[paper sluice]

Casual preloader 😫😫😍😫😫😍😍😍😍😍

Only thing keeping the game fresh ong

[summer willow]

tf2 should just die immediately and disappear forever

[charred thicket]

but which casual preloader?? 😱

[eternal haven]

all of them are kinda cringe

[glass musk]

it’s already dead

no MvM update in sight. call it wraps

[tacit flare]

It's alright, TF2 can never die. The community's spite towards Valve's apathy burns brightly.

[high current]

I would say this is independent of TF2’s overall player base. There’s pretty clear cutoffs in comp leagues where teams evaporate. I’m not sure what it is in HL, but in 6s there was 40+ teams in the free division (AM), 9 teams iirc in the first paid division (IM), 10 teams in main, and I don’t remember the rest.
IM bottlenecks the movement of players to the rest of the divisions, which is really bad. Teams have less choices for player and players have less choices of teams. Which means your far more likely to get stuck with flakey player, toxic teammates, people who make it outside of your control if you do well or not and lead people to quit RGL 6s.

The problem is people don’t want to pay to play competitive. So either leagues need to get rid of the fee or they need to make people want to play in higher leagues.
I’ve thought that making divisions free but having a league fee to earn the medal would be an okay system, but might have its problems. The other idea I had was to move up podium placing teams (currently only 1st moves up) and waive their league fee for the following season. That would triple the potentially moving up players each season, and remove the reason that a lot of people just sandbag on off classes after winning a season.

[wintry marlin]

I can only reasonably expect pro leagues to be made up of teens and streamers atp because there's no money in tf2 esports

If there is a lack of players that's the reason imo

And at the same time no amount of money will make tf2 playerbase care about esports

[fallow ridge]

the format was new and let specialist mains mainclass for the first time, there were also more players in the scene generally

[cursive peak]

But what prompted casuals to have a go at it that's not present now?

[left sand]

tbh i think its culture. theres an exhaustion towards taking video games seriously

[fallow ridge]

comp was more well known by the more experienced players in community servers back then

[high current]

I think the player base’s age tbh. Every team I’ve ever played on has been pretty close to my age. So you have a bunch of people who were in their preteens when tf2 went free to play who saw stuff like ster’s budsquad 6s video and the peak of stabbystabby and uncle Dane’s comp careers, who by that time were in their late teens when they’re more confident and frankly when most guys are at the peak of their puberty fed ego stage who want to get into competitive.
Now we’re in our mid 20s and have jobs, significant others, graduate degrees, maybe children.

There’s still some people in their late teens getting into comp, but honestly most people growing up and getting into comp probably want to do it in games with actual scholarships and careers that can come from it.

[fallow ridge]

most new teams i remember from around 2012/2013 who were doing their first season of hl/6s were made up of a core of friends who knew each other from whatever community server group they frequented

[cursive peak]

That's how my team started.

[fallow ridge]

and those community servers would have more experienced players join them too, so you'd see 6s/hl players pubbing on your regular server decently often

[fallow ridge]

I'm still friends with and on teams with the same group I met on the old kritzkast pubs from back then haha

[cursive peak]

Everyone drifted apart. Don't think I could get the band back together if I tried.

[fallow ridge]

p sure one of my earliest screenshots is of me on a community server with prem solly ipz

i didnt even know who he was but ppl were going nuts over him being there

the post-mym playerbase thinks that comp and casual's base were always totally distinct entities and ppl barely knew about it but that just wasnt the case in my experience

[high current]

In October I’m going to be a groomsman for my friend’s wedding who I met on our first HL team back in 2018.
I feel like people don’t make as many lasting friends in comp as they used to

Basically every team I played for before stepping away from comp in 2021ish used to run Minecraft servers we’d all play on before and after scrims and matches. After I returned in 2023 that’s super rare.

[next nymph]

I get the exhaustion but I don't know if it's really going away. In general, most games I see, playerbases are a whole lot more focused on optimal play than in the past

[fallow ridge]

I found it lmao

2013

[high current]

I could guess from the hud lmao

[fallow ridge]

garm3n 4mp iirc

[next nymph]

see: mmos, where "I'm just a dumbass kid doing whatever and not really understanding what's going on" isn't a thing, the norm is to follow guides to get to endgame as efficiently as possible, usually not even touching the majority of content

[left sand]

that's definitely true, but i do think in terms of esports it has gotten to the point of fatigue

[fallow ridge]

I also think that pc gamers in general no longer have an expectation of forming teams and scheduling pcws like they used to

you have a group of people you ask to add up to matchmaking

you play whenever

[cursive peak]

I dunno how you'd actually compete in a league without forming a team and scheduling scrims.

[high current]

You could have a no-scrim friend team I guess

[fallow ridge]

that's the thing though, competitive team based games these days have players mostly playing via a ranked mode instead of set seasons/leagues

so I think that the way comp tf2 functions just becomes more offputting to the current casual playerbase as time goes on

[high current]

If TF2’s comp wasn’t the most dog shit thing on the planet I’d probably play it instead of RGL. Every league inevitably devolves to shit

[cursive peak]

Yeah, but is that really how actual competitions are played? Not some shitty mode, but like Dreamhack or The International or some shit like that.

[fallow ridge]

well no, but the bottom 95% of players for a competitive game dont have to engage in a setting where they have to add up to pugs, get scrims going and play scheduled games

cs for example has extremely dedicated and talented players near the top ranks who just play matchmaking and faceit

[cursive peak]

That just seems more like glorified pugs than actual competition.

[fallow ridge]

vs tf2 where if you want to play in the bottom divs you have to organise scrims and offis

[high current]

Hot take, organizing scrims and officials is way easier than 95% of TLs make it seem.

[fallow ridge]

the humble highlander format:

[cursive peak]

Like, a random assortment of assholes in a random match doesn't exactly match the same sort of thing as a regular Monday night HL match in RGL.

[fallow ridge]

I agree but it's what most players of modern competitive shooters play

then they follow the actual leagues for the semi pro and pro leagues for that game much like footy fans do

[cursive peak]

I don't even really see that as competitive. It's like trying to put random neighborhood pickup games for (insert sport here) and actual organized things in the same category.

[fallow ridge]

it doesnt have the same pull to me as putting the practice in in preparation for an offi that you know is a tough matchup, no

[cursive peak]

It's just another casual queue with a fancy name and an MMR attached to it.

[fallow ridge]

but for most players adding up to a pugging site like faceit or the game's own ranked mode gives them a hard even match that works for fresh installs and ppl with 1000s of hours

[high current]

I just enjoy actually coordinating with players. I think that individual gameplay is okay but team gameplay is way cooler. Something like faceit gives you enough of that for little enough investment that it’s fine. Like you can queue for a faceit game on CS and know you’ll at least have someone else who will know grenade lineups, and 2 is kind the minimum number of players to have lineups to play “real” CS.

[stone linden]

there’s a plethora of shooter games nowadays that have an actual ranked ladder and are sufficiently intellectually stimulating

[high current]

Not really honestly

You have CS and Overwatch and their clones

I hope you like tac shooters or ult spam

[stone linden]

competitive call of duty seems to be vibrant these days

[wintry marlin]

I need a shooter that's like tarkov but with anime girls

a game with those milsim tacticool dudebros would so emasculated they'd be desperate to seem cool

I didn't know what that word meant until I looked it up but it also kinda works

It would be so funny

[high current]

Emasculated = e-girl for men 🤔

[wintry marlin]

I want sailor moon magical girl transformation type of sequence of them gearing up

https://tenor.com/view/sailor-moon-transformation-usagi-pose-change-gif-5310574

Now imagine this but with military gear

[next nymph]

https://rustexplore.com/skins/hazma

[orchid sorrel]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/337790132126089222/1474564698291830854/image.png?ex=699a4ee4&is=6998fd64&hm=723f587daa3539bd578aef6b1f11c30a3d47bb2213d38370448d33fd67ac3dbe&

We uber chained the entire mission lol

[left sand]

https://youtu.be/nyWixynzues

[radiant merlin]

a rookie indeed

[drowsy marlin]

I want the MVM update to release

[wintry marlin]

They might be busy creating actual robot waves for the new maps.

[small siren]

*They might be busy

creating actual robot

waves for the new maps.*

- Vex

[left sand]

but the maps already come with missions and theyre playtested

[wintry marlin]

Except for ones that released on the workshop very recently

[left sand]

thats not true, thats a meme spread by zesty because he misunderstood some criticism a potato person said i think

[left sand]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3557295574

like you can verify this yourself very easily by visiting the map page

[wintry marlin]

So it was there since august

[left sand]

yes

zesty literally just made it up

and spread it around

zesty idk, gets a lot of things wrong almost all the time

its really sad that no one corrects the misinformation/misunderstandings he spreads

also like sure, theres like some maps with underdeveloped missions

but those maps are just incomplete/bad then, and the existence of such maps has no bearing on the fact that theres sooo many maps with well tested missions

and, those maps are in the minority, like very very very small minority

i literally honestly think zesty produces so much fucking harm for the community by poisoning discussion with like just blatant falsehoods

[orchid sorrel]

Theres like 10+ years of custom mvm maps and missions, so its not really a big deal if the recent maps had some growing pains