One of my favorite Team Fortress Classic maps ever was The Rock, which was a 2fort-style map with two “prisons” facing each other across a body of water.  Unlike 2fort, though, the object was to grab the “flag” from one side of the opponent’s base, and carry it across to the other side, triggering the gas chamber, which then killed everyone in that side of the map.  All long the prison corridors there were lots of twists and turns for ambushes, as well as plenty of ledges and side tunnels for sentry defenses and sneaking around said defenses.

Someone has made one for TF2, but all I have been able to do is download it so far.  I have yet to see any public server playing it, so I do not know how the gameplay is with other players, especially not the 36 players they used to have on the old TFC servers.  But I did download it and ran through it a few times locally, and it looks great with all the details I used to love about the original map, including the sentry towers, floodlights, ledges and the hidden tunnels under the water that give access into the opponent’s base after a demoman has made it clear for his teammates to get through.

Here are a bunch of screenshots from the map, and I really hope some more servers pick it up for their rotations.

This gives me a good chance to put in writing my desire for the upcoming demoman achievements to include the detpacks from the old game.  I can live contentedly without frag grenades, since the spam is unbearable at times, but detpacks were not only key to some of the better maps (You heard me, ctf_well and warpath, you bastards), but a smart, skilled demoman could really create havok with well-timed detpack placement.

For those who never played TFC, well, go do so.  Now.  then go ahead and read the next paragraph.

Detpacks were timed charges that a demoman could place with a timer of 5, 15 or 30 seconds (by default, servers often changed these times) and when they went off they killed all opponents within a certain range of the detpack, and often the demoman himself because he was too stupid to leave a long enough fuse.  It could also open or close obstructions in tunnels, like the walls in Warpath or the water tunnels in Well.  In The Rock, there is a tunnel section that can be opened by an enemy detpack, as seen here, but a defensive detpack could close it again.  This was a key bit of strategy to the map, and I really wonder how well the map will play without it.  Part of the key was that you only got one per spawn, and more often than not the unskilled demoman left it in the wide open areas where everyone saw it and wisely ran away and then killed the demoman after the explosion went off.

I implore Robin and the others, bring back the detpack, or else I will have Chris write it up on 1fort and then you will HAVE to implement it.

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Wow, so there seems to be a lot of graduates from Tijuana Medical Schools in Team Fortress today. I played a bunch of it last night, and it’s a lot of fun so far. I only played medic for a couple of minutes, was having much more fun as a heavy and a demo in a medic-rich environment. I really like the Goldrush map though, it’s a great offspring of the Dustbowl-style linear map, with the moving cart of doom. Like Dustbowl, too demomen and engineers are way too powerful, but still easily countered by all the side tunnels and alternative approaches that a creative offense can take. Ask me again in a month or so, though, once people have worked out strategies for it and learned the layout better. Right now, though, I am enjoying it, especially finding just the right spot for one’s sentry that mows down the offense as they try to get the cart past a certain point.

Got to see the new needlegun, too, when Da Shiv earned it on the map Chris and I were playing last night,

and played in one with a Kritzkrieg, but didn’t get a good shot of that. I really hope the other class achievements come out soon, though, because as it stands everyone is going to try for it, and there’s going to be an underground industry for servers with mods that favor the medics’ grind for achievements. The quicker that Valve releases the others, the quicker we can get back to a normal mode of play with people bitching about not having medics healing them.

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I’m generally not someone who likes to be the center of attention. In fact, when I was a kid I was painfully shy amd tended to go off by myself at school events and such. That makes it even funnier that I enjoy playing as a tank in WoW. For those not in the MMO-know, a tank is the person who charges right in, and makes sure that all the enemies being fought are focusing their attentions (and beatings) on them, allowing the other, squishier classes, to do a lot of damage and eventually kill the critters. In my case, GTB is a druid who has focused his skill development in the direction of melee combat. The druid turns into either a lion/panther form for just doing damage and stealthier endeavours, while he turns into a bear for tanking. GTB is even more focused just on the tanking aspects, although his damage-dealing gear isn’t too bad. He takes a beating, as seen in my earlier post, and keeps going back for more.

One side-effect of being the guy who is the one who runs in and challenges the mobs to a fight is that in small groups (5 or sometimes 10-man) you are the de facto leader of the group. It becomes your responsibility to assign targets, decide which enemies gets beaten up first, which get crowd-controlled, etc. There’s a certain level of stress that is inherent in that job, and it requires a level of trust in the other people in the group to do their job as well. Because of this, I stopped “pugging” (short for Pick-Up Group) a long time ago. I need to know at least 2/3 of the people going nowadays before signing up to go anywhere as a tank. This article has a good description of that feeling, and sums up nicely why I won’t take GTB a-puggin’. Oddly enough, I don’t mind it on my hunter, because all I do is shoot things, maybe stick ‘em in a trap, and when things go bad, I use the Feign Death ability and sit back and wait for everyone else to die out so I can I go on my merry way.

One of the worst experiences I ever had as a tank, in fact, was during a pug where I ran the Steamvaults dungeon with a bunch of people from a couple of hardcore raiding guilds. Not only was I constantly lectured on how to play, everyone was on alternates, not the classes they were most skilled at, and often wiped the group out by their own incompetence. It was topped by one of the healer, who normally plays a tank class, telling me how he couldn’t heal me constantly despite having all the mobs on me, because he needed to make sure all the other members were at 100% health as well. Of course, in the time it took him to go through and make sure everyone was at 100% instead of 85%, the four guys beating on me (because the other idiots couldn’t crowd control) killed me, and then made short work of turning the others into squishy, cloth-wearing snacks.

The upside of tanking, though, is I get to sit there and with a good healer on my side, take on the world. Like in the fight against the Phoenix God, Al’ar, I was the ember tank, collecting all the little phoenixes that spawned (called Embers Of Al’ar), and holding the flock in one spot until it was time to kill them. When one dies, it explodes, knocking anyone nearby into orbit, and doing a ton of damage. So when it was time to kill the embers, it was time to blow up GTB. For too many people in the raid thought this was a really good idea, plus killing the embers is useful too. In the recent guild foray into Mt Hyjal, it was great fun swooping through with the other beartank in the raid and sweeping together all the undead into one group and slapping them around.

Oh, I forgot, there’s one other major downside to being the tank. When you are fighting these gigantic menaces to the world, you have to get right up close. So your view of these epic fights is generally the kneecap and loincloth of the evil aquatic giant, or whatever. Truly epic.

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(sent by my brother)

Fun From Yesterday!

Tags:   2600 · suck it Colecovision · yeah I still have mine2 Comments

So, as every other game site has reported to the point of just cutting and pasting each other, Meet The Scout was released.  Well, yay for the release, but overall it was a little disappointing.  Maybe I was spoiled by The Heavy and The Demoman, but The Scout just lacked a little something.
Not enough character focus the way Demo and Heavy did, or maybe I just was hoping for more than slapstick with BOINK! applied liberally.

Then I read the capsule…

 The youngest of eight boys from the south side of Boston, the Scout learned early how to problem solve with his fists. With seven older brothers on his side, fights tended to end before the runt of the litter could maneuver into punching distance, so the Scout trained himself to run. He ran everywhere, all the time, until he could beat his pack of mad dog siblings to the fray.

Now wait just a minute.  I went to high school with a bunch of kids from Dorchester and South Boston, and sorry, but that’s a New York accent before it’s a Southie accent.  Even Jersey is more accurate an origin for that voice.  I went to school with South Boston accents.  I know South Boston accents.  Brudda, you are no South Boston accent.

Tags:   accents · f*%^ing Matt damon · maybe Tom Cruise decided the accent · The Scout2 Comments

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Really. So completely ripping off Chris is akin to giving him a Happy Ending after a long massage, right?

I’ve been tinkering a little bit with the map constructions in the Source SDK, and primarily to TF2 maps. Not to make my own, I admit that I just don’t have the creativity and the patience to go through what it takes to make a good map. I like to tinker, however, and one thing I really dug was the effort that goes into the AI of HL2, even on the mapmaking level. So my train of thought started chugging along the “What happens on maps with no design for AI?” The first one to come to mind was good ol’ 2fort, and then I decided to blatantly rip off Chris and run a To The Death scenario. I’ll send him a towel for cleanup later.

[Read more →]

Tags:   Not To The Death · That Would Be Stealing4 Comments

Eve client source code leaked  (via Slashdot)

This really isn’t a huge deal, although according to the rumors it’s a bad idea to download the torrent from an IP you play the game from…   The real problem is that in the next few weeks, the Eve Online world is going to be overrun with bots using exploits found in the code.  Personally, I’m finding it really stupid of people to complain about the banning.  You violate the EULA, you don’t get to play.  Suck it up, Nancy.

Tags:   in space no one can see you botNo Comments.

A quick shot from the Webstats of the last TK raid.

In word: ow. When all was said and done, I had a repair bill of about 96g, and a lot of singed fur.

Tags:   GTB · ow hey stop hitting me · wowNo Comments.

No, not the new Indiana Jones movie, I have been trying a few indie games, written by people who aren’t a part of some big company, but just write games. Not just Flash games, either, but actual executable programs. Most have free demos and a small amount of money to buy.

After following the links in the latest Audiosurf update, I poked around Rampart Games‘ catalog, and was pleasantly surprised. I should offer a disclaimer here, I am generally not very accepting of independent media, primarily webcomics. Yes, I know, Concerned, Scribs, and various Lore offerings are webcomics, but they are exceptions, and not just because the authors are friends of mine. I liked the writing, the humor, and the way the comics were “drawn”, a unique look that makes the comic stand out from the others. (In the case of Concerned, it’s Chris’ face posing. I wish I could get them to look as well as he does). But from P-A to VGCats, I’m just not pulled in. Even Achewood leaves me sorta “meh”, and that’s not too bad. I won’t even get into the complete gibbering idiots out there like Squidi and half the people who have hosting on SmackJeeves.

But Rampart Games has a lot of really neat offerings. Many of them I don’t know if I would buy, but the demos were pretty good, and show that the people making them are giving it some love, not just writing things for their DeVry class projects. Void War is actually a neat little game, although the control response and the physics aren’t fully polished. It also has a cool background soundtrack, which adds a nice touch to the Starfox-y atmosphere. I have not tried the multiplayer yet, but the single player levels I played were good. Not quite X3 or SWG space combat, but I would still say it’s good enough to make a fun little game. I admit, though, having the little text-based “cutscenes” introducing the missions and the plotline are a bit Popcap-ish, but not enough to take much away from the game overall.

Tags:   indies · Joe hates things · oh yeah tags · space games · webcomics2 Comments

Over the last week or so, I have had a crazy week full of things like flying on airplanes and meetings at work and causing not one, not two but three wipes on a Tempest Keep raid in WoW.  In my defense though, only one was because I was an idiot.  The other two were just dumb luck.

At the end of last week, though, I had to fly down to Virginia to my company’s main offices for a big meeting and a training session.  This usually involves some of the stupidest travel arrangements I can possibly come up with, starting with my flight out of Boston leaving at 6:30 AM, and the flight back that night averaging about 8 PM, putting me home a little after midnight.  I end up leaving myself a fair amount of time, too, because I don’t trust the TSA to get me through the security check quickly, plus I just don’t like running in airports.  There is no way you can maintain any self-respect running around an airport with a laptop bag slung over your shoulder.  Cannot be done.

The night before, though, I had found a page with a bunch of cool little flash games and bookmarked it, figuring that would help me kill time in the airport without stealing my wife’s DS.   I really liked this one game that was sort of a Missile Command-inspired game where you got one shot and had to create a chain reaction explosion to destroy a certain number of bouncing blobs floating around your screen.  I said to myself “Self, this is a good one to write about, and plug this guy’s page because the games are really good, considering they’re simple Flash games.”  My time with Little Fluffy showed me both the good that Flash games can offer, and the SWEET GOD THAT’S BAD I NEED TO RUN TO 4CHAN TO CLEAR MY HEAD.  This page was in the former category.

So I get to the office, and I’m talking to the IT guys, and mention my laptop has been running erratically lately, and a little warm around the power supply.  They say “Hey, we have the same laptop model in the extras pool, we can give you a replacement and just swap the hard drive over!”  Yay me, I can get a laptop with a fully functioning keyboard, and not have to only use the shift and ctrl keys on the right side!  So we perform the surgery, start up the laptop and lo and behold the transplant worked.  But somehow in the process I lost my network settings including the secure wireless keys and all of my IE bookmarks.  And history.  So when the time came to write up the bit on the games, I couldn’t find the page again.  Upside, though, the new laptop has a better vid card in it, so now I can use 1920×1200 resolution on it, which makes me happy, and now I can probably run some of my games a little smoother on it.  Now I just need to find that site again!  If you find it, trust me, they are fun little games.

From Chris, I got this pretty cool link to a TF2 stats analyzer.  It does a nice job of reading your local stats file and breaking it down for you.  Here’s my current personal bests, and I find it particularly funny that the class I probably play the least  has the record for most damage.

Seriously, I play spy the least, and usually I’m not very good at it.  But I was playing on a warpath server, managed to get behind enemy lines, and not only got in a large number of backstabs, but I managed to kill an ungodly number of sentries, dispensers and teleporters because, well, the engineers were really really stupid.  I also admit to a bit of spawn camping for my backstabs, but I don’t think that’s really a bad thing as a spy, since it’s not like a demoman, you stick your neck out spawn camping and you have the durability of a wet napkin.

It’s a neat program though, so give it a try!

Tags:   · stats · tf2 · WTF Windows3 Comments