Back again. Yeah that’s right. Me. No more exams for another half a year or so. Man does it feel good.

Yes it does. But Valve is also back from… wherever they went. I guess. The last month or so has been a bit of a blur. What I’m trying to say is there’s been a pretty handy update just like yesterday or so, and a Steam update a couple days before that too. Apparently something also broke the item drops in TF2 a couple days ago which had people getting items drops with levels up to 98 or so, sparking some intense speculation and, of course, the customary rage. Anyway, the new update adds support for the Novint Falcon to the Orange Box, and patching some noticeable TF2 bugs, especially for the Spy. And just because this paragraph doesn’t have enough links in it.

So happy days are indeed here again. I’m probably going to get back and get some more stuff on the site because, let’s face it, it’s been a while. However I’m not making any promises because I have a ludicrous amount of stuff on my plate for the next month of holidays. And yes it’s only a month because it’s winter. Miserable, miserable winter.

Up on both the TF2 Blog and the Steam Updates page is an announcement of a significant content addition to the Source SDK, namely the .vmf’s of 10 of the maps shipping with TF2, including most of the ones you’d want - Dustbowl, 2Fort, Granary, Gravel Pit, Gold Rush, Hydro, Lumberyard, etc. For the non-mappers out there, what this means is we can now go right ahead and load up the official Valve maps in Hammer (the Source map editor in the SDK) and have a look at what Valve has done to make them so good. Before, you could kind of “decompile” the existing maps, but it got a bit crazy.

The bottom line is that this is a strong step forward for the SDK, and should encourage more custom maps to play around with the more complex game modes Valve has shipped and maybe experiment with some of Valve’s visual touches to round off their maps. There’s a bunch of other SDK updates and fixes in the update, but I’ll leave their interpretation as an exercise to the reader.

There’s been a goodly number of TF2 updates (or patches, if you will) since the release of the Sniper vs Spy Update and, excluding the minor controversy with the item drop system, leaving it as probably the best update yet, in terms of new content, gameplay, and playability. Anyway, the point I’m getting to is that there’s another update out fixing up a couple more issues.

You can check out the changelist over at Steampowered, but the highlights for me are:

• Added a backstab custom death animation to the Heavy.

Who doesn’t want more animations?

• Increased the Force-A-Nature’s damage by 10%.

I always thought the FaN did MORE damage than the Scattergun (well until I read the description at least). It’s an interesting change, since it seemed to me that (on the receiving end) it was doing plenty already.

• Fixed not being able to reflect arrows with the Flamethrower.

Hell yes! I thought it couldn’t reflect them by design, despite how much I thought it should be possible. Here’s to reflected arrow headshots on those filthy Snipers!

• Fixed Jarate instantly exploding when thrown in some places, like the final area of Badwater.

Jarate is one of my favourite weapons (up with the compression blast), and this was a giant pain in the bladder. All that effort for nothing.

• Fixed a couple of cases where viable backstabs would fail.

Having played a bit of Spy recently, any backstab bugfixes are more than welcome.

You’ll have to try the compression blasting of the arrows for me though - exams start tomorrow! Hence my lack of recent activity. I really shouldn’t even be typing this now.

If you’ve happened to see the words “Team Fortress 2″ and “Update” in the past week or, you no doubt also saw a number of expletives in the same sentence(s). The new “item drop” system employed by Valve following the release of the Sniper vs. Spy Update has received more than its fair share of heat from players pretty much everywhere. There are plenty of explanations and arguments for and against this communal outburst, but one way or another Valve has heard our cries and taken the action we so love them for.

As something of a compromise, the item drop system stays, but the new Sniper and Spy weapons can be unlocked the old-fashioned way: by achieving the milestone achievements added in last night’s update. And these milestones are even more mild than those of the Scout update - they can be earned with just 5, 11, and 17 achievements respectively. The very same update also fixes another handful of bugs resulting from the largest addition of content to the game since its release.

All in all, it’s a nice update, and hopefully we can all be happy again. Hopefully the worst of the class spam is out of the way, as plenty of Sniper/Spy unlocks have already been found.

There’s been a couple of patches for Team Fortress 2 put out there by Valve in recent days, with a couple of notable changes and fixes. The first fixed a number of bugs with the Spy regarding the Ambassador, Dead Ringer and the knife taunt, while the second (today’s) buffed the Ambassador by upgrading its headshots from mini crits to regular crits and nerfed the Dead Ringer by forcing it to deplete its charge when uncloaking early. Having just picked up the Ambassador yesterday, I’m looking forward to trying it out properly now .

And speaking of Dead Ringers, Corkydog pointed out a very handy video on using the Dead Ringer to maximum effect that any Spy should take a look at. Looking forward to plenty more videos like this for the new and rather strategic unlocks in this Sniper vs. Spy update.