Plenty of small but official rumblings have been occurring in the lands of TF2, which I’ve been meaning to report but keep running out of time. Full time employment does that too you.

First up, we FINALLY saw a fix for the Scout’s crazy-legs bug, where double crouch jumping would make it look like “his legs are made of raw bacon strips held up in a wind tunnel”. Of course there was an entirely reasonable and believable justification for the delay. RIP, Del.

More recently, The Administrator has deemed it important to reprimand those choosing to manipulate the outcome of the Soldier vs. Demoman WAR! by committing acts of unspeakable genocide. There was also some congratulations due for the (as yet unnamed) runners up in the WAR! propaganda contest, so we can all look forward to some more bad ass TF2 artwork soon.

There was also a sizeable update, with a smaller update fixing what that one broke. The update itself added three new aspirational, class-neutral hats to be found (or not):
the Modest Pile of Hat, Noble Amassment of Hats, and the classiest of them all, the Towering Pillar of Hats. Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want to wear those. CP_Gorge received a bit of a shake-up too to speed up the action.

All in all a good sheaf of updates, all the better that my lateness doesn’t affect them.

The good folks at CommunityFortress have had the pleasure of an interview with TF2’s #1 man, Robin Walker. Main topics of discussion, as usual, are the most recent update (WAR!), future updates, and Valve’s actions towards aiding the competitive TF2 scene, as well as some discussion of the community’s ever-increasing involvement in the development of TF2.

Robin’s guarded answers aren’t dropping any bombshells, but it’s a good read nonetheless. You can also be sure that the Engineer will be receiving a full class update (as if there was still any doubt), and look forward to a tweaking of the item drop system to be more rewarding. Always ravenous for feedback, there’s plenty of call for fans to let Valve know what they want, so if you’ve got something to say, say it!

With special thanks to RabbitsFoot for writing this guide up, The Demoman, Versus is now up for all to see! And about time to, I say, as the Demoman is truly one of the more interesting (albeit difficult) classes to play in direct combat (i.e. with support of teammates and pre-existing sticky traps). This leaves just The Heavy, Versus to complete this series, to which I am informed RabbitsFoot has already turned his attention.

So check it out, and excuse the lack of images for the time being (that’s my bad). And please note of course that the Eyelander and Targe are not being considered, as per the other Versus articles as well as per the Demoman’s true role.

The most recent TF2 update sees a whole bunch of tangible changes and fixes rolled out, mainly affecting the Spy and Soldier.

The Spy’s death feigning (via the Dead Ringer) has had 9 issues patched over for more convincing death handling, and 6 of the classes have received new backstab animations (on top of those who already had them). The Soldier’s Direct Hit now only minicrits on those exploded into midair, and the Bugle now charges 40% faster while lasting only 10 seconds instead of 14.

On top of that, the Force-A-Nature was nerfed a little, increasing the minimum damage to knockback from 30 to 40, while the Chargin’ Targe’s explosive damage resistance was cut to 50% (thank God). Snipers can now shoot through friendlies, and friggen’ Scouts can’t hit balls through doors any more. There’s plenty of other fixes in there as well, and a few fun-sounding additions for users of the Novint Falcon. All in all, well worth a good read.

Oh! And the ubersaw received a kill taunt, perfect for those Medics who didn’t think just running around with a saw wasn’t hurting their team enough

The TF2 Blog has revealed Valve’s latest community portal, a Team Fortress 2 Contribution page, where the more artful among us can submit their custom creations for official inspection. These include custom items (such as hats and weapons) as well as official avatars, and both have a set of guidelines to assist the aspirational.

This, of course, is one big step up from simply taking suggestions from the Steam forums – there are so many talented individuals out there that would kill to be recognised with an official, personalised item of their own creation, and giving them such an open point of submission should do wonders for the amount of official content Valve releases in the future.

My prediction? Next it will be maps, then updates, and eventually Valve will just be stamping approvals on every community modification while the money flows in. Could this just be the first step of outsourcing game development to the gamers themselves? Maybe this is what Gabe was really talking about when he was suggesting gamers could fund development…