My Blog - Newest to Oldest

July 22nd, 2024
Been a few days since I last updated the site, got distracted with other things. Namely the Team Fortress 2 Summer 2024 Update. And I wanna talk about that.
The Summer 2024 update has introduced 10 new maps: Embargo, Odyssey, Megaton, Cachoeria, Overgrown, Hadal, Applejack, Atom Smash, Canaveral, and Burghausen.
The taunts are pretty good, being actual taunt-taunts, intended to upset the enemy. The rage taunt is kinda hit-or-miss, some animations could use some work like the Scout, but others are really good, like Heavy and Pyro's.
Of course there's a new cosmetic case with some pretty decent sets. Stand out items are the Fire Marshal set for Pyro, the Desk Engineer for Engie, the Gordon Freeman set for Medic, and the button-down shirt and suspenders for Heavy. The Botler 2000 is pretty cool as a "pet" item that follows you around. The Soldier set is kinda a mixed bag, the hat looks fine but the torso and leg items are pretty rough with the way they deform the Soldier's wrists and calves. I know TF2's cosmetic system is rather limiting but goddamn it looks so unnatural even by TF2 standards. Going back to the Desk Engineer item real quick, it's caused a bit of a stir in the TF2 sphere over the fact that the item creator hid bisexual and transgender pride flags in the item's texture that are *NOT VISIBLE* under normal circumstances, you have to use a model viewer to look inside the Engineer to even see it - but boy howdy does it have folks in a fit... People are accusing the creator of putting the flags in there to secretly push an agenda and laugh at people behind the scenes and that Valve is horrible for letting such an item in. Bro... It's an easter egg, put there for fun... Devs have been hiding stuff like gags, ideas, shoutouts, *FLAGS* inside textures since the dawn of 3D rendering. People are even comparing the hidden pride flags to as if someone hid a swastika in the item, like get a fucking grip people, it's not that deep. Really goes to show how thin skinned these folks are.
In other news, Cashworks and Enclouser appearently got full layout revamps, but I haven't been able to play the new versions yet, I keep getting sent to Applejack... Also some Smissmass maps got moved to the year-round map pool, most standout being Hacksaw and Haarp. Some Invasion Update maps got moved out of the Misc category and into their respective gamemodes, 2Fort Invasion moved to CTF and Probed moved to Koth, etc.
In a surprising bug-fix-thats-kinda-a-balance-change, the Gas Passer now counts as making enemies "wet" so the Neon Annahilator can crit enemies covered in gas, giving Pyro a sorta Jarate-Bushwacka combo thing. It's not as impressive as it sounds but it's the first sorta balance change since Jungle Inferno.
All-in-all the update is pretty solid for a seasonal update, I'm happy with it. Unfortunately the rumblings of boycotting the summer update have all but died. The folks behind FixTF2 have said they're not gonna call for a boycott but instead have told people to "vote with their wallets" and "make the right choice". The People have opted that their gambling addictions are more important than punishing Valve for neglecting Casual Mode for 8 years. . .

July 11th, 2024
Appearantly the 7th Issue of the Team Fortress comics got teased by Jay Pinkerton last night, with the script and artwork for the first panel getting sent to a community member via email. This was confirmed by Erik Wolpaw on Twitter. First the bot wave, now a comic tease. Part of me wants to think Valve is trying to apologize for neglecting TF2 for 8 years, but I don't think people should be so quick to forgive. I don't have high hopes of seeing the final issue anytime soon, and I don't have high hopes that the bots are going to stay away long-term. Valve has broken my trust too many times. They promised Heavy would get an update after Meet Your Match then quietly edited the blog post, they "temporarily" muted free accounts that are still muted 4 years on, they gave a quick tweet and some band-aide fixes in response to SaveTF2 then fucked off for two years, they got our hopes up with "update-sized update" only to change it, the list goes on. Valve has not given us any reason to trust them and I'm disheartened to see so many people suddenly forgive Valve because they've done the bare minimum.
It's messed up, man...

July 10th, 2024
I think I'm getting the hang of this whole HTML thing! The code for this site is probably atrocious (minus the template I used, it was wonderfully helpful) to anyone that knows what they're doing, but if it works - it works!