Agent___Whatever
A.K.A The_Dude
- Messages
- 293
Do you hear that? That ominous, otherworldly silence? That's what we in the game biz call the calm before a storm. And keep listening... do you hear that distant rumble? We call that thunder. It happens during a storm whenever it's not quiet.
All of these portents can only mean one thing: Something big is happening. The fact that everybody else on the team keeps telling me that it's only weather, and that weather can't talk to you, tells me they're all in on it. (And possibly not human? More on this later.)
Perhaps it's the upcoming Polycount Pack update making the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and the Australia-shaped hair on my back matte itself back down, since it means we'll be shipping the best of the amazing Polycount Contest entries. Be glad you're not one of us, forced to order that list of magnificent items into some kind of hierarchy. Maybe we'll just announce they've all won first place.
Or maybe it's the release of the Official TF2 Wiki that's made weather choose me as its emissary on Earth. Developed by the administrators of the unofficial TF2 wiki, it's a perfect place to find out everything you ever wanted to know about TF2, but were too afraid to type into Google. Head over there and see if you can help them out. If you're a useful enough contributor, the weather might talk to you too. It might even point out which of the people on your team aren't real humans. Then we could compare notes.
Or maybe, just maybe, it's something else entirely.
Those of you who spent the weekend Tokyo drift-racing your way to a rap battle—or whatever it is people do when they go outside on the weekend—probably feel pretty good about yourselves right now. At the end of the day, though, what do you have to show for it? Vague memories of changing lanes. Twenty-five of the people who wisely chose to stay home and craft items, on the other hand, now have shiny new ultra-rare golden wrenches that they can keep. For a weekend? No. For a lifetime. Eat it, drift-racers. Eat all of it.
Luckily for you wrenchless unfortunates, there's still time to get one. A further 75 golden wrenches can be found through crafting all this week*. We'll also be teasing Engie's new weapons (the first of which, the revenge-critting Frontier Justice,, is currently on display)—with all of this culminating in the long-awaited Engineer Update this Thursday!
*Note that we've disabled the Smelt Reclaimed Metal & Smelt Refined Metal recipes. They'll work again once the Engineer Update goes live.
Edit: Day 2
Everyone loves remote control toys. But the problem with most of them is, unless you manage to remote control one directly down someone's throat, they're pretty useless as weapons. But what if we were to tell you that we fixed that obvious design flaw?
Day Two of the Engineer Update brings the engineering faithful The Wrangler, the remote sentry gun controller; "Upward", an all-new, Valve-designed Payload Map; and 25 shiny, super-rare wrenches from our quickly-dwindling supply.
Note: To ensure everyone gets the chance to pull the lever, we've increased the weekly item drop limit for this week only. So if you thought you'd hit your item cap, think again!
The new stuff so far is:
The Frontier Justice
The Frontier Justice is an unlockable primary weapon available for the Engineer to be released with the Engineer Update. This shotgun cannot randomly Crit and has half the magazine size of the regular Shotgun, but can get Revenge Crits: For every kill your Sentry racks up, upon its destruction the Frontier Justice gets 2 guaranteed Crits. For every assist, it gets 1. This applies even if the Engineer destroys his own Sentry with the PDA.
Damage
* Base: 6 per pellet
* Max Ramp Up: 150% (9 damage per pellet)
* Max Fall Off: 50% (3 damage per pellet)
* Pellet Count: 10
* Point Blank: 80-90
o DPS (damage per second): 133-150
* Medium Range: 10-30
o DPS (damage per second): 17-50
* Long Range: 3-10
o DPS (damage per second): 5-17
* Mini-crit: 8.1 per pellet
* Critical hit: 18 per pellet
NOTE: This assumes that all statistics relating to the Shotgun apply to the Frontier Justice.
Medium range is defined as the length from the main resupply door to the opposite wall on the upper level of 2Fort. Long range is defined as the length from battlement to battlement on 2Fort. Base damage is the damage done at 512 units before damage variance or bullet spread. Ramp up maxes out at 0 units. Fall off maxes out at 1024 units. Damages are approximate and determined by community testing.
Function times
* Attack Interval: 0.625
* Reload Base: 1.0
* Additional Reload: 0.5
Reload base is the time it takes to reload the first ammo. Additional reload is the time it takes to reload each ammo after the first. All times are in seconds. Times are approximate and determined by community testing.
The Wrangler
The Wrangler is an unlockable Pistol replacement for the Engineer. It is part of the Engineer Update and was announced on Day 2.
While selected, it allows the Engineer to take control of his Sentry Gun's aim, and the Sentry Gun stops aiming automatically. When switching to another weapon away from the Wrangler, the Sentry Gun is left defenseless for 3 seconds.
The Wrangler also gives the Sentry Gun a shield that absorbs 66% of incoming damage, doubles the gun's firing rate, and increases the missile launch rate at level 3.
Day Three
July 7, 2010 - TF2 Team
Quick: Name someone whose body of work is a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit; whose strength and moral guidance informs your every decision; and who starred in one of the Police Academy movies.
Okay, and who isn't Steve Gutenberg.
Or the guy who fooled crooks into thinking he was a police car by making police car noises. Okay, now go!
Did you guess Hightower? Oh thank God, because that's what we called our new Payload map, and it is way too late to change it to Sweetchuck. Even though, now that we think about it, that's a much better name that you should seriously consider just calling it anyhow. Way to name maps, Brandon.
Also: wrenches! Hey, everybody remember those? Because Day Three of the Engineer Update has a whole new batch of them—plus a community-made surprise*.
*This isn't the only melee slot item the Engineer's getting...just a bonus!
The Final Day
Engineer Update is Here!
July 8, 2010 - TF2 Team
Say you have two things: a perfectly good hand, and a brilliant inventor for a grandfather. One day you stumble across a blueprint for an amazing-as-hell robot hand meant to replace an arm-stump. Wait, you have three things: the hand, the grandfather, and a saw.
The final day of the Engineer Update unveils the Gunslinger, a mechanical stump-mounted monstrosity; "Thunder Mountain", the most awesomely named of our Valve-created Payload Maps.
Stop reading. Go play!
The Gunslinger
The Gunslinger is an unlockable Wrench replacement for the Engineer. It is part of the Engineer Update and was announced on Day 4.
The Gunslinger appears as a robotic fist. It allows the Engineer to perform a combo attack, in which the third strike with the fist becomes an automatic critical hit. The Gunslinger also gives the Engineer an extra 25 max health, boosting his max up to 150 and making him a considerably more offensive class.
Using the Gunslinger allows the Engineer to build Combat Mini-Sentry Guns instead of the standard Sentry Gun. These Mini-sentries only take 2.5 seconds to build, and cost only 100 metal each, but cannot be upgraded or repaired, and only deals half of a normal level 1 Sentry Gun's damage.
Taunting with the Gunslinger will make the Engineer's robotic hand turn into a spinning cutter that stuns and kills.
Southern Hospitality
The Southern Hospitality is an unlockable, community-made melee weapon used by the Engineer. Striking an opponent with it will cause them to bleed. This weapon will not deal out random crits. When wielding this weapon, you have a 20% fire vulnerability.
All of these portents can only mean one thing: Something big is happening. The fact that everybody else on the team keeps telling me that it's only weather, and that weather can't talk to you, tells me they're all in on it. (And possibly not human? More on this later.)
Perhaps it's the upcoming Polycount Pack update making the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and the Australia-shaped hair on my back matte itself back down, since it means we'll be shipping the best of the amazing Polycount Contest entries. Be glad you're not one of us, forced to order that list of magnificent items into some kind of hierarchy. Maybe we'll just announce they've all won first place.
Or maybe it's the release of the Official TF2 Wiki that's made weather choose me as its emissary on Earth. Developed by the administrators of the unofficial TF2 wiki, it's a perfect place to find out everything you ever wanted to know about TF2, but were too afraid to type into Google. Head over there and see if you can help them out. If you're a useful enough contributor, the weather might talk to you too. It might even point out which of the people on your team aren't real humans. Then we could compare notes.
Or maybe, just maybe, it's something else entirely.
Those of you who spent the weekend Tokyo drift-racing your way to a rap battle—or whatever it is people do when they go outside on the weekend—probably feel pretty good about yourselves right now. At the end of the day, though, what do you have to show for it? Vague memories of changing lanes. Twenty-five of the people who wisely chose to stay home and craft items, on the other hand, now have shiny new ultra-rare golden wrenches that they can keep. For a weekend? No. For a lifetime. Eat it, drift-racers. Eat all of it.
Luckily for you wrenchless unfortunates, there's still time to get one. A further 75 golden wrenches can be found through crafting all this week*. We'll also be teasing Engie's new weapons (the first of which, the revenge-critting Frontier Justice,, is currently on display)—with all of this culminating in the long-awaited Engineer Update this Thursday!
*Note that we've disabled the Smelt Reclaimed Metal & Smelt Refined Metal recipes. They'll work again once the Engineer Update goes live.
Edit: Day 2
Everyone loves remote control toys. But the problem with most of them is, unless you manage to remote control one directly down someone's throat, they're pretty useless as weapons. But what if we were to tell you that we fixed that obvious design flaw?
Day Two of the Engineer Update brings the engineering faithful The Wrangler, the remote sentry gun controller; "Upward", an all-new, Valve-designed Payload Map; and 25 shiny, super-rare wrenches from our quickly-dwindling supply.
Note: To ensure everyone gets the chance to pull the lever, we've increased the weekly item drop limit for this week only. So if you thought you'd hit your item cap, think again!
The new stuff so far is:
The Frontier Justice
The Frontier Justice is an unlockable primary weapon available for the Engineer to be released with the Engineer Update. This shotgun cannot randomly Crit and has half the magazine size of the regular Shotgun, but can get Revenge Crits: For every kill your Sentry racks up, upon its destruction the Frontier Justice gets 2 guaranteed Crits. For every assist, it gets 1. This applies even if the Engineer destroys his own Sentry with the PDA.
Damage
* Base: 6 per pellet
* Max Ramp Up: 150% (9 damage per pellet)
* Max Fall Off: 50% (3 damage per pellet)
* Pellet Count: 10
* Point Blank: 80-90
o DPS (damage per second): 133-150
* Medium Range: 10-30
o DPS (damage per second): 17-50
* Long Range: 3-10
o DPS (damage per second): 5-17
* Mini-crit: 8.1 per pellet
* Critical hit: 18 per pellet
NOTE: This assumes that all statistics relating to the Shotgun apply to the Frontier Justice.
Medium range is defined as the length from the main resupply door to the opposite wall on the upper level of 2Fort. Long range is defined as the length from battlement to battlement on 2Fort. Base damage is the damage done at 512 units before damage variance or bullet spread. Ramp up maxes out at 0 units. Fall off maxes out at 1024 units. Damages are approximate and determined by community testing.
Function times
* Attack Interval: 0.625
* Reload Base: 1.0
* Additional Reload: 0.5
Reload base is the time it takes to reload the first ammo. Additional reload is the time it takes to reload each ammo after the first. All times are in seconds. Times are approximate and determined by community testing.
The Wrangler
The Wrangler is an unlockable Pistol replacement for the Engineer. It is part of the Engineer Update and was announced on Day 2.
While selected, it allows the Engineer to take control of his Sentry Gun's aim, and the Sentry Gun stops aiming automatically. When switching to another weapon away from the Wrangler, the Sentry Gun is left defenseless for 3 seconds.
The Wrangler also gives the Sentry Gun a shield that absorbs 66% of incoming damage, doubles the gun's firing rate, and increases the missile launch rate at level 3.
Day Three
July 7, 2010 - TF2 Team
Quick: Name someone whose body of work is a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit; whose strength and moral guidance informs your every decision; and who starred in one of the Police Academy movies.
Okay, and who isn't Steve Gutenberg.
Or the guy who fooled crooks into thinking he was a police car by making police car noises. Okay, now go!
Did you guess Hightower? Oh thank God, because that's what we called our new Payload map, and it is way too late to change it to Sweetchuck. Even though, now that we think about it, that's a much better name that you should seriously consider just calling it anyhow. Way to name maps, Brandon.
Also: wrenches! Hey, everybody remember those? Because Day Three of the Engineer Update has a whole new batch of them—plus a community-made surprise*.
*This isn't the only melee slot item the Engineer's getting...just a bonus!
The Final Day
Engineer Update is Here!
July 8, 2010 - TF2 Team
Say you have two things: a perfectly good hand, and a brilliant inventor for a grandfather. One day you stumble across a blueprint for an amazing-as-hell robot hand meant to replace an arm-stump. Wait, you have three things: the hand, the grandfather, and a saw.
The final day of the Engineer Update unveils the Gunslinger, a mechanical stump-mounted monstrosity; "Thunder Mountain", the most awesomely named of our Valve-created Payload Maps.
Stop reading. Go play!
The Gunslinger
The Gunslinger is an unlockable Wrench replacement for the Engineer. It is part of the Engineer Update and was announced on Day 4.
The Gunslinger appears as a robotic fist. It allows the Engineer to perform a combo attack, in which the third strike with the fist becomes an automatic critical hit. The Gunslinger also gives the Engineer an extra 25 max health, boosting his max up to 150 and making him a considerably more offensive class.
Using the Gunslinger allows the Engineer to build Combat Mini-Sentry Guns instead of the standard Sentry Gun. These Mini-sentries only take 2.5 seconds to build, and cost only 100 metal each, but cannot be upgraded or repaired, and only deals half of a normal level 1 Sentry Gun's damage.
Taunting with the Gunslinger will make the Engineer's robotic hand turn into a spinning cutter that stuns and kills.
Southern Hospitality
The Southern Hospitality is an unlockable, community-made melee weapon used by the Engineer. Striking an opponent with it will cause them to bleed. This weapon will not deal out random crits. When wielding this weapon, you have a 20% fire vulnerability.
Sound very funny game.
