Monday Night Combat is a class-based, third-person shooter and if you purchase before February 1st, 10am PST – you will receive Team Fortress 2 Items for Monday Night Combat & Monday Night Combat Items for Team Fortress 2!

Cross gaming promotions on steroids, some pics of the items:

Oh Yeah, almost forgot about the update:

Shared Source Changes (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2, HL2:DM)

• Fixed the dedicated server not running on machines using Win2k.

Team Fortress 2

• Added the Monday Night Combat gear.
• Added Crit-a-Cola to the weapon drop list.
• Added missing chalkboard/serverbrowser materials for 5Gorge.
• Fixed some missing particles systems in the low violence version.
• Fixed a bug with the round ending when a control point is captured during Overtime in CP_Egypt.
• Fixed the game not running on machines using Fat32.
• Updated the localization files.

Sorry, Demomen. You fought the good fight and kept it far closer than anybody could have predicted. But in the end, at the noon Thursday deadline, the Soldiers kept their razor-thin lead, with 6,406,065 killed Demomen to the Demo’s score of 6,372,979 killed Sollys.

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

New Content

• Added new control point map Gorge
• Added new capture the flag map Double Cross
• Added item crafting
• Added work-in-progress TF Bots for beta testing in KOTH maps (blog post coming with more info)
• Added headshot death animations
• Added more backstab animations

Soldier

• Added 35 new Soldier achievements
• Added 4 new Soldier items
• Added new Soldier Domination lines

Demoman

• Added 35 new Demoman achievements
• Added 3 new Demoman items
• Added new Demoman Domination lines

Spy

• Now pretends to be carrying the weapons & wearables of the target he’s disguised as
• Moved the Spy’s camera-beard to the Misc loadout slot so he can equip it with a hat

Scout

• The Sandman now only stuns on a max range hit (when you hear the cheering)
• All shorter hits now force the enemy into the thirdperson fleeing state (also removed the damage reduction on them)

Minor changes

• Added new options to the Multiplayer->Advanced dialog:
  • Combat text, which displays damage amounts you do to enemies.
  • Medic auto caller, which automatically shows you nearby friends at low health.
  • Heal target marker, which better highlights the target your medigun is locked onto.
  • Alternative Spy disguise menu, which lets you choose disguises using just the 1-3 keys.
• Fixed being able to affect friendly pipes with airblast (they would unstick)
• Added recharge sound to abilities with a recharge bar
• Fixed attachable wearables not staying on ragdolls
• Players no longer see the wearables that are a part of a friendly spy’s disguise, fixing various graphical glitches
• Added jiggle bones for Pyro’s chicken hat
• Added 2 new game startup songs

Community Mapmaker requests

• Implemented InputSetSetupTime() for team_round_timer (was in the .fgd but never implemented)
• Added “SetDispenserLevel” input to cart dispenser (1, 2, or 3)

Introducing Team Fortress 2’s new Crafting system. Say goodbye to those enjoyable evenings spent complaining on the forums about which item in your inventory was the most useless, spraying anti-Australian racist hate speech all over Robin Walker, his lovely wife, and his beautiful children. EVERYTHING in your inventory now contributes towards something you actually WANT, and can build YOURSELF!

Saxon Hale bears his Aussie Manchest

The Team Fortress 2 Archives of War Journal can be found here.

Another major update on its way with a twist.  If you want either the Demoman or Soldier to gain an extra weapon after the week is up, start killing your least favorite class with your fave.  Excitement plus I am sure, three new weapons each class throughout the week, maps, achievements, and some surprises…….Half Life 2 Episode 3……..hello…..anyone home….?

A secret, exclusive seventh weapon has also been developed by the TF2 team. In other words, either the Soldier or the Demo (but NOT both) is walking out of this update with one more weapon than the other. If you want your class to have it, you’re going to have to fight for it

Click the Comic on the right to discover the Administrators evil plans to fracture the twisted friendship of two natural enemies.  They are Red and Blue after all…. Potential Demoman and Solder update?

The latest Team Fortress 2 update comes with the following audio files (you tube vid) which people believed had the potential to be a new gamemode, but not so according to Robin Walker from this Kotaku article.

We’ve got something coming, but it’s not a new game mode,” Valve’s Robin Walker says. “The key to understanding the new sound files is to figure out who’s hearing them in-game, and who isn’t.

Alert a friendship has been detected and will be eliminated:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9uvQ_k8gqs

TF2 has also received a significant price drop:

From now until 2:00pm PDT, Team Fortress will be available on Steam for the horrifyingly (to our accountants) low price of US$2.49!

Haunted Halloween Special

Five new update-specific achievements will unlock the Mildly Disturbing Halloween Hats—moldering, eldritch veils of such manifold depravity, the human eye will not process the sheer enormity of their malevolence, and out of self-preservation will merely show you paper bags with faces on them. These faces are still moderately scary, though, so brace yourselves for mild terror!

Team Fortress 2:

• Added “+quickswitch” command, which brings up a small panel allowing you to rapidly change the loadout of your current class & active weapon slot.
• Added server ConVar “tf_teamtalk” to allow alive/dead teammates to talk with each other during a match (default is 0)
• Added 1/2 Bonus Point for healing a teammate with a dropped sandvich
• Updated the class menu to show the local player’s current class
• Updated server ConVar “tf_playergib” to have 3 settings for player gibs: 0: never, 1: normal, 2: always (default is 1)
• Updated “player_hurt” game event to include “damageamount” and “crit” values
• Fixed a rare crash in particle system
• Fixed being able to eat your sandvich (via taunt) and drop it in the same frame
• Fixed not correctly remembering the last weapon if you’re using “remember active weapon” and the last weapon was the weapon in slot 0
• Fixed Medic not being able to release his UberCharge if his team won the previous round and the Medigun was his last active weapon (while using “remember last active weapon”)
• Fixed not remembering the last active weapon correctly if the player didn’t die before the next round restart
• Prevented servers from using steam:// commands in their MOTD text
• Fixed using the regen cabinets to get more health than you should when you switch between weapons with/without max health reduction attributes
• Fixed friendly-fire/spectator exploit using projectiles
• Fixed disguised spies not getting ammo from enemy dispensers
• Fixed thrown sandvich traveling through players before being activated
• Fixed sandviches sometimes spawning inside walls, or being thrown through thin walls
• Fixed fire overlay drawing on hats in DX80
• Fixed an exploit that allowed servers to corrupt client’s item database
• Fixed full packet updates showing cloaked Spies for an instant
• Fixed a prediction error resulting in mis-predictions of crits

Community requests:

• Added new “func_flag_alert” entity that fires an alert when a player carrying a flag starts touching the entity
• Added server ConVar “bot_crouch” to make bots crouch
• Added model override for item_teamflag entity
• Added ability to turn off particle trail for players carrying the item_teamflag entity
• Updated team_train_watcher to support 8 cp/track links (was previously 4)

“We were surprised to hear of this news yesterday,” the executive informed us. “Obviously, everyone at Valve is pretty bummed.”

“It would be a shame if folks in Australia, or anywhere else, are unable to purchase Left 4 Dead 2 because of a ratings issue,” Lombardi lamented.

Left 4 Dead 2 is available everywhere else on the planet on November 17th.  Meanwhile feel free to download any R18+ mod available whilst the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification board targets only what gets deposited on their god damn laps.

ENGINE

If the installation is an HLTV relay we allow clients to connect as HLTV clients even if tv_enable is set to false. A recent exploit fix made it such that we ignore the flag indicating that the client is an HLTV client if tv_enable is false, but it is possible that relays won’t have this ConVar set

TEAM FORTRESS 2

Additions / Changes

* Backpack improvement
- Added support for 100 slots in the backpack
- Backpack can now be sorted by type
- Multi-selection in the backpack is now done by holding down the Ctrl key
* Alt-fire on the Sandvich now drops sandwich:
- A single sandvich can be dropped at a time. Dropping the sandvich removes it from the Heavy
- A Heavy can regain his sandvich by collecting a healthkit while already being at full health
- Eating a sandvich using the taunt method now heals a Heavy to full health
- Dropped sandviches heal 50% of the collector’s health
* Medic regen changes:
- Base regen amount increased from 1/sec to 3/sec
- Regen amount increase since time of last damage decreased from 3x to 2x
- End result of above: Old healing scaled from 1/sec to 3/sec based on time since being damaged (maxed out at 10 seconds). New healing scales from 3/sec to 6/sec
* Blutsauger:
- Replaced “No critical hits” negative attribute with “-2 health drained per second on wearer”
- Health drain stacks on top of the above Medic regen changes, lowering the base regen by 2h/sec
* Added “mp_windifference” server ConVar (default to 0)
- When set to X, matches will be considered won if a team gets X points ahead of the other team
* Added a “Remember the active weapon between lives” option to the Multiplayer->Advanced options dialog
* Added “Disable weather effects” option to the Multiplayer->Advanced options dialog
* Added “Show non-standard items on spectated player” option to the Multiplayer->Advanced options dialog
- If set (default), it’ll show non-standard items being carried by the player you’re spectating
* Tournament mode changes
- New item whitelist allowing tournaments to control what items can be used by players
- Added “item_whitelist_example.txt”
- Added “item_show_whitelistable_definitions” command to get a list of whitelistable items
- Added Tournament mode Spectator HUD
- Added “Use advanced spectator HUD in tournament mode” option to the Multiplayer->Advanced options dialog
- Shows all the members of your team (or both if you’re a spectator) at the top of the screen, along with class/health/respawn time/charge level
- Spectator indices are now shown on the team members, and hitting the corresponding weapon selection key (slot1-slot12 commands) will spectate them
* Changed idle player check to include spectators & players who haven’t chosen a team

Bug Fixes

* Fixed explosive radius detection using an axially aligned box instead of a sphere
- Compensated by increasing the radius of grenades, pipes, and rockets to 50% of what they lost at the corners of the OBB
- Grenades/Pipes radius change: 132->159
- Rocket radius change: 121->146
- End result of above: Explosives have had their radius reduced at some angles, and increased at others. Radius is now consistent, angles are now irrelevant

• Fixed Sniper using the reference pose if he has the Huntsman deployed when his team loses
• Fixed Spies speaking their response rules lines after killing a player as the class they were disguised as
• Fixed Medics getting MedicCallerPanels in their HUD for cloaked enemy Spies disguised as their team
• Fixed the Huntsman not firing crit arrows when the Sniper is being CritBoosted
• Fixed being able to fire the Huntsman under water if you jump into the water with the arrow charged
• Added check to prevent clients using the “firstperson” command to get out of thirdperson view while they’re phasing, taunting or control stunned
• Fixed Halo glow effect not being hidden for cloak/disguised enemy Spies
• Fixed wearables not destroying their attached particles when they’re removed
• Fixed several player & viewmodel simulation issues that occurred when the game was paused
• Fixed a DX8-based exploit that allowed modified particle effects to work under sv_pure 2

Community Requests

• Added the entindex() of the object being built to the “player_builtobject” game event
• Added flag to allow CTF map authors to turn off the Overtime mode when timers expire
• Added IgnitePlayer input to TFPlayer

I think I idled for about 3 nights and got one hat in that time.  Well the hat is gone now:

Couldn't do a screenie, quick cam snap apon entering loadout menu.

Over the next few days we’ll be removing all TF2 items that were earned using external idling applications. We’re going to adopt a zero tolerance policy for external applications used to manipulate the persistent item system. Due to us not having a policy in place prior to today, this time we’re only removing the items earned through cheating the system. Going forward, if we find users using external applications, we’ll remove all of their items. If you’re interested, only about 4.5% of the players in TF2′s community will be affected by this cleansing process.

No policy in place?  but you are removing items from 33% of the TF2 userbase.  Nice work Valve.  There are much bigger exploits that need fixing – yet this is priority?

A lot of TF2 users used the SourceOp Idle program (yep 33%) and it was even stated on Steam Powered this app was not that big of a deal to Valve.  Obviously it is.

Meanwhile, everyone who took the moral high road will soon be finding a new hat in their inventory. We’ve also significantly increased the chance of finding any of the existing hats.

This is what users wanted in the first place.

We realize there is a high level of demand for items, and we’re still working on systems to allow you to find them in new ways (via Trading, and crafting duplicates into desired items). However, we need to draw the line at running external applications.

Sounds like Valve intend to monetise TF2 in the same vein as a lot of Korean MMORPG’s.  Damn Valve, keep it real.