TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

Hey guys,

Scott here after a brief hiatus that saw me get addicted to World of Warcraft, drive across Canada, and buy and return a laptop. None of these events were related, but I’ve been a busy little fat man.

So anyway, as I was sitting in a meeting today I had an urge to doodle. And then I had a better idea. I wanted to see what the creative sorts of the Newbs community could draw. We’ve all seen Forte’s arts (and t-shirts and mousepads and such), and we know Dingo can forge stuff out of pure refined awesomeness, but I don’t really know what other people are capable of.

So I propose a contest. A recurring contest, where I am the only one who can’t win.

I propose… an art contest.

“But Scott,” you say, “I have no artistic skills!”

Well, neither do I. And you don’t need them, exactly. See, I won’t be judging these on quality. Oh no. I’m looking for whatever picture tickles me juuuuust right. To quote Family Guy, “That tickles me in a way that if Loretta tickled me in that way I’d say ‘Oh yeah, that’s nice’”.

It can be funny. It can be cool. It can be so mindbendingly awesome it reduces me to a puddle of goo and I have to spend the rest of the life having some annoyingly perky nurse mop the drool off my chin so I don’t gurgle. I’d obviously prefer one of the first two.

So, enough of the preamble. What’s in it for you?

Well, prizes obviously. I haven’t quite worked out the details, but I possess the rare ability to purchase items through Steam and deposit them into your account. It’s like voodoo, except it works (zing!). I can also possibly wrangle up a reserved slot, or if you want I could twist Octo’s arm until he coughs up a t-shirt. The choice could be yours.

Intrigued? You better be.

Now for the important bit. What you have to draw.

For the inaugural Scott’s Ultimate Art Newbs Contest (aka the SUANC), you will draw me…
…

a ROCKET CAKE

Interpret that however you want. It doesn’t have to be TF2-related if you don’t want it to be. The picture I like best wins.

You have 2 weeks. Deadline for submissions will be August 21st. A winner will be announced and contacted not long after.

The winning entry will be featured on the blog, and possibly elsewhere if I can get a gallery organized. I might post all the entries just for fun, depends on how I feel on the 22nd.

You can submit entries by sending me a link to where it’s hosted (I’m on Steam, look me up), or by emailing them to me at “scott at qv7 dot net”. Just convert that into a real email address. Put something about the contest in your subject line and also include your Steam ID if you’re not already on my friends list.

I look forward to seeing what your twisted little minds can come up with :D

Update:
1) If you enter multiple times, your second picture is compared to your first, and I get more critical.
2) Your entry doesn’t have to be a hand-drawn thing, it could also be photoshop, or a picture of a thing you made, etc

For those of you who don’t know, Jigen wants a beanie. Like, REALLY wants a beanie. Beats me why, seeing how he’s a spy.

But anyway, Valve is being a bit of a jerk about this. They don’t want to give Jigen a beanie. And that makes me, among other things, sad.

See, Jigen’s a good guy. And I hate when good guys can’t get stuff.

Luckily he has a solution. Money.

As mentioned in this thread, he’s going to be buying a real beanie, and will most likely wear it everywhere, all the time. And take pictures to share with us all.

So, who would like to help donate to the Get Jigen a Beanie fund? You’ll be helping a great cause, and a great source of potential hilarity.

You’re on your favourite map. It’s full of people, shooting, exploding, taunting, whatever. Everywhere you look, there’s someone. friend or foe, doesn’t matter.

So why am I asking where everyone is?

Well, I’m not talking about players. I’m not talking about our 9 valiant heroes and their 9 scum-sucking worthless doppelgangers. I’m talking about everybody else.

Who?

You know, everyone.

Let’s take Well, for example. You are likely familiar with it. Spawn behind a rocket, wander out through a warehouse, fight in the middle while dodging trains. However, what you might not notice as you run off to kill and be killed, is that there are areas of the map that should be full of people. Meeting rooms, offices, computer terminals, that sort of thing.

And yet, those places are empty. Devoid of life. So, where is everyone?

For example, here’s an office visible in an odd corner of the BLU base on Well.

There’s a desk, a clock, even a phone. But there’s nobody in that office. Nobody to answer that phone should it ring. Which it won’t, because there’s nobody to make a call on it.

Or how about this room? It looks like a shipping/receiving office, complete with a keg of beer (the bases on Well are a distillery and a brewery, after all). You can see plenty of empty chairs and a door leading deeper into the base, but you know what’s not in those chairs? People.

This room (or at least the RED version of it) also contains the loneliest lunch in the world.

I think the BLU version has a thermos in it. Which makes it the loneliest thermos in the world. Does it contain soup? Or coffee? Or some unholy combination thereof? Maybe it’s a good thing we’ll never find out.

Now, the easy explanation for why these rooms are empty is probably that the RED and BLU corporations cleared out their non-military personnel for the duration of the armed conflict. But if that’s the case, why is there bulletproof glass everywhere?

Nobody can shoot the distilling equipment. Which I guess is a good thing. Horrible waste of perfectly good booze otherwise.

In theory, these places could be maintaining their operations during the conflict. Maybe with a slight risk, but they look to have enough defences in place to ensure the workers are at least somewhat safe. Otherwise, they’re clearly protecting themselves from themselves. And that only makes sense if friendly fire is on.

It actually makes more sense to maintain at least a light crew of workers. The brewing business is very profitable, and most everybody likes to imbibe now and then. These companies are just taking money out of their own pockets. Rockets, teleporters, and $200 custom-tooled cartridges aren’t cheap, and all of the above get expended in large amounts. I weep for RED and BLU’s accounting departments.

This theory also involves some bouts of reasoning. Were the 9 bloodthirsty warriors brought in specifically to fight? Are they always stationed around the bases, even when production is ongoing? Is that why there’s bulletproof glass, to protect the workers from a bored heavy? And how awkward must the watercooler conversations be for the workers?

“So, good weekend?”
“Affirmative!”
“What’d you do?”
“Pushups. Situps. Beat a man to death with a shovel. You know, regular Saturday afternoon.”
“Oh, um, well. How bout you, big guy?”
“I ate sandvich and cleaned gun. Puny neighbour tried to tell me I park too close to curb, so I introduce him to Sasha. Then cleaned her again.”
“Screamin’ eagles!”
“Well, look at the time… Back to work… Later guys.”

Worker turnover must be pretty high if they have to spend their whole shifts wondering if today’s the day they trip over a sticky bomb, or the sentry recognizes them wrong.

Another theory is that the workers are, in fact, our 9 most hated enemies. Have they been pulled away from their regular duties to defend the base against the invading army? Or to take over the other side of the map in a bizarre corporate acquisition gone wrong? Are they just fighting this war so they can get back to work (and had it spiral ridiculously out of control in the process)?

Or, maybe nobody’s there because nobody wants to be there. A war that’s dragged on far too long, with the entire civilian population killed or displaced. Maybe there’s nobody in the office, nobody in the distillery, nobody to eat the lunch or coffee soup, nobody anywhere because there’s nobody left.

At least they enjoyed themselves on their way out.

Grey Devil reporting in. Newbs’ resident crab-of-many-names.

A lot of members from Newbs have been spurned by the new item drop system (I know I have). And while the system may not be perfect, Koans decided on Sunday to give users what they wanted. No, not the new unlocks (but I’m sure he would if he could), he went one better over Valve. He threw another (in)famous Newbs Instant Contest: Win Koans’ Money!

Nothing gets people motivated more than cold. hard. cash.

What kind of depraved, whorish, insane shennanigans did Koans’ twisted mind come up with this time around? He challenged the #4 2fort server engineers to build a full setup in the other team’s sink room. Having to build a lvl 3 sentry, lvl 3 dispenser, and working teleporter (exit in sink room and entrance in the home base) proved to be quite difficult and Koans kept everyone motivated by doubling the prize.

There were a few people who got very close (Scott, Ggg, Steven and a few others) but in the end Waffle Frohman rose to the occasion and was victorious! Congratulations. I do hope everyone had a good time, keep an eye out because you never know when and where the next instant contest might be.

On a related note: I’d like to personally thank Koans for putting the time, expense and effort in keeping the community a great place to be. You dont have to be an admin to make these contributions; so if you’d like to donate money, complete something in Octo’s to-do list or anything else you can think of that benefits Newbs you’re welcome to do so.

You like girls right?  Wanna know whats better than a girl?  A girl giving you free stuff!  -

For immediate Release

Tara Wants You To Win cool stuff!

The Newbs T-shirts have been widely coveted by all the Newbs.

See: http://www.tf2newbs.com/forum/index.php/topic,2789.msg47582.html#msg47582

So… your chance to win one has started today with Tara’s Payload Pimps’ First Official Contest.

Play on #7 (Payload Rotation) and for each 60 minutes of play, you earn one e-ticket into the drawing.

Three winners will each receive:
Custom TF2Newbs.com T-shirt
Custom TF2Newbs.com Mousepad
Reserve Slot on #7
honorz

Newly added: Mini-contests.

Chances for you to win more tickets doing specific things.

The first mini-contest is for designing a new MOTD (that’s the screen you get when you join a server). Due date is Thursday for this one.

Details here:
Contest Details are Great!!! Win Stuffs playing Payload Maps

As always, the most important things are to play nice and have fun!  Oh yeah, and join TPP here: Taras Payload Pimps Steam Group (tf2newbs)