TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

Halloween is fast approaching us, and that can mean only one thing. That Valve is preparing to release a new installment of Left 4 Dead. It also mean that its time for the annual TF2Newbs.com Team Fortress 2 Pumpkin Carving Contest. The winner of this contest will win a preorder of Left 4 Dead 2 – (L4D2). Runner ups will get TF2Newbs.com t-shirts. As always if participation exceeds our estimates we will add more prizes. Everyone is welcome to enter, you don’t even need to have played on the TF2Newbs game servers before, as long as you can carve a TF2 Pumpkin (or other gourd).

In the meantime, feel free to check out last years entries and prepare yourself for the full contest rules post which should be coming shortly.

2008 Team Fortress 2 Pumpkin Contest Results

The full contest rules for The 2009 TF2 Pumpkin Carving Contest will be on this page, its subject to change over the next day or so. But I’ll set them in stone soon enough.

I’m sure everyone reading this is fully aware of the drama that has surrounded Valves release of the Halo aka the Cheaters Lament. Well to add a little bit of fun to the mix Daimao has released a skin/model replacement which turns it into some devil horns. This model combined with our hat plugin means that anyone with access to !hatme can now wear fun happy horns (If you want to check it out yourself I recommend that in the morning you help start a server, when the client count hits 6 everyone gets hatme access for the session). Unfortunately TF2′s system for downloading particles is lame, so if you want to fully experience them you will need to download Devil Horn Particles and place the particles directory in C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\YOURuserNAME\team fortress 2\tf\ otherwise you’ll not see the little red circle glowing particle effect.

A couple bad screenshots I took of myself can be seen below..

In other news, I’ve made a more stylish looking image to show the real time stats on how many players were idlers / not idlers that hav ecame to my server since the afternoon of September 3rd 2009.

If you’d like to use this somehow, feel free to hotlink to the image so that it continues to update where ever you put it. The link is:
<img src="http://tf2newbs.com/haloVSnohalo4.png" border="0">

According to the official tf2 blog post yesterday around 4.5% of the user base of TF2 would be effected by the removal of items for manipulating the item system (using the idler). I just couldn’t believe it, because most of my friends list was idling every day, so 4.5% seems awful low. I started logging players that had the halo in their backpack vs players without the halo (people I assume were idlers since they didn’t have a halo). Right now its sitting at 35.61% of my users having ‘no halo’ :) If you’re interested in tracking my servers ratios, check out http://tf2newbs.com/haloVSnohalo.png or if you want a text version http://tf2newbs.com/haloVSnohalo.php

Meanwhile Daimao (famous hat modeler) has suggested an alternative system to valve – he proposes That the ‘cheaters’ should be forced to wear devils horns / have a health penalty for a period of time as punishment. I think it’d be great if the devil horns did come out (officially or unofficially) but I’m not sure valve would want to be seen as penalizing the already super angry faced crowd of idlers who think that its just not fair that they lost their ill gotten gains already.

I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about players being banned / players refusing to medic for players with / without halos. I’d like to make clear that the Newbs Community is not going to be a place where this is takes place. If I see people trying to give other players a hard time (in game) for wearing a halo or for not wearing one I will see that they are removed from the servers. There is a lot of belly aching and qq regarding this decission by valve to bitch slap everyone who used the idler, keep that argument on the steam forums please. All hats are allowed on our servers. If you did not get the halo and wish to wear one, be one of the first 6 players on a server and you will reserve access to our hatme plugin which includes the halo. Thank you. And now back to your regularly scheduled programming….

Today it was announced that all items/drops that were earned by players while using an idler will soon be removed, and that all players that didn’t ever idle will soon be rewarded with a new hat. Since most the people I knew idled, I thought I’d go ahead and post some shots of what the halo looks like:

Be sure to check out the TF2 Newbs servers, all server starters (first six players on any server) are rewarded with the ability to wear any in game hat (including the halo!)

Update: The halo’s proper name is ‘Aura of Incorruptibility’