Team Fortress 2 till Mac i april

Bara personer som bott under en sten den senaste veckan kan ha missat att Steam kommer till Mac. De svältfödda Mac-ägarna kan med andra ord snart njuta av tusentals mästerverk som tidigare bara varit tillgängliga oss PC-spelare, även om det såklart kräver att även spelutvecklarna är med på noterna. En spelutvecklare som absolut är med på noterna är Valve själva, och ikväll gick man ut med nyheten att Portal 2 kommer att släppas samtidigt till både Mac och PC.

Från pressreleasen får vi reda på att även äldre spel, som bl.a Half-life 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead och Team Fortress 2 släpps till Mac i april! Glädjande nyheter, med andra ord. Med den framgång som Apple har sålt sina datorer med de senaste åren finns det således en stor potentiell kundbas att tjäna pengar på.

Steam and Valve’s library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.

Vi mailade Robin Walker på Valve och frågade om PC- och Mac-spelarna kan mötas på samma servrar. Någon timme senare kom det uttömmande svaret:

from Robin Walker
till Max Collin
datum 8 mars 2010 21.53
ämne RE: TF2 for Mac

Yep.

Bilder från Valve:s kampanj:

Valve avtäcker nytt Steam

Ända sedan 2003 har Valves Steam-tjänst varit en central del av PC-spelandet, både genom sin digitala spelaffär och sociala funktioner. De där sju åren börjar dock sakta men säkert att märkas, och för att hindra Steam från att föråldras avtäckte Valve idag programmets största uppdateringen någonsin – the 2010 UI Update.

Det första man märker när man kommer in i Steam är hur mycket lättare affärsnavigeringen har blivit. Nu är det slut på otympliga listor och minimala trailers. Istället finns det faktiska sorteringsmöjligheter, Direct2Drive-liknande förtittar på individuella spelsidor och ett generellt luftigare utseende.

Liknande ändringar hittar vi under spelfliken, som nu kan sorteras på tre olika sätt – helt nya ”detail view”, gamla hederliga ”list view”, samt iTunes-inspirerande ”grid view”. Alla lägen är fulla med nya, fräsha bilder, och i ”detail view” ser du även en hel del social information, så som hur mycket dina vänner spelet ett visst spel eller vilka achivements de just fick.

Slutligen så finns det en helt ny nyhetssektion, en förbättrad nedladdningshanterare och ett helt nytt ”in-game”-gränssnitt.

Uppdateringen är just nu i öppen beta, så alla som vill testa behöver bara gå till inställningar och sedan klicka sig fram till ”UI Update”. Har du inte Steam? Ladda ned det här.

Den kompletta listan med ändringar hittar ni nedan:

Major features:

• Complete overhaul of Steam client UI design to improve discoverability of features and to better expose all the information related to games in your library
• Complete overhaul of in-game overlay UI design to create a richer in-game experience exposing context sensitive information related to the game you are currently playing
• New game details view, presenting a detailed view of all the information for a single game in your library
• New grid view, presenting a graphical view of your game library
• New news page in the store/client/overlay which aggregates from Valve related news sites, official community groups, and third-party gaming news feeds
• New downloads view in the client, making it easier to track your progress downloading new games or game updates
• New Steam store design, including more integrated community features, improved recommendations, and improved video and screenshots viewing (and much more!)

Store details:

• New Steam store/community integration — see what your friends have been buying and playing as you browse the store
• Improved store layout, genre navigation, and genre pages, including more robust navigation per category
• Improved game detail pages, including quick link to demos, inline display of higher resolution game trailers, improved screenshot browser, and improved game recommendations
• New game-specific video page, containing all of a game’s trailers in one place, now in higher resolution Flash format
• Improved discoverability of sales and discounts, including prominent shortcuts and consistent store-wide visual presentation for price cuts
• New quick-info tooltips on store home page and genre pages which allow users to read about games before navigating to detail pages
• New search filtering options- search for packs or DLC, easier to use filters for searching by price and metascore, and sort by release date

Client feature details:

• View of your most recently achieved achievements and likely next achievements in the client game details view and in the in-game overlay
• View of friends currently playing a game as well as all friends who sometimes play a game in the per-game details view
• View of related game news in the client game details view and in the in-game overlay
• Clock in the in-game overlay (!)
• User customizable categories assignable per-game, by which the various game library views can now be filtered
• Tracking of last played time for games to show in the client library views
• Sort your games by last date played
• Library list view displays larger graphic, and a new column displaying a game’s Steam Cloud state
• New invites section in the friends list UI allowing you to accept or decline invites directly without going to your community control panel
• Cloud support for many non-machine specific local settings such as favorite servers
• Implemented new DirectWrite based font rendering for the client and in-game overlay on Windows 7 or Vista with both SP2 and the ”Platform Update” installed. This offers improved pairwise kerning for text layout as well as better anti-aliasing of text on supported platforms.
• Display of total played time in the client game details view and the in-game overlay
• Type to jump support in the games list, grid, and game details views
• Better Steam cloud conflict resolution support, with the ability for users to choose how to resolve conflicts between machines
• Improved forward/backward navigation in the client UI, acting across various different view types (e.g., games list, to community, back to games list)
• New style and layout system for Steam’s VGUI UI toolkit, enabling much more complicated flowing layouts. Skins will need major overhauls to be compatible with the new client, but will also have much more power and flexibility available to them via the new .style and .layout files used in the new VGUI code.
• Backup/restore wizard
• Community: all official game avatars in one place, linked from your edit profile page
• New outer glow effect supported when rendering text in VGUI
• Support for alpha blending of gradients and text in VGUI
• Support for many new layout and placement commands in VGUI
• Support for native drop shadow effect on primary Steam windows on Vista and Windows 7

Bug fixes:

• Improved reliability of auto-login to store and community when used in the Steam client
• Improved truncation of long text strings in many places
• Fixed the various UI states and settings to persist across client restart more reliably
• Fixed being unable to reliably delete previously added non-Steam shortcuts from your games list
• Fixed forward/backwards navigation on Community tab getting stuck on redirects
• Many small performance and memory usage improvements
• Improved sorting consistency between views
• Fixed hit areas on friend panel down-arrow affordances to make clicking on them more reliable
• You can now remove a blocked friend without having to unblock the friend first

General improvements:

• Now using a WebKit based rendering engine for the client and in-game overlay web browsing components (replacing Internet Explorer)
• Improved speed of in-game overlay web browser
• Improved search functionality on the Steam news page

Web pages which use confirm() or alert() calls in javascript no longer break the in-game overlay web browser

[Tagen med tillstånd från Nukem.se]

Typ 25:- för TF2

Köp Team Fortress 2 idag för det löjligt låga priset av 2.50 euro. Köp det till en kompis, till mamma, lillbrorsan, din faster eller farmor. Om du inte vet någon som kan tänkas vilja ha det, köp det åt dig själv. Du kan alltid ge bort det senare.

Själv har jag införskaffat 10 nya exemplar av Team Fortress 2. Dessa ska skänkas bort till bättre behövande.

Team Fortress 2 för låtsaspengar!

Onlinegamers Steam-grupp: Nu över 200 medlemmar

Igår fick Onlinegamers Steamgrupp sin tvåhundrade medlem. Det var den gamla oldschool-klanen Einhärjarnas trotjänare Rampage som valde att komma in i vår varma gemenskap.

Gruppen grundades 13:e mars. Alla medlemmar, förutom våra admins, har varje vecka chansen att vinna samlarkort med TF2-motiv. De är en present till oss från Robin Walker på Valve. I morgon är det dags för nästa utlottning. Håll tummarna!

TF2 uppdaterat

Det kom en liten uppdatering i natt. Den innehåller möjligheten att ta bort items med den nya backpack-menyn. En annan nyhet är Reset Stats-knappen.

Game Changes

• Reworked the character loadout screens to support future features
• Added the ability for players to permanently delete items from their inventory using the new Backpack menu. This does not reset achievements. Once an item has been deleted it can never be re-earned
• Added the ability for players to reset their player stats using the Reset Stats button on the Stats menu. This does not reset achievements
• Added a ”player_teleported” game event that is sent when a player is teleported
• Updated cp_junction_final to score per-capture instead of per-round. This fixes the map not working correctly with Tournament mode and the stopwatch
• Scouts now drop the flag if they’re carrying it when they start phasing

Fixes

• Fixed instances where Steam connection problems would cause some unlocked items to be unusable
• Fixed the custom crosshair menu not clearing itself when ”None” is selected for non-English clients
• Fixed warning about not being able to execute skill1.cfg when starting the dedicated server

Från SteamPowered.com

Information om nattens TF2-patch

I natt släpptes den utlovade bugfix-patchen till TF2 (och Day of Defeat). Som tidigare nämnts har Natascha fått sin skadetabell korrigerad så att den överenstämmer med informationen som gått att läsa om den. Nu ger den 75% skada. Följ min blogg med bloglovin Bland nyheterna märks bl.a. ändringar i  Medicens- och Engineerens HUD:ar.

Patchen i sin helhet:

Team Fortress 2

• Added percentage to UberCharge HUD panel for the Medic
• Added upgrade progress and levels to Engineer HUD panel for all buildings
• Added mp_tournament_allow_non_admin_restart server ConVar to allow server admin to toggle whether non-admin players can issue the mp_tournament_restart ConCommand on the server. Default is 1 (current behavior)
• Added flag to the gamerules entity so map authors can override the HUD type being used. Allows map authors to force CTF or CP HUD to be used if they mix CTF/CP entities in the map
• Added check in CTF HUD to make sure it doesn’t point at disabled capture zones when the player is carrying the flag. Allows map authors to have more than one capture zone for each team in the map
• Changed AutoTeam to give new players to the attackers on attack/defend maps if the teams are even
• Fixed Pyro model not animating in the class menu
• Fixed players getting stuck in the ”prepare to respawn…” countdown loop
• Fixed Natascha not getting the proper 75% of damage and slightly increased the strength of Natascha’s slowdown
• Fixed teleporter entrance/exit effects being drawn when they don’t have a matching teleporter entrance/exit
• Fixed announcer saying ”the cart is nearing the checkpoint” after the round has already been won
• Fixed cloaked spies having a particle-beam effect while standing next to a dispenser that’s healing them
• Fixed server crash when trying to load a map that contains control points with duplicate index values
• Fixed several materials warnings in the console
• Fixed ”Cart.Explode” sound script entry using an unknown sound channel
• Marked the cl_bobcycle and cl_bobup ConVars as cheats

Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source

• Fixed clients using reloadresponsesystems, sv_soundemitter_flush, sv_soundemitter_filecheck, sv_findsoundname, and sv_soundscape_printdebuginfo to lag/crash servers

Source Engine

• Fixed client ”timeout on mapchange” problem
• Fixed setinfo exploit
• Marked the r_aspectratio ConVar as a cheat

Server Browser

• Renamed ”Quick List” to ”Map List”
• Removed minimum ping filter from Map List

Källa: Steampowered.com

Stor TF2-uppdatering släppt

Samtidigt som man utannonserade nästa stora classpack släppte man också en ny patch till TF2:

Team Fortress 2

• The Engineer’s teleporters can now be upgraded to level three. It will recharge faster the higher level it is
• The Engineer’s dispensers can now be upgraded to level three. It will give out metal and heal faster as it is upgraded
• Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground or from health cabinets
• Some changes to the second part of the first stage of Goldrush to give the attackers more of an advantage
• Any weapons that fire bullets (shotguns, sniper’s machine gun, heavy’s minigun, etc.) can now break apart the Demoman’s stickybombs
• The icon on the HUD for a person calling for Medic will now give more information to the medic (if the target is low on health, on fire, etc.)
• Added an achievement tracker that will allow people to choose specific achievements that they are trying to get
• There is now a custom icon for death messages when the player was killed from a critical hit
• Added a new particle effect for when a player enters the water
• Added smoke to the feet of a rocket jumping soldier
• Players will now have some particles swirling around them so other players can see when they are overhealed

Demomannen har nerfats, med andra ord. Dessutom kan dispensern uppgraderas till level 3 och spionen kan förlänga sin cloak genom att plocka upp ammo från marken.

TF2 Gossip analyserar

Borta på TF2 Gossip har man gjort en liten analys av nattens uppdatering. Texten nedan är kopierad därifrån:

Any weapons that fire bullets (shotguns, sniper’s machine gun, heavy’s minigun, etc.) can now break apart the Demoman’s stickybombs

When you fire at a sticky with a shotgun or similar (melee works too) it will break apart. You cannot do it while the sticky is flying in the air. If you pick up the broken parts of the sticky, you will get full ammo.

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The Engineer’s dispensers can now be upgraded to level three. It will give out metal and heal faster as it is upgraded

You can now upgrade your dispenser just like with your sentry. It takes 200 metal to upgrade it one level. At Level 3 it will heal 100 hp in 5 seconds. Maybe even more clans will begin to use engineer on gravelpit and turbine?

> Läs hela artikeln hos TF2 Gossip

• Mer på Steampowered.com

Granary uppdaterad i ny patch från Valve

I nattens patch till Team Fortress 2 har Valve återgått till den mer tävlingsinriktade versionen av Granary, och tagit bort setup-tiden och portarna. För tävlingsspelare innebär det att den populära kartan Pro_Granary fortsättningsvis inte kommer behövas.

Patchens innehåll:

• Added rate limit for several client commands to prevent server spamming
• Added consistency checking for particle systems
• Updated r_particle_timescale ConVar so it can only be changed if the server has sv_cheats set to 1
• Updated loading/disconnect dialogs so they’re easier to read
• Updated Dustbowl, Granary, and Badwater Basin with several exploit fixes
• Updated Granary to remove the setup time and gates

Källa: Steampowered.com

Äntligen! Efterlängtad patch till TF2

Som några kanske redan har märkt publicerade valve nyligen sin senaste uppdatering till tf2. Där finns flera välkomna åtgärder på saker som har plågat tf2-communityn, men den kanske viktigaste punkten fanns att läsa under punkt nr. 2:

• ”Fixed the Kritzkrieg not working on servers with crits turned off”

Detta kommer säkerligen att öppna upp för nya taktiker inom tf2-genren på tävlingssidan, där man normalt inte använder sig av crits och därmed inte kunnat använda sig av Kritzkriegs specialfunktion.

Hur det kommer arta sig i fortsättningen är kanske än så länge lite för svårt att förutspå.

Read more

TF2-uppdatering 23:e juni

Eftersom Pyrons unlockables krävde färre avklarade achievements än för Medicen har man likställt kraven för de två klasserna. Dessutom täcker gårdagens uppdatering även några nyfunna buggar. Hela listan:

Team Fortress 2

• Reduced Medic’s unlockable requirements to match that of the Pyro’s. Medic players now meeting the requirements will receive their unlockables shortly after joining a server
• Fixed Spy sapper viewmodel animation popping
• Fixed another issue with the Hot on your Heels achievement

Incorporated the new Russian fonts into the base Team Fortress 2 fonts. Fixes the missing fonts problem when running in Russian with English VO

Källa: Steam News

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