Team Fortress 2 has been the silent beneficiary of two updates in as many days this week, which an awful lot for a game older than you or I, or them thar hills. The truth is that nobody knows quite how old TF2 is – we don’t have its birth certificate, and geological studies can only tell us so much. What we can tell you is how it’s changing.
In Monday’s patch, Valve took to the water to fix a couple of presumably longtime visual issues. The first had seen underwater explosions cause graphical ‘corruption’. Yikes. The second had seen objects of all shapes and sizes rendering unproperly when submerged. Both are now sorted.
Also of note was a nerfed Phlogistinator for the Pyro – now featuring a reduced rate of MMMPH gain when fighting tanks and robots in MvM, as if that mode wasn’t tough enough – and crafting changes to the Tuxxy tuxedo, the Wilson Weave and the Ham Shank.
Tuesday’s update, meanwhile, was confined to teething issues with the last patch and unknowable server issues. See below for the full changelog on both.
Monday
- Added UGC Highlander Season 9 and UGC 6vs6 Season 11 medals
- Fixed the Botkiller Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher and Spy Knife weapons using incorrect team materials for the arms
- Fixed a bug that allowed level 3 mini-sentries in Mann Vs. Machine mode
- Fixed a problem where underwater explosions would cause graphics corruption
- Fixed an issue with HDR rendering where auto-exposure would vary incorrectly in some areas
- Fixed an issue where objects underwater would not render properly
- Fixed incorrect ellipsizing of text in some cases for the Mac version
- Updated the Phlogistinator to reduce the rate for gaining MMMPH when attacking tanks and robots in Mann Vs. Machine mode
- Updated the Tuxxy tuxedo so it can be crafted
- Updated The Wilson Weave and The Ham Shank so they can be crafted, traded and gift-wrapped
- Updated the console so it can be accessed from the terminal that was used to run the game for the Linux and Mac versions
- Added player avatars to the votekick menu
- Added -insert_search_path command line argument
- Fixed deflected Cow Mangler 5000 projectiles doing full critical damage instead of minicrit damage like other deflected projectiles
- Updated the Linux version
Fixed triggers never registering as “released” on certain game controllers
Fixed clipboard issues on some window managers, most notably KDE
Fixed a bug where the map list would be reversed
Made loading custom fonts for third party HUDs work on certain fonts
Tuesday
- Added a missing material for the UGC medals
- Added server convars related to investigating server network and CPU utilization:
sv_netspike
sv_netspike_sendtime_ms
sv_netspike_output
I’m fascinated to see Valve working on third-party controller support for Linux. I’ll ride the Big Picture Mode train all the way to the lounge and back, but surely anybody entering a mouse-fight with analogue sticks is destined for failure?