Category:Team Fortress

Anatomy of an Update: Lessons from Robotic Boogaloo on Community Updates

It’s been a good long while since Robotic Boogaloo, the first (and thus far only) community-created update, and I’ve been thinking about it lately. The update never sat well with me and even if we don’t all agree that the update wasn’t that great, we should all acknowledge it wasn’t well-received. But I don’t feel that should be the end of community-created updates. I think the TF2 community can and does do better. If we want community updates to be a thing that people celebrate on the same level as normal Valve updates, though, they need to BE on the same level as a Valve update, as opposed to being a thing of people seeing one is out and thinking “Aw fuck, hat glurge”. The next one, if there is a next one, is gonna have to really knock it out of the park to prove this is a thing worth doing on the regular.

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Importing Team Fortress 2 Item Models into Blender

So maybe you, like me, are interested in making an item for Team Fortress 2. And maybe you’re new to modelling so you want to look at TF2 models in, say, Blender (though this will get you far enough if you’re using something else). With the new SteamPipe content distribution system, though, shit’s all hidden and confusing now ’cause they converted all the .gcf files into .vpk’s. Even if you’ve extracted stuff from TF2 before, maybe you’re having a hard time now. All the tutorials for how to do this are outdated and I can’t be the only dumbass who couldn’t figure this out in two minutes, so I am gonna put this here for anyone who needs it.

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Robotic Boogaloo: The Community Divided

So Robotic Boogaloo. The first community-created update. Turned out to be pretty controversial, didn’t it? Half of the “community” are extremely disappointed in the finished product and the other half are giving themselves a hernia trying to defend it. But let’s be real here.

The update was a failure on a lot of fucking levels and just because a lot of people we know and like and admire worked on it doesn’t make that any less true. And protip, guys? Acting like people who are pointing out that updates normally involve a lot more than reskinned hats are being ungrateful to the work that went into this one not will not convince anyone that Robotic Boogaloo is a glowing success either. Because the failings in this update are largely not reflective of the work and effort put in by the contributors. The problems lie in that it ultimately did not produce an acceptable update.
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Hello

Presently

The Future is Still Silver and Black: The MSI’s Pioneer Zephyr and the IRM’s No. 9911-A “Silver Pilot” are pen pals, writing to each other from their respective museums about their service lives both pre- and post-preservation.
Low Art Lyseum: DJ, Ray, and Ellie play and critically analyze videogames. 7:00 CST on Thursdays/Fridays. Currently playing Mafia: Definitive Edition.
Engines in Sidings: Thomas the Tank Engine stories. Written with Ray.

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This is going to be a startling question: Are you aware of the youtube ai age verification situation? If yes, could you help me get more awareness for this issue? If no, I would highly suggest looking into it as well for your benefit.The age verification will destroy online privacy and effectively censor the rest of the internet. We may lose the ability to watch videos that an ai determines to be of childish nature, whether it be a commentary of a tv show or a slime review video. The ai will deny you of your access to youtube, unless you present an id like a credit card or a drivers licence to regain access to watching any video. Even if you are an adult, it will not allow you access unless you surrender sensitive info about yourself. Should this spread, internet privacy and safety will be gone, and even a 1984 situation would take place (hoping not). The surrendered data can be exposed to the world, doxxing so many people and allowing scammed and hackers to steal personal info. I do not want to see this ruin anyone's love for anything that may seem childish to a faulty machine designed to somehow replace a parents' responsibility of looking after their own children. It is scheduled to take into effect on August 13th this month.I am afraid that this is what will shatter many fandoms of beloved childhood shows, games, books, and franchises. I just hope that at least the TTTE fandom will help step up against the loss of internet security and privacy. United we stand, together we fall. Let us stand and stand firm against this ruin.Cheers,A worried American who is a thomas fan

So like, there seems to be a wave of bad, privacy-violating legislation going around lately. Gonna be real in that I don’t really know how to fight that kinda thing effectively. Based on the UK one that just passed, kinda seems like the point is actually to stifle communication, since… [more]

for the WIP ask game... The Future Is Still Silver and Black? (original train fiction from you two sounds really interesting!)

So last year, I went up north to visit Ray. Ray lives in Chicago, which just so happens to have the largest railway museum in the United States, the Illinois Railway Museum.

At the IRM, we saw the Nebraska Zephyr, which is a streamlined stainless steel articulated trainset. Each of the… [more]