crafting

A tale of crafting (I regret nothing)

by ZombieSkittles on April 8, 2010

474px-Hat_magazineThis is a tale1, the tale of a man. This man possessed many hats, but unlike others who strove for their titles as hat wearers, he did not really care. There was a certain thrill of finding a new one to add to his collection, but it quickly wore off when he saw others complaining and cheapening his happiness. One day, he decided no more; he was going to have some fun with his hats, for better or for worse.

In his possession was the following:

Deciding he could do without the Billycock and the Beard, the gentlementleman crafted the two together, to see what he could create. What he got disappointed him; a Demoman’s Fro. “But I am not black, nor scottish!” The mentlegan exclaimed. Onlookers laughed and cried out in disappointment. Since he was already in the mood, the gentleman announced he was going to craft it with either his Tyrants Helm or his Stainless Pot, and that his team members may decide. Unanimously, it was decided to craft the Stainless Pot; revealing an even more disappointing sight; a Texas Slim’s Dome Shine. The laughter was deafening. No-one had the guts to risk one of their coveted hats, let alone two of them, to such a risky exercise. But the mentleman was apathetic to the digital items. “The chances of getting three crappy hats in a row is 0 to 100 man! Craft!” Said one onlooker. The gentlegen knew the odds, but since he was already knee deep in crafting, decided to craft it with his Troublemakers Tossle Cap.
He had never cared for the urban style beanie, and was happy to see it go if it meant the chance of a decent hat. Pressing the craft button, he once again drew the short straw. “A Trophy Belt! That’s the generic hat with some teeth attached!” He shouted over the top of the constant chatter. “Well, the mining light is the generic hat with a light on it, maybe you should craft those two together.” One of the more vocal team members suggested. “Well why not,” the gentleman mumbled, and he crafted those two for his final attempt, and produced a Glengarry Bonnet. He shrugged and said, “could be worse, it could be one of the hats I’d already used up in this shameless experiment.” And went right on playing, with absolutely no gameplay changes whatsoever.

And the moral of the story is, anyone who obsesses over hats are douchefags. The end.

  1. not that tale, Rubenerd

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TF2 Game Update for March 19th, 2010

by ZombieSkittles on March 20, 2010

As seems to always happen, TF2 got an update the very day after a major update. Following the first Community Contributions Update, we have a small update based around crafting. It focuses on two points;

  • Updated the new community-built hats so they can be crafted
  • Updated the Camera Beard and Medic Mask so they can be crafted as hats

So the first one is an obvious fix that I’m surprised wasn’t immediately implemented, I mean, so that means that the people who tried to craft the new hats yesterday (and there would be a few) had no chance of getting them even though they should of. But either way.

The second point is something we’ve been hoping for. Camera Beards, being changed from a hat to a “misc” item, now drops like a normal item. As such I have two of them, others will have more (some claim to have ten). So, being able to craft two of them into an actual hat is an awesome win for the people who bitch constantly.

Now we just need to be able to craft medals, and that might satisfy people. Are you going to craft your camera beards?

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Jengerer’s Item Manager

by ZombieSkittles on February 19, 2010

Ever wanted to manage your backpack outside of the game? Neither have I! However, using his mad skills, Jengerer created an application just for that.image

The Item Manager accesses your Steam account, and displays your backpack for you. From this program, you can look at your items, sort them, and even craft items. It was originally made back in the days when people idled using the notorious 3rd party programs that Valve banned. Even though those days are over, the program still lives on.

The program is fairly simple, and does what it was made to do. While it doesn’t really have any use other than a novelty, it’s still a nice, Valve approved, program that you can download at Jengerer’s website.

Use the program? What do you think?

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The Goal (Crafting)

by ZombieSkittles on February 8, 2010

With the additional and slow refining of the crafting system in Team Fortress 2, there’s been a lot of complaining about how hard it is to craft a hat. I thought we’d take a minute to look at this.

The recipe

3 weapons/items = 1 scrap metal
3 scrap metal = 1 reclaimed metal
3 reclaimed metal = 1 refined metal
3 refined metal = 1 random hat

So, with a little maths, we work out that:

1 reclaimed metal = 9 weapons/items
1 refined metal = 27 weapons/items
1 hat = 81 weapons/items

Now, 81 items may seem like a lot, but I’d like to take you back, back into the past, to before the War Update and the crafting system. Now back then, there was no way to force hats. How did people get them? Random drops. Now, random drops for hats were rare, and half the time you ended up with endless items. Some people now have heaps of hats from random drops (I have a couple myself), while others still don’t have any, after hundreds of hours of playing.

The idea behind the crafting system was so someone who just can’t seem to get a hat, can now put all those duplicate items he receives in drops to work towards finally getting one.

Of course, you inevitably find those people who complain because the crafting system has made it  too hard to make anything meaningful. But really, hats are meant to be rare; Valve can’t just give them away, can they?

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What’s next?

by ZombieSkittles on January 21, 2010

So with the last Team Fortress 2 update settling behind us, the question is inevitably going to come up; what’s next? There’s so much that Valve could do with the game, it’s just a question of where to start.

Engineer Update

It’s been almost 2 years since the first of the class updates were rolled out, we’ve only got one class who hasn’t received a major update, complete with new weapons and achievements. So it’s a fair to assume that one of the next updates to be released will be for the Engineer. This of course means new achievements, but in the case of weapons, the Engineer is a little different to other classes, being he is able to build sentries and other buildings. This leads to a lot of options; will the Engineer get new types of buildings, or new upgrade levels for them? I can see something being made similar to the Sniper’s Razorback item, but can be applied to buildings to protect from sapping.
In the case of new buildings, an idea in my head is having more than one type of sentry, such as one that shoots flame, or a trip mine similar to those in Half Life (you step into the laser beam and the bomb goes off). The concept being that an Engineer could only build one type, creating more strategies and abilities for the character without creating building spam. Just some thoughts.

Trading System

As was hinted by Valve months ago in the TF2 Blog, eventually we will see a system for trading items with other players, and being able to work towards getting specific items. The latter was rolled out with the Soldier/Demo class update in the form of a crafting system, which lets you combine multiple items together to eventually create an item you (hopefully) didn’t already have. This leaves us waiting for the trading system. Implementation needs to be thought out though, since we can’t just stop midgame to see if anyone wants to trade a weapon, bring up a box, and do it while bloody war rages around us. It’ll probably be something like a trade with Steam Friends, or more likely it’ll be set up like a bidding list system, where you post that you want to trade item a for item b, and someone goes through the search results and finds the swap they want. Either way, it’ll be interesting; will players be able to ask for more things? Like someone putting up a Tyrant’s Helm and asking for 3 camera beards?

l4d_dem_cerealbox_ss_rzThe Fabled 10th Class

Someone, somewhere, is currently posting on a forum about the age old theory that Valve will incorporate a 10th class into the game to shake things up. The whole thing was caused by the cereal box in Left 4 Dead, and whether or not this will happen has long been debated, as while it would create a new experience, the complete overhaul of the game dynamic is too large to think. I’ll leave you to think about this one.

New map type

Although I have no idea what exactly Valve could pull out of their hat in terms of a new game type, it’s still possible that they might. My thought goes to the old Escort missions, where you had to escort one civilian player to a point while the other team tries to kill and stop him. We’ve seen the escort game type in the form of payload maps, but the Civilian class code was placed in TF2 right from the start, as is apparent from the fun YouTube videos exploiting it. Future game? Maybe.

Completely Random Item Updates

The other day, Valve made the official request for item design contributions from the TF2 community. Players submit their designs for hats and even weapons, and Valve will take the best, modify them to keep the game balanced, and inject them into the game. Now, I can see this being a completely awesome addition, and effectively ensuring new content comes out for the game as long as the TF2 community wills it. It’s a clever move from Valve, because this means that the items they bring in were what the players wanted. These could be rolled out as random item updates with just different assortments of items each time, or hopefully…

More Class Updates

Just because Valve have gone and updated (almost) all the classes once doesn’t mean it’s over. They could go back over and give a third set of items for each class. It would add further flexibility in strategy to the game, and more. With the recent Contribution System update, that could happen, as chances are people are going to submit their designs for the items they feel SHOULD of come out in the initial updates.

To prevent this post going too much longer I’ll stop here. But there really is so much Valve could do with this game. What else do you see Valve implementing?

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TF2 Game Update for December 22, 2009

by ZombieSkittles on December 23, 2009

Another update has come out today (thank god), which makes some nice, noticeable fixes to the game.

The big update for me was something I’d been frustrated by since they changed the Sandman to stun only when the ball is thrown from the furthest possible distance. All other times it would just initiate a temporary fleeing animation, allowing the hit player to run away. This wasn’t reflected in the achievement for killing 50 enemies while stunned, and as such made this achievement almost impossible to do unless farming it. It’s not possible to stun the player from that distance then run to them in time to kill them.
I came online today set to write a big ranting post about this, but upon checking the last update, I’ve seen that Valve have “fixed several Scout achievements that were broken by the new type of bat stun”. I assume this means if I kill a fleeing enemy, it counts now. Thank you Valve.

Also in today’s update:

  • The Scottish Resistance made it difficult to sticky jump, as you had to be looking at the sticky bombs you wanted to detonate. This update makes any bombs at your feet explode without you needing to look at them. I heard a lot of people complaining about this, so it’s good to see this fix.
  • Team Fortress 2 now supports bots as was detailed yesterday. It’s still in beta, and the first update to them happened today (they didn’t react correctly when stunned)
  • You can see which particular items in your backpack are equipped. I like this because I was getting sick of crafting three of four of item x, only to find I crafted the one I had equipped, and run out into battle without my Jarate by accident. Also, isn’t it funny that Jarate gets crafted into scrap metal? Guess I have too much iron in my diet.
  • A few fixes mainly around the Rage metre with the Buff Banner not displaying or generating properly in various situations.
  • A few achievements were fixed and altered to be easier to get.

Any thoughts on the new update? It’s all fairly simple stuff, but still.

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