" - Fixed Linux dedicated server map load problems on certain Athlon processors"

"Asked whether that still meant for free, Lombardi said: "Oh, for free, definitely, as much as we can. You know, we don't have full say over that, but we have some say over how that works.

"So, for us, for free is the way to go. The gamers play the game, they want to keep playing the game, so we've collected their fifty bucks at the start, and once they're in the park, they can ride any ride they want in the park. So, for us that's been the philosophy.""

" - Fixed a medic invuln exploit.
- Fixed grenades going through players or buildings.
- Fixed exploit with rockets causing damage through thin walls.
- Fixed exploit allowing snipers to fire faster than intended.
- Fixed exploit allowing players to teleport with the intelligence.
- Fixed exploit attaching sappers to buildings through walls.
- Fixed spy backstab exploit.
- Fixed spy being able to attack without dropping his disguise.
- Medics no longer heal enemy spies when they're not disguised.
- Tweaked autobalance calculations.
- When an engineer dies in sudden death, his buildings explode.
- Fixed stats sometimes not reporting correctly.
- Added a dialog to indicate when the host shuts down the server.
- Added rumble to TF weapons.
- Fixed ping column sometimes getting hidden in some resolutions.
- Added 10 and 14 player game sizes.
- Prevent hosts selecting game sizes above their bandwidth limits.
- Improved handling of large network packets to eliminate bandwidth spikes.
- Reduced respawn times for smaller games."

" - Fixed Internet and Custom tabs in the ServerBrowser not correctly displaying the server info when going back and forth between the two tabs"

"Added "Custom" tab to the server browser
- Servers can now specify metatags describing the custom rules they've adopted
- Players can use tag filtering to find servers running the custom rules they want to play
- Added options for servers who want to become custom games: Disable critical hits (tf_weapon_criticals), eliminate respawn times (mp_disable_respawn_times), and raise maxplayers above 24

Initial release of Tournament mode (mp_tournament)
- UI for handling team naming, ready mode, and win results
- Disables team player limits, autobalancing, and intermission

Class balancing
- Reduced Soldier's maximum rocket reserve ammo from 36 to 16
- Reduced Demoman's maximum sticky bomb reserve ammo from 30 to 16
- Reduced Demoman's maximum grenade launcher reserve ammo from 40 to 24

General
- Added protection against voice command spamming. Dramatic reduction in teleporters needed
- Fixed mp_timelimit ending the map during the middle of a round on maps like Dustbowl and GravelPit
- Fixed "lastdisguise" command not remembering if you were disguised as your own team
- Added "Toggle Disguise Team" binding in Options->Keyboard to toggle the disguise team for the Spy's PDA
- Changed PDA menus to accept keys bound to "slot1", "slot2", etc., and "slot10" cancels
- Fixed Spectator targetID not using team colors
- Changed team autobalance code to not balance the teams when the active round timer shows less than 60 seconds
- Fixed "-maxplayers" on the command line not correctly setting the maxplayers value for the server
- Fixed Badlands never having Sudden Death triggered
- Fixed Engineer being able to detonate buildings that are being sapped
- Changed Engineer buildings to detonate when a player disconnects instead of blinking out
- Fixed potential client crash for players being healed by a Medic or dispenser
- Made several improvements to server-side stat reporting (not related to individual player stats)"

" - Fixed Badlands exploits and missing textures
- Fixed tv_enable resetting maxplayers value
- Fixed a case where a spy stabbing from the front of a player would score a backstab
- Fixed stats being reported incorrectly for some players
- Dropped weapons now replenish half of your max ammo when picked up
- Added exec'ing a cfg\.cfg file on the client when you select a class to play (for real this time!)
- Reverted mp_forcecamera changes from previous release and set TF2 default back to 1"

" Valve's devotion to its customers, their unheard of desire to ensure that at every turn we are inescapably pleased with their product, is no more noticeable than with Team Fortress 2. Like doting mothers, they've been keeping tabs on how we play. Vast mountains of data stored in underground bunkers keep records of our every action - that time you were sniped on top of the bridge in 2fort? It's in there. And all in the name of improving the thing more and more.

"Most of the time the stats tend to confirm things we already know," explains Robin Walker, lead developer on Team Fortress 2, "but there are cases where our assumptions are incorrect, like players using one area more than another. Or the areas that are most lethal."

"Fortress Forever 2.0
- Re-added recoil for some weapons (e.g. IC)
- Suiciding no longer causes you to lose 100 fortress points
- Grenades now have trails and halo's around them
- New EMP effect
- Medkit fix. Should be much easier to heal people with medkit and spanner now, as friendlies are lag predicted now
- Death by burning is no longer a suicide
- Scouts now don't take fall damage
- Blue pipe fuse timer dramatically decreased (from 2.5 to 1.1 seconds). Pipetrap explosion radius increased from 125 to 150
- Spy now has a 'last disguise' option on the menu
- New options screen with a load more stuff on it"

"Some tags are automatically filled in, based on server convars. For example, in TF2 we've removed the restrictions on a variety of server options (like friendly fire & respawn wave times), and now the tag system will automatically add a tag when they're changed, so that customers who want to play on these servers can easily find them."

"Source Engine

- Refactored how lightmaps are downloaded to the graphics card at level load. On some hardware configurations this can lower level load times significantly
- Optimized some particle systems to improve performance on some hardware configurations
- Player stats are now sent up as they change, rather than when the player dies
- Improved playback of sub-frame sounds
- Fixed a crash caused by alt-tabs during map load
- Eliminated unnecessary temporary memory allocation in scenefilecache

Team Fortress 2

- Badlands released
- Changes to Dustbowl
- Added a new access point to the stage2 attacker gates (drop-down left from spawn), allowing attackers a way to reach the left route without being subjected to the spam and sentry gun fire
- Fixed a gap in stage 3, cap 1 that allowed a player with to wiggle above the "ceiling" clip
- Fixed a gap behind stage 1, cap 1 house
- Fixed a high perch on stage1 cap1 house roof
- Fixed a perch offering view of nodraw textures and the skybox (stage1 cap2 rock barrier)
- Fixed a few places where rockets/demoman pipes could pass through non-solid models
- Sealed up a gap over stage1 lower startgate
o Clipped off tall windows in stage 3 to prevent sentry guns from behind built behind them
* Changes to Capture the Flag Well
- Fixed trains not starting on map spawn
- Removed cap association from red spawns that were spamming console
- Changes to Granary
- Removed spawn timing advantage from the middle (from -3 to 0)
- Fixed several model perch exploits (red, blue cp1 gate and blue cp2 gate pipe)
- Fixed a few places where players could get stuck between containers and silos
- Adjusted playerclips on red container that made it appear like players were floating
- Added a small delay (200 ms) before a zoomed sniper shot can get a critical hit
- Added server side convar mp_fadetoblack. Same functionality as Counter-Strike, used mainly during in-person tournaments and LAN events
- Added flamethrower "sizzle" sound when the Pyro is hitting a target
- Updated explosion debris to be a bit darker
- Fixed idle players not being kicked from the server if mp_allowspectators was set to 0
- Added ctf_well to the default mapcycle.txt file
- Added ctf_well to the default motd.txt file
- Fixed floor tile material type
- Fixed some weapon damage info missing from TF2 game stats
- Made some small changes to the Demoman viewmodel that were causing performance problems
- Added exec'ing a .cfg file on the client when you select a class to play.
- Added a new timer to the HUD to show the value of mp_timelimit. This is useful if you're playing a timed match on 2Fort, where you only set a timelimit on the server and no other win conditions.
- Added server log entry for buildings destroyed by their owner
- Fixed sentry gun shadows being clipped
- Updated glass material

SourceTV

- SourceTV now uses a hidden slot on the game server. This allows for 24 player servers to also have a SourceTV proxy connected to it
- Fixed Pyro's flamethrower flames not showing up in SourceTV"

" - Pyro And Demoman - Tweaks are being looked that will give Pyros the ability to earn points for lighting up large groups of enemies, even if they are not killed by the attack. Additionally, they're looking at giving the Pyro class a little boost when trying to take out Engineers hiding behind their sentry guns.

- Engineer - The Engineer will reportedly receive points for assisting in building up a teammate's buildings.

- Soldier - This merely mentions that they're looking to make it so that Soldiers are a bit more careful when firing their rocket at point blank range."

"- Added new capture the flag map CTF_Well
- Added Spanish map descriptions
- Added new option to auto-save a scoreboard screenshot at the end of a map to the Multiplayer->Advanced dialog
- Added more particle optimizations for mid range and low end hardware
- Updated CP_GravelPit to fix all known exploits and changed the scoring method to score per capture rather than per round
- Updated "nextlevel" CVAR to trigger a changelevel at the end of the current round (not mini-round)
- Fixed SourceTV demo recording problem
- Fixed mp_stalemate_enable not preventing Sudden Death mode on some maps
- Fixed a couple cases where player stats were not being recorded correctly
- Fixed some log entries being truncated
- Fixed crash caused by trying to import a custom player spray
- Removed the "Reset Stats" button from the Player Stats screen"

"The area near what was once the second-to-last control points have been rennovated to give another set of stairs to the upper floors of each team's home building, but other than that the structure of the map is largely unchanged. It's better suited to large numbers of players, since the action tends to be more spread out on CTF maps. As an extreme example, Valve's Robin Walker recalled having to defend his team's dropped intel underwater, in the moat outside the train yard."

"Thanks for all the feedback, and I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the game. We are indeed investigating Soldier changes, and one of the changes we're trying out is focused on making Soldiers a little more careful firing their rockets at point blank targets.

As for the Pyro scoring, we have a minor tweak coming down the pipe. He's going to get a small amount of points for every enemy he ignites. This should reward you for those moments where you drop into the middle of an enemy pack and light them all up, hurting them all and disrupting their plans, but not managing to actually kill them."

""Our estimate is that both these maps should be out within the next 2 months," Valve employee Robin Walker told Shacknews. "We expect to ship other new content before that."

That other content includes the forthcoming Medic achievement pack, which will add several new achievements for the Medic as well as a significant gameplay tweak for the class.

"It's a large scale modification to the core of the game," Walker hinted. "It'll debut in a limited fashion through the Medic first, but it'll be affecting all classes eventually."

"We're really looking forward to the community reaction," he continued. "We're really excited about where TF2 will be going over the next year."

Source: ShackNews "