Dr. Grordbort is testing the water with two new packs for Scout and Medic. Though nothing is set in stone, Weta are asking you to vote for which you want, or don’t want. Regardless of how much you may not want the Scout to get anything new, Valve have gone and ponyed up a for a boombox that plays 4 different thumping taunt tracks.

Speaking of ill tunes, the latest offering from the TF2 Jump guys has a sound track you’re going love if you have any soul left. Hell, we even named the creator as player of the week!

Ruskeydoo has been with us less than a week and he’s already moonlighting for UGC in the 3rd Communities vs Pros event. I think he may still be playing that match in his head. No mind, we’ve got plenty of TF2 fixes and updates to keep us entertained. Everything from the Soda Popper to the Hero’s tail has either been tweaked or, in the case of items such as the Dashin’ Hashshashin and Nanobalaclava, made paintable.

The e-mail bag is all about items and trading. Droogie kicks off the trading discussion so we chat about the fabled TF2 Spreadsheet before Moregun Freeman gets moves us on to TF2 Raffle. Finally Stephen Merchant gives us all something to think about. Well, he gives the Heavy 4billion combinations of things to think about.

But that’s all what valve are planning on doing in the coming year. This week however, they still managed to put out an update, featuring a brand new user created item The Conquistador. But if you want some new items right now, You might consider Pre-ordering Jagged Alliance. If you do, you’ll get the Battle Bob, Bushman’s Boonie and the Merc Medal.

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for this coming Saturday. That will be when the Communities vs Pros III event will be going live. If you want to get any details or watch it live, EOReailty is the place to look. In the mean time, why not get hold of the new Steam mobile apps we talked about last week. Whats new you ask? This week is open and free for all to try.

Links:
Atlas Painting  |  Wheatley Death Star  |  Space Core Plushie  |  Portal 2 In Real Life  |  Portal 2 Cocktail Recipies  |  Cave Johnson’s Flaming Lemonade  |  Chell’s Springheels  |  GLaDOS Writes to Celestia

But valve didn’t stop there. They also patched TF2, adding in a new community made item, Aladdin’s Private Reserve. But it was in the Beta version of TF2 that the big changes happened. Both the heavy and the spy get nerfs that don’t have people calling out injustice, but actually smiling with intrigue.

Then you’ve got gamingheads taking pre-orders for the medic statue. Yes we talked about the statue before, but now you can actually get hold of one, instead of just pining over valve copy. Announced this week was the official line up for the next Communities vs Pro event. The apply named Cold War, will be happening on February the 11th. If you want to watch it live, just head over to eoreality.net/events

That said I know how they feel. This interview was recorded in December of 2011 and one thing or another has kept me from releasing it till now. The major 2.4 update happened for gg2 in October. The release combined a new play mode with greatly enhanced mod intergration.

Dual King of the Hill, requiring a team to hold their own point while taking the other team’s before the timer starts to go down, is an expansion on the standard KOTH mode associated with Team Fortress 2 the game’s spiritual forefather.

Possibly the most important part of this big update comes in the form of the mod update. Lead gg2 developer, Psychopath takes us through the benefits of the new open format for map makers and modders.

Intro/outro created for WIP by Cryogenetic.

The TF2Maps.net item we mentioned last week has finally been placed into the game. The Mappers Medallion is now not only in the game, but up for grabs for the winners of their latest contest, any previous winners and if the stories prove to be true everyone who entered the Artpass contest. That’s a bucket load of winners.

Meanwhile, over in the world of eXtelevision, eXtine has started his own Video show about the state of the game and the US competitive scene. He’s managed to take the considerable feedback he received from his first green-screen experiment and made this second episode into something very interesting. The still as-yet untitled, “Show with no name” is well worth checking out.

The TF2CSA (Competitive South Africa) currently have sign ups open for their first, foundry Cup. The odds of winning are still pretty good, so if your ping to this corner of the world is low enough sign up for fame and glory.

It seems like this show is all about competitions and prizes. Facepunch are hosting a series of quick draw modding competitions. In this first one they asked teams of two (see link for random team names) people to make an item for TF2 in the theme of “Retro futureistic”. If steam punk is your thing keep tabs on this site. If you want to give it a go yourself take heed of Pogo’s Resources and Tutorials post.

In the space of a just over a year MaxOfS2D’s YouTube site has seen well over 50 animations. He seemingly posts everything that comes into his mind; ranging from concept tests, to “how-to use 3ds Max” (his weapon of choice),  to random moments captured in GMod, all the way through to a dancing lady succubus pyro.

We asked you at the beginning of 2012 to come up with questions for Max and you certainly obliged us. We had more than 160 entrants, most of which were polite enough to speak aloud. We took 20 of the best (one was edited out) and put them to Max in this interview. Our thanks to everyone who entered, the 20 finalists bagging themselves a KritzKast Lo-Fi Longwave hat.

This week we all got up at 6am to do this extra long episode. Actually, only one of us did that. WM from Oz fortress fame, joined us this week. Not only is he a great person to talk to, he is also the best person to talk about not only Oz Fortress, But the Kritzkast Lo-Fi Offclass Cup too. Yes that’s right, Another chance for people to win a Lo-Fi Longwave, if you live in the Australasia.

But lucky for him (and us) There is still a lot more to talk about this week. Valve must have returned to the office after the holiday break, because this weeks update has been cleaning up after the christmas update. To celebrate this we let Sic Semper loose on our blog to point a few things out to Valve.

We also wanted to make you guys aware of an update to the white list generator, that lets you have multiple presets and a shiny search bar. Then we have our last time, the TF2Maps.net are hosting their latest Map making Contest. The Dynamic Payload Contest. This one is going to be good.

The good news for those seeking to wear shorts or thongs is that Valve has decided that winter is over already. As such they have called back all the Winter Crates, but as our guest host Ruskeydoo found out, they’ve not been replaced with normal crates. I sense an update to the update soon.

In the meantime we have a couple of YouTube videos for you. The Booty O’Saxton Hale! tells a Demoman’s story though in-game footage, a Machinima style little used with TF2 given the options of SourceFX and Gmod.

The second video is 51 seconds of frags in the Super 8 style of early colour cinema with a strolling sound track. Ain’t no Sunshine – Murder has never sounded so relaxed.

The geek art of CGHUB artist, SLiD3, depicts the cast of TF2 as super-deformed miniture characters and lends our conversation to making a collectable series of toys.

Finally John Patrick Lowrie is cornered at MagFest2012 and made to read a letter from Red Sniper to MLP’s Princess Celestia.

While we’ve got Ruskeydoo here we weren’t going to get away with not talking about the new UGC seasons and Wireplay Team Fortress 2 6v6 League (Season 10). We’re fine with this as we have our own Cup to talk about. KritzKast has teamed up with OzFortress to bring you OzFortress Presents: KritzKast Lo-Fi Offclass Cup or OPKLOC for short.

The letters section is brings us news of an excellent TF2 webcomic; <<IFA>>Rickbobby‘s impressive generosity and involvement in Community vs Pros; and the fake Sentry update. Brought to you by the same guy who created the fake Guard Dog update.

Links:

Wheatley’s Nomination Speech  |  Wheatley’s Winning Speech  |  Novint Falcon for Portal 2 | Rattmann’s Twitter  |  Portal 2 Present  |  Aperture iPad Sleeve  |  Make Your Own PotatOS  |  ASEMBLE Twitter  |  Zbot’s Twitter  |  Codename’s Twitter   |    Nutter’s Twitter  |  Nutter’s Website

Map Review: 12 Angry Maps