KritzKast

In retaliation for Dustin’s attack on our show, Ruskeydoo and Agro invaded the Halo podcast Podtacular armed with little to no knowledge of Bungee/343′s stunning titles. We really hope he haven’t broken your show Dust Storm. There has been a little patch this week but that’s nothing compared to the massive story that hales the death of idling! Possibly, maybe, in some small way. Valve drop the bomb on what the new 3A robotic models are going to look like. Personally, I’ll have one of each and keep them coming, faster. And as a further aside it appears that Dark Horse Comics were giving away postcards that appear to indicate TF2 comics will be coming in FALL 2013! The image and title for this week’s podcast is stolen from THE PINKY’s brilliant SFM work, SPYFALL. For which he earns our PotW title. Well done lad, OneMoreUser would be proud.

There’s been a big update this week. Sometimes when we say that we’re talking about a new map added or a few dozen new items. This time “big” doesn’t seem to cover all that’s happened. Valve actually seem to have fixed pretty much everything all at once. Although we’d not go so far as to say that we have the perfect game now, we’re just a lot closer to it. We’re not going to list all the bug fixes either, not when the official blog has done such a good job of it. Oh, and the two maps we talked about last week are in now and have been thoroughly played, a bit, so we get to talk about cp_process and cp_standin with some hint of authority. Along with the Summery theme of unwanted bugs there’s now a bunch of new crates; Summer coolers to be exact. These open to reveal one of 60 new workshop submitted items. It’s a good job we have Heartsman and Ruskeydoo on the show to help sort out the really good ones. Before we leave the workshop behind there’s now a mail list for budding builders to ask all things of the seasoned pros and report bugs that they find too. Lastly we can’t help but mention the Pipeline. For some working for Valve is a lifetimes hard work realised. For other lucky sods it’s work placement. You lucky, lucky, b**tards. It’s still unclear if anything impressive is going to come out of this website but for now it stands as a great big “ner ne ne ner ner” to us all. Well done everyone.

When we make these episodes, we record them on a Sunday and try and get them edited as soon as possible. However sometimes we talk about future events, only for them, to be released in the time it takes us to get the episode ready for public consumption. This is one of those weeks. Sorry to say we won’t be talking about the huge update that just dropped….however we will be theory crafting about the update. We will however be talking about the Special Effect Charity Set. A group of Item creators have been asked to create some items for the charity Special Effect. The result is a very nice set currently on the workshop. But with your votes, they can not only make it into the game, but all profits from them will go directly to charity. Can’t say fairer than that. In other steam news, You can now Link your Steam account with your twitch.tv account, if you have one. The main people who benefit from this are DOTA 2 players who get advantages from linking them together. However, we can foresee multiple cool features popping up with this move. Unlike the move ESEA made a month back, Which has now directly landed them with a lawsuit. To find out if this effects you, or just to find out more, follow this link. Actually, While your at it, Follow this link too. Its the latest episode of Work In Progress with Agro chatting to Tim from Ozfortress, Gamers United, TF2mixup and all manors of TF2 Events. Lastly are 2 very important announcements. The first is that the limited edition blu figures are available in the valve store. the other one is that TF2 is the best PC shooter of all time……who knew.

Some weeks, no news happens at all, we struggle to find things to talk about and deep down, we all cry ourselves to sleep. This was not one of those weeks. We’ve had al kinds of things occur in the world of TF2 and steam. We start with the new item dropping. The Summer Claim Check. Nobody really knows exactly what its for yet, But we do know that it will be able to be cashed in for a “special crate” at a later date. The bigger news however is that item creators can now assign credit to a list of communities, tool creators, or guide writers that may have been a great help in making their item a reality. Valve posted a blog post In other news, The steam trading card feature has now gone live. So expect to see masses of trading cards up for trade. Trading not your thing? how about a Free for all event hosted by EdgeGamers. Its very simple, the aim of the game is not to work together but get more kills than your teammates. While it doesn’t involve what we think is the key part of this team based hat simulator, it does add for a fresh flavor on this game of ours. Still not got your intrest? How about a 72hour mapping contest hosted by TF2maps.net. Some of the resulting maps are very interesting and even add a few unique quirks not seen elsewhere. You have until July the third to get your votes in. Your waiting for me to talk about the ARG aren’t you? We’re not even sure there is an ARG, it depends on who you talk to. Ruskeydoo is convinced that the recent Korean voice patch for HL2 is clear sign of an ARG due to some of the tricks they left floating about. The recent discovery of newly added Korean notes in Surgeon Simulator also adds fuel to the fire. Even though the developers have claimed its not an ARG, that only makes people believe it more. Even with all of that, We still talk about TF2 Characters in Joe Danger, The best Wedding present in the world….from Valve. Plus we talk about the posibility of future updates to TF2 on the Xbox. There is so much to talk about it, its surprising that we can list it all on these show notes.

Out with the old style (crate #55) and in with the new (crate #59), I’ve got an answering machine that will talk to you. It says, “Hey, how you doing? I’m sorry you can’t get through. Why don’t you leave your name and your number and I’ll give you 7 new unusual effects”. Okay, that’s (probably) the last time I try and squeeze lyrics from a De La Soul song into the show notes. The effects are: Kill-a-Watt, Terror-Watt, Cloud 9, Aces High, Dead Presidents, Miami Nights and Disco Beat Down. TF2 has inserted itself into another game, this time it’s Surgeon Simulator 2013. The Heavy plays the role of the poor sap on the table and Medic plays the surgeon. Frankly, I think they missed a trick, the scout should have been the anaesthetist, BONK! There’s news that we may soon be getting a way to share our games on Steam. All we have are snippets of code for proof with no-one stepping forward from Valve to confirm or deny the story. I for one am looking forward to the chance to give my copy of “3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures Deluxe” to someone in hope they never actually return it. Ruskeydoo was a bit out of it this week having survived a couple of solid days of drinking. I too was on the back of a hard day’s night following TF2-25, KevinIsPwn’s marathon TF2 event in benefit of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. We raised over $1000 but it’s not too late to donate what you can. The Highlander Nations Cup is starting up again. If you want to get involved, to represent your country now is the time to step up since applications end 8th July. There’s been several updates to the Trading Cards beta with booster packs, colour changes, XP for number of games purchased and an achievement showcase to name but a few. Lastly our cat in the tree story is a sleepy tale. Two TF2 livecasters from different continents raced against each other in the mighty sport of sleeping. ThePledge and Mr Slin going hell for leather in a match that Sezco saw fit to commentate on. This put meta in the meta.

Think what you achieved last year? Finished school,  got a job, found the partner of your dreams and got married? Pah! They are nothing compared to what Jessecar and Geel9 have managed. In just 10 months they’ve created Scrap.tf and made it into one of the single most useful and visited TF2 traders’ destinations. Their site offers access to twenty trading bots who’ll turn your random items into scrap and more. We asked you to come up with questions for this interview with Geel9, offering Vintage Lo-Fi and queue Priority for those we chose to use. There were 8158 unique entries which we whittled down (with your help) to just 16. These are, in an order not too dissimilar to the order in which they were asked: How might you advertise this site to new coming Team Fortress 2 players? What does scrap.tf’s logo stand for? What exactly does it represent? According to recounts, you and Jesse both remark the site was birthed from the Facepunch forums. What’s the backstory behind the creation of the idea of scrap.tf? Scrap.tf has definitely changed the tf2 trading market. Did you expect it to have such an impact? Do you take the effect on the market into account when you make changes to scrap.tf? How did the process of advertising Scrap.tf go? Was it a friend to friend? What would be the most efficient way to advertise (after your experience of doing it)? How do the bots work? Have you ever had a bot get hacked? Each day, scammers liquidate many items for easier sales. Valve tends to ban people who help them along by trading for scammed items. How does scrap.tf protect its bots and people who trade with them? With your recently implemented promo items banking, is it possible for scrap.tf to pay for itself? (i.e. maintenance cost, hosting cost, etc.) How much time do you spend debugging the website compared to time coding new features? When you and Jesse are out of High School, will you continue your career in coding? If not, what will you do? Will you add more Bots to Hat Banking in future? And can you lower the first 0,33 fee? It will attract more people and will make our TF2 economy better. Without “1,22 or less” Buyers. When did both of you get into programming and what was the first major project you worked on? With the constant growth scrap.tf has been experiencing in the past months, don’t you guys worry about getting overloaded at some point, both from the technical and administrative points of view? You have said that you crated scrap.tf to eliminate Scrapbankers who flip for profit, yet some say you utilize this tactic with your Item Banking services. How do you respond to these accusations? Why is your name Geel9? Tuxxygate? The chosen few will receive their prizes shortly. Our thanks go to Geel9 for the interview and CDJO for the accompanying sfm picture.

We are joined today by Dust Storm from Podtacular, the long running unofficial Halo Universe podcast. Why? Well we’ve very happy to have Podtacular join KritzKast in the PodKast network and we thought you’d like to get to know him. TF2 seems to be going through a fashionista phase at the moment. In the last week 18 news hats/miscs have been added to the game. The cross over with Gunpoint brings us the Crosslinker’s Coil. A pre-order of Total War™: ROME II will gain you 7 themed cosmetics to pimp out your classes giving them that look of battles long gone. Scout gets his leopard on with the Beastly Bonnet and the Cheet Sheet. Pyro is standing proud in the Centurion and Steel Sixpack. Demoman gets the Tartan Shade and the highly questionable Tartantaloons. finally medic proves his superiority over lesser men with his Hardy Laurel. We’re seeing the up side to all that work Valve put into their new workshop import tool. Only two days after implementation and a blog post requesting new submissions they’ve dropped 10 new items into the game. I wish Ruskeydoo was here to tell you what that means. It’s super impressive given that in the past it could take many weeks between a submission being accepted and finally allowed into the game. Personally my favourite is The Dark Age Defender. Every demoknight will be wearing it this season. We’ve got two big news stories in hats! Firstly, unusuals are now tradable in the Steam Community Market. Secondly we have 30,000 Steam members, 3,000 twitter followers which we are celebrating by giving out 300 lo-fi longawave hats to you guys. Speaking of hats, TF2 has caught the eye of The New York Times‘s Fashion and Style section. Apparently spending thousands on in-game items isn’t normal behaviour. Who knew? Anyway they got some of those people with hundreds of pairs of shoes that they’ll only ever wear once and won’t last forever to talk about how gamers are a bit frivolous. Well they’ve got us there. Maybe we should run around murdering pedestrians for petty cash. My bad, that’s Saints Row IV – soon to launch with TF2 skins. Our ‘cat in the tree’ story comes from Valve’s offices where they are wondering if you’d buy a sweater that looked this. Erm, is this a trick question?

Running with our theme of promoting people who do charity events, we have Kevinispwn on the show this week. He is planning on doing a 25 hour stream of TF2. Because 24 hours, just isn’t enough. It will be happening on June 22nd on the Kritzkast servers and stream. Just head over to kritzkast.com/live to watch it unfold. As much as we’d love to, we can’t make the show all about Kevin, especially when this weeks update dealt with so much. we got more ETF2L Medals in game, Valve put an end to the dreaded Interp exploit and we find out what are the final items in those Mysterious Promo boxes. We also give our reactions to the TV spot for TF2 that aired with the premier of the new series of Venture Bros. Along with that advert came TF2 items straight from venture Bros. Listen in and you’ll hear our opinions of both the items and the first TF2 TV advert Alas, it can’t all be good news. This week saw the offical end to the TF2 Beta. Yeah, that right, one of the first exclusives we got, has now come to a close. We look back at how it was used and discuss if this truly was the right time to turn it off. The big news this week comes from the competitive side of TF2, or rather the future of it. Sal and eXtine visited valve HQ last Monday, to talk about the future of competitive TF2. They bring back with them news that Valve are thinking of putting a Highlander lobby in the game. We talk about the merits and flaws of both HL and 6v6. Then, to round it all off there’s a not-in-anyway-expensive GamingHeads sniper figure. We must admit, they do look perdy, but none of us can warrant the second mortgage required to actually buy one.

Yes this week has lots of things happened. However this isn’t the show for this week. Nope. This is the very late episode for last week and strangely enough, seemed like an empty week. That is until we tell you about the i49 qualifier games. A game where non-premiership teams can compete for free tickets to i49. If youre team wants to give it a ago, all the details can be found here Oh look, what is this. The next set of NECA Toys. Its the soldier and heavy. Its happening in july. Its almost like the cast of kritzkast have been given our favirote classes first. Thanks NECA. We also talk about the TV spot valve put out…..Actually we don’t really talk about it as when the episode was being recorded, it hadn’t aired yet. However you can listen to us guessing wildly and getting it completely incorrect. Over at TF2maps.net, they are doing another of their themed updates. For those who have not seen them before, its a project where people help make maps and mapping resources themed in a singular theme. This time the theme is Islands. hmmmmm. Get your thinking caps on and your butts over to TT2maps.net. Ever heard of IGL? Thats because they are event organizers that have just come onto the scene. Don’t worry, the way they are going about things, we think they will be very big very soon. So get you and your team on their Highlander Ladder as soon as you can. Our last item isn’t really TF2 Related. But it has the chance of being implemented in TF2. Overwatch. if your into CS:GO, check it out. We would also like to dedicate this episode to Andrew Scott Reisse, one of the lead developers on the Oculus Rift project, who lost his life last week aged 33.

Its indigogo all the way this week with both US and Australia/New Zealand reaching their targets to bring teams to i49. While we’re on the topic of the UK’s biggest LAN party, someone is looking to set their friend up for a blind date there. Apparently she’s slim, about 5’6″ and into gaming. No words on how old she is but she is from Wales so take that into consideration before you apply. eXtv are back with their Top10 videos. This will have been the first for quite some months. From the same video factory there’s a round up of the 2nd hundred Moments of Glory. Watch out for the Lo-Fi toting pyro at the end. There have been updates of course as well, but only little things like fixing the VR Mode for OSX users and making the Practioner’s Processing Mask into a neck item, not a face one. We’re more interested in what 3A have to offer with their blurry Heavy image. If their Portal 2 offerings are anything to go by we may be in for a treat.

Following on from our interview with Valve’s Andrew Wilson and the Robotic Boogaloo team we have two RBers join us for this week’s show: Heartsman (previously known as c**tsman) and NeoDement, co-auther of the brilliant guide of guides for making hats (and other items too, I guess). We shed a tear for the loss of such unusual effects as Emone and Electric Boogaloop but golf clap the sheer brilliance of the first wholly community made TF2 update. At last count there were 39 Hats, 18 Misc and 5 Extras added to the game, not to mention a comic, a website and a new SFM video. Valve haven’t been sat on their hands while their community has been working. Not only have they created a new import tool that will allow them to publish content faster, they’ve also come up with Steam Trading Cards too. Technically it’s still in beta but the benefits of getting on there are many-fold. Collecting the full set of cards give you XP that count towards your levels. Every level you go up gives you 5 more friend slots and every 10 levels opens up a showcase for your profile. Now on to NECA where a tour goer snapped some pictures of the upcoming 6″ Spy and Engineer models (complete with a toolbox and wrench). Former Valve employees have been continuing to work on hardware they started while at Valve. Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson have been given Gabe’s personal green light to take their 3D glasses / Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality prototype and make something of it on their own. They were part of the group that were let go from Valve a few months back but continued to work passionately on the project. In a slightly less dog-in-tree story, Geel9, one of the creators of the Scrap.tf (along with Jessecar) is someone we’re due to interview very shortly. He has admitted to using a script to craft Tuxxy #1 as well as other prized items. He feels so bad about breaking Valve’s Terms of Service he’s raffled off this prize, free of charge.

What do you do if you don’t work for valve but you really want to make an update for your favourite First Person Shooter? Some write emails, many grumble over the unfairness of it all but a select few plough on ahead and make their own fake update anyway. So it was with Robotic Boogaloo. Hats were made to a metallic theme, given quirky names and fun little descriptions. An SFM video was made, a site, a comic then just before due date for release *pop* it ceased to be and all around wondered what happened. By now you know the truth Valve has made it real. We talk with the community team behind the idea and discover how the fake became TF2′s very first entirely fan made update. To accompany this audio interview we’ve asked a few questions of Valve’s Andrew Wilson. 1) Valve have used content produced by community groups before such as the polycount pack but this is first time you’ve taken an unsolicited community project in its entirety. What made you choose the Robotic Boogaloo to release over things such as Night of the Living Update? Robotic Boogaloo had a really nice comprehensive package. LOOK AT IT.  I’ll wait, here. Even before it became what it is now, the fledgling content showed much polish paired with some really well thought out decisions. Concepts like Night of the Living Update have done a great job of showing us and the rest of the Team Fortress community what is possible in a theme. I don’t imagine that RB would have come without Night of the Living Update. Some of the design restrictions in Robotic Boogaloo helped this be a palatable first choice for us to promote the RB Team’s work. The stuff that the community is doing keeps getting better.  At this point, it’s impossible to ignore, and so we’re not. 2) The community produced more items for RB than actually made it into this update. What was your selection process? What factors meant some items were accepted and others rejected? Since the robo-hats are based on other items, we wanted to make sure that didn’t destroy the value in some of the rare and mysterious items that already existed in the game in a limited form from promotions, events, etc. Other designs were based on game play expectations, implementation, or craftsmanship. Some of the hats had multiple submitted versions and in those cases we judged them against each other and the better-looking item was selected. Several of us got together and reviewed items based on those concepts, and the final list is the result of that. 3) The accompanying comic was created by Heartsman. Should Valve release another bound edition of the games’ comics such as “VALVE PRESENTS: THE SACRIFICE AND OTHER STEAM-POWERED STORIES” will his work feature in this too? On a further note, can President Kisses Von Butternubs now be considered to be canon? Anything canon should come from the team here; we view the comic as a possible alternate universe. This comic may inspire more community made comics and other branches of the TF universe. While we don’t want too many people steering the canon for TF, we love to see where the characters are taken, and having a bound compilation of TF spin-offs would be something I would love to have on my bookshelf. Why no mention of the future engineer? He’s pretty much incredible 4) RB sees the largest number of cosmetic items added in a single update. Will Valve be focusing on huge updates of this nature in the future or was this a one off? Are we going to see more old hats discontinued to make way for these new items? This is a new concept. Our players might love it. We think they will appreciate it, but that’s to be seen. We’d like to see the response. The import tool we used to help the RB come to fruition is designed to make updates like this more possible, and we hope to nurture even more events like this, should it bring widespread joy to TF. Broadly speaking, we would like to release more content faster, and the RB update has helped us consider just what it t[...]

It seems as though something big is on the horizon as we didn’t have an update this week. However we still had a tone of stuff to talk about Ranging from community actives to how much sweat valve need to make a good game. Trust me, if you listen to the episode it all makes. Plus now you can cool off with a nice glass of bonk. If they were still available in the store that is. Do you remember “Hatgate”? Yep, that the name of the Skullgirls incident. Now it seems like their promised hats may actually be added to the game. If we the TF2 Community like them. They have been added to the workshop for people to view and if they get enough attention they might just make it in the game. We give our opinions on them, but if you wish to see for yourself, have a look here. In the rest of the TF2 Community we have the Game changing realization that SNSD are not the best HL team in ETF2L. In our backyard, we host a raffle, giving away far over 27 hats. The guys at Teamfortress.tv help with the i49 Fundraiser by putting on 2 showmatch’s of hypertheical Lan Finals. Plus, we find out what its like to make a bot that gathers you over $10,000 worth of TF2 loot, only to have it deleted from your account.

Steampipe has finally dropped and in case you haven’t noticed everyone survived. Wahoo. That’s not to say there wasn’t a need to immediately apply a  patch since sv_pure had gone mad and people weren’t allowed to spray their tags everywhere. Despite lots of things not breaking, P-REC, the auto-recording utility for comp players didn’t survive. There’s been a patch/download for it already though. While we’re still on the comp side of TF2 there’s a few stories for you. Cbear and Mr Slin have the livestream up for Comp vs Pros 5. We’ll not spoil it for you by telling you who won. Our server providers, Hypernia are partnering with ETF2L. The 8bit 2D fan made version of TF2, Gang Garrison 2 is running their own 3v3 single elimination tournament. Redditor, renalucario captures blow by blow the nightmare that was ESEA incorporating a bitcoin farming botnet into their anti-cheat client. Geel9 (co-creator of scrap.tf along with Jessecar) has agreed to being interviewed by KritzKast. We’re asking for your help coming up with questions for him. Even if you can’t think of a good question there’s still a chance to win hats by voting on other peoples’. Lastly we’d like to share with you this beautiful video explaining what happens between teleporters.

There’s something new, interesting and unexplained in your Team Fortress 2. We’re not just talking about our lead audio editor, DougRattmAnnThEpyRo making his début performance as a host. The RoboCrate has trundled into our lives and we can’t say for certain what this means. Never has this stopped us from random speculation in the past, nor shall it now. It has no key and no expiry date, neither does Doug. Speaking of unholy abominations, MisterMulluc has combined Futurama and SFM to bring you the GentleBot Hell video. In other crate related news the Refreshing Summer Cooler and the Festive Winter Crates have both had their descriptions updated. There’s a new filter for client downloads to ”Only allow map files” rather than all those other pesky media files that many servers use to set themselves apart. A quick reminder to set your alarms on StarWars day so you don’t miss the Comp vs Pros match. And a shout out of joy to the Ducks for their 2nd place win in the UGC EU Platinum League. Trading news and there’s a new tool for checking the highs and lows of items over time courtesy of Trade.tf Lastly, what do you get if you combine an Oculus Rift with an the Virtuix Omni? Well, other than a fully immersive game on an omnidirectional treadmill? Game porn. And like the real thing you don’t want anyone watching you while you’re playing because you may be having fun but you look like a right dick.