occasionally on a server in the evenings set up for a bunch of Raven ex-pats, but anyone's welcome to follow me in if you see the box pop up. 

I would follow you into the gates of hell.

(But only coop Doom2 so you'd get killed first.) 

I need to find some people to play tf2 with. Jumped on a pub last night and it was chaos.

Has everyone got headsets? 

Yes, and even better, I've actually got a Ventrilo server running, version 2.3.0. Add me to your Steam friends list and I'll share the details.

I've found that Steam's own voice-comm is shit, as is TS. 

I'm loving this game. Valve nailed everything from the visual styles to the feel of the guns to the level design. Great, great game. 

Funnily enough I never liked Team Fortress Classic. Bad (sometimes awful) level design, horridly slow gameplay and crappy graphics. This, ahhhh, this however feels like a true successor to TF. It's very definitely a spiritual follower of the ideals of TF, which is why I'm enjoying it so much. Did I post these already?

Anyway, let's see some screenhots of those maps, people. 

Or do you mean screens of the levels they released with the game? 

SDK just updated to support TF2, according to the steam news page. (also notoriousray posted it in the portal thread :) 

/me hugs metlslime. 

I'm just going to come right out and say it.

TF2 is probably the closest thing to a perfect game that I've ever seen.

That is all. 

TF2 is at least the best game of 2007. 

I have it, but since I have never ever played deathmatch games I don't know where to start. How do I find a team I can play for? 

Uhhh, you hop on a server and watch the level introduction. Join RED or BLU. Then pick a class. Kill the other team. 

i wouldn't say it's the best of all time, but it's at least the best of what i've played this year... art style rocks, gameplay is simple enough to get after playing only for a half hour or less but complex enough to allow for a lot of cool shit (tm) to happen during play.

all in all, valve really did well with the two non half life titles this time. 

I most just play on a 24/7 Lazytown server. Great map! I like going sniper. One time I stayed alive for 29 minutes getting 53 kills, 91 points and gave out 12,200 damage whilst dominating most of the team.

Heavy is the funniest guy the way he runs around and shouts when he is doing well. A jolly big guy who liks to kill people with his beloved gun... nothing wrong with that. 

I know nothing about the game and I have never played more than 5 minutes in a multiplayer FPS.

Is it worth me getting?

(oh actually looking at my Steam games list I think I already have it...) 

 

Some gameplay stats for TF2:

http://www.steampowered.com/status/tf2/tf2_stats.php

Scroll to the bottom for very cool (if not especially useful) heatmaps that show where most deaths occur. This is really cool, though the hotspots area all around the control points, which is obvious and not very illuminating. I'd love to see the same maps but with the contrast shifted so that the blue-to-green scale was more obvious, so we can see how it varies in all of the hallways and random other spots. 

What is quite interesting is the Win ratios of each team. Check the ratio for ctf_2fort, which obviously should be 50/50 (while ignoring stalemates), instead Blu seems to win alot more than Red. Some people suggested that this is due to the Blu door in the startup screen being in the middle, and the Red on the side, thus when the number of players on the server isn't pair, Blu is most likely the team to have an extra player, as most players just click right away when reaching the team choice page.
Maybe there's another explanation though?

I like the slight green line along the tracks on Well, Trains are so imbalanced! 

someone suggested that red player skins are easier to see than blue ones. 

That would probably be a better, simpler explanation. =) 

But I remember in Goldeneye I always used the spetnaz in the grey camo because he just faded into the walls.

Blue's a difficult colour to get right in games for players or enemies because psychologically / visually your brain doesn't register it as much.

I always noticed how alot of faster twitch games added environment maps or animated textures to blue players - like in Quake 3. 

http://www.mine-dog.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2940 

If you've not seen it already:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CTGrjcgSeAA 

...more sick that the original sfx