I wanted to start this weekend with some silliness. Yutram and I went onto one of the Serious Sam Workshops (Fusion 2017 specifically) and decided to mix things up by playing with TF2 weapons in survival and co-op. It was fun, and in some ways really educational.
Aside from having a couple TF2 mods installed I also have a separate double jump mod, and as an added side effect I can somewhat jump infinitely around any map. It isn’t perfect; sometimes the jump button will stop working, but since there is no fall damage you can just jump back up to your heart’s content.
I mainly played with the Scout and Engineer modes. There was something about jumping around the map avoiding enemies that seemed fun to me, as well as dropping sentries in certain areas while I ate my ice cream and watched Mental’s minions die.
On April 8, 2020 Rick May, who voiced the Soldier from TF2 as well as Peppy Hare from Star Fox 64 (among other roles he’s played) passed away at the age of 79 due to COVID-19. I love each character from the TF2 series, while the game is nonsensical and might not seem like much to someone who hasn’t looked into it or played it much (if at all), there is so much lore and story than you could possibly imagine, and it is really, really ridiculous. The Soldier was the only other American character out of all 9 classes (that we know of) and easily the craziest American of the two… I mean this is taken directly form the official site:
Though he wanted desperately to fight in World War 2, the Soldier was rejected from every branch of the U.S. military. Undaunted, he bought his own ticket to Europe. After arriving and finally locating Poland, the Soldier taught himself how to load and fire a variety of weapons before embarking on a Nazi killing spree for which he was awarded several medals that he designed and made himself. His rampage ended immediately upon hearing about the end of the war in 1949.
The Soldier is actually my 4th most played class (from when I actively played TF2). I think my proudest moment using him was during one of the Halloween events. I was playing on a public server with my Dad and Bro with a bunch of random people, and the opposing team had these soldiers that liked to rocket jump in the air using the practice rocket launcher (the rockets don’t harm you or anyone else, they just make it easy to jump), then parachute back down and try to either shoot you with a shotgun or hit you with a shovel. I used my Disciplinary Action to outrun them, and Direct Hit to not only rocket jump up to the payload (Helltower) but to also shoot at anyone around me (the Direct Hit is basically a Rocket Launcher that requires the accuracy of a sniper rifle, you have to be dead on in order to get a hit which in most cases is deadly) and sending us all to hell to race for the Bombinomicon, the two soldiers on the other team were both pissed and confused that I got past them, and inevitably my team won the round.
Rest In Peace, and thank you for voicing such an amazing character. If it hadn’t been for COVID-19 he would have still been working to this day. You can argue that he was old, and that he would have probably died from something else, but that isn’t the point. Him, like many people, are dying from something that could have been better handled if we actually had a government and people that could take it seriously… but that’s for a whole other post entirely.
The worst thing I could think of happened… there was no bacon to fry this weekend. But I still had some leftover ham. I made up one scrambled egg with paprika, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper, onion, garlic powder and some parsley, with some ham and swiss on top with a little bit of deli sliced red bell pepper, and secured between two crusty slices of French Bread. Wasn’t what I had in mind for breakfast this morning, but it was actually quite good.
I was going to write something yesterday, but ended up taking a 12 hour nap by accident. I feel well rested, but a bit sore… rough work week and all that.
Also managed to do a little livestream this evening; You can watch it here, as this one is a Twitch exclusive. If I have time to do a stream tomorrow I will, probably something else tho. Gained a couple new followers tonight too and peaked at 4! It was a good night I’d say.
I got quite a bit done in SFM today! Rewarded myself by getting my ass pounded in TF2 alongside Yutram… They have definitely changed the AI a considerable amount since we used to play regularly, that and the AI behavior seems a little off, the bots are really good at detecting spys to the point that the bots don’t seem to want to go spy. Last I checked the bots were set to medium difficulty, Yutram and I are wondering if Valve decided that the cool kids deserve MLG mode bots or some shit. While we were playing we were treated to an interesting message:
In TF2 you have the option of wasting $100 or some shit on a digital ring that you can give to your friend or partner as a sign of friendly gay marriage or something, and not only do you get to personalize the message, but everyone playing the game will see it regardless of server. I’ve seen quite a few of these over the years, and it’s nice to know the tradition is still going strong. I never received one myself, and hopefully never will.
I somehow managed to survive work. Stocked up on some flonaise and bought some more tissues. I can’t tell if I’m getting better or not. I also preordered the new Wolfenstein, see how that goes. I also played a bit of TF2 this evening, after doing a little prep work for a couple future videos though nothing big yet, just the starting points. Tonight was more of a play night to make up for not much play during the weekend… that and Yutram and I owed ourselves some form of game together.
I survived another holiday work week, and celebrated by playing some Sekiro and TF2. I also decided on a whim to look into modding the Dark Souls games… my god what a bountiful harvest. Definitely adding to my leisure to do list. I can’ believe it but apparently I’ve spent over 8 hours in Sekiro.
Get Shrek’t
I’m thinking that I might take a break from it though, at least for the weekend. I got to the Madam Butterfly boss battle and died after a long fight that demanded my hands and ego take a break. I really do like the game, as hard as it is it feels good when you finally figure out how to take down the bosses. One of the mods that I have installed gives random status effects, and for some reason I managed to earn permanent regeneration that would only run out if I died. Even after respawning this regen effect would continue.
Now onto the next favorite part of my weekend…. sleep!
I’m officially on vacation now. The weather was nice, and for my first day of vacation I decided to clean the bedding and take it easy. I even played a bit on the couch today, and even got back to my old roots in TF2. I even got enough junk to craft this butt pirate hat!
I have to say that TF2 has aged considerably well over the years. Hard to believe that it’s over a decade old, though the deliberately cartoony graphics make it timeless.
I also had a nice quiet Halloween. People at work liked my costume, quite a few were baffled by it at the same time. What baffled me though were people telling me my costume was “cute”. I fail to see what is cute about me wearing a metal jaw with a sombrero and poncho. :rick:
As for the rest of the week I haven’t really planned anything special. I just wanted to get away into my own world for awhile. Probably tackle some errands tomorrow, then do something evil. :zorak:
I ran into a bit of a problem running TF2 under Linux; I’ll be in the middle of a game and it’ll spit this engine error:
Out of memory or address space. Texture quality setting may be too high.
Doing a little research gave me an answer, but not one I like. Apparently this bug has been around since an update last year and seems to mostly be noticeable under Mac and Linux, especially if you’re running Open Source drivers (or if you’re trying to run the game on a potato). One “temp” solution is to delete the sound.cache file before launching the game. I say “temp” in quotes because it’s 2018 and this still seems to be an issue.
So it looks like my options are delete sound.cache every time I want to play, or play under Windows… which I planned to go both ways on anyway, but now it seems the Windows version will take precedence. I know I could play it via Wine if I wanted to, but considering I have this setup as a dualboot that seems rather pointless if I already have a native client…
Well, it is my weekend. I had plans to head back to Windows anyway at some point. I haven’t been there since Monday. 😛
Some of you might remember awhile back when I wrote about the pro’s and con’s of Steam, where I pointed out the good and bad with their recent choices. Probably one of the biggest points I touched on was the Steam Mobile Authenticator. I went into detail about how dependent Steam is on having your account tethered to a cell phone at the client level. But what about people who run dedicated servers for TF2, CS:GO, etc? I’m one of those people, and you want to know what the status is? Fucking stupid.
Last year I had to close down my CS:GO server when I discovered that I had to have a phone number attached to my account in order for it to function in anything but LAN mode. I decided to say screw it since it was the least popular server that I ran. Today however I noticed that for whatever reason my MvM Quickplay server was running insecure despite being set otherwise. Upon doing some research I discovered that a phone number must be associated with the Steam account the server is running off of. Oh, it’ll run. But in insecure mode, great huh? I feel like I’m being blackmailed… Either give us your phone number or your quickplay servers will never be secure again.
Fuck you Valve, and fuck the lowest common denominator for being stupid enough to get scammed, and practically forcing server owners like me to suffer the consequences of their stupid fucking actions. What the hell is the point of having a phone number tied to a server? I can at least kind of sort of see the point in clients having a phone number tied to their account for security reasons and VAC banning users who hack on an alt account tied to the same phone number, but why servers?!?!?!?!
The server software Valve provides for their Source Dedicated Servers is free, creating Steam accounts is free. It doesn’t take much to make an alt account with a cheap cellphone and a small game purchase on your account. So what fucking point are they trying to make?
Now I’m in a position where I’m contemplating if it’ll be worth it to get a cheap android to prevent this from happening to my other servers, or if I should just shut down when their time eventually comes. My MvM server was one of the more popular TF2 servers in my collection and I hate seeing it go because of Valve wanting a fucking cell number. If I do get an android though I’ll only use it for my alt server account. I’ll remove the battery and shove it in the drawer when I’m done. I fucking hate this.
