Report: Objective Focused Sniper

Last night I played another hour of Sniper. I tried the rifle for a bit, but I'm really awful with it, and I feel too much like a camper so I switched back to huntsman. I started of really good, pinning a scouts head to the wall with my first shot, then it was all down hill for about 30 minutes.

Eventually, I started to find my stride getting 35 kills and 10 headshots. Nothing to write home about to be sure, until you consider that I still have less than 2 hours as a Sniper. Plus I kept aiming at people's feet like I was shooting a rocket launcher. Some habits are hard to break.

Now, some people complain that as a Huntsman Sniper, you are ill-equipped to be at the front lines. You're Heavy-slow when your bow is drawn, you shoot one projectile at a time with no splash damage, and you only have 125 HP. I generally agree with the sentiment, but if you don't run to the front lines unsupported you'll be okay. Despite the shortcomings of being a Huntsman Sniper, I capped 3 intels and defended 4.

Report: Learning the Sniper

I decided to play Sniper in game for the first time today. It was... pretty bad. I've never been a very good sniper in any game I've played, so I hadn't played it to this point. The playstyle of the average Sniper doesn't really appeal to me. I like to play offensively and push. It's why I play so much Soldier and Demo. However, I do have all of the unlocks for the Sniper, so I loaded out with the Huntsman and the Jarate.

As terrible a Sniper as I am, and I am very bad, it was really fun running around with the bow and arrow. I was body shotting a lot, I think it's from aiming low with rockets and grenades all of the time. Once I started aiming higher, I started missing more, but at least I started head shotting people.

I'll continue to play it for now. On the upside, I can only improve as a Sniper. I guarantee that I can't get worse.

Report: My First Hour as a Spy

After playing TF2 since November, I finally got my first hour of Spy under my belt. Here's what I learned:

1. I am Failspy - I miss backstabs all of the time. All. Of. The. Time.
2. I need to realize that I can't shouldn't start sapping sentries that are surrounded by the entire opposing force.
3. Infiltrating the opponents base and successfully taking down an Engineer and his sentry nest is an actual adrenaline rush.
4. Playing as a Spy, as opposed to a Soldier, is a completely different experience. Both physically and emotionally.
5. Use. Your. Revolver. I knew this before hand, but I had a hard time bringing it out. I just want to stab everyone. Spies that shoot live longer.
6. Backstabs, on the rare occasion that I get them, are very satisfying.
7. It's going to take a long time to get better.
8. Patience is a virtue.
9. Pyros suck.
10. If you've backstabbed and re-cloaked, make sure to re-disguise also. It's pretty embarrassing to drop your cloak in order to sap a sentry and get shot immediately because you aren't wearing a disguise.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can consistently get into the oppositions base. Usually once I get there, I do okay. I often make bad decisions and start following enemies out the front door. Usually with a Pyro behind me. Truth is I had the most fun messing with an Engie in his base. Sap a building, cloak, sap a different building, cloak, repeat, backstab. I want to do more of that and less burning to death. Something like this:

Report: Learning to Engineer

I only have any real experience with 4 of the 9 classes in TF2. This past weekend I decided to change that and try a couple of classes that I don't normally play. I figured that I would try Spy and Sniper. It didn't work out too well.

I figured I would start with Spy, as the Sniper playstyle holds less appeal for me, and joined a server. There were 2 other Spies already, but it's 2Fort and I didn't think anyone would mind. No one did, until we gave up 2 quick caps due to lack of defense. Some guy asked if one of the Spies would go Engie. He was polite about it, so I switched since I thought I was probably the worst Spy of the three of us. And so, I spent a few hours playing as the Engie.

Things I learned:

• Teammates are sometimes ungrateful. There's always a guy who never seem to like where you build anything. You want it somewhere else? You go Engie.
• As much as I hated Spies before, I hate them even more now. It did give me some insight in how to play as a Spy though.
• Engineer is boring. I always suspected as much, but if the rest of your team is good, there's not a lot to do as a defensive Engie. Wait for a spy, break his sapper, hunt him down, wait for him to re-spawn and make his way back, repeat.
• Demomen suck.

On the upside, I have more points in a single life as an Engineer than any other class. And the longest life (22:22). I probably could have stayed alive for longer, but I'd get bored and wander into firefights with my shotgun looking for a reasonable place for a teleporter exit.

Overall, it was sort of fun. I'd do it again, but I'd prefer to do it on a less organized team so that I have more to do.

Strategy: Soldier Doublecross

I'm posting this because while I barely play Doublecross, I capped using the same path I saw in this video. It's very effective, as people don't expect it. Not yet anyway.

Scripting: Name Change

This is real quick for those of you that might want to change your in game name so that it's not the same as your steam name. You can put this line in a *.cfg file or you can type it into console:
setinfo name "<desired name>"

Here's a video showing it in action:

Scrpiting: Aliases

What I'm going to show here isn't very complicated. I like using my "q" key to switch to my melee weapon and then to press it again to get back to my previous weapon. I'm going to show you how I did it initially, which worked, but not how I really wanted it to, and my revised version. The revised version is also the "proper" way to handle things for when your scripts start getting more complex. To do this, we need to understand aliases.

Aliases all have the same structure: alias "<alias>" "<commands>"
If there are multiple commands, they are separated by semi-colons(;). Easy enough to understand, I hope.

Version 1 (not recommended, but it gets the job done):
alias "PRIMARY" "r_drawviewmodel 0; slot1; cl_autoreload 1; bind q MELEE;" alias "SECONDARY" "r_drawviewmodel 1; slot2; cl_autoreload 1; bind q MELEE;" alias "MELEE" "r_drawviewmodel 1; slot3; cl_autoreload 0; bind q lastinv;" // bind them bind "MWHEELUP" "PRIMARY" bind "MWHEELDOWN" "SECONDARY" bind "q" "MELEE"

This script does what I want, but not very well. You'll notice that "MELEE" uses the "lastinv" command. It does switch back to the weapon I was using, but it ignores any setting I have in place for either "PRIMARY" or "SECONDARY" (the r_drawviewmodel command, in this case). Plus, if I change my mind about what button I use for melee, I have to change the binding in other places too.

Version 2 (the right way):
alias "PRIMARY" "r_drawviewmodel 0; slot1; cl_autoreload 1; alias MELEE MELEE1" alias "SECONDARY" "r_drawviewmodel 1; slot2; cl_autoreload 1; alias MELEE MELEE2" alias "MELEE1" "r_drawviewmodel 1; slot3; cl_autoreload 0; alias MELEE PRIMARY" alias "MELEE2" "r_drawviewmodel 1; slot3; cl_autoreload 0; alias MELEE SECONDARY" // bind them bind "MWHEELUP" "PRIMARY" bind "MWHEELDOWN" "SECONDARY" bind "q" "MELEE"

This is a much better version that addresses all of the problems that the first script has. I have two different MELEE aliases that differ only in which weapon it will switch back to. Which one is used is determined by PRIMARY and SECONDARY. It happens in the last command of each alias.

I hope that helps. Also, feel free to steal this script if you want.

Launch Options: How To

Just a quick video to show how to set launch options in TF2:

Launch Options

One of the main reasons that I started this crummy blog was to try to have a definitive list of launch options for TF2. While I'm sure there's a resource out there, I can't find it. So I'm going to create a list of launch options and add to them as I find new ones. Here's what I have so far:

Option	Description
-autoconfig	Sets your configuration to default settings.
-height	Sets the height of your window in windowed mode. Use your screen resolution numbers with -width and -height to get a full screen window.
-noborder	If in windowed mode, there is no border.
-novid	Removes the Valve video that normally launches first.
-sillygibs	Replaces gibs with springs, sprockets and more.
-window	Runs in windowed mode. Makes alt-tabbing easier.
-width	Sets the width of your window in windowed mode. Use your screen resolution numbers with -width and -height to get a full screen window.

This post will be updated repeatedly.

Scripting: Comments and Simple Binds

This is going to be really quick and really easy. I'm only covering two things in this post: how to add a comment to your script, and how to do a simple bind.

First, commenting your scripts. Comments are used just so it's easy to tell what's been scripted without having to mentally parse the commands. Generally, I just describe what's supposed to happen. Comments are indicated by two slashes at the beginning of the line and anything that follows them is ignored. For example:
//This is a comment.
Hopefully, that's easy enough to understand.

Binding is also very straightforward. You need to tell TF2 that you want to bind a certain key to a specific command. For example, if I want to change my primary weapon from the default of "1" to "9":
//Binding my primary weapon to number 9 bind "9" "slot1"
There, it's done. What's important to note is that while "slot9" is the default bind for "9", now that you've overridden it "slot9" no longer has a key assigned to it. Also, unless you reset your binds in each class like I talked about in my previous post, this binding will stay for every class, every time you run the game after the script has been executed.

I hope this helps someone understand binds a bit better. Next time, I'll discuss Aliases and more complicated scripts.

Scripting: Getting Started

When starting to customize your scripts for your different classes, it's a good idea to back up the default binds for TF2. What I did was copy the default binds into a file called defaults.cfg, and exec it at the beginning of each classes configuration file.

Your TF2 config files can be found in your steam folder at :
./steam/steamapps/<username>/team fortess 2/tf/cfg

The first line of each of my class files is:
exec default.cfg

This resets all of my binds in case a different class has binds that affect the new binds. This is especially important for your Spy and Engineer config files. For your convenience, here are the contents of my default.cfg, you can copy and paste into your own:
unbindall bind "0" "slot10" bind "1" "slot1" bind "2" "slot2" bind "3" "slot3" bind "4" "slot4" bind "5" "slot5" bind "6" "slot6" bind "7" "slot7" bind "8" "slot8" bind "9" "slot9" bind "a" "+moveleft" bind "b" "lastdisguise" bind "c" "voice_menu_3" bind "d" "+moveright" bind "e" "voicemenu 0 0" bind "f" "inspect" bind "g" "taunt" bind "i" "showmapinfo" bind "l" "dropitem" bind "m" "open_charinfo_direct" bind "n" "open_charinfo_backpack" bind "q" "lastinv" bind "r" "+reload" bind "s" "+back" bind "t" "impulse 201" bind "u" "say_team" bind "w" "+forward" bind "x" "voice_menu_2" bind "y" "say" bind "z" "voice_menu_1" bind "'" "+moveup" bind "`" "toggleconsole" bind "," "changeclass" bind "." "changeteam" bind "/" "+movedown" bind "-" "disguiseteam" bind "SPACE" "+jump" bind "TAB" "+showscores" bind "ESCAPE" "cancelselect" bind "INS" "+klook" bind "END" "centerview" bind "PGUP" "+lookup" bind "PGDN" "+lookdown" bind "PAUSE" "pause" bind "ALT" "+strafe" bind "CTRL" "+duck" bind "F1" "+showroundinfo" bind "F3" "askconnect_accept" bind "F5" "screenshot" bind "F10" "quit prompt" bind "MOUSE1" "+attack" bind "MOUSE2" "+attack2" bind "MOUSE3" "+voicerecord" bind "MWHEELUP" "invprev" bind "MWHEELDOWN" "invnext"