VanillaTF2

Here’s another one of those interactive posts, where I put things out, and you can fill in the blanks. Let’s rumble!

Infused
As we’ve covered before, the last Infused is no more, while they’re said to make a final appearance together at the upcoming Epic lan. Meanwhile, scouting protégé Greg is at work with a new roster to compete in i43. I had the pleasure of having a chat with him earlier, and he confirmed the following preliminary lineup:

Hat (medic)
Boomeh (soldier)
Ghent (soldier, trialling)
Numlocked (demo)
Greg (scout)
“” Viqun (scout)

With Numlocked confirmed, this will surely throw some pebbles into the cogs of Epsilon (see below). Furthermore, Mike (soldier, k1ck) is also rumored to be a candidate, but this is unconfirmed.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts - Aristotle

Not to beat around the bush, today is the official birth of a collaborative project between TF2tv, VanillaTF2, and a prospected development of the old ETF2L radio – VanillaTV. I don’t have the habit of pulling Dr.Philian greek philosopher quotes outta my ass, but I can’t think of a better wording for the motivation our project. ETF2L radio had a strength in its quality control, and the share spectacle of any cast they did to prove it. TF2tv had a notorious chase for providing a quantity of match coverage to the masses, with consistency in streams and video on demand. With VanillaTV, we want to combine those strengths in one place, together with all the discussions and information surrounding our games. On a foundational level, the decision is a no brainer.

The hard decision, was done by Byte (ETF2L radio), Comedian (TF2tv), and their respective teams. The merger of the 3 services requires forsaking certain liberties and hours of former work hours for structure, for the sake of “the greater (longterm) good”. It’s a mature and noble decision, one deserving recognition.

The project won’t be a revolution, and there’s no intention of patting ourselves on the backs just yet. Like the birth of this very news site, it will be a continuous work in progress – iterative solutions, with hopes of as much help and contributions from anyone interested, as possible.

Keep reading for all the details! - Torden

This is Darn. As team leader of the most winning team in TF2, and with a straight shooting charisma superior to most, Darn has been one of the most outspoken voices in the quest to promote our game. -The front of the “VanillaTF2″ movement, a champion of “what’s good for TF2″.

Darn is also the guy that would lead Dignitas into dropping out of AFS and, the latest, ESL, once it became clear that all chance for winning were lost. He was the man in charge of (not) ordering plane tickets to get Dignitas to i42, the man who was spotted on IRC arguing how prem is great, only to destroy a perfectly fine game just hours later – Yes, a team game is only as strong as its weakest link, so fragile 1 person can destroy it by ragequitting, fucking about, or event steal another team’s opponents, let alone dropping in an out of leagues at their own leisure.

Darn is in many ways the true personification of our game: Ambitious, but with a severe lack of consistency.

Huge shoutout to Exfane who did the lion’s share of the work putting this all together.  I simply refomatted it, sorry about the delay.

ShoX

I could chase nerds around, or I could just make a post, and let nerds come fourth. Being lazy, I went with the latter:

ButtonBashers
Stefan and Bash already left the ETF2L roster, and team leader Marco untagged on steam, as well as confirmed the fold on IRC. Reportedly, some of their players are hoping for the upcoming Brink to catch on. The news comes after several weeks of BB inactivity. Who will stay? Will Numlocked team up with remaining Epsilon players?

Crack Clan
Hykleri is back as scout, and Drosophile says on tf2.europe that he left the team

Codcrille
We already mentioned Codcrille (medic) looking for team mates in an earlier post. The plans seems to get a foothold, as he’s seen playing with former knights players Zebbosai (soldier) and Nor. Destructo (demo), Vadrigar (scout) and  Blade (soldier) has also been seen playing with them. What’s the deal, boys?

Update: Apparently, Zebbozai was a merc, and their main roster includes none other than former wotr player and pickup superhero, Nos.

Missed anything? Gief updates!

Anyone who feels the urge to type “tf2 is dead” in comments, is a vegetarian! – Torden

Tt are hitting it large with another $500 sponsored ESH cup. I could write a bunch of fancy bs about it, but let’s face it, this is the juicy stuff:

Tournament Details

Maximum teams: 64
Date: Monday 2nd May – Sunday 15th May
Format: Double-elimination Cup
Admins: Crasp
Sponsors: Tt eSPORTS, CaseKing
Prizes: $500 for 1st, 6x Tt Isurus for 2nd
IRC: #esportsheaven (on irc.quakenet.org)

Rules * Signups

Only 25 slots free atm, get going!
-Torden

Update: Infused wins their second iSeries in a row, congratulations!

If you’re just back from a holiday out in the sun like a regular person, you might not be informed of the action going at i42. -So far, the games have been one sided, with both LB and UB finals providing 5-0 results, in the favour of all things Thermaltake. The consolidation finals is going live this moment, which will decide who will get 3rd place and who will go to the grand final.

Considering the matches so far, one could expect Infused to win their way to play Team Thermaltake in a (hopefully) more even match.

Here’s some coverage from the event:

Cadred: Day-1 round up, Final day fixtures.
Us:  Group stage fixtures, lineups and results.
TF2tv: interview series on youtube, match vods on own3d

Summary

This match has been hugely anticipated – with the winner of this getting to represent the United Kingdom in the ESL Country Championships, along with a massive amount of bragging rights.

Seeing numlocked step into what has come to be known as “Byte’s team” must’ve been a boost for the entirety of Team UK1 – numlocked has been playing really well since coming back to TF2, dishing out so much damage since joining Button Bashers it was unreal.

Pre match talk from honeymustard and minimoose commentating was mainly based around the fact that joske was playing scout – the consensus seemed that UK2 were putting themselves at a disadvantage by putting him up against the scout team of Greg and fisshu – who honeymustard stated had been playing decently recently.

First of all, a big thanks to honeymustard and minimoose for casting, and the entirety of the TF2TV team, where you can watch the game again via the VODs.

Now, read on for the full rundown/wall of text, bought to you by / Trell!

Like I mentioned earlier, we got a bug yesterday with white screens when you commented. This should now be fixed. If you’re otherwise experiencing troubles, try doing a forced refresh (shift/ctrl+f5), and let us know if the problem still exists.

Now, onto a more proper introduction of what’s going on. A while ago, we asked for help with programming, and to our great luck, Skyride answered to the call of duty. Skyride is a veteran of the scene, perhaps most known as the man behind pixel servers and pixel pickup. It was an easy choice to add him to the list of technical admins.

We were also fortunate to pick up a web design/implementation intern protégé, Martn. Martn has been working with some much needed shaping up of the visual design of the match ticker and comment system, as well as developing the highlighted articles reel. Meanwhile Skyride is currently working on hardcore plug-in creation, but is also the man you can thank for details such as being able to sort the entries in match ticker and community news, as well as lending a hand with Martn’s projects.

The comment system:
We’ve already added the functionality before, comments you haven’t read will be marked with a green line on the right of the box. The date stamp on the left shows # of new comments / total # of comments.

Highlighted articles:
You’ve probably noticed how some posts can disappear into the void of post quantity. We want to do something about that, and pull some of them back.

So which posts are applicable? -Posts that have relevance over an extended period of time, be it because of the importance of its content, or by the quality of the written words.

Note: There’s more stuff coming, but in the meantime, are the changes here to stay? Make sure to let us know what you think (and why you think it), and if you’re missing something design/layout/feature wise.

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-Torden

Update: Apparently, Stefan as 2strong for sticky:

Update: Once again, / Trell is back with a match review + post match interview. Also, numlocked joins BB. It goes a little something like this:

Button Bashers stefan, bash, numlocked, Gear, Ronny, Marco

20

Team Thermaltake leon, exfane, fisshu, dorkan, kaidus, mirelin

ETF2L ETF2L Season 9

(25 comments)

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TIME

• Sunday April 17th
• 21:00 cest
• 15:00 edt (na)
• 05:00 est (aus)

CASTED BY

• No cast information available

SOURCETV

• tf2.team-thermaltake.com:27100

Who will win this match?

• Team Thermaltake (133%, 12 Votes)
  
• Button Bashers (33%, 3 Votes)
  
• Tie (0%, 0 Votes)
  

Total Voters: 9

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MAPSSCORE

DEMO

VIDEO

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cp_granary3-2

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Another highly exciting game (most of the recent games casted by TF2TV have been thrilling to watch) – and if you’re someone who has never had any interest in watching competitive TF2 before, there has never been a better time to jump in and start watching the streams of these matches.  Some impressive skills on show from both teams, with none of the players dissapointing the spectators, or the commentators.

Read on for a full round up and some answers from the Button Bashers almighty leader, Marco, aka bb\mvp.

Yes, this is quite late. Blame the PLDX secret merger and then me forgetting about this post. But after that, do check out the new movies below! Starting us up is the new masterpiece from sIN – featuring an amazing soundtrack and some fun, fun frags.

No Name 3 -