My friend Joe over at Massive Crits has a great post about the player-remade map of Rock.

Unlike Joe, I had the chance to play a couple rounds on Rock recently. Small matches, all basically Scout rushes and one Heavy camping the warden’s office, but it was enough to see the map work beautifully. It’s a great recreation, down to the last detail, and brought back a lot of memories of playing it back in the old TFC days.

Joe also has a lot to say about bringing back the Demoman’s detpack. While it feels to me, lately, that the Demoman is a bit overpowered, I agree with Joe — it would be a great addition to the Demo’s arsenal and I’d love to see it return, perhaps as a Milestone 3 weapon for the Demoman’s achievements.  Being able to open pathways — and being able to reclose them, especially — was a big strategical element of maps like Rock and Warpath, and it would be great to reintroduce that.

My annoyingly erratic update practices continue — there’s a new entry up on Living In Oblivion.  Check out Day 19 Ampersand 20 here.

Sorry I can’t keep to a schedule, but I don’t have a schedule, because the moment I have a schedule for something I feel pressure to meet the deadlines, and when I feel pressure to meet the deadlines I rush, and when I rush I’m not happy with the results, and when I’m not happy with the results I feel resentful that I have to produce any results at all.

So, you might want to subscribe to the feed if you want to know the moment something new comes out, or, just check back every fifteen minutes like you should be doing anyway.

With the swarm of medics dwindling and gameplay returning to more-or-less normal levels on most servers, it’s time to look ahead and speculate wildly about which class will be up next for new achievements and unlockable weapons.

According to this post over at Control Point, all signs point to Pyro. Some snooping around with GCFscape has revealed this line of text that may indicate that the mysterious, muffled fire-flinger will receive the next batch of unlockables:

“Achievement_Group_1600″ “Pyro Pack (%s1 of %s2)”

As to what the achievements might consist of or what sort of alternate weapons might become available, I leave that bit of speculation to you, commenters, as I have such a splitting headache I can think of nothing at the moment. Nothing. Headache’s sappin’ mah creativity!

What do you think? What kind of new-yet-balanced weapons would you like to see on the pyro, and other than burning scores of people, what kind of achievements might be worthy of his (or her) time?

EDIT: Okay, I ate something and thought up some:

Smoked Under Water: Axe or shotgun 10 enemies to death while underwater.

Wet Match: Play a full match without using your flamethrower.

Hot Under the Collar: Kill 10 other pyros with burn damage only.

Axing For Help: Comically pretend to help an engie build something by whacking it with your axe, which is hilarious no matter how many times you do it.

The Hottie or the Shottie: Set 50 enemies on fire and finish them off with your shotgun.

Flick your Bic: Burn down an enemy sentry while safely standing around a corner from it.

Fire in the Sky: Kill the demoman whose sticky bomb sent you flying through the air.

Boom, Baby: Ride the Goldrush bomb into the last cap point on Goldrush and die in the explosion.

Hadouken Doin’?: Burn an enemy with the secondary pyro taunt — and come on, this taunt should totally cause 1 point of damage.

id Software has announced that they’ve begun work on Doom 4.

I didn’t play a whole lot of Doom 3, even though I was enjoying it.  I just kind of stopped at some point for reasons I couldn’t remember, and never went back.  But I liked the parts I played, they were scary as hell.  Something to look forward to.

Via RPS.

If you enjoyed the 2D Flash version of Portal, and believe me, you did, you might be interested to know that the people behind it, We Create Stuff, have created (or more accurately, recreated) those levels for the actual 3D Portal game.

I haven’t tried them yet so I can’t say how good they are, but if you’re looking for some new Portal puzzles, this pack has over 40 maps, good for several hours of playtime.  And all for the low, low price of clicking something.

The Payload gamemode seen in Goldrush is a variation on the old escort mode from the TFC days called “The Hunted” or “V.I.P.”.

One player would be the VIP, sort of a wimpy, wealthy looking dude with an umbrella, and his team (made up of heavies and soldiers and, I think, medics) would try to escort him safely through the map to an escape point while the other team (snipers only, I think) would try to take him down and end the round. I think those were the only classes who could play — I don’t even recall demos or pyros on those Hunted maps, but maybe I’m wrong — it’s been years.

It’s hard to imagine Hunted mode working in TF2. There are some very good players out there who are extremely hard to kill, but with everyone on the other team gunning for the same person, it’s hard to imagine someone making it from one end of the map to the other without dying, no matter how good his teammates were.

Another problem with the old Hunted was that the VIP was chosen at random and, often, whoever wound up playing it was a doofus who ran out and got killed or just didn’t cooperate, ruining the match for everyone (one of the many reasons Valve went with a mindless — though charming — bomb on a cart for Payload). Plus, it wasn’t a huge amount of fun being the VIP; it was exciting enough, running scared, but other than hiding behind people and ducking behind cover, there wasn’t much to do besides rely on teammates.

And, of course, it just wouldn’t be TF2 without all the classes playing, not just soldiers and snipers. With all of these things in mind, the VIP would need some beefing up and the VIP’s bodyguards would need a few favors right off the bat for this to even work.

1) Set-Up Time

For the offense, though, instead of the defense. While the VIP would have to wait in the spawn, the rest of the team could scamper ahead to set up sentries, get into hiding for some backstabbin’, or stickymine sniper ledges.

2) Checkpoints

Just like in Payload, getting the veep to a checkpoint could open new avenues to the bodyguards and close some to the assassins. It could push the assassin’s spawn point further back, or bump up the bodyguards. And, so there’s not massive camping around the path to the checkpoints, like you see in Goldrush, there would be multiple check points to choose from. So, instead of just going from A to B to C, you could go from A to B1 to C1, or A to B2 to C1, or A to B3 to C2, etc.

Reaching a checkpoint would also refill the veep’s health and recharge his gadgets. Yeah, he’ll have gadgets (see below).

I think a single exit is still required, though, because you have to throw the assassins a bone and give the engies a chance to work.

3) Spies on the VIP’s team could disguise themselves as the VIP. That’d be awesome fun. So you could have decoy parties defending the fake veep while the real veep snuck around another way. Or you could have a dozen fake veeps (and one real veep) all run for the goal and hope the real one gets through.

The VIP would need some customization as well. In the TFC version, he had low health and was armed only with an umbrella that he could hit people with. He’d definitely need a health upgrade and a few other tweaks to make it even remotely possible to get him across the map.

1) Bullet-proof bowler hat

I don’t care who you are or how fast you run or how invisible you get, you probably get headshot at least once a round. Even untalented snipers get lucky, and I should know. With everyone on one team looking to kill the same person on the other, the snipers, with their one-shot kills, are going to be out in droves. That’s why the VIP needs a bullet-proof bowler hat.

Don’t get me wrong, the veep can still get headshot, but not while his bowler hat is on. Snipers, however, can knock the hat off with a full-power headshot, and the veep will have to scurry back to retrieve it (or risk continuing without it).

2) Bullet-proof umbrella

The umbrella isn’t just for melee anymore — right-click and it foomps open, providing a shield he can crouch behind. This slows the veep’s movement drastically but gives him some protection against incoming fire.

3) EMP Grenades The perfect way to reintroduce grenades back into TF2– give ‘em to the VIP. He could chuck these to explode clusters of stickies, knock sentries out of commission (maybe just temporarily), or explode an enemy’s ammo suppy, dealing them damage and forcing them to resupply.

Maybe the grenade can even disrupt ubers? Ubers (and Kritzkriegs) are probably the real problem when it comes to Hunted mode, because nothing is gonna stop an ubered Pyro from killing his chosen target or a Kritz’d-out soldier from blowing someone up. So, maybe the EMP blast could knock out the medigun.

Gadgets!

Now, I don’t want to turn the veep into Superman or make him that hard to take down. The point of the game mode is, he should be weak without protection. But, it might be nice for the veep to have some other gadgets to make him more fun to play and give him a fighting chance out in the open.

Clearly, he can’t be sporting all of the gadgets at once, so he’d have a loadout screen at the start of the match where he could choose a gadgets to use during the game. Most of these are weaker versions of weapons and skills already in the game.

1) Self-healer, or even self-uber-er, perhaps slower to heal than the medigun and uber only lasting five seconds.

2) A cloaking device he can use, once, in a pinch. Maybe it can only be recharged at a checkpoint.

3) Spy-detector. Backstabs are gonna be a big issue, so maybe a gizmo that beeps when a disguised spy is near without actually pinpointing who it is.

4) A fireproof suit. He’d take direct pyro damage but not stay on fire, like the pyro’s own suit.

5) Mini-sentry. He could toss this level 1 sentry down but not repair or rebuild it until he reaches a checkpoint. It could slow down enemies while he hides and waits for new bodyguards to arrive.

6) Decoy - a hologram of him that runs in one direction while he runs in another. Lasts 10 seconds or so.

7) Spring-loaded shoes. Is this getting dumb yet? Yeah. Anyway, he could do the equivalent to a rocket jump, allowing him to travel some alternate routes or leap to safety.

And so on.

The other thing to consider is just having the veep have a set number of respawns. That way, if he’s taken down, the round isn’t over and everyone can keep playing. And, if he had a limited number of lives it would make that last life ever so precious.

Anyway, just some ideas I decided to jot down instead of doing my job. Someone go out and do all the work to make it all happen okplzthx.

EDIT:  Commenters below brought up a point I had planned to get back to:  the initial problem Valve saw of the stranger playing the VIP being a retard and ruining the match.  I can see this still being a problem on some public servers, but a lot has changed since the TFC days.

With Steam we also have our Friends List, and I think more and more people are regularly playing with groups of people they know and enjoy the company of, and who can be called on to not act like idiots (unless everyone is in the mood to act like idiots, which is just fine).

Everyone has their favorite servers where they’re likely to find a good match and like-minded people to play with.  Sure, there are still mic-spammers and griefers, and that will never change, but for the most part, players play with the friends or at least in locations where they know they’ll find a good match.

Also, with these hypothetical changes to the veep, maybe more people would enjoy playing him and he wouldn’t have to be randomly assigned unless there were no volunteers.

Over at Gamasutra there’s an article examining the top 20 underutilized licenses. You know, for games. Included are The Venture Brothers (I agree — I’d love to see a VB game) and Groundhog Day (I… huh?).

They leave off one that, despite my generally negative feelings about MMORPGs, I personally think is prime for the MMORPGifying: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

I’m know I’m not the first person to think this, and I know there have been other Discworld games, but it’s perfect for an MMO, and it’s the perfect time for it with every gaming company on the planet wanting a slice of that sweet Blizzard pie. Why not Discworld? They’re trying everything else under the sun. A Tom Clancy MMO is a possibility, and there’s apparently a Lego MMO coming. So, you can run around as a Lego man. For $15 a month. Yay, or something.

Discworld already has everything a MMO player could want. Want to play as a tank? You could be a troll or a golem. If stealth is your thing, you could be a vampire. Brawler/tracker: werewolf. Healer, you could be an Igor! If you prefer to be human, you could play as a City Watch Sam Vimes or Captain Carrot type. And of course you could be a wizard (or even a WIZZARD).

There are plenty of monsters and creatures running around, too. Zombies, imps, gargoyles, dragons, ghosts, Death… pretty much everything from fantasy and sci-fi appears at some point in the Discworld continuity. And I know there are pets in most MMORPGS. Who wouldn’t want a large sapient pearwood chest on little legs following them everywhere?

Of course there’s Ankh-Morpork, as colorful and crusty a capital as you could want in a game, and the perfect player hub. Join the Watch, or the Assassin’s Guild, or the Thieves Guild, or the Beggar’s Guild. Or the Clown’s Guild. If you’re the seventh eighth son of a seventh an eighth son, attend the Unseen University. There are plenty of foreign lands to visit as well, like Klatch, Uberwald, EcksEcksEcksEcks, Djelibeybi, the Agatean Empire, just to name a few.

Hell, it’s even got natural, logical gameworld borders — the Rim. No need to stack up mountains or end roads with piles of rubble to contain players, there’s the edge of the Discworld right there doing it for you without breaking immersion. Plus, in at least one book they went over the edge, so hey, expansion pack.

I recall an interview with Pratchett a couple years ago where he sort of brushed off the idea of an MMO, but I really can’t think if a better match than a sprawling fantasy gameworld and the writings of Terry Pratchett. There would be challenges — making it funny, sure, but mainly keeping it funny over the course of months or years of gameplay. I don’t care how well written Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s dialogue is, you’re gonna get tired of it hearing it after the 100th time you have to buy something from him.

Bottom line, I really don’t feel like working today so I decided to kill time by writing this. Besides, I’ve had pretty good luck on this blog so far by wishing for things aloud and seeing someone make them happen.

True to his word, Internet celebrity Christopher Livingston today published an update to his Living In Oblivion blog.

Place your mouse over these words and click your button to view Day 18. Quick! Before he changes his mind! He’s crazy like that!

Adventure haters rejoice:  my Living in Oblivion blog gets a write-up in the June 2008 issue PC Gamer UK!  That’s all kinds of awesome.

So, if you want to see Nondrick’s huge ugly head in print, head out to newsstands and pick up a copy, or as they say in England, hop in the lorry and nip round to the news agents.  They talk all funny over there.

If you want to see Nondrick’s huge ugly head on the blog itself, I don’t know what to tell you as I haven’t updated it in ages.  Ho ho.  Seriously, I’ve got a couple entries just about ready to go, so I should have some new stuff up shortly!  Swearsies.

And thanks to everyone at PC Gamer UK, again, especially this bloke.

Well, after a morning of meticulous meddlesome medicing on mostly public servers, I’m happy to report I’ve got the Blutsauger. Some of the achievements I got because I was specifically grinding for them, and totally ignoring the needs of my teammates. Some were just accomplished by playing the game like a non-jerkwad. The achievements I got to unlock it were:

First Do No Harm: Scoring the highest without personally killing anyone wasn’t really that hard because, while I’m a decent healing medic on certain maps, I’m a bad attacking medic on all maps (so while I tried to kill people, I failed), and I was also healing a bunch of my very talented friends. I believe the map was Dogblu. I didn’t even realize I was first in points when the round ended. Go me!

Quadruple Bypass: Healing a teammate who is taking fire from four enemies at once. Easy. Just find a Heavy. I wasn’t trying to specifically achieve this one.

Surgical Prep: Have an uber ready when the set-up clock runs out. Easy. Just find a teammate.

Trauma Queen: Three ubers in five minutes, with five assists. I don’t even recall doing this, so I think I might have died between ubers and lost track. At any rate, Goldrush or Dustbowl are good maps for this one whether you’re grinding or not.

Double Blind Trial: Deploy your uber within a few seconds of another medic deploying his. The pubbies are still crawling with medics, so this isn’t hard even if you’re not trying for it.

Triage: Uber someone who is about to take a critical hit. I didn’t even realize this was an achievement, but while ubering a Heavy I saw a Scout about to run over some crit stickies, so I ubered him in the nick of time.

Preventative Medicine: Block a cap by ubering someone. Dustbowl, Point 1, Stage 3. I was definitely going for the achievement and I think I wound up ubering a sniper just because he was there.

Midwife Crisis: Heal an engie while he’s setting up a sentry under fire. Goldrush is the place to do it. This guy was in no danger of dying: he had a dispenser up already and I think a Scout was pistol-peppering him from about 400 yards away . I just wanted the unlock.

Sawbones: Hit an enemy five times with your saw without dying.

This one was kind of funny. DaShiv, who I mentioned the other day, was a medic on the opposite team on Warpath. He’s an excellent medic (an excellent player in general) and already has the blutsauger, which meant I could basically never kill him. I was out-needled in one-on-one fights and when I chased him with my saw I could never catch him due to us being the same speed, so he’d needle me to death while feasting on my delicious hit points. Frustrating.

Anyway, I guess he was preparing an uber when his patient suddenly died. I charged him with the bonesaw and managed to trap him under the little stairwell near the second point. He ubered solo but couldn’t get past me, and couldn’t kill me without switching to a weapon. I couldn’t kill him because he was ubered and I didn’t want him to escape so I kept him wedged in there, blocking him with my body. So, we were both sort of immobile. Just to pass the time, I rammed my saw into his invulnerable face repeatedly, and got the achievement, which I hadn’t realized would work on an ubered enemy. I can’t recall what happened when his uber wore off, but I’m sure he deftly killed me as he so often does.

Hypocritical Oath: Kill a spy you’ve been healing. I totally did this on purpose. Saw a very unconvincing spy disguised as a soldier skulking around our spawn, healed him for approximately .00078 of a second then bonesawed the shit out of him.

Autopsy Report: Taunt someone you’ve killed. I, um. I died a few times trying to accomplish this. Embarrassing. It was during a very heated round of Goldrush, Stage 3, too. Just awful behavior on my part. Though we won, I still feel guilty about it. I think you have to be right on top of the guy you’ve killed for it to work.

House Call: Join a game a friend is in and uber him: I have something like 90 friends on my Steam list, most of whom I don’t even know, so this wasn’t too hard to get.

One that I’m sort of confused that I haven’t gotten is Second Opinion: ubering two teammates at once. I did this about 10 times and never got the award. Weird.

Anyway, I’m set! I’d like to someday get the KritzKrieg (I still haven’t even seen one in action) but for now I’m happy with my Blutsauger and will go back to only playing medic when my team needs one or I’m just in the mood.