Category: podcast

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When we make these episodes, we record them on a Sunday and try and get them edited as soon as possible. However sometimes we talk about future events, only for them, to be released in the time it takes us to get the episode ready for public consumption. This is one of those weeks. Sorry to say we won’t be talking about the huge update that just dropped….however we will be theory crafting about the update.

We will however be talking about the Special Effect Charity Set. A group of Item creators have been asked to create some items for the charity Special Effect. The result is a very nice set currently on the workshop. But with your votes, they can not only make it into the game, but all profits from them will go directly to charity. Can’t say fairer than that.

In other steam news, You can now Link your Steam account with your twitch.tv account, if you have one. The main people who benefit from this are DOTA 2 players who get advantages from linking them together. However, we can foresee multiple cool features popping up with this move. Unlike the move ESEA made a month back, Which has now directly landed them with a lawsuit. To find out if this effects you, or just to find out more, follow this link. Actually, While your at it, Follow this link too. Its the latest episode of Work In Progress with Agro chatting to Tim from Ozfortress, Gamers United, TF2mixup and all manors of TF2 Events.

Lastly are 2 very important announcements. The first is that the limited edition blu figures are available in the valve store. the other one is that TF2 is the best PC shooter of all time……who knew.

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Out with the old style (crate #55) and in with the new (crate #59), I’ve got an answering machine that will talk to you. It says, “Hey, how you doing? I’m sorry you can’t get through. Why don’t you leave your name and your number and I’ll give you 7 new unusual effects”. Okay, that’s (probably) the last time I try and squeeze lyrics from a De La Soul song into the show notes. The effects are: Kill-a-Watt, Terror-Watt, Cloud 9, Aces High, Dead Presidents, Miami Nights and Disco Beat Down.

TF2 has inserted itself into another game, this time it’s Surgeon Simulator 2013. The Heavy plays the role of the poor sap on the table and Medic plays the surgeon. Frankly, I think they missed a trick, the scout should have been the anaesthetist, BONK!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXzi7_m7g70?rel=0]

There’s news that we may soon be getting a way to share our games on Steam. All we have are snippets of code for proof with no-one stepping forward from Valve to confirm or deny the story. I for one am looking forward to the chance to give my copy of “3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures Deluxe” to someone in hope they never actually return it.

Ruskeydoo was a bit out of it this week having survived a couple of solid days of drinking. I too was on the back of a hard day’s night following TF2-25, KevinIsPwn’s marathon TF2 event in benefit of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. We raised over $1000 but it’s not too late to donate what you can.

The Highlander Nations Cup is starting up again. If you want to get involved, to represent your country now is the time to step up since applications end 8th July. There’s been several updates to the Trading Cards beta with booster packs, colour changes, XP for number of games purchased and an achievement showcase to name but a few.

Lastly our cat in the tree story is a sleepy tale. Two TF2 livecasters from different continents raced against each other in the mighty sport of sleeping. ThePledge and Mr Slin going hell for leather in a match that Sezco saw fit to commentate on. This put meta in the meta.

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Running with our theme of promoting people who do charity events, we have Kevinispwn on the show this week. He is planning on doing a 25 hour stream of TF2. Because 24 hours, just isn’t enough. It will be happening on June 22nd on the Kritzkast servers and stream. Just head over to kritzkast.com/live to watch it unfold.

As much as we’d love to, we can’t make the show all about Kevin, especially when this weeks update dealt with so much. we got more ETF2L Medals in game, Valve put an end to the dreaded Interp exploit and we find out what are the final items in those Mysterious Promo boxes.

We also give our reactions to the TV spot for TF2 that aired with the premier of the new series of Venture Bros. Along with that advert came TF2 items straight from venture Bros. Listen in and you’ll hear our opinions of both the items and the first TF2 TV advert

Alas, it can’t all be good news. This week saw the offical end to the TF2 Beta. Yeah, that right, one of the first exclusives we got, has now come to a close. We look back at how it was used and discuss if this truly was the right time to turn it off.

The big news this week comes from the competitive side of TF2, or rather the future of it. Sal and eXtine visited valve HQ last Monday, to talk about the future of competitive TF2. They bring back with them news that Valve are thinking of putting a Highlander lobby in the game. We talk about the merits and flaws of both HL and 6v6.

Then, to round it all off there’s a not-in-anyway-expensive GamingHeads sniper figure. We must admit, they do look perdy, but none of us can warrant the second mortgage required to actually buy one.

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Yes this week has lots of things happened. However this isn’t the show for this week. Nope. This is the very late episode for last week and strangely enough, seemed like an empty week. That is until we tell you about the i49 qualifier games. A game where non-premiership teams can compete for free tickets to i49. If youre team wants to give it a ago, all the details can be found here

Oh look, what is this. The next set of NECA Toys. Its the soldier and heavy. Its happening in july. Its almost like the cast of kritzkast have been given our favirote classes first. Thanks NECA. We also talk about the TV spot valve put out…..Actually we don’t really talk about it as when the episode was being recorded, it hadn’t aired yet. However you can listen to us guessing wildly and getting it completely incorrect.

Over at TF2maps.net, they are doing another of their themed updates. For those who have not seen them before, its a project where people help make maps and mapping resources themed in a singular theme. This time the theme is Islands. hmmmmm. Get your thinking caps on and your butts over to TT2maps.net.

Ever heard of IGL? Thats because they are event organizers that have just come onto the scene. Don’t worry, the way they are going about things, we think they will be very big very soon. So get you and your team on their Highlander Ladder as soon as you can.

Our last item isn’t really TF2 Related. But it has the chance of being implemented in TF2. Overwatch. if your into CS:GO, check it out.

We would also like to dedicate this episode to Andrew Scott Reisse, one of the lead developers on the Oculus Rift project, who lost his life last week aged 33.

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Following on from our interview with Valve’s Andrew Wilson and the Robotic Boogaloo team we have two RBers join us for this week’s show: Heartsman (previously known as c**tsman) and NeoDement, co-auther of the brilliant guide of guides for making hats (and other items too, I guess). We shed a tear for the loss of such unusual effects as Emone and Electric Boogaloop but golf clap the sheer brilliance of the first wholly community made TF2 update. At last count there were 39 Hats, 18 Misc and 5 Extras added to the game, not to mention a comic, a website and a new SFM video.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJeQhW3qnqo?rel=0]

Valve haven’t been sat on their hands while their community has been working. Not only have they created a new import tool that will allow them to publish content faster, they’ve also come up with Steam Trading Cards too. Technically it’s still in beta but the benefits of getting on there are many-fold. Collecting the full set of cards give you XP that count towards your levels. Every level you go up gives you 5 more friend slots and every 10 levels opens up a showcase for your profile.

Now on to NECA where a tour goer snapped some pictures of the upcoming 6″ Spy and Engineer models (complete with a toolbox and wrench).

Former Valve employees have been continuing to work on hardware they started while at Valve. Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson have been given Gabe’s personal green light to take their 3D glasses / Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality prototype and make something of it on their own. They were part of the group that were let go from Valve a few months back but continued to work passionately on the project.

In a slightly less dog-in-tree story, Geel9, one of the creators of the Scrap.tf (along with Jessecar) is someone we’re due to interview very shortly. He has admitted to using a script to craft Tuxxy #1 as well as other prized items. He feels so bad about breaking Valve’s Terms of Service he’s raffled off this prize, free of charge.

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It seems as though something big is on the horizon as we didn’t have an update this week. However we still had a tone of stuff to talk about Ranging from community actives to how much sweat valve need to make a good game. Trust me, if you listen to the episode it all makes. Plus now you can cool off with a nice glass of bonk. If they were still available in the store that is.

Do you remember “Hatgate”? Yep, that the name of the Skullgirls incident. Now it seems like their promised hats may actually be added to the game. If we the TF2 Community like them. They have been added to the workshop for people to view and if they get enough attention they might just make it in the game. We give our opinions on them, but if you wish to see for yourself, have a look here.

In the rest of the TF2 Community we have the Game changing realization that SNSD are not the best HL team in ETF2L. In our backyard, we host a raffle, giving away far over 27 hats. The guys at Teamfortress.tv help with the i49 Fundraiser by putting on 2 showmatch’s of hypertheical Lan Finals. Plus, we find out what its like to make a bot that gathers you over $10,000 worth of TF2 loot, only to have it deleted from your account.

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Steampipe has finally dropped and in case you haven’t noticed everyone survived. Wahoo. That’s not to say there wasn’t a need to immediately apply a  patch since sv_pure had gone mad and people weren’t allowed to spray their tags everywhere. Despite lots of things not breaking, P-REC, the auto-recording utility for comp players didn’t survive. There’s been a patch/download for it already though.

While we’re still on the comp side of TF2 there’s a few stories for you. Cbear and Mr Slin have the livestream up for Comp vs Pros 5. We’ll not spoil it for you by telling you who won. Our server providers, Hypernia are partnering with ETF2L. The 8bit 2D fan made version of TF2, Gang Garrison 2 is running their own 3v3 single elimination tournament. Redditor, renalucario captures blow by blow the nightmare that was ESEA incorporating a bitcoin farming botnet into their anti-cheat client.

Geel9 (co-creator of scrap.tf along with Jessecar) has agreed to being interviewed by KritzKast. We’re asking for your help coming up with questions for him. Even if you can’t think of a good question there’s still a chance to win hats by voting on other peoples’.

Lastly we’d like to share with you this beautiful video explaining what happens between teleporters.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7YiEa3TRM]