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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]

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ttp://www.kritzkast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/360fx360f.png”>There’s something new, interesting and unexplained in your Team Fortress 2. We’re not just talking about our lead audio editor, DougRattmAnnThEpyRo making his début performance as a host. The RoboCrate has trundled into our lives and we can’t say for certain what this means. Never has this stopped us from random speculation in the past, nor shall it now. It has no key and no expiry date, neither does Doug.

Speaking of unholy abominations, MisterMulluc has combined Futurama and SFM to bring you the GentleBot Hell video.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLPkKZS6q9k]

In other crate related news the Refreshing Summer Cooler and the Festive Winter Crates have both had their descriptions updated. There’s a new filter for client downloads to “Only allow map files” rather than all those other pesky media files that many servers use to set themselves apart.

A quick reminder to set your alarms on StarWars day so you don’t miss the Comp vs Pros match. And a shout out of joy to the Ducks for their 2nd place win in the UGC EU Platinum League.

Trading news and there’s a new tool for checking the highs and lows of items over time courtesy of Trade.tf

Lastly, what do you get if you combine an Oculus Rift with an the Virtuix Omni? Well, other than a fully immersive game on an omnidirectional treadmill? Game porn. And like the real thing you don’t want anyone watching you while you’re playing because you may be having fun but you look like a right dick.

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This week we are joined by the very joyful Ace from Wolfsgorawr. He fits in perfectly with our crazy ensemble  He’s a great person to talk about the new cvar “cl_first_person_uses_world_model” That allows you to view your world model in first person. Officially made for the Oculas Rift, this option has been given to us to at least pretend that we have that sweet piece of hardware. We also talk about how certain plugins my become obsolete due to valve restricting how you connect to secure servers with the use of “-insecure”. Makes no sense? listen in for it all to be revealed.

This week also revealed how people can get their hands on one of the reddit hats. Actually, your chance to get one has already passed. You needed to participate in the reddit April fools event. But if you did you can now redeem it by going to This Link. Their methods have caused a bit of confusion and to a certain degree, anger. But we were guilty of that when we released the Lo-Fi right?

A Public Service Announcement comes next in the form of a date for Steampipe’s release. April 30th is the day it will be unleashed on the world. Make sure you have the space on your computer and if your a server admin, make sure you mark that date in your calendar to update all of your servers.

After that we talk about the ESEA season 13 finals between High Rollers Gaming and Classic Mixup. As always, it was an intense match with crazy moves being played all over the place. Check out the VOD and see for yourself. Or maybe you’d like to enter a 1v1 soldier Ladder. No? What if i told you the prize was a Fully working Arcade Machine? Suddenly its more appealing. Check out MWEB’s Page for all the details.

Lastly we have our player of the week. RedXM. He created a Fantastic Add on That changed your Healing beam’s floating plus’ with Kritzkast Logos. We Love it. If you check it out, we’re sure you’ll love it too.

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Some people were wondering why there was no update this week. We here at kritzkast don’t wonder such things. For we know that Valve are currently on their Hawaii Holiday. So no need to worry about the lack of bug fixes. However, that doesn’t mean there is nothing to talk about. Last Sunday was the Finals of the Ready Steady Pan tournament II. Agro and Ruskey were lucky enough to cast the finals and use far more pan based puns as humanly possible. If you want to watch the PANdemonium that was the finals, click on this link and you can relive it as if you were there. Going on at the same time was the Tip of the Hats event. Trying to raise money for one step camp, the event featured 2 days of 12 hour TF2 live streaming with various different events and personalities from TF2. The list is too long to mention here, but you can recap on everything that happened here.

We couldn’t have a show this week with out talking about all the toys. Yes thats right, more of the NECA series of action figures have started to pop-up for pre-order. However NECA have made no announcement about these figures…or the July release date that seems to be attached to them all. If you can’t wait til July, Then why not head over to the TF2 and get yourself a Plushie Balloonicorn. This beckons the question…isn’t it actually a plushicorn?

If that isn’t enough, The fans have also been hard at work making toys for us. If you head over to Psychobob Arts Shapeways shop, you’ll see he has created a fully upgradeable Sentry gun. As awesome as it looks, is it legal? Over in the prop world, we have been treated to a collection of great looking TF2 replica weapons by HVD Props. They are planning on creating at least 1 weapon for each class. To follow their progress head over to their facebook page

Though it’s too late to vote, you can still see someone from Valve’s staff in a kilt.

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Yes, of course it was April Fool’s day last week. Valve’s chance to make fun of us by feeding us misinformation. This time round they teamed up with Reddit to declare that reddit had taken ownership of TF2. The official Wiki played along with multiple updates that just weren’t true, including koth_egmill, the Easter Bundle and a wonderful animation for the Pit-Boy.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k9ksZriAtw]
ETF2L got in on the fun too. Claiming the beloved eSports celeb, TivQ was a hacker. There were some red faces when it was revealed to be a hoax later on.

There’s a bit of a cross over with the real and fake when it comes down to the proper update. Reddit hats, the Conspiracy Cap and the Public Accessor have been added to the game, though no news on how to actually get them yet. In addition there was a secret Easter egg on the April 1st blog post. Clicking the full stop at the end of the post takes you to The Teufort Reader and series of Adverts for Lecture Valley and Mann Co. products. Included in this may-be-fake-may-be-real line up are a medieval teleporter, Dispenser costumes and lots of nutmeg.

Good news for VR fans, the HUD on the Occulus Rift we talked about in eps.213 week has been updated, along with new input parameters for Razer’s Hydra controller.

It’s been a long enough wait but Poker Night at the Inventory 2 is finally available as pre-order. That means new TF2 items and luckily enough we have the creator of those items in our hosts list. We grill Ruskeydoo about the  Bloodhound, Dapper Disguise, Necronomicrown, Samson Skewer and the Long Fall Loafers. He didn’t make the loafers, but four out of five aint bad.

There’s manic gameplay on the eSports front too. Starting with a Ready Steady Pan Semi-Final. Ruskeydoo and Agro casted this match between itsallgood and Goon Partchers. We did such a good job they’re letting us cast the final next week too.

Agro joined Khalesi and Commedian to cast the final round of the Round Robin‘s 7th EU Mentoring Tournament.

Finally, there’s and epic competition ahead in the 5th  Community Vs Pros. 9 communities are represented to fight against the pro team of AG.