Amused Geeks

TF2 had another one of their great free updates (http://www.teamfortress.com/replayupdate/) with tons more hats for me to lust after clearing out much of the stocked up refined metal in the TF2 economy with a newly added bonus for early crafters where they get a numbered version of the item if they are one of the first 100 to craft it (the item is still numbered in backpack viewers and such even if it is crafted after the first 100, but only 1-100 show up in game apparently, I got 4 really terrible hats attempting it some random crafts :( ).

Valve also added a “Replay” feature where players can receive a demo of their last life from the server.

It’s a neat feature overall. Seems like it basically uses the old Source TV system and constantly records a demo on the server and players can then receive a snippet of these server-side demos for their last life (or seemingly the last life up to the point they pushed the replay key).

Unfortunately a lot of game service providers don’t allow or charge extra for the feature, and it’s lag-inducing on a lot of the servers it is on (Problems with Linux in particular as noted here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1875130).

Played around with it a bit and it takes awhile to convert the videos at full settings (on an i7 950 3.2 ghz with 12gb ram on Win 7 64 bit). A 4 minute or so video I just left running overnight when I went to bed.

Also in typically evil promotional Valve fashion, they have an event tied to the whole thing to promote the new feature. The Saxxy Awards, where players can submit videos in various categories for a pseudo Academy Awards type of thing.
http://www.teamfortress.com/saxxyawards/

Here’s a few samples.

This is a 2-3 year old video made using the old system and trying to prevent insane processing times etc. Fairly horrible quality.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxOcPogXC74[/youtube]

Then the much nicer and smoother looking results of the new Replay feature.

Short farting about as Huntsmen sniper on CP_Fastlane video.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgh7hf3OhKI[/youtube]

Somewhat longer (4 minutes) video playing demo on PL_Thundermountain (this was the one it took overnight to convert).
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo0H3KKXIU0[/youtube]

And my crowning achievements and possible submissions for the Saxxy Awards Failure category.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob7-uCRf0Mk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im6RguLIwwU[/youtube]