It really does take a lot of time and experience to know when spies are coming. A few quick pointers:

1. Spies appear at half health by default if they are disguised. If you see one of your teammates at half health, spy check him to be on the safe side. Medics can heal him to make him appear at full health though.

2. There is no reason for someone on your own team to be running erratically or back towards your base in most cases. If you see someone behaving oddly, spy check.

3. Turn around every 3-5 seconds. Sounds stupid, but it becomes second nature, and you get a good feel of your surroundings. If you turn around and someone is making a run straight for you, it is probably a spy.

4. You can feel spies that are cloaked. If you nudge up against something and it's not a wall, chances are it's a spy.

5. Pay attention to the class makeup on your team. If there are no pyros on your team, then a friendly pyro is actually a spy.

6. Look to see what each class is doing. An engineer should be tending to his equipment or finding ammo or going for some assists with the pistol/shotgun. If you see him wandering around aimlessly, sorta hovering about, it's probably a spy. Same with other classes -- a heavy should be spooled up or firing his gun instead of walking around on the battlefield, etc.

7. Imagine where you would hide as a spy. When you get to those locations, make sure to turn around and make sure there are no enemy spies there.

If you play soldier well, you are pretty much invincible to spies. With the amount that I rocket jump, spies will never be able to get me (since rocket jumping requires turning 180 and shooting the ground).

Oh, and Lasereth, how about 2 weekends from now?

I will see what I can do. Like I said, we are REALLY informal (we've only scrimmed together twice), we're not even a clan, and we rarely play together, so I will do my best to get them on at the same time.

I'm always up for some TF2 if Team Lasereth needs additional members :thumbsup:

I've never played competitively though...

Oh, if anyone on here has a server for this that we could use, that would be awesome.

I'd offer to join Team Lasereth myself, but it's been established that I'm not very good yet. I don't know the maps, I don't know the classes, and spies are the bane of my existence.

Them's some good spy-hunting tips, though. I'll try to keep all that in mind.

Don't worry. The maps that are currently getting heavy rotation are new to me. I've been out of the loop for a bit. I get lost quite easily, and die rather quickly as a result. Plus I have next to no achievements, and no unlocks.

I only know a few classes reasonably well; namely (and kinda in order of knowledge extent), the Heavy, the Medic, the Soldier, and the Engineer. I've tried the Demoman and Sniper for a bit, but I haven't played him much. The other classes (Spy and Scout) I tooled around a bit, but I don't like playing them enough to learn them. Perhaps you'll find your own niche(s).

We should hook up some time. (And on Brawl as well.)

We need to find a server where we won't get pwned.

That's cool, I quit about 6 months ago, but I liked playing with my clan. I was usually medic sniper or scout. They keep asking me to play, but I haven't reinstalled it. I have time to play casually, but not "SERIOUS BUSINESS" scrim/matches all the time.

Lasereth, how's the team recruiting coming along?

I have it spammed on our group. The team actually scrimmed this past Saturday, so I am thinking we will have a good turnout this Saturday. Have you found a server yet?

I wouldnt play this game hardcore, so I wouldnt join a team, but I bought it this weekend with the orange box and Im having a ton of fun. Any pub servers you guys play for fun?

Hah, I forgot to ask my friend for his server. I'll ask tonight or tomorrow. As for the time, one of my members said it would be best for Sunday. Would that be possible? Maybe around 9pm EST?

And, dippin, I tend to play payload only maps, so the pub servers I look for are payload rotations. And, despite the bad reputation this particular clan gets, I actually like the eGO server for this. There's a lot of really talented people there.

I play on the Sons of Bedlam clan server and the nQa clan server. Recently I've been playing on the CHZ server as well.

---------- Post added at 06:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:07 PM ----------

We've only ever played together on Saturday so I would prefer to do it then. Is there anyway you can get it together for Saturday?

Ok, but we would have to do it before 5pm est.

Ahh, shit man. I completely forgot, but I told my girlfriend I'd take her out Saturday. If we can't do it Sunday, then what do you think about next Saturday?

I will try to get it together for Sunday night. I'll post if I am sure of our turnout.

Yes, that would be awesome of you. We can do it earlier than 9pm too if needed.

Ok I have 4 people who will definitely make it, I will try to find 2 extras to get a team together.

Does anyone remember who had the TFP server?

Lasereth, I got us a server.

Set up a time and I will try to get our team together!

Next weekend? Not sure about doing either Saturday or Sunday though.

Any word, Lasereth? We have a server now.

Sorry man I hurt my back a week and a half ago and have barely been able to sit or stand until recently. I will post a bulletin to try and schedule it for this Sunday around 9 PM est. Does that sound good?

Oh don't worry about it dude. We have all the time in the world. If you need more time for your back, by all means take it. Otherwise, I'll ask the teammates if that sounds good.

Link

After all the talk of L4D has left me hot and bothered, but my machine just won't handle it (Dell laptop 2Gig Core Duo, 3Gig RAM, and onboard video). I've heard that TF2 works ok with lower settings, so I'm jumping on this like a fat kid on a trampoline. I live in China, so I hope that the internet connection will not spoil my fun. Cheers and keep having fun.

You know, if you put $60 in a videocard, it would run L4D and TF2 fine. The rest of your system is up to it, don't let that onboard video ruin the fun!!

Yeah, neither game takes a whole lot to run well. My old card of 6 or 7 years could run TF2 on the low settings at 60-80 fps.

It was a great experience. I'll drop the cash to get the Orange Box in the future when I'm not afraid of this delicious time sink.

The game ran pretty well with only the occasional hang-ups. I turned everything down.

The real key is to start as a medic or engineer and work your way up to pyro or other forgiving classes. Where is Willravel? I bet he knows how to be a spy. I sure as hell suck at it.

Lasereth, sorry about not responding the other day. I actually couldn't play because my computer is dead. I was on my friend's computer when you saw me on. Hopefully I can fix my rig this week.

Randerolf, it's going to be very rare for you to find anyone that can play a spy effectively. They have the hardest learning curve. For the other classes, just watch someone good play. By just watching them, you'll find out what all their strengths and weaknesses are, as well as the best way to use them. Lasereth for instance plays a good heavy. You can see his youtube video.

Watch this video if you want to learn how to play spy. It's possibly the best I've seen.

^ That spy is incredible. I'm a terrible spy... I last about 10 seconds before someone discovers me.

How many unlocks has everyone received after the new system was implemented? Any hat sightings yet? So far, I only have The Huntsman (very cool) and The Cloak and Dagger.

I just went ahead and bought this over the weekend while it was $10. I have this for 360, but it's so dead. :[ I actually suck at FPS on the PC but I'm not doing too bad. I guess I've gotten used to using WSAD and a mouse from Fallout 3 as of late.

That Spy is really, really good. Most of my play time so far has been on an Engineer. I normally alternate between Engi/Solider/Pyro/Demo/Medic. I'm not exactly sure what my Steam name is but I go by the name Esoteric in games. >_>

The only item I've unlocked so far is The Razorback and I somehow managed to unlock it twice.

The new system is absolute garbage. It took me 2 whole days to even randomly find anything (which was the axtinguisher, one that I already had). Since, I've found both the cloaking watches and the razorback. The thing is, I don't play spy at all. I do love playing sniper, and the razorback is nice, but I really want to try the huntsman. What's lame is that in the old system, I could've had all of the new weapons within 3 or 4 hours of gameplay. Now, I have to watch everyone else play with the huntsman while I have to wait weeks/months/years to randomly find it. I know they're implementing a trade system, but only god knows when that will ever come out.

I have the Ambassador, Dead Ringer, and Jarate. I also got The Sandman this go round since I didn't cheat to get it like everyone else. I love the new system -- I can play the game however I want and still get the unlocks. It also makes you look forward to playing the game and getting new items.

I saw the pyro hat and the scout hat so far. No one I know have them though.

The Ambassador + Dead Ringer is freaking great.

Milestones are back, so you can farm if you feel like it. Or just get random drops if thats your thing. I had enough achievements to get milestone 3 on both spy and sniper just from normal play since the patch came out. Maybe now the hats will drop a bit more often, tired of backburners and sandmen. LOL

Some short clips for your entertainment taken by me!!!!







Watch in HQ or the quality is bad!!

One more:

^ What a ridiculous chain of events, awesome!

I actually had a very entertaining KGB round on one of FuG's public servers the other night. On ctf_turbine, the entire server (a public one, mind you) coordinated a heavy-only, melee-only round. 10 heavies on each team trying to capture the flag with only the KGB; endless fun!

So I've been playing a Spy almost exclusively lately to learn the ins and outs and I think I've improved quite a bit from when I first started playing as one. The Cloak & Dagger and Ambassador are awesome. I also have Dead Ringer but I haven't tried it yet.

The Dead Ringer is really hard to use because it's so situational. From what I've seen, it's not so bad when you're on offense, but when you're on defense, it's much harder to put into play. It's definitely a fun little toy though.

Personally, I still prefer the original cloak because you can just grab ammo lying around to extend the length of the cloak. Also, it drains much more slowly than the others. Standing still with the Cloak and Dagger and waiting around just takes too much time for me.

The Ambassador is a straight upgrade for sure, though. It essentially makes the sniper's Razorback useless. The only time I use the Razorback is if I know the spies on the opposite team suck and won't bring out the Ambassador.

Latest video!!!!!!!!

ehh, lots of newb farming, but that first spawn camp was HILARIOUS

Nice one. You were mowing them down like your name was Toro. When I see people play well, it makes me want to get out there and try some more.

How do you get your videos to run so smoothly? I tried recording a sniper one and when I created a movie file, it was choppy as all hell.

Well first I record a demo in TF2 while playing. The moment I get on a server I open the command line and type "record fileXX" without the quotations. Name the file whatever you want. This is recording a file that can be played back using the source engine of what happened when you were playing. It's like playing TF2 except the file knows what's gonna happen already.

Open TF2 and hit shift F2 to open up the demo file window, hit load, and load the file you recorded.

Now you will need a recording program that will actually make a movie out of what you're watching. I use the full version of FRAPS. I have it set to 60 FPS at half-size. If I set it to full size it gets choppy like you're saying.

When you're watching the demo, press the record button on FRAPS and boom, you're recording a movie of TF2.

Keep in mind that how choppy your videos are during recording is largely dependent on your video settings in TF2 and how good your PC's hardware is. My PC is by no means a powerhouse but as you can see it records pretty darn good.

If your framerate sucks while playing TF2 then it will suck while recording also. If your PC runs TF2 great, but when recording it gets choppy, then you need to lower your graphics settings.

Ahhh. I do use the record feature in TF2. To make the demo file, I was using the one built into TF2 as well. While it plays, it makes the demo. Only, when it's playing and making the demo simultaneously, the framerate drops to shit. So, the demo's framerate is also shit when I watch it. It is neat to see the ridiculous headshots in slow motion though.

I'll try it with fraps or an equivalent though. Thanks.

Wow, my PC only chugs for a split second when I record a demo. After that the framerate doesn't drop at all. What are your PC specs?

No, what I mean is I can record while I play just fine. But, according to TF2 wiki, there is a command that lets you turn that demo into a movie file (sorry, I meant movie in my above post, not demo). It plays the demo, and while it's doing that, it converts it. That's what makes it turn to shit. I had one as an example of what it does, but I've lost it somehow. And, now I can't even play the demo back anymore.

But, yeah, I'll try fraps out or an equivalent later. A friend of mine is a map maker and he's recreating one of the old TFC maps. I forget what it's called. Maybe rockwall or rockfort or something like that. I'll record and see what it comes out as and post it.

Ohhh, I never use that feature, though that feature definitely makes it higher quality. It basically converts thousands and thousands of still images into a video of really high quality. I couldn't get it to work right either. :(

Heh, yeah. I'm assuming you have to have some baller ass computer for that to work properly.

Unfortunately, I forgot to record Rockyard earlier tonight. But, I can tell you for certain, it won't be popular. It's a MASSIVE 5 point push map. Each of the individual areas where the cp's are located are pretty neat looking, and the middle point is an island surrounded by water, essentially (the underwater fights on that point are insanely fun). But, all the points together make the map entirely too large. It literally takes the heavy an entire minute to reach the middle point.

Thats why you have battle engineers building teleports nad mini bases close to the front lines.

Do we still have a server? If not its no biggie, just curious

EVGA | Decade Celebration | Team Fortress 2 Weekend

Some prize thing coming up.

It's happening again, another EVGA prize thing...

EVGA | Articles | Own 'em all

Two weeks is a lifetime!

Starting May 17th, EVGA will host a two week long Team Fortress 2 event! Play on any of our TF2 servers at any time during the 2 week period and you will be entered into the drawing! Signup and participation is free and easy for any who wishes to participate. Official gaming will begin on May 17th at 4:00PM Pacific, and continue until Monday, May 31st at 11:59PM. Anyone that signs up and plays any length of time during those two weeks will be eligible to win a prize.

This is not a competition or tournament, merely a chance for regular gamers to come out and play your hearts out for some great gaming goods.

To qualify for this event, you just need to signup here with your Username and Steam ID. Just login and play during the two weeks, it's that easy! We hope you have fun and continue to make our wonderful gaming community as great as it has always been. Please visit the official EVGA Gaming site to the event to see the full list of servers EVGA Gaming Community | Dominate with us today!.