Do you hear that? That ominous, otherworldly silence? That's what we in the game biz call the calm before a storm. And keep listening... do you hear that distant rumble? We call that thunder. It happens during a storm whenever it's not quiet.

All of these portents can only mean one thing: Something big is happening. The fact that everybody else on the team keeps telling me that it's only weather, and that weather can't talk to you, tells me they're all in on it. (And possibly not human? More on this later.)

Perhaps it's the upcoming Polycount Pack update making the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and the Australia-shaped hair on my back matte itself back down, since it means we'll be shipping the best of the amazing Polycount Contest entries. Be glad you're not one of us, forced to order that list of magnificent items into some kind of hierarchy. Maybe we'll just announce they've all won first place.



Or maybe it's the release of the Official TF2 Wiki that's made weather choose me as its emissary on Earth. Developed by the administrators of the unofficial TF2 wiki, it's a perfect place to find out everything you ever wanted to know about TF2, but were too afraid to type into Google. Head over there and see if you can help them out. If you're a useful enough contributor, the weather might talk to you too. It might even point out which of the people on your team aren't real humans. Then we could compare notes.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's something else entirely.

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/battleofbothworldsfinalPoster"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/battleofbothworldsthumb.jpg" width="420" height="505" border="0"></a>

So you've been taking advantage of Training Mode and Offline Practice Mode all week, and you think you're pretty hot stuff. What better way to find out how wrong you are than to watch some pros in action at the Steam Powered User Forums' <a href="http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1302587" class="standardLink">"Battle of Both Worlds"</a> match this week? Also known as the "Pros vs Pubbers" event, the match features a team of competitive players versus a team of highly skilled public-server players. It's a perfect opportunity to see a whole bunch of truly great TF2 players have some truly great fun. <a href="http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1302587" class="standardLink">Check it out</a>.

So you've been taking advantage of Training Mode and Offline Practice Mode all week, and you think you're pretty hot stuff. What better way to find out how wrong you are than to watch some pros in action at the Steam Powered User Forums' "Battle of Both Worlds" match this week? Also known as the "Pros vs Pubbers" event, the match features a team of competitive players versus a team of highly skilled public-server players. It's a perfect opportunity to see a whole bunch of truly great TF2 players have some truly great fun. Check it out.

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Engine

• Fixed crash in SourceTV relay
  

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed blood splashes not appearing on bullet hits
  
• Fixed Achievement dialog text being cut off for certain resolutions
  
• TFBot Changes
  
  • Medics now respond when nearby humans call for Medic
    
  • If a Medic Bot is healing you and has an ÜberCharge ready, use the voice commands "Go go go!" or "Activate Charge!" to force the Bot to activate the ÜberCharge
    

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed client crash when rendering model panels
  
• Fixed client crash when rendering text strings
  
• Fixed client crash in the main menu
  
• Fixed server crash related to bots and health kits
  

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Engine

• Fixed a crash related to model caches.
  
• Fixed a crash related to empty proxy files.
  
• Fixed a rare crash involving corrupted voice-comm playback.
  

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed some issues with the community submitted tips.
  
• Fixed a case where servers could get stuck in an infinite loop while spawning bots.
  
• Made the training HUD code more robust, so it doesn’t crash if the client has modified HUD resource files.
  
• Fixed a potential crash in the HUD during startup.
  
• Fixed a level change crash related to Bot navigation meshes.
  
• Disabled quickswitch UI in training to reduce confusion.
  
• The Demoman's battleaxe now sounds like a sword.
  

Missed a note from yesterday:

• The Eyelander now collects the heads inside Eyelanders of Demomen it decapitates.
  

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed training servers showing up in the server browser for other users
  
• Fixed a crash related to level changes while playing a game with bots
  
• Fixed a potential crash on startup
  
• Remove debug "crash" command on dedicated servers
  

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/macupdate"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/its_here.jpg" width="420" height="236" border="0"></a>

We'd originally planned to tease out today's update over the course of 19 deviously brain-twisting blog posts, each containing a mercurially complex riddle hinting at the nature of the update. Unfortunately, everybody seems to have cracked the subtle rhyming codex embedded in our first blog post, which was actually supposed to be the most unsolvable of the 19.

So anyway. <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/macupdate" class="standardLink">Team Fortress 2's available on the Mac now</a>.

Or is it?

No, it is. Sorry, that was Riddle #17. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste.

As part of the celebration, <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/440/#weekend" class="standardLink">TF2 will be FREE to play all weekend</a>, and 50% off to purchase. We've also got a <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/macupdate/earbuds" class="standardLink">little treat</a> for anybody logging into the game from a Mac.

We'd originally planned to tease out today's update over the course of 19 deviously brain-twisting blog posts, each containing a mercurially complex riddle hinting at the nature of the update. Unfortunately, everybody seems to have cracked the subtle rhyming codex embedded in our first blog post, which was actually supposed to be the most unsolvable of the 19.

So anyway. Team Fortress 2's available on the Mac now.

Or is it?

No, it is. Sorry, that was Riddle #17. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste.

As part of the celebration, TF2 will be FREE to play all weekend, and 50% off to purchase. We've also got a little treat for anybody logging into the game from a Mac.

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Counter-Strike: Source Beta have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Engine

• Made several changes that improve stability for clients running low on addressable memory.
  
• Changed all HTML controls to use Webkit for the rendering engine.
  

Team Fortress 2

• Added Mac support.
  
• Overhauled the main menu, and added help to Loadout, Backpack, and Crafting screens.
  
• Added Training, with support for General gameplay & Soldier class training for now.
  
• Added Offline Practice mode, with support for KOTH maps and Dustbowl.
  
• The "Open Character Loadout" key will now go to your future class if you’ve requested a class change, but haven’t respawned yet.
  
• Added community submitted gameplay tips
  
• Community Requests:
  
  • Added "mp_forceautoteam", a server convar that forces all joining players to autoteam.
    
  • Added "mp_stalemate_meleeonly", a server convar that allows melee weapons only during stalemates.
    
  • Added "ExtinguishPlayer" input to tf_player for map makers.
    

Counter-Strike: Source Beta

• Fixed "wade" water sound not playing correctly on maps like Chateau.
  
• Updated the scoreboard:
  
  • Fixed to scale correctly in 5:4 resolution.
    
  • Fixed so it can be closed during intermission
    
  • Reduced font size to accommodate seeing 16 players per side.
    
• Fixed issue that awarded three points and a separate achievement when the bomb explodes after the round ends.
  
• Fixed issue with round end panel blocking the view of the game.
  
• Fixed issue in which you weren’t given credit for grenade damage if you fired a weapon at someone then hit them with a grenade.
  
• Fixed getting the achievement for shooting enemies in mid-air if the enemies were on ladders.
  
• Fixed mapcycle.txt skipping over several entries in the list.
  
• Fixed console warnings about missing materials.
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause a single MVP star to appear as an entry on the scoreboard.
  
• Fixed issue that made the FINISHER achievement impossible to get.
  
• Fixed ai_test_los crashing the server.
  
• Fixed the chat window so it no longer renders over scoreboard.
  
• Fixed MVPs not being cleared when sv_nomvp is set to 1.
  
• Marked mat_showlowresimage as a cheat command.
  
• Updated several strings to be gender neutral.
  
• The large radar is now disabled when freeze cam is active.
  
• Achievements dialog changes:
  
  • Now displaying the Steam Achievements dialog instead of the in-game Achievements dialog if screen width is less than 1024.
    
  • The Achievements dialog is now closed if you have it open and switch to a lower resolution.
    
• Repositioned the Fun Fact on the summary tab of the Achievements dialog and gave it a background to fix truncation and readability.
  
• Added a priority order for displaying win conditions when multiple win conditions are set.
  
  • If timelimit exists and is not 0, then show timelimit.
    
  • If timelimit does not exist, show maxrounds if not 0.
    
  • If both timelimit and maxrounds are 0, show winlimit.
    
  • If timelimit, maxrounds, and winlimit are all 0, show nothing.