We're going to ship an update with another small set of Pyro changes this week. Like our previous update, our goal is to increase the degree to which skill can make a difference between two Pyro players. We received a bunch of useful feedback after the last update, and we think we've managed to address most of it, without removing the skill-based additions. As always, play with it for a bit, and then let us know what you think.

While we've been mucking about with game balance, Mister Royzo has unveiled his latest round of creations over on his Fancy vs Nasty Update page. Go take a look, and try not to melt his web server down.

In between obsessing over hats, we've been trying to keep up with all the neat things the community is doing.
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<li>The fantastic folks over at <a href="http://www.tf2maps.net/" class="standardLink">TF2maps.net</a> have unveiled the results of their latest community mapping challenge: <a href="http://compctf.tf2maps.net/" class="standardLink">The Competitive CTF Contest</a>. If you're a fan of CTF, or a competitive team looking for some new maps to try out, it's the best day of your entire life. All down-hill from here, sorry.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=14856077#post14856077" class="standardLink">Third European edition of Pros vs Pubbers</a> event is coming up. Like previous events, their goal is to bring competitive & public players closer together. If that sounds like fun, head over and get involved. They also sent us this neat poster to show us that not only are they better at TF2 than us, they're also better artists.</li>
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<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/thyw_large.jpg"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/thyw.jpg" width="350" height="501" border="0"></a>
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In between obsessing over hats, we've been trying to keep up with all the neat things the community is doing.

• The fantastic folks over at TF2maps.net have unveiled the results of their latest community mapping challenge: The Competitive CTF Contest. If you're a fan of CTF, or a competitive team looking for some new maps to try out, it's the best day of your entire life. All down-hill from here, sorry.
  
• The Third European edition of Pros vs Pubbers event is coming up. Like previous events, their goal is to bring competitive & public players closer together. If that sounds like fun, head over and get involved. They also sent us this neat poster to show us that not only are they better at TF2 than us, they're also better artists.
  

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It's been a busy week for the Team Fortress team. That's right: the police are here again. We're on a first name basis with them, the fire department and the nasal extraction emergency response team at Overlake Hospital by now, so it was like meeting with old friends.

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=3692&p=1">Read the full post</a>

It's been a busy week for the Team Fortress team. That's right: the police are here again. We're on a first name basis with them, the fire department and the nasal extraction emergency response team at Overlake Hospital by now, so it was like meeting with old friends.

Read the full post

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

Linux Dedicated Server

• Fixed srcds_run to work properly with the Counter-Strike: Source beta dedicated server when autoupdating.
  

Engine

• Fixed the startmovie command not using the codec dialog.
  

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed dropped weapons and ammo kits not being affected by explosions.
  
• Adding missing "+lookup" and "+lookdown" keybind options.
  
• Added SetCTFCaptureBonusTime tf_gamerules input to allow map authors to set the length of crit bonus time (in seconds) for CTF captures.
  

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 a missing localization string
  
• Fixed an issue where Linux dedicated servers would not automatically retrieve master server addresses
  

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 players seeing cloaked Spies when they should be fully cloaked
  
• Updated the Homewrecker
  
  • It now damages enemy sappers on friendly buildings
    
• Fixed items not displaying correctly while playing back a demo
  
• Badge hire dates now display the time in GMT
  

We're shipping a quick update to clean up some of the confusion around the 119th Update badges. We initially chose to calculate which badge to give players based on the beta release of TF2, because that was the date that customers could first play TF2. This turns out to have been a mistake, largely because many players did the math and thought they were getting something other than what they ended up with. So to remove that confusion, this new update moves that date forward to the official retail release of TF2, the 10th October 2007, and reissues updated badges to anyone who would be affected by that date shift.

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/119"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/platinum.png" width="420" height="333" border="0"></a>

We also felt it was still important to reward those who were there on the first moment TF2 went live, and helped us by beta testing prior to release. So we've added a new "Primeval Warrior" badge, which will replace the badge of anyone who purchased TF2 prior to the official release date.

On a quick side note, we've been having fun watching <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/QuickActionTF2" class="standardLink">QuickActionTF2's</a> movies, which inspired <a href="http://communityfortress.com/" class="standardLink">Community Fortress's</a> Moments of Glory. If you haven't seen the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHHsG1fTM-s" class="standardLink">latest one</a>, it's worth it just for knoxxx's awesome move. It's also a great way to brush up on your french.

We're shipping a quick update to clean up some of the confusion around the 119th Update badges. We initially chose to calculate which badge to give players based on the beta release of TF2, because that was the date that customers could first play TF2. This turns out to have been a mistake, largely because many players did the math and thought they were getting something other than what they ended up with. So to remove that confusion, this new update moves that date forward to the official retail release of TF2, the 10th October 2007, and reissues updated badges to anyone who would be affected by that date shift.



We also felt it was still important to reward those who were there on the first moment TF2 went live, and helped us by beta testing prior to release. So we've added a new "Primeval Warrior" badge, which will replace the badge of anyone who purchased TF2 prior to the official release date.

On a quick side note, we've been having fun watching QuickActionTF2's movies, which inspired Community Fortress's Moments of Glory. If you haven't seen the latest one, it's worth it just for knoxxx's awesome move. It's also a great way to brush up on your french.