Source: Steam Powered

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 & 2, and Portal have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Team Fortress 2, Episode 1 & 2, and Portal

• Added support for the Novint Falcon

General

• Added an option to the advanced multiplayer menu to select left or right handed view models
• Fixed a bug where a spectator's wearable items could be seen floating around the player they were spectating
• Fixed a bug where a fake Spy hand would appear on the screen of other players
• Custom death animations now only play 25% of the time
• Fixed teleporters not being build-able in some places where they should be (such as within the pit at the end of Badwater Basin)
• Fixed rare client crash on connection and level change
• Removed refract from water ripples caused by bullet impacts for performance reasons
• Added log entries for player extinguished events using the medigun, jarate, flamethrower and dispenser
• Started tracking localization settings to help make decisions regarding localization in the future
• Fixed the blank progress bar in the upper-left of the screen when the client scheme is reloaded

Mapmaker requests

• Added spawn flag to func_respawnroomvisualizer that allows it be non-solid to players
• Added SetSolid input to func_respawnroomvisualizer to change solidity to players dynamically
• Added OnWonByTeam1 and OnWonByTeam2 outputs to the TFGamerulesProxy

Sniper

• Fixed a bad detection case in the "Friendship is Golden" achievement
• Changed the description of the "Triple Prey" achievement so it better describes how to get it
• Critical arrows now have a trail and correctly deal enhanced damage
• The Huntsman now defaults to be right handed
• Friendly arrows will no longer trigger the near miss sound on you
• Fixed several sources of floating arrows

Spy

• Fixed disguised Spies occasionally looking like they have invulnerability, instead of the correct fake Spy mask
• Disguised spies will no longer lose their disguise weapon when they interact with a weapon locker
• Fixed a bug where the spy's watch would randomly change models during play
• Fixed uncloaked spies flickering in and out of the cloak effect when taking damage
• The Cloak and Dagger now always regenerates at its intended rate. Previously it only regenerated at the correct rate when the spy was cloaked
• Increased the Cloak and Dagger regeneration rate slightly
• Capped the rate of energy loss from moving faster than run speed (falling / air toss) while cloaked with the Cloak and Dagger
• The Dead Ringer's cloak consume rate has been slightly reduced, giving about an extra second of cloak time on a full meter
• Emerging from the Dead Ringer's cloak now drains up to 40% of the cloak meter instead of 100%. This drain only happens if the meter is at least 60% full
• The Dead Ringer's cloak meter can now be regenerated from ammo sources
• The Ambassador now only crits when fully accurate and no longer penetrates enemies
• The Spy can no longer change weapons from the knife while shocked by the Razorback
• Force-A-Nature & Flamethrower air blast knockback effects no longer work on disguised spies
• Fixed disguised Spies showing the wrong teleporter effects when using an enemy teleporter

Source: Steam Powered

(Bellevue, WA - June 23rd, 2009) - Valve Corporation, one of the video game industry's leading entertainment software and technology companies, announced today that they have released support for the Novint Falcon for several of their best selling games.

The Novint Falcon is an entirely new type of interface for PC gaming. Essentially a small robot, the Falcon lets players feel high-fidelity three-dimensional touch in enabled games.

Valve's best selling game franchises, which account for over 30 million retail units sold worldwide and over 80% of the PC online action market, include Half-Life®, which has won over 50 Game of the Year Awards, Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike® Source, Portal® and Team Fortress® 2. Valve is also the developer of leading-edge technologies, including the Source® game engine and Steam®, a leading platform for digital content distribution with over 20 million registered users. Today, an update was distributed through Steam adding Novint Falcon compatibility for customers of The Orange Box which includes Half-Life 2: Episodes 1 and 2 (the original Half-Life 2 is playable with the Falcon through a download available from Novint), Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Additionally Valve will soon release support for other leading titles including Left 4 Dead, Day of Defeat Source, and Counter-Strike: Source®. Using the Falcon, players feel realistic weapon recoil, enemy attacks, vehicle movements, and interactions with the environment. Novint has also released its must have Pistol Grip accessory, which replaces the standard Falcon grip to create an even more immersive FPS gaming experience.

Customers interested in purchasing a Falcon to use with Valve's games can do so at Novint's site, https://home.novint.com/store/promote.php. Novint is currently offering a special Orange Box bundle, priced at $149, for one week only in celebration of the launch. The bundle includes the award winning Novint Falcon, the pistol grip, the Orange Box, and over $150 of additional software.

"We're very excited to partner with a company so dominant in the PC game industry," said Novint CEO, Tom Anderson. "Their sustained excellence, best-selling games, enormous user base, and forward looking vision make them standard bearers for the industry. We feel Falcon support for their online games in particular could be our first real killer app, which is an exciting milestone.

Not really realted to Half-Life...but

Steam Powered

A Steam client update is now available. To apply the update, click the File menu inside of Steam and then select "Check for Steam Client Updates...". The specific changes include:

Steam Client

• Improved Steam startup performance
• Fixed a crash when clicking on very long URLs in friends chat
• Fixed the in-game overlay not showing over some D3D9 games that set a texture as the render target
• Fixed a case where the overlay could go temporarily unresponsive due to using a skin that generated bad geometry
• Fixed some cases of trying to send data to Steam servers while disconnected
• Fixed chats in the overlay which have existing text from out-of-game not scrolling to the bottom by default
• Fixed log files from in-game overlay corrupting some output
• Fixed app cache download issue for users with slower connections

Source: Kotaku
Probably the best tf2 video I have seen to date...

Source: Half-Life Fallout
Related: Sven Co-op

Lately, map submissions to the Map Showcase have been few and far between, and admissions of maps into the Best of Maps Showcase have been even fewer. Thus we have decided to hold a BOMS (Best Of Maps Showcase) revival event by holding an Official Sven Co-op Mapping Contest!

The goal of the contest is to stimulate our near-dormant mapping community and create a collection of new and interesting levels which, in turn, may be used to attract more players to Sven Co-op. However: entries must be, in some way, unique in comparison to the majority of previously released Sven Co-op maps in order to be considered as a winner of the contest. Guidelines on what we're going to be looking for are listed below. Mappers will have three months to create and submit their entries. See the bottom of this post for information on how to register yourself for entry in the contest.

Three grand prize winners will be chosen, and will be awarded the following prizes:

1st: $70 USD -OR- Up to $70 USD worth of Steam gifts
2nd: $50 USD -OR- Up to $50 USD worth of Steam gifts
3rd: $35 USD -OR- Up to $35 USD worth of Steam gifts

All three grand prize winners will also receive an official Sven Co-op T-shirt!

Additionally, the three winning maps will have the opportunity to be included in the next version of Sven Co-op, and all maps which have been entered in the contest (so long as they are serious attempts and fulfil the guidelines and rules) will be released in an official Sven Co-op map pack (including the three winners, until the next version of the mod is released).

Source: Steam Powered
Related: Steam Community

The Steam Community has been updated including these new features:

• Comments on group announcements
• Comments on group events
• Events now persist - Users can view and comment on past events
• Miscellaneous layout and design updates

Source: Steam News

Updates to Source SDK have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Source SDK

• Added source files for ten shipping TF2 maps


• arena_lumberyard


• arena_ravine


• cp_badlands


• cp_dustbowl


• cp_granary


• cp_gravelpit


• ctf_2fort


• pl_badwater


• pl_goldrush


• tc_hydro


• Updated shadercompile binaries and added missing DLL needed for shader compilation

SDK Tools

• Fixed the issues with the following tools: height2ssbump, normal2ssbump, pfm2tga, splitskybox, vbspinfo, vmt_tweak, vmtcheck, shadercompile


• Fixed an issue in studiomdl pertaining to $shadowlod

Hammer

• The texture browser automatically ignores most textures that cannot be placed on brushes or displacements, as well as anything inside a .svn folder for those using svn as their choice of versioning software.


• Added additional auto visgroups for sprites and cubemaps


• Separated the VRAD calls into two sequential while using HDR (-ldr and -hdr) instead of -both


• Model browser is now created once per session


• Displacement brush dial now has greater range


• Added a stop button to sound previews

SDK Launcher

• Added the ability to edit game configurations with vconfig

Source Code

• Added a new template mod that replaces the old 'advanced' source . This template has options for teams,classes, sprinting, prone, stamina, etc.


• Added shader source; fxc.exe, psa.exe and vsa.exe must be placed into the dx9sdk\\utilities folder and you must modify materialsystem\\stdshaders\\buildsdkshaders.bat to set your paths.


• Most tonemap controller options now work in multiplayer. The 'template mod' map 'sdk_teams_hdr' demonstrates this.


• All three mod types by default mount the required appids - Multiplayer uses 218 and mounts 320 for example. Gameinfo.txt contains a new entry 'AdditionalAppId' for this purpose.


• Particle systems can now be defined with a per-map manifest, similar to soundscapes.


• Fixed a number of issues which caused the server to not compile in linux

Multiplayer Source Code

• Players animate with the new animation system that came along with TF2.


• Fixed third person animations and all effects


• Fixed SLAM issues


• Fixed Use of UTIL_GetLocalPlayer on the server in various locations


• Fixed a number of other bugs / asserts

Singleplayer Source Code

• Fixed a number of issues preventing the source from functioning correctly


• Added new vehicle "hl2buggy" so that users may have both the charger and the old buggy

Source: www.tf2.com

Today we're releasing an update to the Source SDK that includes the .vmf source files for many of the official TF2 maps. This is something we've wanted to do for a while, especially as we've been growing the range of game modes in TF. Here's the list of maps that are included in the update: Lumberyard, Ravine, Badlands, Dustbowl, Granary, Gravelpit, 2Fort, Badwater, Goldrush, and Hydro.

For the beginner map makers out there, we hope this gives you an easier entry point by allowing you to alter or edit an existing map, as opposed to being forced to start from scratch. For example, you could start by fine-tuning cover in Goldrush, alter the layout of Granary, or tweak the amount of health and ammo in Gravelpit. Or maybe you just have a ton of ideas on how you think you could improve Hydro or 2Fort. We'd love to see what you come up with.

For the experienced map makers, we hope this gives you a variety of examples of how we design and construct levels, the tools we use to finish the aesthetic/thematic elements, and some specific implementation solutions to performance and networking problems. We also hope that it'll reduce the amount of confusion around the game logic and entity setup required for the various TF game modes.

Our plan is to get more of our TF content source out in the SDK, so look for more maps & model sources in the future.

I am still setting things up but here is the info for the server:
IP: 64.62.228.171:27015
Name: www.hlgaming.com | Custom Maps | FF = On | HLSS = Off

This is a friendly fire server so please watch where you shoot :)