What we know so far:

1. They will eventually allow for some servers to have a level of custom model creativity back: source.
2. They will effect the increase in bad servers in some way, possibly through the server browser: source.

Leave me alone.

Hell, I’ll bet money on it.

DOUK

~

There is a 100% chance servers will break.

Luke, you may not have my Team Captain.

I probably should get round to actually publishing my plugins on AlliedModders, considering I’ve had an account registered, but not posted on since 2009.

The tinfoil hats were out in full force last night, with rumours that a huge update was to release. Instead, we got some update following the end of the Saxxy Awards which added an interesting bird model to the game.

I started messing around with the model; it’s hilarious. It’s so rigid and lifeless. I think most people who tinker with the game figured out it was a simple entity named “entity_bird”. But then I wondered what it was like to play as a bird…  I added infinite double jumps to replicate flying, enforcing scout, hiding hats and miscs, and initially no damage, until it was suggested that it’d be pretty fun to enforce melee and allow damage again.

So, that was last night on the server. It was hilarious.

Plugin: here.

Hat?

So, after exactly a month’s break of no idling, I decided to once again rev up those hats for a month’s worth of idle time, which equates to about 44 hours, and roughly 44 items in those hours. If you have 8 accounts like me, you’re loaded by the end. 352 items.

I thought about writing up my idling method for a while, and today decided I’d actually get round to it on the back of setting up the idle session.

Sandboxie

First up, it’s a trick that’s parroted around SPUF quite a lot - a tool called Sandboxie. It allows you to create a degree of separation between programs, and this is ideal for working around Steam’s “one instance only” mechanism. My setup is 6 individual instances, a la “sandboxes”, like below.

If you’re setting these up for the first time, they might individually need a bit of extra configuration, such as increasing the file migration limit to account for the large GCF files the game has. Deselecting the Drop Rights restriction is also a fix for quite a few issues.

Steam and Robin’s Hat Content

Though not necessary, I have a shortcut to the Steam executable dropped in the drive root, as on a laptop, navigating to the Steam folder 6 times is irritating with a touchpad. (I idle on my laptop, deal with it.)

There’s typically a game update at least once a week, which requires updating every single instance of the game. If you’re idling weekly, this can get old pretty quickly, which is why I’ve switched to doing this monthly. There’s no real way around this, as updating is generally quicker than copying 10gb of GCF files to each instance.

Steam Guard

You’ll most likely want to disable this, as there’s a chance that your IP will change (assuming you have a dynamic IP) which will require yet another verification on every account you idle on, as for some reason IP is stupidly taken in to account, when a mere hardware and software system signature would do nicely.

Game Configuration

Once this is done, the game will most likely need configuration for each instance to make everything run without a fire. With this setup, I can run everything on a laptop with an Intel integrated chipset, as nothing is drawn.

-novid -dxlevel 70 -textmode -nosound -console +map dazidleslol +mp_timelimit 0 +mp_idledealmethod 0 +sv_password bob +hostname HAT

(Map available for download at the bottom.)

Once this is done, the game will most likely need configuration for each instance to make everything run without a fire. With this setup, I can run everything on a laptop with an Intel integrated chipset, as nothing is drawn.

These settings however, will save to the registry and removing the launch options won’t be enough to reset this.

There are two options here; you can try adding “-autoconfig” to the launch options, and removing it after the first run, or browse to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Valve/Source/” and deleting the “tf” key. (May be located elsewhere, but this is the location for me.)

Anyway, you’ll end up with something like this, with a bunch of Steam instances running. If you’ve got a crap video card like my laptop, you can usually launch the game on each Steam instance and use the “unknown video card” warning as a wait point.

Begin to filter these through to launch, one by one, until you get the server status messages in each client. These are usually ended with “x connected”. Launching them all at once will most probably result in pain, and I don’t have the balls to try personally.

During Idling

You’ll want to monitor each client’s output every hour or so during the idle session, specifically for the lovely “Connection to Steam servers lost.” message - after this point, you’ll receive no further items, regardless of whether you regain connection or not. This instance will have to be restarted - consider it similar to when a server loses connection to Steam when playing.

Read up on the current item drop system as this will help you maximise the time.

When you’re finished

Close each instance of the game, and change the launch options for each to:

-novid -window -noborder

I recommend launching your recipient account on another computer (if possible, mine are in the same room) and crafting everything up on that account (though this may not be possible in cases of 352 items)

A time consuming process, but it’s seemingly worthwhile when you contrast the amount of items you’d get through normal play. Personally I wouldn’t bother if you only own one account - it’s only worthwhile for dealing with a lot of accounts which each require 11 hours a week.

dazidleslol.bsp (created by ShortSword to ease resource use): here

(tiny cube with a spawn point)

As for Sandboxie, if you’re struggling for a copy, you can always ask me nicely on Steam. :3