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As some of you may have already noticed we do currently have a TF2 server running. I realise a lot of you guys are left out of the loop due to us using mumble so I'm gonna try and explain a bit about our server and whats going on.

Its IP is 217.163.22.130:27015 and if you were to add that to your server browser now you'd notice it has a password, which is narwhals.

It currently has a password for the simple reason that its cheaper- in fact a passworded server is about 2/3 the price of one that isnt. However this can be changed depending on interest and donations. It currently costs about £9 for the tf2 server (without a password the cost rises to £14) and I believe £10 for mumble, which means the total cost, per month, is about £24. This is a lot cheaper than our old dedicated server and I'm sure it's possible to donate specifically for the TF2 server if you so wished (just in case you didn't want your money being used for something you didn't use).

Our server is an 18 slot with a large map selection and uses a fast download server. On our old server there was an emphasis on catering to the public, which is fine, every community needs the public to survive; however I believe that the focus on the public made our server a little less fun than it could have been. I've always thought that the reason our community kept playing on our server in the first place was the custom maps, great personalities with lots of voice chat, good admins, (fun nights!) and the relative high skill of our server.

There are a lot of TF2 servers out there, countless 24 slot vanilla map servers if you wanted to play on them. Don't you want to play on good custom maps, with people who actually talk? Or play on a server that doesn't feel too full and spammy? And most importantly play with friends? I do.

Expect more quality custom maps on our server than ever before and less worrying about conforming to the boring standard. This is a server for you guys.



The Tf2 server wasn't the only thing I wanted to tell you about. We currently have 2 steam groups: Critical Gamers and Crits.org Server Regulars. This is redundant and annoying so I have a small task for the members of these groups.

• If you are in Critical Gamers and not in Crits.org Server Regulars then congratulations, you dont have to do anything. (I bet you're relieved.)
• If you are in Critical Gamers and in Crits.org Server Regulars then please leave Crits.org Server regulars.
• If you are not in Critical Gamers and are in Crits.org Server Regulars then please look at your friends list, under the Crits.org Server Regulars tab you will be able to send me a message over steam even if you're not in my friends list, I will be able to invite you to the Critical Gamers group (after you get in please leave Crits.org Server Regulars.
• If you are not in either group you can send me a PM on this forum (which I recommend everyone sign up to) with your steam username or email associated with it and I will add you to my friends list until I get you into the group. Alternatively you can wait and catch an admin on the server.

I will be chatting to people in these groups over the weekend as well.

Expect the Critical Gamers group to actually be used for news and announcements in the future and most likely used to announce games on the tf2 server until it gets filled by itself.


Also expect changes to this forum, to make it more consolidated and less intimidating and hopefully get more posting.


Lastly, I would personally like to say that I was surprised by the number of people from our community who still read this forum and who appeared on our server when they noticed it, despite the password. You guys are great and hopefully we can continue a good thing here.

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Ok Rynex, you proved your point I moved it to the 2nd post in the thread since people won't like autoplaying stuff.(see comments) -Nali

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So Brindster and I decided to reinstall the OS on the box that the site and Mumble are hosted on (Gentoo is package managment hell, btw). As should be done, I took a backup of the forum database, but when I tried to restore it I found out it got truncated halfway through. Oops. The last complete backup I have is from the end of November and let it be known that this kick in the arse means I'm now doing twice weekly backups

In other news, we're not dead. Mumble is as lively as ever (though I can't say the same for IRC, especially now that Mumble's replaced it) and I strongly reccommend using it (the guide is out of date, but I will rewrite it shortly). Also, stay tuned for the upcoming relaunch of the TF2 server!

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Without telling the community leaders, I've decided to start on a new article series called Games To Watch. Simply put, it'll be previews of upcoming games that any one of us are particularly excited about, especially if it involves co-operative play. First up, we have Splash Damage's upcoming IP, Brink.


Splash Damage is without a doubt one of the British games development world's greatest modern developer, and also holds the unique title of having been built from a community of dedicated gamers and modders - not only that, they are responsible for Enemy Territory, one of the most popular online multiplayer games in the world, so it is always exciting to see what they're working on. This time, it's their own unique IP, and frankly, when I went to see a preview of it at Eurogamer, I became incredibly interested in how the game is becoming one of our games to watch.

Brink is set little more then five minutes in the future, aboard a floating city simply called The Ark, a gargantuan structure, representing modern humanity's greatest achievements in both urban art and communal design. As time went by, The Ark ends up being the last civilised remnant of Earth, and refugees coming from all over the planet begin to put a strain on The Ark, pushing it, as the name suggests, on the brink of civil war. Complicating this is the different ideologies both factions, the Security Forces and the Refugees, believe in. The Security Forces believe the refugees are a threat to The Ark's stability, which would send humanity into freefall, and the refugees believe themselves to be freedom fighters.

When I went to see the game showcased at the Eurogamer Expo, Splash Damage's Paul Wedgwood demonstrated many aspects of the game, the SMART system, the art design as well as showing us an entire level showing off the components of the co-operative play system, the last of which I was most impressed by.

The SMART system (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain - I think that's a backronym) is intended to take some of the problems of movement out of the equation - it's a generative system whereby pressing the sprint key and moving towards your destination makes the game calculate the movements smoothly without players having to risk falling off of obstacles - a bit like Mirror's Edge without pressing buttons. At first I wasn't entirely convinced by this system, but then it occurred to me that when you're being shot at, the last thing you want to happen is to get yourself stuck on the geometry. When you factor in the fact that many areas surrounding The Ark, for example, Container City (a level shown at Eurogamer).

Container City was the example level demonstrated, and I'm happy to report that Splash Damage has retained the system shown in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars of encouraging you to complete objectives that help your team by rewarding you with experience points. Anything you can do will help the team. Want to do a bit of stealth? You can change your loadout without penalty (sometimes, it'll even rewards you) at convenient locations and then sneak around alternate routes, doing a bit of light torture on a hapless grunt. Want to blow shit up? Switch to Soldier class for general mayhem, or Engineer for more objective focused explosive action. Earning XP also feeds back into your character generation screen, much like Enemy Territory, earning XP earns you rewards that can change the way you play your chosen class.

Technically-wise, despite being in pre-alpha, the content shown was incredibly sharp -map design, art direction, even the soundscapes of The Ark was brilliant. And finally, there's still competitive multiplayer, which is separate from the co-operative story mode. Speaking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Jim Rossignol, Paul Wedgwood has confirmed a meta-narrative which plays throughout the game which rewards playing as a group. Which can be as much as 10 or more players playing co-operatively.

Why is Critical Gaming excited about Brink? For the same reason why Team Fortress 2 and Enemy Territory are both games we enjoy. Objective based co-operative multiplayer with different class loadouts and play styles make a game for us, and of course the co-operative side of things always chimes well with us. Hopefully when it is released, we'll be blowing stuff up as a group, and we hope you'll join us

Brink is scheduled to be released in Spring 2010