Why you should visit the Unofficial SPUF Server

I don't really know what this has to do with the SPUF server, but Hydro makes a change.
I don’t really know what this has to do with the SPUF server, but Hydro makes a change.

So, the night before this article was written, (since we don’t publish articles immediately) everyone jumped onto the SPUF server and had a whale of a time. We had all sorts of fun and it was nice. It turns out, all we have to do is throw a couple of people in there and it’s lovely. I’m going to tell you why we should visit the SPUF server more often.

Read more

Countering the Gunslinger

Defeating the Gunslinger
Defeating the Gunslinger

SPUF has pretty much agreed: we hate the gunslinger. I am not going into a rant about whether it is overpowered or not – check any page of SPUF for that. Regardless of whether or not it is OP, it is still no fun to play against. But it can be countered by most classes without too much effort. Of course, you can always call a friend over to help you take it out, but sometimes you just have to do it yourself.

The mini-sentry has 100 health and 48 DPS, which is formidable considering it is such a small target.  Many times, your crosshair is bigger than the sentry you are looking at.  It builds faster than it takes a dominated machina-toting gibus-wearing sniper to ragequit and fires quicker than a hatless spy frantically firing his revolver at an overhealed heavy.

This guide also covers tackling an engineer/mini-sentry combo, where the engineer is hanging around near his mini-sentry so he can constantly feed spam to the other team.

Read more

Art time with Medic – Cardboard Shotgun

Hello everyone! In today’s article, I’m going to show you how to make a shotgun out of cardboard. Why cardboard? Oh, there’s loads of reasons. Although it’s not as sturdy as wood or metal, cardboard is far lighter, cheaper, easier to use, more forgiving if you screw up and it uses old stuff that you were only going to throw away anyway. So, let’s begin!

Read more

Fixing A Hole

It’s no secret that some of the senior staff here at SPUF really like Special Delivery and the only map that supports it, Doomsday. However, one common thing that many people I talk to about Doomsday tell me is that the entire map is a horrendously mapped, broken pile of garbage. And they’re absolutely right. As aabicus put it when I spoke with him several nights ago, “It’s like Valve forgets about the Sticky Jumper when they make maps.” The opposite seems to be true as well, in that the folks at Valve forget about maps when they made the Sticky Jumper. Doomsday… [Continue Reading]

My response to those who consider the Heavy a boring class

Are Heavies too slow?
Are Heavies too slow?

I’m not sure whether this is a prevailing sentiment towards the Heavy as a class, but I get the impression that people more commonly find this class uninteresting to play than any of the others, based on what I’ve witnessed with regards to typical class quantities in a team and remarks from other online players. Some have outright said in retaliation to getting dominated by me that the Heavy is “boring” or “unskillful”, whilst some have questioned me out of genuine curiosity why I enjoy the class when they fervently do not.

Read more

Using More Cosmetics to Your Advantage

"Help me, Bombinomicon!"
“Help me, Bombinomicon!”

Between the 742 hats, cosmetics, and visible action slot items in Team Fortress 2, Valve has in general done a very good job of steadfastly keeping them cosmetic-only. While it’s fun to deck your character out in crazy stuff, it’s not possible to actually use these items to gain in-game benefits, right?

Read more

Spam and Spawn-camping: Legitimate tactics?

Scorched Earth
Don’t think they’re gonna get out any time soon…

Spawn-camping. Some love it, some hate it. Spam. Some love that too. Some hate that too. Everyone though hates it when they can’t even get out of their own spawn room! Today, we’ll discuss whether spam and spawn-camping are something to be encouraged or whether they should be wiped off the face of the planet.

Read more

First Look at Recent Changes to QuickPlay

Official servers only, a good thing or a bad thing?
Official servers only, a good thing or a bad thing?

Perhaps one of the smallest and yet most influential changes that Valve has made to the game was not too recently ago, summed up by one small note at the top of the patch notes:

– Add quickplay option to only connect to official Valve servers

This change was subject to much heated controversy, spawning several rapid threads about the topic on SPUF, Reddit, the HLDS mailing list, and other such communities. It also reflected growing divisions between important parts of the community, as server owners protested a change that would deprive them of a major source of traffic and players applauded an option that would guarantee a certain level of quality in their server experience.

Read more