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Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 6:54 pm
by Pwnstar
How do you know these are going into the game and not are just mods they are promoting that give a Halloween spirit?

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 7:27 pm
by THE Flying chihuahua
Pwnstar wrote:How do you know these are going into the game and not are just mods they are promoting that give a Halloween spirit?
If you are talking about the Night of the Living Update thing, they kinda are.

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:08 pm
by black_and_blue
How is it that nobody noticed this yet? Or is it that everyone noticed but didn't bother to post it...
http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Halloween_2012 wrote:On October 23, 2012, the head of the Spy portrait on the TF2 Official Blog was changed to resemble a skull. Clicking on the skull led to a hidden page, with a newspaper page titled "The Teufort Reader". The bottom of the newspaper is ripped, showing two cards with odd symbols.

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:21 pm
by Zork Nemesis
THE Flying chihuahua wrote:
Pwnstar wrote:How do you know these are going into the game and not are just mods they are promoting that give a Halloween spirit?
If you are talking about the Night of the Living Update thing, they kinda are.
They ARE mods, but they're also all in the workshop as potential candidates (a number of last year's Night of the Living Update got included; both the Wanga Prick and the Unarmed Combat were part of it). That doesn't mean they aren't awesome.

Here's the chin's page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... d=93564322

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:02 pm
by Boss Llama
black_and_blue wrote:How is it that nobody noticed this yet? Or is it that everyone noticed but didn't bother to post it...
http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Halloween_2012 wrote:On October 23, 2012, the head of the Spy portrait on the TF2 Official Blog was changed to resemble a skull. Clicking on the skull led to a hidden page, with a newspaper page titled "The Teufort Reader". The bottom of the newspaper is ripped, showing two cards with odd symbols.
Here's the newspaper image.
VIEW CONTENT:
Image
It appears to be a teaser for the comic that released the next day. When Merasmus shows up, he's carrying a WizardCon MCLVI bag, and lower the two classifieds on the left are strongly related to the plot of the comic as well.

If taken as one for one substitutions for English letters, the text on the visible card is readable as:

FIELD FEELS
WHOLE WOOLS
BROKE BOOKS
ABLES ALLEN
ABLES ALLER
BROTH BOOTS
ABLES ALLEY
WHOLE WOOLF
ANDES ADDER
BRENT BEENS

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:06 pm
by Zork Nemesis
Just posted: http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=9211

More importantly: http://www.teamfortress.com/blizzbobarrabas/

This year, players will receive private gift spawns that they can grab at their leisure without having to race everyone on the server for them.

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:12 pm
by Boss Llama
Ooh, more writing. Working on it.

The pattern of the writing appears to be thus:
ABCDE ACCDF (top card of newspaper)
AGHII JDHF (to[ card in announcement)
KLCIM NHCOPBQ (header)
RHECM SHTHIPM (footer)

Assuming it is consistent, and not just Valve trolling us, it doesn't break meaningfully as a simple substitution cipher. It can make a couple series of words, but just not particularly meaningul ones.

The first word of the lower card in the first image (the newspaper) appears to take on the format UDEM, though there's a possibility it's UVDEM. At the very least, I suspect it opens with a special symbol or dipthong or something.

The frequency distribution is not unreasonable for English, though it's hard to tell with only 47 letters as a sample.

There may be a hint in the roman numerals associated with some of the cards, with additional symbols.


There is some discussion floating around that the top card in the newspaper may be a typo, which says "SUPER SPPED" instead of "SUPER SPEED." It does look like a scout running, afterall. If we accept those letter values, I can translate the top card in the main update page as "SMALL HEAD," which makes sense for the image, and possibly the word "VERY" as the first word of the lower card in the newspaper. Unfortunately that all leaves us with utter trash for the main inscriptions. Interestingly, two of the symbols appearing in the top left of cards on the update page are not used anywhere in the writing - the Maltese Cross (filled center) and the thing that looks a bit like an SG.

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 7:41 am
by Boss Llama
It's running both a capital and lowercase alphabet, which is why the symbols at the beginning of the words only appear at the beginning of words. Every word is capitalized.

There is Super Spped and Small Head. The lower card on the newspaper starts with the word "Zero."

I had started to suspect there might be another language, probably Latin, involved, but had to go to bed. During the night, somebody came up with this translation of the alphabet:
VIEW CONTENT:
Image
According to that, the header says "Explo Capitus" ("Fill the Heading" - among other things)

The bottom then would say "Barpo Kabalto," which doesn't seem to mean anything. I'm not sure where the guy got his values for all the letters - I'm guessing this is an alphabet from elsewhere and is pretty solid. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some phrase or way to alter this to get a meaning similar to "Fill the Footer" as well.

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 11:04 am
by The Domer

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 11:10 am
by Supreveio
Correction: goes live later today. That was posted last night.

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 11:24 am
by Plinko
I'm going to have exactly one night to enjoy this, so if anyone would like to give it a go or a couple of ones tonight around 10:30 VST, give me a holler. I might be able to grab some extra vouchers for those willing to brave it with me when it'll probably be packed. . .

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 11:42 am
by Moonray
I'll make sure I do that, Plinko. :wink:

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 11:55 am
by Supreveio
According to an email (and posted on Facepunch), the event map this year is KOTH_Lakeside_Event.

There's also going to be a Quickplay change where players can choose to play on servers running Lakeside 24/7, or servers running all the event maps.


The email in question:
Hello!

Here are some details for how to configure your server to receive quickplay traffic.

First, the general requirements and scoring systems have not changed. (Your server must have an account and advertise the _registered tag, will be penalized or excluded for certain rule changes, etc). Details are here:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_art ... -AFGJ-3513

This year the quickplay UI will offer players two choices for Halloween:

1.) Halloween 2012. Servers exclusively running the new map 24/7.
2.) Halloween mix. Servers running a mix of all the Halloween maps.

At any given time, your server can only be in one pool or the other. Valve will be running servers in both pools.

Your server will be placed in pool #1 if:
* You advertise the tag "event247"; and
* You are running the new map "koth_lakeside_event".

Your server will be placed in pool #2 if:
* You advertise the tag "eventmix"; and
* You are running one of the four Halloween maps.

The eligible Halloween maps are:
koth_harvest_event
cp_manor_event
koth_viaduct_event
koth_lakeside_event

If you don't set one of the two tags, you won't get any quickplay traffic!

Also, I'd like to mention a new convar that has been added, mp_mapcycle_empty_timeout_seconds, which will cause your server to cycle the map if it has been empty for a certain period of time.

- Fletch
IS IT TRUE? I dunno. We'll find out when the update's actually here.

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 2:37 pm
by Supreveio
In the meantime, however, please enjoy Night of the Living Update 2, Day 2

Re: Spectral Halloween Special + Night of the Living Update

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 3:53 pm
by OldMan
Lakeside?? Really? I thought the map last year was bad. (because it was) But lakeside? ugh! Just a rehash of a not very good map to be a Halloween event? Again? I am quite disappointed if this is true.