Group Fortress 2 is 17 years outdated, and someday we’re all going to die. The in-built cruelty of entropy ensures our universe is finite, and all issues should ultimately fade into heat-death. Staving off a small factor of this inevitability was Valve’s on-line shooter getting a giant patch final week, which in flip triggered the sport to suppose a few of its gamers have been Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman, and crash.
TF2 gamers are, let’s say “passionate” relating to the longevity of the sport. Whereas firms like Sony simply swap issues off and not using a care, and sport preservation is rejected by the group that’s imagined to symbolize the trade, Valve’s obscure and ambiguous ongoing assist for the multiplayer shooter appears to—if something—make its player-base extra rabid for seen assist. Guarantees of a giant replace in 2023 have been virtually instantly retracted, however then delivered upon by the summer time. Since then, it’s been crickets. However in the midst of April, the sport acquired an replace out of the blue, which noticed the 2007 sport obtain 64-bit assist for the primary time.
Hoorah! cried its gamers, as a result of this improve meant the sport immediately grew to become able to boosting framerates by as much as 25 %. That’s—as noticed by GamesRadar—apart from gamers who have been utilizing a customized HUD that made the interface look extra like Valve’s much more historic sport, Half-Life 2. As a result of, maybe not unreasonably, this was now inflicting the sport to suppose the particular person was enjoying as the sport’s protagonist, Gordon Freeman.
It’s by no means clear why a HUD ought to trigger Group Fortress 2 to suppose its participant is one other sport’s character making an attempt to infiltrate the TF universe, however it’s price celebrating that reasonably than telling gamers to simply swap again to the default HUD for the practically two-decade-old sport, Valve rolled out a repair for this particular situation as an alternative.
“Mounted a crash underneath 64-bit brought on by some customized HUDs utilizing Half-Life 2 HUD components which assume the participant is Gordon Freeman,” say the most recent patch notes, launched in a single day on April 22. This was accompanied by a bunch of different fixes, together with one addressing time travellers nonetheless utilizing Home windows 7.
It’s a variety of enjoyable, and really cathartic, to harangue Valve for his or her incessantly opaque and weird choices, as a result of it’s a weirdo firm. Nevertheless it’s additionally essential to supply kudos when deserved. Fixing such area of interest bugs in a correctly historic sport (we’re all however mud) is a splendid factor to do. Though it’s controversial there was a greater choice on this case. Playable Freeman in TF2, anybody?
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