Deadly Pandas

Deadly Pandas Spray

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 04:41:00 +0000

Reverie has made a fancy spray with the Deadly Pandas logo, for you all to download and use! Get it HERE. If it doesn't prompt you to save, right click the link and Save Target As. Go to Options->Multiplayer Tab->Import Spray, and select the TGA file you just saved.

You can use this with just about any Source-based game, like Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, etc.

Happy gaming!

News: Scout Update and Achievementbox

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:16:00 +0000

In case you haven't seen the Deadly Pandas Steam Group announcement, PANDA | Pyrrhus has created the scout achievement box, and it is on the Deadly Pandas server. It will be exclusively on our server for the first day the scout update is released, and then it will be posted on fpsbanana for others to download.

We'll run it 24/7 until all active Deadly Pandas are done. Not a Deadly Panda? We're recruiting, so go ahead and join our group!

News: Forums Are Up & New Media!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:01:00 +0000

Forums are currently up & new media! Be sure to register for it so we can start getting things rolling. We need feedback for, well, everything. Give ideas for content and events - let's make this fun! Add the Deadly Pandas calendar to your Google Calendar!

A few In The Groove 2 videos have been uploaded into the Media section, too!

We're looking to add some more real content and get things rolling. So, if you have an article, picture, or video you want to put up, e-mail admin /at/ deadlypandas.com! You can also submit articles through the the forums page, too. Select articles will be placed on the Resources page under the appropriate category.

About

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

We're a group of gamers who simply like to play games and have fun - it doesn't matter how good you are, just whether you get along with us!

Check out our Steam profile at http://steamcommunity.com/groups/deadlypandas.

We host only a single game server at the moment:

Deadly Pandas TF2 Server

8.12.16.82: 27015
Pure Team Fortress 2 server
Mani Admin mod, including features such as 'votemap' and 'rockthevote' commands, so you can change the maps!

Interested in becoming a Panda?
Join up on the Steam Community!

The Deadly Pandas can also be found on Facebook! It's an open group so anyone can join.

Contact Information
Submit any ideas, articles, suggestions to admin /at/ deadlypandas.com.

Media

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

A few links and embeds to pictures and videos - either related things or videos by/featuring Deadly Pandas.

Do you have some videos, pictures, and/or screenshots to add? Send them to admin /at/ deadlypandas.com! If you have captions that you want added, make sure you list them and the image they correspond to.

Team Fortress 2

(Video) Reverie with uber sound changed to "Ride of the Valkyries"

In The Groove 2

(Video) ITG3 theme on an ITG2 dedicated cabinet. Courtesy of Jbean.

(Video) MR!B (Pyrrhus) playing ITG2 edit, Neckbreaker.

(Video) MR!B (Pyrrhus) playing ITG2 edit, Dam Dadi Do.

(Video) MR!B (Pyrrhus) playing ITG2's Delirium.

(Video) CHAR (Reverie) playing ITG3's Coming Out.

Portal

(Video) Portal Level 19 Skipping. How to go through level 19 of Portal without having to use the platform. Video created and done by Pyrrhus.

Resources

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Some resources to check out. Includes links to useful information, and write-ups we have here.

If you have an article you'd like to submit, e-mail it to admin /at/ deadlypandas.com!

Team Fortress 2:

Team Fortress 2 Stats

Detailed, up to date stats for TF2 from the current week. Includes various information about classes, achievements, and very useful map information. Be sure to check out the Death Maps!

Recording TF2 Games

An article by Pyrrhus regarding how to properly record gameplay with minimum impact to your performance. Also discusses how to take recorded videos and compress and optimize them for YouTube.

Binding Actions in Source Games

An article by Pyrrhus that will walk you through making your own binds and aliases. Includes examples and a useful melee attack bind.

The Team Fortress 2 Blog

Includes TF2 news, information, and random other goodies

Recording TF2 Games

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Intro
In this short howto I'll describe how I record in-game demos while playing Team Fortress 2, as well as how to take the recorded demo and get it onto YouTube without the grainy quality you see frequently. This can also be used for other Source-based games, such as Portal or Counter-Strike: Source.

First I want to get some terminology out of the way - it may be simple, but it'll save some confusion:
Demo: an in-game recording, where everything you see or hear is recorded to a file. Requires a copy of the map played on to be replayed. It's also possible to view your character from a third-person perspective. Must be replayed through TF2.
Video: the moving pictures you'll see on YouTube :)

Let's start off by listing off what you're going to have to download. I'm going to assume you want to put your videos up on YouTube, rather than simply record the demo - if you just want to record the demo and not make a video you can skip these.

VirtualDub
Xvid Codec
FRAPS (optional - NOT FREE!)

FRAPS is a screen recorder that is NOT FREE, but provides nice screen recording capabilities that may be preferable to some over the provided startmovie functionality of TF2. If you absolutely can't do it yourself, have a friend turn your demo into a video for you.

Recording
If you haven't enabled the developer console (simply referred to as console), go ahead and do that.
Main Menu -> Options -> Keyboard -> Advanced -> Enable Developer Console

Go into console (press ` or ~ to the left of the 1 on your keyboard) and type
record

Where would be the name of your demo. For instance, I might record a demo playing 2Fort by typing:
record pyrrhus_2fort_7_1_08

This will start recording the demo to the file "pyrrhus_2fort_7_1_08.dem". You might find it useful to use a similar naming scheme - the important parts being the map name and the date recorded, or some other identifier to let you know what the demo is.

After you've recorded whatever segment of gameplay you want (a few seconds, a round, a whole game, etc), you need to stop recording by typing into console:
stop

Note that if you are disconnected from a game it will also stop recording.

Converting to Video
To play demos, a few options:
demoui
demoui2
playdemo

Refer to http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Demo_Recording_Tools for more advanced options for playing demos.

To record the demo to a video, a few options:
startmovie (records as a series of TGA images that can be combined to make a video, along with a WAV audio track that you can add to the video)
FRAPS (records as one AVI)

(INCOMPLETE - more details to come when I get back to this...for now I'll plug in some info from my preliminary notes)
After you record an AVI with FRAPS:

Take huge AVI and open with VirtualDub
Audio Settings

Audio -> Full Processing Mode
Audio -> Compression
MPEG Layer-3 -> 32kBit/s, 22050 Hz, Mono

Video Settings

Video->Full Processing
Video->Filters -> Add -> resize
New Size -> 640x480

(640x400 for my video with a 16:10 widescreen...just enter 640 and the height will come out correctly)

Aspect Ratio -> Same as source
Framing Options -> Letterbox to aspect ratio (4:3)
Video -> Compression -> Xvid MPEG-4 Codec

File -> Save as AVI
Wait
Upload to YouTube

Remember, when viewing these videos on YouTube you might still see them as grainy/blocky/low quality at first - just click the "watch in high quality" link, and you're set!

Here's my example. Again, make sure you click "watch in high quality". For this particular video, I turned down the audio settings (for a test), although it turned out it would've been fine with normal audio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI3i6hoaLmU

Binding Actions in Source Games

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Intro
So, you're an engineer sitting inside your base, and all of the sudden you see a spy! You want to call out to your team with the voice commands to let them know, "That Pyro's a Spy!", but those extra few seconds you spend fumbling with your keyboard give the spy enough time to sap your stuff and kill you.

One way to help this sort of situation is to use what are called binds to assign keys to common in-game actions. For me, if I ever see a Spy, I hit my thumb button on my mouse (I have 2, we'll get to that), which is bound like this:

bind "MOUSE4" "voicemenu 2 0"

This will activate the voicemenu, selecting the third menu, and the first item in that menu. Note that these numbers are not typos, but instead start counting from 0.

Anyway, let's get into it.

Enabling Developer Console
In short, enabling the console. This is something very simple, yet easily overlooked. To enable the console, from the main menu:

Options -> Keyboard -> Advanced -> Enable Developer Console

After you've done this, you can now open up the console by pressing tilde (` or ~ to the left of the 1 on your keyboard). All commands you'll see here need to be done in the console or in the configuration files - do not type them in chat or you'll be laughed out of the server.

Bind Command
Binding can be defined as simply assigning a key to an action. The general format of a bind is:
bind ""
Where is any key on your keyboard or a mouse button (MOUSE4, for example, above).

A few more examples are:
bind p "say Visit the Deadly Pandas website at www.deadlypandas.com !"
bind MWHEELDOWN "+jump"

The first bind will say the above text in the public chat. If you want to do teamchat, do say_team instead of say. Some of these useful commands can be learned by looking at your config.cfg, which we'll get to in the Configuration Files section.

The second bind will set your mousewheel to make your character jump when you scroll it down. This is obviously not something everyone would want, but useful for some (for instance, I don't use mousewheel for changing weapons, so I use that for jump). Another cool thing about this is that you can have multiple keys doing the same command. Without using binds you wouldn't be able to set, say SPACE and MWHEELDOWN to jump.
NOTE: The jump command isn't simply a one-shot command! The plus "+" in front of it denotes that it is a two-state command. The + state is used when the command is activated, and the - state is used when the command is deactivated. So, when you press your left mouse button (bind MOUSE1 "+attack"), you start attacking, and it doesn't stop until you release your mouse button (which when executes -attack).

Here's another example - this one executes multiple commands:
bind MWHEELDOWN "+jump; say Visit the Deadly Pandas website at www.deadlypandas.com !"

As you can likely tell, this will make your mousewheeldown cause you to jump and shamelessly advertise to everyone on the server as you jump. To use multiple commands with one bind, just use a semicolon ";" between each command.

Alias Command
The alias command is used to give names to an action or a series of actions. The general format of an alias is:
alias "" ""

So, I can do exactly what I did above, except making things a bit easier on the binding process:
alias "advertise" "+jump; say Visit the Deadly Pandas website at www.deadlypandas.com !"
bind MWHEELDOWN "advertise"

This will do the same thing, except in a bit of a cleaner fashion. Let's get into a real use for aliases...a script a friend wanted - something that will quickly switch to your knife or other melee weapon and stab an enemy:
alias "+stab" "slot3; +attack; wait; -attack; wait; +attack"
alias "-stab" "-attack; wait; lastinv"
bind MOUSE3 "+stab"

This script will execute the "+stab" command when you middle click with your mouse, and then the "-stab" command when you release your mouse button. The "+stab" command will change to your melee weapon (slot3), attack (select the weapon, in this case - like clicking after rolling your mousewheel), wait for a moment, stop attacking, wait for a moment, and then begin swinging your weapon.

Configuration Files
Located (for me) in C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\sarcius\team fortress 2\tf\cfg
or, \steamapps\\team fortress 2\tf\cfg

For these games (Source-based games) the config file(s) should be in the same general location.

These are text files containing all of your settings (see config.cfg) and binds. As a rule, I always back up my config.cfg before I manually make any changes to it, as you can mess things up pretty bad and have to reconfigure all of your settings!

Team Fortress 2 is special, as it has a config file for each class. Whenever you switch to that class, the config file is loaded up. So, you could potentially have completely different controls for each of the classes. Some things you might want to tweak per class may include chat binds, sensitivity, or other useful binds. Be aware that when you swap from a class, those binds will still be in effect for your next class, unless you rebind the buttons in the new class's config, or do something like execute config.cfg to reset your configurations.

Using the alias example above, I'm going to modify my spy and engineer to change to their melee weapon and attack when I middle click (I wouldn't recommend doing this with MOUSE2 (right click), because right click is used for a lot of things, like spy cloak, and engineer sentry rotate).

Open the spy.cfg and engineer.cfg with Wordpad (should use Wordpad instead of Notepad).
Copy the lines above, or write your own
Save, and you're done with those.

BEWARE: By default, TF2 uses MOUSE2 (right click) for "+attack2", which is for detonating stickies, spooling up the heavy's minigun, ubercharging as medic, zooming as sniper, etc! If you bind this to MOUSE2 instead of MOUSE3, go into each of those config files for the previously mentioned classes and put:
bind MOUSE2 "+attack2"

See this page for more detailed information: http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Scripting

Events

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Here will be our list of upcoming large events, along with the calendar.

Please note that the times currently displayed are Central Time. If you are East Coast, add one hour, if you are West Coast subtract 2 hours.