Pissed at Valve

Alright, so I still haven't gotten time to finish the blog updates. I spend my weekends in California with my girlfriend and almost every other waking second working on Highborn: Chapter Three.

I say almost every other waking second, because for about an hour a night every third night or so, I've been playing Team Fortress 2. My friend Angry Anthony made a Chef's Hat for the Piro, who I usually play, so I logged in after more than 2 (3?) years away and bought it. Then I started playing a little. A lot has changed and you can tell it hasn't been the top valve team that has been working on it.

Two issues I want to rant about real quick. First is they are having these Saxxy Awards for user submitted videos. They advertise this on the main menu. The ad takes up more than half the menu screen and has a gold statue, think Oscars, rotating to the sound of clapping and camera flashes... THAT DOESN'T STOP!! Oh, they die down for a little bit with the occasional clap or flash, BUT THEN IT PICKS BACK UP AGAIN! YOU CAN'T SHUT IT OFF! MY GOD IT IS ANNOYING!!!

Second issue and what really set me off. I logged into Team Fortress just now and when I tried to connect to a server (their new server menu isn't the greatest piece of technology either by the way) it told me that "This account does not own this game" and promptly disconnected me. I tried several severs with the same result. I'm logged in on the main menu, it shows my achievements and past stats, the game is listed in my Steam library. WTF!

I tried searching their support site. When I type the phrase ""This account does not own this game" it told me that the words THIS, DOES, NOT, and OWN were common words and were omitted from the search. Yes, I put the search phrase in quotes. Tried several way of searching for an answer. No luck finding anything relevant, big surprise.

I then just did a Google search and for it and found another post somewhere complaining about. Somebody there linked to a Steam forum post that said they were doing maintenance on accounts created around the time of the Orange Box release and they would be down for about 20 hours.

I know these kinds of things happen. Account maintenance is understandable. No email message about this? Nothing on the Team Fortress 2 twitter feed, though plenty of posting about the new hats they are selling ingame. No news post when I launched Steam, though plenty of advertising for other games I should buy? Not even a warning when I launched the game that some accounts would be unuseable during this maintenance?!

They thought a pop-up saying I didn't own the game would be sufficient?!

And if Valve is supposed to be this leap forward, super-duper, do it right on don't do it at all company, why doesn't their support site have any mention of this that is searchable? Or hey, how about a top issues list on the support home page? Instead... they thought it was acceptable for me to get all the way into the game, and they be told that I was being disconnected because I didn't own the game?

They thought a pop-up saying I didn't own the game would be sufficient?!

I keep saying that because these are the people that pioneered digital distribution. The ones who are trying to get the skeptics to believe that it is okay not to have physical media that I can hold in my hands. Trying to get us to feel safe and secure in the knowledge that if we buy it digitally from them online, that we will still own this game.

...unless... they decide we don't own it.

Going to Sydney

I'll be in Syndey this weekend for Supanova. I haven't really had the time to look into who is going to be there until now. Comic wise we have Stan Lee by video conference... Marv Wolfman, unfortunately I don't have anything of his here in Australia for him to sign. Whilce Portacio, don't think I have anything of his here either. Something seems to be up with ComicBase because it isn't showing me all of the issues for people I'm working for. Going to have to go over and post on their tech forum.

Bruce Spence is going to be there, he was as the last Brisbane Supanova. I really wish I had something cool from Road Warrior (Max Max 2) for him to sign.

There is a Fury billboard up in Sydney that I want to try and get to see.It is on William St. near the corner of Boomerang. Click on the pic for a much larger version.

Speaking of Fury, I've also been doing a few questions a week over at Game Arena. Here are the links to part 1 and part 2. Part 3 should be going up anytime now. We also announced some major changes to some of the game systems last week which you can read about here.

I would love to go back and edit this to spice it up, add that JBHIV humor, but Snipers aren't going to set their own selves on fire! Don't call Homeland Security, thats just my way of saying I'm going to play Team Fortress 2.

Re-Hacked

Way back when I first started this blog I was annoyed at the way it put a one pixel border around all my pictures, especially my picture over there on the right. I had drawn in the drop shadow on the white background and the border ruined the effect. I was way too lazy to search though Blogger's template HTML code that was way more advanced than the HTML code I had been familiar with years before. So instead I just put some simple HTML code into one of the 'about me' sections of my profile that loaded the picture and the links that used to be under it.

Not so way back, but still awhile ago, a friend pointed out that I don't have my blog's name nor my own name written as text very often and therefore I'm not easy to find on search engines. I could fix that but updating so fields in my profile but I found out that Blogger no longer allows you to to put HTML in any of those fields. So if I changed anything on my profile it wouldn't save. In order to get the new picture up I had to rename the new .jpg file, over writing the previous 'Blond 2006' picture.

So to make a long story even longer I fixed it all yesterday. I nuked the HTML in my profile, updated several fields; notice all the posts are signed "Joseph B. Hewitt IV" instead of "Joseph the Fourth" now. I still didn't use their layout because it makes the picture really small. I re-hacked my picture and links back in. I do like the way it says my name now instead of 'About Me' like it used to. It was quite the pain figuring it all out though, comment out a line... see what changed... change a line... see if it worked... There were times I was screaming and shouting at the computer so much Connie thought I was playing Team Fortress 2 again.

I did find a bug though. I was dismayed at the profile's lack of choices for profession categories. For a Game Designer I expected to there to be something like 'Software Development' or at least an 'Entertainment' category but there isn't anything close. I chose 'Not Specified' but it doesn't save and always resets back to 'Accounting' which is the first option on the list. Horrified at being listed as an Accountant (sorry Becky) I switched it to the very generic 'Technology' category.

Scott at My Extra Life is doing the judging on his Jack Thompson Photoshop contest this weekend and posted all the entries. I was a little disappointed at all the dodgy ones. I was hoping to see a few really grand entries but most of them seem to have been given little thought and were pasted together using MS:Paint. I guess I am more used to seeing the quality Photoshop Phriday stuff on Something Awful.