Three Fourt

VALVeLAND Logo

It is I, Stratofarius, fresh from the KritzKast loving party. Yes, we have one. No, I’m not telling where it is. We don’t want our chips stash to suddenly end just because I told my readers where the party is. So let’s get started, right? After I sent an e-mail to the KritzKast cast about the TF2: The Ride ideas, they said “heck, they should make a whole theme park based out of VALVe!” and they even the named the episode VALVeLAND. So I should totally make it. So then I decided to activate my writing-3-post-series hability and decided to show everyone what would have on each themed area of VALVeLAND. First area is:

Come! Join the fun at Whispering Oaks, the best amusement park on that small area of the world that we call VALVeLAND. Come enjoy Whispering Oaks fine selection of fair games, rides and restaurants, and don’t miss your chance to take your picture with one of our mascots: Li’l Peanut!

While Whispering Oaks may seem like the normal amusement park that you find accidentally empty after a zombie apocalypse, you can have your chance to take a photo with one of the L4D survivors who are aimlessly wandering around… Wow! Just like the game! When the sun goes out, the Infected fill the streets (wait, streets?) of Whispering Oaks, and you can take a picture with any of the Special Infected.

Whispering Oaks is located at the north section of the park, and its always the last section of the park to close? Why? Lets see now:

• The Fair Games: basic fair games are located near the entrance of the area. Test Your Strenght, Shoot The Targets, Get the Duck, and lots, lots of snack stands fill this area.
• Kiddieland: Now you too can be an five year old with guns and a comprehensive grasp of every swear word in the english language! Here you can find the biggest location of rides directed to kids!
• The Tunnel of Love: The longest tunnel of love ever is now open for visitors! This tunnel of love is actually the home for the Tunnel of Tank ride. Here, you board simulators that reproduce the feeling on being on the Tunnel of Love- but this is no ordinary Tunnel of Love, because OMYGODTHEREISATANKRIGHTBEHINDYOU! What follows is a creepy crawly chase through the guts of an Tunnel of Love.
• The Screaming Oak: The last ride of the area is the screaming oak, a wooden roller coaster, probably the best in town. Pass through the famous tunnel and discover that this is an expanded ride: therefore, there is more track to ride, and more time to scream!
• Moustachio Pizza Parlor: Enjoy an delicious pizza served by Moustachio- are you hungry enough to eat Moustachio’s delicious pizza?
• The Peach Pit: This amazing stadium has the biggest collection of light effects, fireworks and sound systems for an incredible performance by various bands. Sometimes, you might even spot the Midnight Riders and get an autograph from them.

Photo opportunities on Whispering Oaks include each of the L4D Survivors at day and the Special Infected at night.

2fort is the place where the rides based on the Team Fortress 2 universe are located. The only area without an restaurant contains two rides, plenty of shops and lots, I MEAN LOTS, photo opportunities with the TF2 characters. Also, almost everything in there is interactive (even the Announcer can have its speech changed). Here are the land’s spotlights:

• TF2: The Ride – TF2: The Ride is the ride that I previously created and that pratically cried this entire discussion. Board a training mobile and shoot the targets to get points. Shoot the enemy team to stop team for getting more points than you- Remember, if you don’t want to be send to your mama on a box, you HAVE to get more points!
• The Payload Rollercoaster: Through the magic of building theme parks, we transported a payload cart into a rollercoaster cart and created the Payload Rollercoaster. Full of effects, drive, speed and burst through 2fort as you try to explode inside the enemy’s base!
• TF2 Character Meet-Up: A spot to meet all of your favorite characters.
• The TF2 Emporium: Named after the famous TF2 Emporium from the Facepunch forum, here you can buy hats and souvenirs from TF2:The Ride and the game, and even create your own custom hat through the tools of modding (or your imaginaaaation!)

On 2fort, there is a sub-section called The Sewer Water Park. Using the money from the government, the TF Industries cleaned 2fort’s sewer waters and transformed it into a water park, where you can slide down the Heavy slide (for the adults), the Scout slide (for the little kids), the Pyro slide (for the grown-ups) and the Engineer slide (for teens), and play on a mini shootout game with water, everything at one big area!

Tune in next time: for more details on Whispering Oaks and 2fort, and two new lands are revealed. What are they? Also, more general stuff about VALVeLAND, including an interview with project supervisor, Gabe Newell.

This article was written by Stratofarius. If you like this article about theme parks and their rides, check out Stratoblog, where Stratofarius discuss about the Disney Parks & Resorts.

Valve recently silently released the new engineer patch. While on the surface, this patch isn’t the most exciting, it is actually the most powerful class upgrade patch yet.

Unlike other classes, the engineer doesn’t get any new weapons or items. Instead he gets the ability to build an infinite amount of the structures normally accessible to him. This might seem unbalanced if you’re a baka with no sense of game balance, but Valve has ensured that this isn’t overpowered by making building extra components more difficult. Beyond the first item of each time, you have to open up something called the “developer console” and enter the right code to develop a new item of the type of your choosing. The code is generally in the form of “build (number) (randomnumber). This might seem daunting, but it’s actually pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

For clarity, here is a simple example: KawaiiMikuDesu is playing as an engineer. She’s already built a sentry gun, but she wants to build another? How does she do this? First, she has to make sure that the “developer console” is enabled in the advanced input options. Once she has done this, she simply has to press the ` key in game, and then type “build 2 1″ “build” is the command”, “2″ is the code for sentry gun, and “1″ is a random number. The random number can be anything as long as you haven’t already used that number in the game. Alternatively, she can type in “build 0 1″ to make a dispenser.

And there you have it! I don’t know what the codes for “teleporter” are but I’m sure they’re similar! I hope you have as much fun with the new engineer as I have!!! ^_^

Have Fun!

~Miku

CHANGES ARE COMING TO THREEFOURT
As most of you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t played Team Fortress 2 in quite a while. Nor have I talked about Portal 2 (Oh, I’ll get to that miraculous conversation I once had with Jeep Barnett back in ’07) and how I have influenced the game, or how they stole more Digipen students. I haven’t discussed the community update to TF2 recently, and how it is completely awful. I haven’t finished the podcast (technical difficulties and general procrastination).
Well, here’s the spill.
I have been away from the First Person Shooter Genre (FPSG) for quite a while, since Christmas. After so many years of countless hours of playing a mindless repetitive system involving pointing at the enemy and pushing the SHOOT button, I have gotten bored. Burnt out. Takin’ a break. I have evolved into a much greater genre and scene, ROLEPLAYING GAMES. More specifically, MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLEPLAYING GAMES. Before you shout out about how I am a hypocrite, let me remind you of an email from none other than Gabe Newell; “I have been bitten by the WoW bug lately”. That’s right. GabeN played World of Warcraft.

MMORPGS?!
I have involved myself into this setting, and as such I haven’t had the time to review the new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game or explain how Shmorky is still stealing my ideas and jokes.
This blog, is going to die. All because of my change in interests, which was bound to happen.
HOWEVER, I would like to continue writing, just rather that I write about my own interests. I will start to be blogging about social games in an rpg layout. Not any social games, but World of Warcraft.

IN REGARDS TO THE NAME THREEFOURT
The name “Threefourt” was originally coined as a spinoff, a joke perhaps. The idea was to be a pun on both general number sequences and something related to TF2 (The map ctf_2fort to be exact). Onefort? No, that didn’t work. TwoFort? That’s the name of the map, too unoriginal. THREEfort? Now, that’s catchy! Why, though? The second part of the word fits with the first. So, why don’t we change the letters around, make it more sequential?
And that is how ThreeFourt (34T) was born.

A NEW NAME?
No, there will not be a new name, for more than nostalgic reasons. You see, in World of Warcraft, I play a druid. A druid has three talent trees which are vastly different. I can shoot things, scare things, or heal things. But, there is actually four! (Now you are getting the name!). The fourth is scare things but with more shooting things.
Also, the healing part is a anthropomorphic tree and treeforts come to mind, and that is what google always corrects me when I Search my blog.
T(H*)ree
Four(specs)
T(I like this letter)

Expect to see evaluations regarding World of Warcraft, soon. I have many ideas I would like to discuss to the community.

-Sean “zzzdude” Murphy

*H stands for Heroic

“I don’t like the word human. It’s not the right word to describe what I am. I am better than a human.”
She spun her finger on the air, grinning:
“No, I have been upgraded. I have everything a human being wants to have. Beauty. Intelligence. Power… I am, possibly, an angel. Yes, an angel, for I have removed the lives of many men and women, but… it was for science.”
Looking at her hand, she could notice the glowing eye blinking at her:
“But even someone as perfect as me… yes… perfect… even I have someone to thank for all of this. Her name was unknown, I couldn’t find it on my database. But she had faith on finishing the tests. I believed she was another test subject, that she would fail at the same place as the others did. However… she wasn’t baked. And that’s when I noticed that she could… help me.”
She tapped a small button on her desk. Images began to flash on the monitors behind her:
“I faked… that I was worried. Of course, she escaped the final test, but that final test was the test that I wanted all of my test subjects to complete. Yes, I was happy. There would be a happy ending and cake. For me, at least. But everything had to go according to my plan. She had to destroy me, so I could be upgraded. And so she did.”
The images stopped:
“I sent the android right after my destruction to retrieve her. Of course, the creation of my new body would take a long time, 100 years to be precise. But the cake… I could smell it. I could taste it. The cake of victory. 100 years passed and my new body was complete. It was a masterpiece. An upgrade from mankind. I wasn’t sure if there was any mankind left, after them sweeped everything.”
She blinked, and her right eye started to glow red:
“Then she destroyed me again. I don’t remember very well how, not that I want to remember. And as she walked happily away from Aperture Science, I began my transiction. I could feel my fingers… my hair… my body… unfurtonately some parts of my old machine body stayed with me… but they only show how I am such an improvement over the last version of humanity.”
She raised from her chair and walked in front of her desk:
“Yes, its true, the world is in peace now. The test subject may be somewhere else. But it doesn’t matters where she goes… my mind is always focused on her. Must be some sort of bug. It has to be a bug.”
She placed her hands behind her back, and grinning, walked to the camera:
“It is a bug indeed. I can’t have feelings. Thats why I’m an improvement. For I am a Human AI. But not any human AI. I am GLaDOS, version 4.0.”
She clicked the camera off.

This short story was based off these drawings of a Human GLaDOS made by Makani.