Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Updates Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Source Engine Changes (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2, HL2:DM)

• Fixed a bug with voice recording intermittently not recording after playing in a level for a while (Mac)
• Fixed a rare client crash caused by text rendering (Mac)
• Updated the server browser localization files

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/4633/

Tweaking Hammer for Efficiency

by Timothy 'YM' Johnson @Nodraw.net

Like any engine, after a bit of love and attention it can run much better, spend some time setting hammer up how you like it, get something that you like and get it to work for you, it’s your workflow. Read more ...

Dynamic Materials with Proxies

by Andy "Velvet Fist, Iron Glove" Durdin @Nodraw.net

This picture constantly rotates.

Material proxies are a neat little feature of the Source engine that let you alter various properties of a material dynamically.  This can produce some neat effects, as the texture position, scale, rotation, transparency and much more can be changed continuously, or even in response to game events.
Take Half-life 2, for example.  You know those combine force-fields, that ripple with energy, and fade out as you move away from it?  Or in Team Fortress 2, you’ll have seen the rotating radar screen in the 2fort basement.  Both those effects are done with material proxies. Read more ...