You are not writing code, you are altering how an engine functions, with all the toys to play with laid out for you in a confusing manner. Having most of the source code to the engine helps with negating the initial confusion, and tones down the difficulty considerably.

Cool that someone else is messing around with the game, but I've got advice if you want to make proper configs, and you'd learn valuable skills while at it. https://github.com/VSES/SourceEngine2007 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013
Presuming you know nothing of C++, don't start from a book to learn the basics, ignore the lisp evangelists, and avoid youtube tutorials. Start with https://www.learncpp.com/ & search engines, treat search engines as a gateway to writing better code, I'm thinking you would write code later on.

Here's some stuff to look into about what you've changed in your configs, I didn't exclude any nitpicks.

Supporting other source engine games in a nutshell, I've made a complete port to Garry's Mod months ago, strange quirks like r_rootlod being above 0 messing up the interiors of TDM cars. The port was generally the same as the TF2 config apart from convar removals, aforementioned quirks, and some new convars to mess with. Alot of playtesting really.

Not happening, I've had enough with the low self-confidence. I was insecure about the configs being 'dirty' or wrong on some convars back then.

I'm fine with working on the configs from time to time, and I'm happy to provide them to people who appreciate the work put into them.

Although it is clear that teamfortress.tv members are generally unhappy with my presence from some people being very unhappy with the VG cheating I did regularly in the past.

I won't vanish suddenly for that reason either.

Here, I'll give context to how I kept the self-confidence problem at bay:

I've been doing adjustments to my eating habits, really liking it so far, salmon being my new favorite food.

I also found activities that are very rewarding to me, and I seem to have a winning battle with inattentive ADHD, which was the core reason of my low confidence (inability to do what is important, or have interests in something outside the comfort zone).

Lastly, I take walks everyday I can.

My outlook on life - comparsion:

Before: Everything is insignificant, no point in trying.
Now: Reducing as much misery as possible for yourself and others you know personally is important.

snd_spatialize_roundrobin 5

Months ago I had minimal knowledge on audio in the Source Engine:
https://github.com/SylveonBottle/optimization/blob/070994049611003a51d09fac0ba3d7e5029a2783/TF2/base.cfg#L107
As you can see, it has been set at that value for a long while.

Despite me looking over a bunch of other convar changes I did, I didn't do so relating to audio.

So now I have.

This is what my research on the convar led me to:

Values other than 0 add a delay to the changing of soundscapes within maps, that delay is longer for the same given value if the FPS is lower.

(Soundscapes are the enviromental sounds baked into a map.)

How you can tell if the soundscapes are delayed for too long is if previous soundscapes get stuck, then jump to silence, then to the newest soundscape.

I've found that nothing is wrong with the changing of soundscapes when the value is set to 2, even while using fps_max 30.

If you want to test this for yourself, set snd_spatialize_roundrobin at 10 to delay, 0 to remove the delay.

Optional: Set soundscape_debug to 1 to see the soundscapes, once a line turns green, the soundscape has changed.

I'll be looking into the other audio changes I've done after the Pyro update release.

As for my next release, which nobody asked about but I feel the need to talk about it, will be alot cleaner and the autoexec might actually be easy to read.

Other things to note are some corrections not related to audio, new cfgs that I've finished already (lowram.cfg, weakgpu.cfg, some others), and performance improvements to cfgs I've never touched in a long while.

More information and a download link avaliable at: https://github.com/source-engine/optimizations

It is very customizable and will under most circumstances appeal to your personal preferences.

edit: Config is gone, be back later.

Services such as these actually help with ping, since they provide better routing to locations.

Don't be fooled by these 'gamer' VPN services though, they are all ripoffs.

Go with a reputable VPN service such as AirVPN for the same results, with some additional bonuses (your privacy actually being protected is one of the main benefits).

Personally, I get 20ms less ping to some locations (Luxembourg, Sweden) while connected to a US west coast AirVPN server, pings are also much more stable to every location.

I remember being frustrated a month ago about smoke trails not showing for rockets under DX8.
Wouldn't have thought of downgrading GPU drivers, so thanks for that man.

Infinite uber for pyro is patched, getting uber and crits instantly after taunting is not.
I don't see how that is possible, unless it is server specific.

These exploits are nothing new, they have existed since the May 17th, 2013 patch (could be steampipe, actually).
That patch added anti-speedhacking measures, the convar to it is sv_maxusrcmdprocessticks.

The majority of exploits have been discovered in 2015, Wutstorm (now Lithium) being the first public cheat to exploit the anti-speedhack and possibly the first cheat ever to.

It is as simple as using proper speedhack at extreme values.
Improper speedhacks such as host_timescale or host_framerate will not work.

Cheat providers call this extreme speedhack "Remove conditions".

Just something I want to say right off the bat, if you hear someone burping (not through voice comms), it is almost 100% that they are using a cheat, this is a common side effect of extreme speed values.

List of exploits (new ones were discovered after this):

• Ear-raping with the cow mangler.
  
• Instant decloaking with any watch.
  
• Instant reloading with the cow mangler and bison.
  
• Fast health regen, the first discovered exploit, patched.
  
• Instant rezoom, it does not impact the firing rate of sniper rifles.
  
• Removal of burning, bleeding, and stun conditions. It cannot remove mad milk or jarate.
  
• Medic infinite healing range, you had to use airstuck in combination for this to work, patched.
  
• Pyro phlogistinator infinite uber, you had to use airstuck in combination for this to work, patched.
  
• Clipping through walls to other players as a method of anti-hit, fast health regen had this side effect.
  
• Exiting spawn at the start of a round, which can also lead to very long setup times if a point is capped.
  
• Huntsman health booster, heals an enemy by 1000~ HP when hit by your arrow (assuming you are using this exploit).
  
• Sentries being unable to target some remove conditions users (depends on what the cheat is doing, and if the user is shooting or not).
  
• Instant captures on some control points, this can be countered by another teammate reaching a point before the cheater does to make instant capping not possible on that point, until it becomes uncaptured.
  
• Instant taunting, it is also possible to cancel all taunts while doing them at any given time. Instant taunting can also lead to a game breaking exploit, spamming taunts such as Meet the Medic or Shred Alert to massively lower the framerate of other players into single digits or low double, also has the chance of crashing TF2 for others.

Forgot to add, this also caused the instant defuse and plant in CS:GO.

Put this in your autoexec:

filesystem_buffer_size 0
filesystem_max_stdio_read 32
filesystem_native 1
filesystem_unbuffered_io 0
filesystem_use_overlapped_io 1

Or reinstall TF2 as a last resort.

My config seems pretty watered down on this site, it's also out of date (2.3.3, current as of this post is 2.5.1).
Would be great if the config were to include all the customization available from the original versions.

I would assume the issue you are facing is related to PVS, so set cl_SetupAllBones to 1 to see if it solves the issue, you will get an FPS drop from this.
As for cl_pred_optimize, it does not drop framerate when set to 1.