Hey guys!

In response to my last message, I was approached by another HUD-maker, CriticalFlaw, about taking over control of the HUD.

He already runs his own successful HUD which you can check out here:

http://huds.tf/forum/showthread.php?tid=252

and has already been maintaining his own version of my HUD here:

https://github.com/CriticalFlaw/rayshud

After seeing the pretty awesome track record he has with HUD stuff, I was more than happy to pass on my HUD to someone I know would take proper care of it, so I've officially given him control of my own.

What does this mean for you guys?

- The potential for an up-to-date, official, working version of my HUD.
- The potential for future updates to the HUD, assuming CriticalFlaw remains active in the HUD community.

What does this not mean?

- There's no guarantee that the installer will continue to be supported. That was created by myself and a friend of mine and neither of us have plans to support it moving forward. If at some point another installer pops up then so be it, but as of right now, it's not making a return.

It's super awesome of CriticalFlaw to be willing to help me (and all of you guys out) like this, so major props to him for being up to the task.

<3 raysfire

So since there's a lot of ambiguity about my HUD the past few months, I figured I owed it to everyone to write a short message to update you all and hopefully remove any uncertainties that might be going around throughout the TF2 community.

I started this HUD as a side project back when I was a senior in high school in late 2012, as a means to introduce myself to the more technical side of game-related things in order to familiarize myself with the types of things I might deal with when I went off to college the following year and pursue a degree in computer science. While the HUD didn't necessarily match up entirely with the type of work I ended up doing while pursuing my degree, the development of the HUD was fun, and seeing more and more people enjoy something I put out continued to drive me to update it and keep it alive for as many people out there that wanted to use it; even long after I ended my "formal" relationship with the game.

However, now that I'm entering into my final semester of my undergraduate degree, I'm oftentimes finding myself with not enough free time left to do all of the things I want to do. While I love this game and the community surrounding it, I just don't have the time or motivation to pursue updating it anymore.

While I'm still around the community and still active online, my free time is scarce compared to what it was when I first created the HUD; and the little free time I do have goes into pursuing other things - building my stream community, pursuing a healthier lifestyle, etc.

Unfortunately, this means that as of today, I'm officially going on a long hiatus from TF2 HUD editing. If something happens to suck me back into this game and I end up pouring free time into it again, then sure, I might come out of the shadows and update my HUD again, but it was just eating too much of my time and I can't warrant putting time into it anymore.

So, what does this mean to you guys?
- My HUD isn't going anywhere. I plan to keep my github repository public and open - Anyone who wants to fork it and create their own version of it that's kept up to date is welcome to do so.
- You're free to continue to use it, but it'll most likely be bug-filled, and some things might not work properly (although that's already the case at least somewhat from what I hear, haha)
- The installer (which was already somewhat broken from the start) will also no longer be receiving updates. If someone on down the line wants to create another version of it, then feel free.

If you're seriously interested in taking over support of the HUD, feel free to contact me at my email (raysfire64@gmail.com), or DM me on Twitter @raysfire (https://twitter.com/raysfire). If I think you'd be a good successor, I'd be willing to add you as a collaborator to the repo and allow you to push updates to it.

Thanks for everything, guys. We had a good run. I appreciate all of you for supporting me, being patient with me through updates, and enjoying the content that I made. Hope I'll see some of you around in the future.

- raysfire <3

I'm not 100% confirmed yet, but there's a pretty good chance I'll be there again this year. If any TFTV people make it out, let me know so I can say hello!

It probably means it'll be a 2-way race then. People that are doing couch commentary aren't listed on the schedule.

Also: While the event itself has had it's fair share of scrutiny over the years due to the whole financial thing; it's really the only time that speedrunners from all sorts of different game communities have the opportunity to meet up and spend time together. Think of it as like the speedrunning community's GXL LAN. While there's also ESA, the GDQs consistently have the highest/largest attendance of any speedrunning event and in most situations if you want to meet up with friends in an event setting as far as speedrunning is concerned, this is really the only time you get to do it. There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes (casual room, board game room, practice room, free play arcade, free play pinball machines, off-stream speedrun races, room parties, etc) that make the events more than worth it to attend every year if you're a part of the community.

I'm not trying to defend some of the shady stuff the organization has done (especially considering I got screwed by them with registration a year ago), but I feel a lot of the stuff in that video is very misleading. The few times I did commentary, I wasn't told anything by the staff directly and was just given the simple guideline of "being civil". Saying the event is "sterilized" because runners aren't able to show "their true personality" just seems like people firing shots at the organization for wanting to keep the commentary on their runs relatively clean. I understand that that's not everyone's style, but if you can't show your personality without filling your commentary with swears, I dunno what to tell you. \o/

I'm still very active with games so I'm not sure if this is the type of response you're looking for, but I figured I'd answer anyways.

That's a hard question to answer because a lot of factors affect the way my life has played out over the past few years. I'm going to assume you're referring to specifically the parts of my life that dealt specifically with this game and how things have been different ever since then. If that's the case, then maybe? When I was really dedicated to this game, I wouldn't sacrifice scrim time and matches for anything; they were things I looked forward to at the end of every day and I still look back fondly on getting myself pumped up before a league match. However, it was obvious that I burning myself out towards the end of things, so it was definitely a nice change of pace to no longer be tied to a multiple scrim/matches a week and provide myself more flexibility with my free-time. The way I saw it, if it was becoming a chore to play this game, then maybe it was about time I take a break.

Occasionally when I have nothing to do I'll boot it up and queue for a pub or play some matchmaking as a kind of "nostalgia"-esque thing, but I like to keep myself pretty busy these days so that doesn't happen too much. I haven't played any type of pick-up game or anything since I played my last league match though.

The reason I stopped playing this game is merely because I lost interest in it and something else came up that started filling the time I used to put into TF2. I'm a big advocate of things happening for a reason, so when I shifted my focus to speedrunning and finishing my degree up from TF2, I felt it was just because my period of interest had passed. If you're still enjoying the game though, I definitely think you should keep playing. I think that you shouldn't stop doing something just because you felt you needed to "stop", but rather because you actually aren't enjoying the act of doing that particular thing anymore.

Honestly, it was extreme burnout. After 7,000+ hours of doing most of what this game had to offer (being a part of a pub community, playing competitively, actively streaming it, making a hud, messing around in other misc. gamemodes), I just lost the spark to keep playing it that I originally had when I started, and something else came along that captivated my interest.

Just because I don't actively play the game anymore doesn't mean I've forgotten all of the friends I've made here and am interested in how the game is doing. After putting 7,000 hours of my life into this game, I've pretty much emotionally invested myself in the future of this game even though I'm not playing. I'll probably be around and supporting the scene until there is no scene left to support.

Hope this helps give you some insight. :3

My HUD does not mess with weapon models at all.

If you're having issues with them, I'd recommend you take a look at your config and/or custom weapon skins you may have had added. The fact that you say it happens on only my HUD and no other HUD is most likely placebo. All my HUD does is modify the in-game HUD files, and all the installer does is customize those files to give a more personalized user experience.

Tickets go on sale a week from today. The BYOC tournament last year was a tad lacking in entrants, but it still had a prize pool and trophies for the winners and staff seemed to be fairly accommodating. If there was enough interest, it might be worth it to reach out to them ahead of time if enough people planned on attending to help with organization, etc.

https://austin.dreamhack.com/17/ticket-info/

Additional information (based off of last year's tournament): Teams were registered through the DH BYOC tournament system, and then team captains coordinated with event staff via a DH Discord. There were Discord channels for voice, but people could use whatever they wanted. Map pool was a little iffy, but that's because the staff running the tournament didn't have a lot of knowledge in the form of competitive TF2. If reached out to enough in advance, I'm sure they'd be willing to work with the community on things.

I'd imagine they'll use a similar structure in both Atlanta and Denver as well.

The fact that you have a custom HUD element (in this case damage numbers) means that you are, in essence, using a custom HUD. In order to get your modified damage numbers working correctly, you need a .vdf file that contains essentially what is said in post 2.

To elaborate further: I'm going to assume that your HudDamageAccount.res file was in a folder structure similar to

tf/custom/<custom name>/resource/ui

What you must do is take the .vdf file specified in post #2 and place it within the folder:

tf/custom/<custom name>

If it's structured correctly, that folder should just have another folder in it (resource), and the newly added vdf file. Reminder that the first line within the .vdf file must match the name of the custom folder within your actual customs folder, otherwise the game won't recognize that you're trying to use custom HUD elements and instead load the stock files.

It should be below casual and competitive - If you can give me a screenshot of what you see, it'd help me out a lot though. Thanks! :D

Hey guys, I went ahead and made a quick hotfix to the installer. It won't address all crashing issues present already, but it should automatically include the info.vdf file upon installation, removing the need for the extra step of manually moving the info.vdf file from the direct download. If you were trying to use the installer prior and were having issues with the HUD appearing after installation, this should fix it.

You can download it here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19762650/rayshud_installer_07122016.zip

Reminder that the installer requires a .NET framework of at least 4.0 to run properly. If the installer is giving you issues, check to make sure you have at least .Net 4.0.

I made this in a rush, so there's bound to be issues with it. If it doesn't work for whatever reason, please let me know.

rayshud v2016.7.12 has been released!

Sorry for taking so long on this; I was away at SGDQ this past week and just got home earlier tonight. Everything should be working fine, but due to Valve removing the ability to easily replicate matchmaking and their game coordinator repeatedly going down while I was updating the HUD, it was hard to make everything perfect.

This update was mainly just so I could get something out to everyone who's been waiting patiently for such a long time - I plan to release another update shortly after addressing some of the bugs and cleaning up some of the visual clutter that's probably present in this version.

*****

NOTE: If you use the installer, the HUD will most likely not work by default. You'll also need to get the file "info.vdf" from my most recent commit (also included in the direct download below) and put it in the tf/custom/rayshud folder (the base directory, next to all of the folders). Your files will still be customized, but the game won't recognize the HUD without this file. I'll look into getting this fixed soon so you won't have to take this additional step.

*****

If anything seems off or isn't working properly, please let me know so I can make sure it's fixed when I begin the second wave of fixing all of the visual/functionality bugs I find.

This version includes the following changes:

- Added in support for matchmaking with the Meet your Match update.
- Added in support for casual with the Meet your Match update.
- Added in the ability to check the "Pyro vs. Heavy" war standings from the main menu.
- Cleaned up the appearance of the store to accomodate for the new update.
- Removed the "Welcome back" section of the main menu, as it no longer works unfortunately.
- Added in support for the new animations.
- Updated clientscheme.res and hudlayout.res to reflect the Meet your Match update.
- Moved the location of the stopwatch time on both casual and competitive modes to be smaller and closer to the player panels.
- Updated the scoreboard to have a larger server map time in the top left corner.
- Updated the scoreboard to display the casual/competitive badges larger for readability.
- (Potentially) fixed a bug where tournament win conditions sometimes wouldn't display.
- Fixed the item notification and recent update buttons not working on the main menu.

You can download the update here:

https://github.com/raysfire/rayshud/archive/faadfc97b6088dfd8c5799735fc2363b72ac138d.zip

or via the installer by Tree here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18079550/rayshud_installer.zip

______

New Main Menu:

http://puu.sh/pYUeY/b7e28cb74a.jpg

Casual Menu:

http://puu.sh/pYUYN/b325236d49.jpg

Competitive Menu:

http://puu.sh/pYUZl/09e417b65d.jpg

Updated Stopwatch Elements (Casual/Competitive):

http://puu.sh/pYVnt/fd60721a04.jpg

If the runner wants me to be on the couch again for his run, I will be. People have told me that he's wanted me to, but he hasn't approached me about it directly. If I do end up being on the couch, I'll tweet something out so that people know ahead of time.

Event Info:
Date: July 2nd - 10th, 2016
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Venue: Hilton Minneapolis Downtown
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick
Schedule: https://gamesdonequick.com/schedule/

Notable runs that are going to occur:

- Super Mario Sunshine Any% (Ran by the WR holder, SGDQ stream opener)
- Spyro: Year of the Dragon Any%
- Super Mario World All Castles Race
- Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Glitchless Any%
- Trauma Center Second Opinion Any%
- Pokémon Red Any% Glitchless
- Jet Set Radio Any%
- Donkey Kong 64 Any%
- TAS Block
- A million Megaman games
- Super Metroid Any% Race
- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Any% (Stream closer)

I'll be there the 2nd through the 10th, so if any of you guys end up going, feel free to find me and say hello. :3

Also, in addition to this, if you need a place to hang out during the event and you don't want to talk in the main chat, I'll be running a side chat on my Twitch channel where there's generally a decent amount of people chatting during the GDQ events.

Yeah, once you get access to the friends list feature, it shows all of your friends who are currently online and using twitch and clicking their name opens up a whisper to them so you can chat across the site without having to be in the same channel.

http://puu.sh/oNqWK/99edbeb427.png

rayshud v2016.4.29 has been released!

Sorry for the long delay on updating this after the patch Valve put out earlier this week. It's the end of the semester for me and I was swamped with assignments and other things that took up a lot of my time this week. Hopefully this update makes up for it somewhat.

Also, reminder that if you don't like the default lime green and yellow values on the tournament spectator panel, they can be easily edited by simply changing the color codes in ClientScheme.res, lines 32-34.

This version includes the following changes:

- Fixed floating health above players not displaying properly.
- Added in support for team leader avatars and team names on the scoreboard when playing in a 6-stack against a 6-stack in matchmaking.
- Added in support for team leader avatars and team names on the pre-game and post-game panels when playing in a 6-stack against a 6-stack in matchmaking.
- Re-did the stopwatch elements when playing attack/defend in matchmaking.
- Removed the "Winners" panel displaying twice in two different sizes when on the results screen of a matchmaking game.
- Fixed the player panels displaying improperly in a matchmaking game.
- Fixed the matchmaking door open/close animations not displaying.
- Re-did the round counter HUD element to match the theme of the HUD more when playing matchmaking.
- Fixed the "setup" and "overtime" labels from clipping with other HUD elements when playing matchmaking.
- Fixed some HUD elements getting cut off when spectating someone.
- Fixed the "Win Conditions" shadow from sometimes appearing during the ready-up process of a matchmaking game.
- Fixed various HUD tournament elements displaying when not necessary.
- Added in tooltips when mousing over a player's rank in the matchmaking menu.
- Completely redesigned the tournament spectator panel to be much more cleaner and easy to read.
- Cleaned up the chatbox to take up less space on the HUD and be generally less bulky (thanks nokk!).

You can download the update here:

https://github.com/raysfire/rayshud/archive/cdb4007a02367563219a8a1ffb9acfd9c3fe7d42.zip

or via the installer by Tree here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18079550/rayshud_installer.zip

______

6-stack changes in matchmaking:

http://puu.sh/oACno/1700cbfd7d.jpg

http://puu.sh/oq4q9/9764f701fb.jpg

http://puu.sh/oACuO/e8d481fcd3.jpg

New stopwatch elements in matchmaking:

http://puu.sh/ozMV2/cc256d300a.jpg

Updated koth elements in matchmaking:

http://puu.sh/ozNa0/9fed3a46b2.jpg

New round counter in matchmaking:

http://puu.sh/oABA9/5591c9719d.jpg

New tournament spectator HUD:

http://puu.sh/oADl8/8dd2ca2457.jpg

New rank tooltips in matchmaking menu:

http://puu.sh/oAFty/385ae582a3.jpg

Yeah, I linked the BYOC tickets in the thread posted before that one here:

http://www.teamfortress.tv/post/487095/dreamhack-na

But no one ever responded :(

Granted, at that point in time there was no TF2 tournament confirmed.

As far as I know, this was a pretty recent development, so there's not really much many of us here could've done to prepare for it other than buy a BYOC ticket way in advance in hopes that something would pop up.