Valve ANNOUNCES portal 2! So says the Valve press release in my inbox, extremely short of details:

VALVE ANNOUNCES PORTAL 2

Sequel to 2007's Game of the Year Coming This Holiday

March 5, 2010 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life) and leading technologies (such as Steam, Source), today announced Portal 2 for shipment this coming holiday season.

Portal was originally released in 2007 and earned over 70 industry achievement awards.

For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com

Signups for TWL Season 6 are still underway!

Qualifiers have already begun for the next season, but it's not too late to join. To get a qualifier match and attempt to place in a higher division, see this thread for more details. Whether your team is new or old, TWL guarantees close, competitive match-ups with it's divisional ranking system.

The map list (subject to change, and in no particular order) is as follows:

TGBF.TV is proud to present a cast of Apocalypse Gaming vs Hostile Faction on cp_gravelpit for ESEA Open playoffs. The match will start at 11 EST/8 PST and will determine who plays Vires Gaming in the winners bracket finals.

The casters will be djfivenine and m0lk while Schetter will be producing the match tonight.

This will be a clash of playing styles on gravelpit.

Hostile Faction is known for their talent and individual play while Apocalypse Gaming is know for their strategy and teamwork.

Some argue that Gravelpit is suited for the team with the best teamwork. But you can also argue that one medic pick, one sticky trap, or one soldier controlling the roof on B can change the tide for the whole match.

Join us and tgbf.tv for this exciting cast!

Valve continues their quality Developer Blog posts with an insight into the process on developing new tools for the Engineer. Read more for information about the upcoming Engineer update and a couple shout outs at the end!

We're plugging away at the Engineer update. He's an interesting class to work on, because he creates a larger footprint in the game than any other class. This means we have a lot of options to work with, and the resulting set of ideas is truly daunting. Since we've already built and playtested some things that haven't worked out (with no false modesty, I think we've mastered the art of rapidly making things that aren't fun), we thought it might be interesting to give you some of our failed experiments.

The first was a new building internally known as the Repair Node. We gave Engineers the ability to replace any current building (teleporter entrances and exits were considered one building for this) with the Repair Node instead.

While deployed, the Repair Node would draw from a pool of energy to fix damage to nearby buildings. When the node ran out of energy, it would stop repairing and regenerate up to full, creating a window of opportunity for the attackers. When sapped, the Repair Node's repair function was disabled for the duration of the sap.