If teams are even, the timer will go down to 30 seconds upon reaching at least a 7v7. Before, there was no timer handling for teams evenly forming.
If teams are not even, the pre-match timer will go down to 60 seconds upon 12 players joining the game. Before, it was upon 4 players joining the game.
The match will start immediately when reaching at least a 9v9, or if players have been waiting for 90 seconds total, the match will start immediately with at least a 6v6. Before, the match only started with a full 12v12.
Fixed various desync in the timer countdown, including 11 seconds being skipped down to 10
Fixed demo recording starting immediately after doors close, rather than slightly after
Casual mode autobalance fixes:
New autobalance system now activated for all servers by default (mp_autoteambalance 2)
Autobalance now announces during the round it will be active in 5 seconds, rather than working quietly
Autobalance now runs instantly at the start of each round, ensuring that teams are balanced before gameplay starts
Autobalance no longer runs for the first 60 seconds of a round, or the last 60 seconds of the round timer
Autobalance is now less favored for Engineers with relevant buildings, or Medics with enough UberCharge level
Autobalance is heavily less favored for players that have been recently autobalanced
Autobalance is less favored for players that have been playing for a long time
Made autobalance rebalance scoring metric much more intelligent, keeping track of moment-to-moment raw performance levels, rather than biasing towards players who have been on the server for a long time, or by solely long term performance rank (MMR)
DirectX 9.0c (dxlevel 95) with Shader Model 3.0 is now the minimum supported spec
This GPU spec was introduced in 2006
This will allow us to streamline certain rendering systems, improve performance, and enable more modern features
Some quality levels from lower dxlevels will be introduced through graphics settings rather than a separate dxlevel, based upon community feedback
Optimized various rendering systems to take advantage of the new spec
HDR map data is now required to be enabled
This will allow maps to only need HDR lighting rather than also an LDR lit version
Graphics settings (Post-processing) will now disable HDR visually rather than skipping loading its data
Restricted r_pixelfog to be on to prevent a visibility exploit
Removed support for r_shader_srgb convar, which was unsupported any GPU that matches the new minimum spec
Dynamic models now compute full ambient lighting rather than a limited number of samples
Networking updates:
Fixed cases of subtick desync
Fixed some cases of position desync. This was most often encountered during backstab attempts.
Fixed player class not being reset when switching teams in competitive modes
Fixed players who already are a certain class getting the message that they have reached the class limit
Fixed players spawning as an invalid class in some cases when picking a class that’s over the class limit
Fixed hitscan weapons not refilling their clip on kill during competitive match warmup
Fixed bots not fighting in competitive warmup
High skill competitive matches will now experience fully instant respawns during warmup
Fixed a possible case of sound crackling
Fixed a bug with scoreboard consuming mouse input for a tick upon initialization
Removed pd_atom_smash from bot friendly map cycle, as bots do not function on it
Reduced the size of overheal health icon overlay
Minor math performance optimizations and bug fixes
Disabled weapon sway for now as we have sufficiently tested this iteration of the feature
Reduced default volume from 20% to 15%
Merged the following upcoming changes for TF2:
Fixed case mismatch in Linux packed file paths
Fixed the Rescue Ranger console having incorrect visual effects
Fixed GENTLE MANNE of LEISURE bot name being duplicated
