Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 Classic (TF2C) is a modification for Team Fortress 2 that attempts to bring back the glory days of Team Fortress Classic (TFC).  If the developers are going to take the time to combine TF2 and TFC, why not just play Fortress Forever (FF)?

Lets go back in time 2 years to when TF2 was released.  Most of the tf2 players were glad that the grenades were removed.  One of the main reasons was because of the grenade spam.  But chances are – most of the people saying that had never played Quakeworld Team Fortress, TFC or FF.  I personlly remember being in several TF2 games when the topic of TFC came up.  Several of the players made the statement – “there are other versions of Team Fortress?”  Well yea, where do you think the “2″ comes from?  Since a lot of TF2 players had never played any other version of Team Fortress, they have no real experience to base their opinions on.

So how can players really say that they were glad grenades had been removed, when they had never played with grenades – they can’t.  To be able to voice an opinion on something you need some kind of experience on the matter.  And a lot of TF2 players, TF2 is the only version of Team Fortress they have ever played.

When TF2 was released, players were glad there were no grenades, players were glad there was no bunny hopping, players were glad the classes was overly balanced, players were glad that capture the flag (CTF) was no longer the focus, players were glad to see a bunch of cap point maps and only 1 or 2 CTF maps,,,,.  Overall, it seemed that TF2 was the best Team Fortress game to ever be released.  Were the majority of the players really “that” happy?  Or, were they just going with the crowd and only repeating what others had said?

My personal opinion on the matter – most of the TF2 players that said they “loved the game”, were just going along with the crowd.  Its called peer pressure.  They were just repeating what others said so they were not ridiculed be the other players.

There has been a lot of complaints that TF2 is turning into a role playing game with its unlockable weapons.  The classes are moving further and further away from their traditional roles.  The people saying this stuff were usually discredited and ridiculed.

Most people do not want to stand out, they do not want to have fingers pointed at them and others say “your stupid for saying that.”  So the crowd mentality kicks in, people keep their mouth shut and just go along with the crowd.

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Tags: Fortress Forever, Team Fortress 2, team fortress 2 classic, Team Fortress Classic, tf2, tf2c, tfc

Team Fortress Classic – also known as TFC – is maybe one of the longest played games in online gaming history. TFC was released in April of 1999, which was over over 10 years ago, and the game still has a loyal fan base.  Even though the player base has shrunk over the past decade, TFC still has a loyal following.

Besides TFC, some of the games that have reached the 10 year mark are – Quake, Quakeworld, Duke Nukem, Counter-Strike, Half-Life 1 and Doom.  But very few people consider Team Fortress Classic to be in the same class as any of those games.  Those types of people usually have never played TFC.  If they had played it, they would understand “why” TFC has a fan base that spans a whole decade.

Thanks goes to jjb273 for posting this video on youtube.

People that have never played Team Fortress Classic, they may not understand what the video is about. But for those of us that have played it, the video is moving and brings forth certain emotions. The time of TFC is passing away. With the release of Fortress Forever and Team Fortress 2, players have moved on.

But for some people, TFC is like an old friend that we have fond memories with.  Its like a high school or college buddy that we think of from time to time.  There is no way to really understand, unless you have been there.

Long live Team Fortress Classic.

To discuss this article, visit the TFC Forever thread in the Team Fortress Classic forum.

Tags: team fortress, Team Fortress Classic, team fortress classic forum, tfc, tfc forever, tfc forum

This video shows some outstanding skills from Team Fortress Classic. Oh the good ole days of TFC, how I miss them so. Thanks to MollariB5 for posting this video on youtube. To discuss the video, visit this thread in the Team Fortress Classic forums.

Thanks to fubukitsunami for posting this next Team Fortress Classic video on youtube.  I just wish this video was a little longer.

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Tags: team fortress, Team Fortress Classic, tfc

Team Fortress is a team and class based online multiplayer computer game based on id Software’s Quake. Team Fortress was originally designed and written by Robin Walker, John Cook, and Ian Caughley in 1996.

The original network code for Quake 1 was not optimized for internet play with dial-up – which was the primary form of connection in the late 1990s. This lack of optimization for dial-up connections caused severe lag, ping spikes and jerky movement while playing. The solution was “Quakeworld.”

QuakeWorld, was developed by John Carmack, John Cash and Christian Antkow, and was released in December 1996. Further development was later taken over by David Kirsch (a.k.a. “Zoid” from Threewave, of Capture the Flag fame) and Jack ‘morbid’ Mathews. It included a useful program called QuakeSpy, written by Mathews, which later evolved into GameSpy.

Even though the original Team Fortress was developed for Quake 1, it was played on Quakeworld. Thus the acronym – QWTF or Quakeworld Team Fortress.

From QWTF, Team fortress matured and was developed, revised and port to different games. Some examples of these are:
NeoTF
MegaTF
Team Fortress Classic
Q3F
Fortress Evolution for Quake III Arena
Weapons Factory
Quake 4 Fortress
Unreal Fortress
Unreal Fortress: Evolution
Fortress Forever
Quake 4 Fortress
Team Fortress 2

Some of the versions of Team Fortress listed above never made it past the development and beta testing phases. Those versions are only listed for information purposes only.

Visit the Team Fortress Forums to discuss these and other games.

Tags: Fortress Forever, Quakeworld Team Fortress, team fortress, tf2, tfc

The people that play Team Fortress are a pretty loyal bunch.  Most of them have been playing since the days of Quakeworld, or at least Team Fortress Classic (TFC).  So what is it about the game that makes it so good?  And what is it that makes the game so addicting?

With a lot of online games there is usually a couple of character classes to play.  Such as Counter-Strike – there are two teams, but the players on each team do not have special skills, or special weapons.

Left 4 Dead is another good example.  There are 4 human characters, but all of them can use the same weapon, they all do the same thing and none of them have any special skills.  Now the zombie side of the team, that is a little different.  Each zombie has its own skills and abilities.  That might be why people like playing the zombie class so much.

Kinda like the human controlled zombies of Left 4 Dead, that is what its like to play Team Fortress.  Each player has their own skill, grenades (except TF2), and weapons.

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Tags: fortress-forver, team fortress, Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic, team fortress forums, tf2, tfc

Part of the problem started when an untold number of noobs bought the orange box and started playing TF2.  Most of the new players had never heard of anything else besides TF2.  To this group of new players, Quakeworld Team Fortress, Team Fortress Classic and Fortress Forever never existed.

While in a game of TF2, a player overheard two other players talking about TFC.  The noob said – “There are other Team Fortress games?”  This is the kind of player that has been thrust into the community.

There are two types of people playing Team Fortress:

Old school – the people that played either QWTF, TFC,  FF and TF2.

Noobs – the people that have only played TF2.

I am pretty sure that a lot of TF2 players consider their selves “old school” after only playing one version of Team Fortress for less then 2 years.  Sorry guys and gals, that is not how it works.

The “real” old school team fortress players are the ones that were playing Quakeworld Team Fortress over 10 years ago.  From QWTF they went to TFC and then to either FF or TF2.

If you were to go back in time, 4, 5 or even 8 years ago – there was a mutual respect between the QWTF and the TFC players.  Mainly because a lot of the people had played both games.   But these days, there seems to be a lack of respect from the TF2 players towards those other games.

Click here to read the rest of the team fortress community has been divided article.

Tags: Fortess-Forever, old school players, quakeworld team fortress, team fortess, team fortess 2, Team Fortress Classic, tf2, tfc

This is a video comparison of 2Fort in QuakeWorld Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic.

One of the major differences between QWTF and TFC 2Fort is that a lot of the shadows were eliminated. Quake 1, by the way the game was designed had a lot of dark colors and shadows. These color textures were brought over the the original QWTF. When TFC was released, it used the Half-Life 1 textures instead of the ones that came with Quake.

The overall size of the maps were reduced between QWTF and TFC. Not just the outside area, but the ramp room, the basement and the flag room were all reduced. This is especially noticeable in the flag room. the flag room in TFC is maybe half the size of the flag room in QWTF 2Fort.

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Tags: 2fort, quake world team fortress, quakeworld, Team Fortress Classic, tfc

2Fort! The very name brings back memories of snipers, medics, scouts, and sentry guns.  For those of you that do not feel like reading all of this – long story short, 2Fort went from a 32 – 64 player map to a 12 player map. If your still interested, keep reading.

Back in the days of Quakeworld, 2Fort went through several changes and there were several versions released. On any given server there were sometimes 2 versions of 2Fort – 2Fort and 2FortR. Back then, the maps were big, by todays standards they were huge.  The standard server usually had 16 player slots – 8 players per team.  Even though the standard server ran 16 slots, there were servers that had 24 and 32 players slots – 12 and 16 players per team.  At one time there was talk of 64 player servers.

One of the major reasons why these 64 player servers never became popular, was due to the system resources the server required.  Back in the mid to late 1990s, memory and processors were not cheap.  And just how expensive was the memory?  Around $3 a meg, and up.  Each player that connected to the server required around 1.5 megs of memory (if I remember right), then add the amount of memory required by the servers operating system.  For a 64 player server you would have to have at least 96 megs of memory just for the players, then add another 100+ megs for the operating system – lets just round that up to 1 stick of 256 megs to be on the safe side.   Just for the memory, the server owner would have to spend about $768.  Leasing a server at that time was not an option.  If you wanted a server, you had to know someone with access to a T1 or better.

Even though there were plans for 64 player servers, they never became popular mainly due to the technology limitations at the time.

2Fort was the map of the day.  There were other popular maps, but 2Fort was the one that just about every server owner had in the rotation.  Maybe one reason why it is so popular is because of how simple the map is.   Unlike a lot of maps at the time, 2Fort was simple – there is the enemy now go shoot them.  New players figured out the map pretty quick.  Maybe that is why 2Fort gained so much popularity?  The truth is, its a combination of a lot of features that makes this map so popular.

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Tags: 2fort, Fortress Forever, q2tf, quake 2 team fortress, quake world, Quakeworld Team Fortress, team fortress, Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic, tfc

Shutdown 2 is a classic map that has a lot of unique features. Regardless of what class you like to play, this map has something for everyone.

One thing that really sets this map apart is a walkway all the way around the top of the playing field (also known as “The Yard”). This is a perfect spot for snipers to pick off enemy players. Its also good for soldiers, demomen and heavy weapons guys to get into an ambush situation over looking the doorway of the enemy base. The players that like to get on the upper walkway, they also give the spys something to stab in the back.

The Yard has an above ground tunnel looking thing that spans from one side of the map to the other. When the players leave their base, they can not shoot all the way across the map to spam the enemies doorway. On opposite ends of the “tunnel” there is an entrance and a ramp. Players can go into the tunnel, go to the other end and exit, or just go over the ramp and into the enemies yard. On each end of the tunnel is a ladder that can be used to gain access to the upper walkway.

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Tags: capture the flag, ctf, Fortress Forever, shutdown 2, team fortress, Team Fortress Classic, tfc

2Fort, just the name brings back memories of snipers, the heavy weapons guy, rocket jumping to the snipers deck, medic infections, the flag room, sentry guns,,,,, and the list goes on and on. For each person the experience is going to be different. So unless someone has played at least 2 different versions of Team Fortress they will not be able to appreciate the history of 2Fort.

Team Fortress Classic Soldier on the bridge in 2Fort

For those of you that do not know, 2Fort had several different versions. There was a version of 2Fort that had a long hall going to the flag room. And the flag room was very small, as compared to the size we know it right now. The original 2Fort started out in QuakeWorld Team Fortress. The QWTF version looked more like rock and wood, almost like a medieval castle. The area between the 2 bases was large and open. The ramp room area had plenty of room to move around. The QWTF 2Fort snipers deck seemed a lot larger then the one we have on the FF or TF2 versions.

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Tags: 2fort, 2fort versions, ff, quakeworld team fortress, tf2, tfc