What is Team Fortress Classic?

Team Fortress Classic (TFC) is Valve's new add-on for Half-Life that combines the thrilling first-person multiplayer gameplay of the original Team Fortress with Half-Life's leading edge technology. In Team Fortress Classic, you play one of nine roles or classes, such as Medic, Soldier, or Engineer, and then join your teammates online or over a LAN to battle against enemy teams. Each class has unique weapons, items, abilities, and style of play.

Team Fortress Classic brings the social multiplayer gaming experience to new heights. The varying strengths and playing styles of each class and the different objectives for each map encourage you and your teammates to work together and add a level of strategy and interaction to TFC that you don't find in other first-person multiplayer action games.

Team Fortress Classic is based on the original Team Fortress mod that took the action gaming community by storm in 1996. TFC's features include:

If you're interested, you can take a look at the original Team Fortress homepage.




How do I install TFC?

Installing TFC

TFC is included with Half-Life v1.009 or greater. If you have an earlier version of Half-Life, run Half-Life and hit the "Update" button to download Half-Life v1.009. TFC will be automatically installed with it.

Launching TFC

Setting Up Your TFC Keys




How do I play my first game?

Connect to a TFC Server

Read Your Briefing

Choose a Team

Choose a Class

Learn Your Base

Maps and Scoring

Defending Your Base

Defending the Ramp Room


Working with Your Teammates

TFC is all about working with other players as a Team. Doing this effectively isn't too hard if you make use of the tools built in to TFC. There are a variety of them, so here's a quick look at some of the most useful ones.

Game Over

At some point the game will end, and you'll be shown the game scores. You'll recognize them as the same scores shown when you hit your "Show Scores" key ("Tab" by default) earlier. Players are sorted by their Teams, and for each player you'll be able to see how many times they died and how many enemies they killed. This isn't terribly important in TFC, since some classes aren't designed to kill people (like the Scout!) but are just as essential to a Team's success as a Soldier or HWGuy.

You'll be able to see the score of each Team to the right of the Team name. This score is based on how well each Team achieved the map objective, which was to capture the enemy flag. Killing the enemy 1000 times won't win you the map, but a single Capture might!

You'll be shown the scores for awhile, and then the server will move on to the next map. Depending on how the server's set up, it could be 2fort again or it might be a new map. This time, try experimenting with some of the other classes and see what strikes your fancy.

You can change your class at any time by hitting your "Change Class" key (B by default). It'll bring up the Class menu again, allowing you to pick the new class you'd like to be. The next time you respawn, you'll be that class.