Heya Slick! I was just reading what the Luci's flowers Admin wrote about TK's - and he is right cause I try to only play on servers that have TK on - it's more realistic than not being able to shoot your TM - but the inherent problem is what he said. Dumb people come in and think its so funny to watch their teammates get killed. I think you are wrong though - those people don't do it because the think its funny.... well, maybe some of them do, but I think that most of them do it because they suck. They can't kill anyone on the OTHER team so they get mad and kill their own teammates. The urge has come to me as well - but theres a simple solution folks... GET BETTER OR DON'T PLAY!

What I THINK we should do is make a black list. Theres a TXT folder in the TFC directory that keeps track of who is banned from a server - we should share the file on an FTP or something - so that servers, TK or not, will not accept losers who think its funny to freaking kill their own team mates. Because, even when TK isn't on, they can take away your armor. I REALLY think black listing people is a good idea - they think its so funny, they can play by themselves, or some server from Alabama with a 9 baud connection on a 486 with a half a meg of ram. Have fun folks!!!!!!

HardCharger: Well, since this is my first time doing the mailbag, I will forgive the "Heya Slick" part. :-) I mean, c'mon, HC is people too! Anyways, on to business.

As far as TK is concerned, I really only play using TK whenever I am in a match. I like the realism, but unfortunately, the state of many pubs precludes using TK at all. I think that many of the people who abuse it do it for their own amusement, and since it is a game, there isn't any real hope to cut out all of the TK abuse.

Now, Blacklisting. I think that it is a good idea, in theory, but in practice, it is too hard to enforce. What I mean is, lets say Joe Blow submits Llama Bob to the list to be banned, and Llama Bob finds out about it. What is to stop him for doing the same thing to Joe Blow to get back at him. Like I said above, it is a good idea, but it will need alot of work to become a fair and accurate practice.

Slick: Well, you have the following options....... I always recommend becoming a regular on a particular server or two.. Movements like TPF are great, we need more though, just "circles" of people who like to play and know they can have a good time on such and such a server.

The TFC community has over 5,000 people playing at any given time of the day, when you figure the percentage of bad apples.. It leaves a lot of people out there to try and ruin your fun time. That's why we have a voting system and such. When your a regular, the regulars will be more apt to vote and help each other out. -- And matches with people you've had previous encounters with always helps. I love taking on people that I got wasted by or wasted the previous time I was there, it adds to the fun.

Blacklisting is a better option in a smaller community. I can't advocate that on PF simply because with this huge community, good people's id's could get added to that list by a bad person, simply because a community being this big there's no way I'd know who was trying to contribute to the list.

Blacklisting within a circle of servers would make sense though.. If there was a group of server admins who ran the same type of servers and knew each other.. who all had the.. (example) -O2- tag, then that circle of servers could have their own black list since they know each other.. This works well as a person is not going to hit every server out there in TFC, but is more likely to hit a certain kind or type (like my -O2- example) those servers all have the same list and don't have to worry anymore.. Nor the players on them.

Quake 2 there was the CRBot and the eraser bot. Half-Life there was the Jumbot. Then came Botman with his botpack, getting bots to spawn in TFC CounterStrike and OpFor games. Since then numerous Counterstrike bots have been made, but as far as I've found no-one's built on this to make a high quality TFC bot. sure it takes time to make these things, I can understand that, but no one's attempted to make vaguely realistic behaving bots. For instance, the HPBot only fires at you when close, you can pick off any bot's head on 2fort with ease.

Hopefully with the Odd bot coming around, someone might be starting to make some challenging bots to practice against. Spies that change skins anyone? I'll have to be patient cause I cannot program to save my life. However, I do think TFC would be helped by decent bots which newbies could practice against without getting insulted. Hell, everyone got minus scores at one stage.

HardCharger: Well, personally, I would like and support the development of more bots for TFC. I have played with the HPBot and it is a good start. Hopefully, as the community progress, people will start to develop more Bots for the game. They can add alot to the game itself, and can be a Really Good Thing for people with bad connections.
If anyone knows of more bots in development, let us know at our news line.

Slick: I agree completely. So far the only TFC bots are:

ODD Bot

HPBot

Sniper Bot - An attempt at a sniper bot, nothing great, but an attempt. (sorry, no link)

TFC would be AWESOME if we had some decent bots to take on. It would be heaven. I've always offered hosting to any potential TFC bot products.. But nothings turned out. I'll continue to help TFC bot production in any way possible.

Get VIAGRA the breakthrough medication for impotence delivered to your mailbox...

...without leaving your computer.

In less than 5 minutes you can complete the on-line consultation and in many cases have the medication in 24 hours.

From our webform to your mailbox. On-line consultation for treatment of compromised sexual function.

Convenient...affordable....confidential. We ship VIAGRA worldwide at US prices.

HardCharger: Is someone trying to tell me something?

Why is it taking Valve so long to make TF2? By the Time they're done and ready to sell, people won't be interested in getting it, and probably better games will be out for grabs instead of TF2.
Thank You.

HardCharger: TF2 should be a good game... I think Valve will release it when they are satisfied that they have made the best product that they can. I just hope I will still be able to operate a computer when that is... :-)~

DieHard: The game has been in full development since the release of half-life. Once HL was out the door they had to still spend a small amount of resources fixing bugs. Valve is a company that will redo a project until they are happy with it. HL missed its date by a year. It came back to be the game of the year, hopefully TF2 will do it too.

I saw your article about voting at GameSpot (or as I like to call it GSpot.... hehehe) and I voted for TF2. I am seriously disturbed though - Warcraft 3 seems to have the whopping majority of the votes - TF2 is second, but not even trailing closely behind. Warcraft had like 50 percent and TF2 had 10. Now normally I wouldn't whine about this - thats how democracy works and all. But we have an ENTIRE community of TF2 gamers out there - all as eager and anxious as I am to have it come out - and they complain and complain about the release date. Yet.... when it comes down to the test.... they don't take 1 minute of their time to do a zarking survey. Maybe if we got enough votes Valve would look at it and slap thier heads and go "Hey! We need to haul our asses into overdrive! Marco! Bruno! Stop slaping Adolf and leave him be and come here and work on the models!" Of course, this is a crock of monkey snot, they aren't going to speed up their process - I'm just writing this cause TF2 KICKS WARCRAFT'S ASS AND WE ALL KNOW THAT!!!!! Hehe. So could you tell all the peeps on your page to visit that site and get them to vote?

HardCharger: Well... I normally don't pay much attention to such polls, as I don't think they have much actual bearing on the gaming community, but I know that I would hate it if TF2 was beat out.

Slick: While those polls are fun to dominate, they don't mean a whole lot except to the readers... Companies do not use them for information as to what to do. Warcraft 3 does not have a bigger following than TF2, I can assure you. Next time a poll comes up though let the news@ hear about it and we'll crush the booth.

I'd just like to say all the info you have on your TF2 section is pretty phat. Reading just makes ya wanna drool. Anyway, just like to say I like all the pics and movies and the text explaining everything. Think you guys have done a great job, and I can't wait to meet you in the battlefield!

HardCharger: Thanks! Now send me money.