Team Fortress Classic | Survival Guide | Introduction

The TFC Survival Guide: Introduction

Contents
What is TFC?

What is Team Fortress Classic? I'm so glad you asked. I should have been a college Professor, I love to lecture the young and ill informed! Or the old and ill informed, makes no difference to me! Seeing as you are already here, you must have found some sort of info on TFC to get your curiosity up. The online gaming community is in for one of the biggest, baddest multiplayer experience ever with the release of TF Classic! You really have to experience it to fully grasp the concept of teamwork in an environment setup to not only pit you against other teams, but to establish certain goals other than the standard termination of the enemy.

Team Fortress Classic is a port over of Team Fortress, (which was based on Quake one), to Half-Life. Team Fortress was one of the most successful mods for Quake ever. Seeing the popularity of Team Fortress for Quake, the authors of TF, Team Fortress Software, decided to make TF 2 for Quake 2. For what ever reason, a deal was not cut with id Software, and those plans were trashed. Enter, Valve Software.

The popularity of Team Fortress didn't go un-noticed by Valve, the makers of Half-Life. Valve Software bought Team Fortress Software, and hired the boys! (Robin Walker, John Cook and Ian Caughley, though I understand Ian has moved on to other things). Plans were then made to offer TF 2 as an add on for Half-Life, and then once again changed to make TF 2 a stand alone game using a heavily modified Half-Life engine. All of these changes contributed immensely to the discontent and general dissatisfaction of those who purchased first, Quake 2, and then Half-Life solely on the basis that they thought TF2 was being made for both those games. An understandable quagmire and not easily dismissed!

In the process of making development tools for mod-makers, Valve decided that the best way to do it was to create a mod that would cause you to test everything you would ever want to do when making a mod. And what better mod to do that than TeamFortress? Thus TeamFortress Classic was born, a reincarnate of sorts from Quake TF1, now prettier, smoother and better balanced, a true commemoration and finish to the mod that will live in infamy, TeamFortress.

Who knows exactly why the decision was made? Was it in part to satisfy the disgruntled TF players who so eagerly awaited TF 2? Or was it to test, to a certain extent, some of the Half-Life engine and how it would handle Team Fortress? I don't know, I haven't asked. Never the less, a decision was made to port TF over to Half-Life and offer it as a free patch. While it was delayed several times and the TF community's anger grew, finally, April 7, 1999, TFC was made availible to the public to all those who owned Half-Life. I feel with the continuing growth in popularity of Half-Life, and the fact that is has been named as game of the year, and even best PC game ever by some of the media, TFC could easily become the most successful mod ever created. I could just be blowing smoke too, I have a tendency to do that! (Note, CS is kinda popular these days I hear).

TeamFortress Classic has evolved into it's own game aside from Half-Life. New players interested in getting TeamFortress 1.5 without having to buy Half-Life (and for a lower price) can get a demo (but not full version) or the Full Version and play online with any current TFC Servers and players out there from Real.com's Games. Personally, I would buy Half-Life, you're missing out on too much if you don't, but for some this could be a decent option. -- All Patches to get your client and server up to date are avaliable on our Files Page.


Give Me More

Team Fortress Classic is a team based game. You figured out that much all by yourself I'll bet. While there are a few variations, most of the maps are based on two teams. A red team and a blue team. Depending on the capabilities of the server, you could have anywhere between say four to sixteen members on each team. All maps have certain goals. The most common goal is to go into the enemy base or territory, grab their flag and return it to a specific point in your own base or territory. Sounds simple enough, does it not? Well don't let the simplistic description I just gave relax you to much. All the while you are trying to accomplish your goal, everyone on the other team is trying to kill you..... with authority!

The hardest part of the whole deal is to decide what class to play and learning how to use them to their full potential. Oh, you don't know about the classes yet do you? They will be fully explained later in this guide, so for now I will give you a very brief run through. What is a class? Well just as in the real life armed forces, you have different specialists in different fields. Each having specific strengths and weakness. Things such as armor, health and weapons vary greatly depending on what class you choose. Things such as high mobility and toughness will be at issue. Wether you are playing an offensive or defensive position will also need to be taken into consideration.

The quick run down of classes. Scout, fast, very fast, light armor, health and weapons. Sniper. Also fast moving, light armor and health. Carries powerfull rifle though, watch out for the red dot! Spy. Medium speed and armor, light weapons, but able to disguise himself as a friendly. Medic. Medium speed and armor, health regenerates automatically, able to heal frendlys or infect the enemy. Demoman. Heavy weapons, armor and good health. Medium speed. Pyro. Medium to heavy fire power, medium armor and health, medium speed. Engineer. Medium speed, health, armor and the ability to build sentry guns and supply cabinets. Heavy Weapons Guy. Just as it implies, very powerfull assault cannon, holds 200 rounds. Very heavy armor and health, also very slow. Soldier. Also has very heavy weapons, heavy armor and health, and also very slow. As I said, a more in depth coverage will be included later.

What is the object of the game? That is the beauty of TFC, the object changes with the different maps. In one map the object might be to simply go grab the enemy flag from their base and bring it to your capture point in your own base. You score points for that. That is the object in maps such as 2Fort and Well and Rock2. In the map Hunted, your goal is to either escort the president to a car for a safe get away or to assasinate him. The maps and game goals can vary so much that they are almost like different mods in themselves. The main limitations being the imagination of the map author, and their ability to come up with new goals.

That's what Team Fortress Classic is all about. You join a team on a server, you work as a team to attain your goal. You win as a team, you loose as a team. What team is successfull may very well depend on just how well you interact with your team, and how well you function as a whole, not the individual talent of the players. This goes way beyond death match and single player. We think if you give it a chance, You will see the value of the team attitude, though it may take a while for all those involved to grasp the concept, and learn what roles they are best suited for. What class to use and if you want to be on offense or defense. Now then, lets get started! Read on in this guide to find out exactly how!


Quick Start

Quick and dirty, the way most of us like it! As this is the Q&D (quick and dirty) route, we are going to have to assume a few things. Like that you already have the latest Half-Life patch installed and it works. This can be eaisly checked by running Half-Life Update (c:\sierra\half-life\upd.exe) It will automatically check to see if you have the latest version. If this is not the case, then you should not be in the Q&D section and instead proceed to Setting it up.

Even the Q&D route has several different paths to your goal of playing TFC. If you let the install program place an icon for TFC on your desk top, then you can click on that icon to start a game. The Half-Life/TFC mod interface will open. From the menu on the left, select Multiplayer. The Multiplayer interface will open. At the top of the menu, you will see Quickstart. You can select this and it will connect you to the fastest, active internet game found. Or follow these instructions. In that menu select Internet Games. The Internet Games interface will open. In that menu, select Update. That will update the list of servers and a list of servers will appear. Click on a server to select it, and then click on Join game in the menu and you will be in if everything is fine and dandy!

Another way to join is to just click on your Half-Life icon, (where ever you have it stashed). This takes you to your normal Half-Life menu, but it has been updated with the new patch. In the menu, you will now see Custom Games in the list. Click on that. The Custom Games interface opens. As of the time of this writing, only TFC is listed in the Custom Games window. In the future, there will be others. So you would have to select the Custom Game you wish to play, in this case, TFC. Select TFC by clicking on it, then from the menu, click on Activate. Now TFC is activated and from the menu, you select Done. The TFC interface will open and you can proceed with the same instructions as above. Select Multiplayer. The Multiplayer interface will open. At the top of the menu, you will see Quickstart. You can select this and it will connect you to the fastest, active internet game found. Or follow these instructions. In that menu select Internet Games. The Internet Games interface will open. In that menu, select Update. That will update the list of servers and a list of servers will appear. Click on a server to select it, and then click on Join game in the menu and you will be in if everything is fine and dandy!

That's it for the Quick and dirty section. For further information, continue on reading our Team Fortress Classic Survival Guide!


Next: Setup



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