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Team Fortress

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

History

The original Team Fortress was written as an add-on modification ('mod', alternately 'TC' for total conversion) for id Software's Quake and released as freeware on August 24, 1996. The first release for QuakeWorld (v2.0) came on December 22, 1996. It was sufficiently successful that Walker, Cook and Caughley formed Team Fortress Software to develop Team Fortress 2 as a commercial mod for Quake II. Team Fortress 2 for Quake II was never fully developed and released. Walker and Cook later joined game developer Valve Software and released a port for Valve's Half-Life engine (Goldsrc) called Team Fortress Classic, which closely followed the gameplay, classes, and maps of the original. In 2007, a completely revised Team Fortress 2 was released as a stand-alone retail game for Valve's Source engine.

Since its inception, and the subsequent release of the source code, Team Fortress has become an ever-expanding community project, with various server side modifications including CustomTF, OZTF (Australia, Brasil and USA), MegaTF (USA) and TF2003 (Russia). Other, lesser-known modifications proliferated and typically made minor changes such as making small adjustments to the class strengths and altering grenade behavior.

On the 18th of June, 2007, zelTF, a self contained QuakeWorld Team Fortress package and installer was released publically. zelTF allowed Team Fortress to be accessible to anyone who was able to download the package, the game being ready to run immediately after installation. Previously QuakeWorld Team Fortress had been notoriously difficult to set up, with so many different files and configurations required to play.

Community

Community servers

Servers were quickly created all over the world, and were commonly listed and accessed via a browser utility for Quake-based games known as QuakeSpy, which later became GameSpy. During the peak of Team Fortress popularity, players could find geographically local, active games at any hour of the day[citation needed]. Upon joining the game, the player would be assigned to a team and would then select a character class. Active servers are still in existence today, an amazing feat considering the game is now in its 11th year. The majority of games are now organised through IRC, these include clan wars, pugs (pick up games) typically comprised of 8v8, and quads (attack vs defence games) of 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4.

Servers

Used as an online battlegounds where other people can meet and join teams to battle it out online. The ingame browser via steam can be used to find games based on map being played, number of players, ping, and by geographic location.

Clans

Many users desired more organized games, and "Clans" popped up everywhere. Clans often started from a group of friends, and grew from there. Players that wanted to join the clan were either personally invited, or had to go through a tryout to join.

Clans competed against each other on a regular basis. Games would be scheduled before hand with a set time and a map. It was up to the Clan to decide who would be best for the game, and those members would meet prior to the game and prepare to play.

IRC community

IRC proved to be the primary form of organization and communication for Team Fortress Clans. There were many memorable community oriented channels, but the most prolific were the individual clan channels.

There are still surviving QuakeWorld Team Fortress IRC channels in existence today. This is where pick up games and clan wars are traditionally organised. A list of active QWTF IRC channels are listed below:

Region: Australia / New Zealand
Server: irc.enterthegame.com
Channel: #oztf
Mod: OZTF

Region: Brasil
Server: irc.irchighway.net
Channel: #qwtf
Mod: OZTF

Region: Finland
Server: irc.quakenet.org
Channel: #kvadd
Mod: TF 2.9

Region: North America
Server: irc.gamesurge.net
Channel:#fortress-legends
Mod: TF 2.9 (and OZTF)

Region: North America
Server: irc.gamesurge.net
Channel: #megateamfortress
Mod: MegaTF

Region: Russia
Server: irc.quakenet.org
Channel: #qwtf
Mod: TF2003

Cheating

The final Team Fortress for Quake was version 2.9, released on 20 October 1998. Globally, fans of the mod played it for many years, until id software released the source code to Quake and Quakeworld, allowing easy and widespread cheating. The community's confidence was shattered and the mod had all but died.

However, the advent of secure client restrictions on QuakeWorld game clients, such as those included with ezQuake enabled the community to be able to enforce a common verifiable QuakeWorld standard. This prevented clients with unauthorised functionality being used.

In today's close-knit Team Fortress community cheating is seemingly non-existent.

Evolution

Team Fortress has evolved into an entire genre as fans of the original modification have created a multitude of slightly different versions for various games:

  • Fortress Evolution for Quake III Arena was intended to create a very close replica of the original QWTF, but was canceled and last released as an alpha build. It has recently returned as a standalone mod built upon Evolution Q3, but as a completely different project.
  • A mod titled Q3F, for Quake III Fortress, was developed for Quake III Arena, and while it was praised for its accuracy in preserving the QWTF gameplay, it never saw a huge following. This mod was further developed into the Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory mod Enemy Territory Fortress, or ETF, in 2005; it had a notable initial following and many servers still operate, though it has since receded considerably in popularity.
  • Unreal Fortress (abbreviated as UnF) existed for Unreal Tournament.
  • Unreal Fortress: Evolution first started out as UnF 2003 for Unreal Tournament 2003, but has been made into a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 when Epic released the newer version of the game. It has never left the beta stage.
  • Another evolution of TF is the multi-games mod Weapons Factory that has several considerable modifications to TF classes which results in different gameplay, resulting in many servers having to put limits on specialists (non-soldier classes).
  • There is also a large Custom TF community presently active. Custom TF by Bill Kerney (aka Shaka[UVM]) has the normal classes of TF but also includes a "custom" option, where players have a set amount of money with which to buy weapons, armour, and skills.
  • MegaTF was another popular Team Fortress mod which featured new enhancements to each class like proximity mines, laser drones, and airMirvs. The community slimmed after the popular East Coast and West Coast Biscuit servers were shut down for unknown reasons. There is a MegaTF mod currently in development for the Amnesia server called "MegaTF United" being developed by XavioR and other Team Fortress modders.
  • Finally, the latest mods currently under construction are Fortress Forever (Released in September 2007) for Half-Life 2 and Quake 4 Fortress for Quake 4 (production on Q4F has ceased, however there is a Q4F modification in development by XavioR (aka avirox) called Quake 4 Fortress XT which addresses several of the incomplete factors of Q4F).

Robin Walker gave another Australian permission to continue his work and improve the original Team Fortress.[1] The result of this was Oz Team Fortress, or OZTF, which contains many updates and bugfixes. zelTF, a ready to play version of Team Fortress, is based on the final version of OZTF (1.45). MegaTF, CustomTF, OZTF, the original TF, and many more mods with enhanced graphics are available as a free download from FileFront.

The original Team Fortress was one of the first popular class-based first person shooter games and still maintains an active playerbase and modding community, with CustomTF servers being the primary source of Team Fortress play and development today (2007) according to quakeservers.net [2].

See also

News

Software

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