Team Fortress
Team Fortress is a team & role 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. This article deals with the development and evolution of Team Fortress; see Team Fortress Classic for full details of player classes and gameplay.
Versions
The original TeamFortress was written as an add-on 'mod' for 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 TeamFortress Software to develop Team Fortress 2 as a commercial mod for Quake II.
Later, TeamFortress Software was bought by Valve Corporation, and the work they had done on Team Fortress 2 was moved to the Half-Life engine. While Team Fortress 2 was eventually delayed and changed to another game engine (which would later be known as the Source engine), the original Team Fortress was given a heavy graphical facelift and released as Team Fortress Classic, bundled with Half-Life, which is based off a heavily modified Quake engine.
Team Fortress 2 was announced in 2006 to be bundled with Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Portal.
Community
There are two ways an individual can play Team Fortress,
Community Servers
Servers popped up everywhere, and were commonly listed on GameSpy, also known at that time as Quakespy. Players could find a game going on at just about any hour of the day. Once you joined the game, you would be assigned to a team and be able to pick the character class you wished to play. There usually wasn't much organization to these games, more of an individual effort.
Clans
Many users desired more organized games, and "Clans" popped up everywhere. Clans usually 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. Often rivalry was fierce during these games, but most clan members had a general respect for one another off the field.
Cheating Demise
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 has all but died. A few servers still operate.
The Team Fortress community slowly dispersed after the release of the source code. Interestingly, few TF fans made the move to TFC, claiming that they preferred fast engine, physics, and netcode of the former. Others disliked the balancing that took place among the classes in the move from TF to TFC, including the nerfing of the Sniper class. Many of the remaining TF players frequent the Quakeboards which can be found at http://www.quakeboards.rmcd.net
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 however recently returned as a standalone mod built upon Evolution Q3, but is compleatly different.
- Then there was 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 Enemy Territory Fortress, or ETF, in 2005 for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory; it had a notable initial following, though it has since receded considerably in popularity.
- Another mod, Unreal Fortress (abbreviated as UnF) exists 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.
- 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 alive at the moment. Custom TF includes the normal classes of TF but includes a "custom" option, where players have a set amount of money with which to buy weapons, armour, skills, etc.
- 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 for Half-Life 2, Improved Custom Team Fortress for Quake 1 and Quake 4 Fortress for Quake 4 (production on Q4F has stopped because lack of a development team.).
Recently the developers of Team Fortress gave permission to another Australian to continue their work and improve the original Team Fortress. The result of this is OzTF which contains many updates and bugfixes. 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 online multiplayer games and Team Fortress Classic enjoyed a similar following. None of the other modifications have managed to find a lasting following. With the inception of the Tactical Shooters spearheaded by Counter-Strike and the advent of 'realistic' FPS titles, the genre has mostly stagnated.