Team Fortress Classic

Team Fortress Classic (TFC) is a popular multiplayer modification for the first-person shooter computer game Half-Life that allows teams of players to compete on the Internet in lethal games of capture the flag, escorting a VIP, territory control, and other missions. It was ported to Half-Life by the developers of the Team Fortress mod for Quake.

Classes


One interesting aspect of TFC is the interdependence it breeds amongst teammates. After picking a team (i.e., the red team or the blue team), players pick a "class". After dying (which happens often), players can pick a new class. Each class, listed below, has its own advantages and shortcomings.


 * Scout - fastest class, weakly armed and armored, can strip spy of its disguise
 * Sniper - sniper rifle (with zoom)
 * Soldier - RPG launcher, heavily armored
 * Demoman - can lay pipebombs and detpacks (large, timed bombs)
 * Medic - can heal teammates and infect enemies
 * HWGuy (Heavy Weapons Guy) - heavy armor, powerful Gatling gun, slowest class
 * Pyro - has flamethrower and napalm missiles
 * Spy - can disguise as a member of another team and remove enemies' disguises; can kill in one stab with knife
 * Engineer - can build automatic sentry guns, teleporters, ammunition dispensers, can repair teammates' armor, has EMP grenades
 * Civilian (only in VIP games and other special modes) - weak character who must be protected by his teammates in order to win, armed with just an umbrella

For example, the scout is the fastest class in the game, but can easily be fragged (killed) by an HWGuy. But an engineer can lay waste to an HWGuy with his EMP grenades, which won't really affect medics. But snipers can kill a medic before he gets close, but is vulnerable to getting stabbed in the back by a spy. But the spy's identity can be revealed by a scout, and the interdependence goes in loops like this again and again.

Although this works in theory, reality is nothing like it. Games where professional players fight it out are dominated by Soldiers and Medics. This list will try to objectively describe the flaws of each class:


 * Scout - This class is used at times, he has the highest speed after all, this won't always help though as anything can kill him. Can conc-jump.
 * Sniper - Unused/restricted in professional games, not very effective due to lack of many high-powered fast weapons.
 * Soldier - The best class, good speed, rocketjumps, high damage, powerful grenades, lots of HP, very popular.
 * Demoman - Played at times, good at both defense and offense due to his high amount of explosives. Hard to use due to no major hitscan weapons.
 * Medic - Fast and powerful, just as the soldier. Can conc-jump like the scout.
 * HWGuy - Very powerful, would be the best class if it was not for the bunnyjumping restrictions and the HWGuy restrictions (1-2 per team).
 * Pyro - Not very useful, has no advantages over a Soldier except for his excellent speed.
 * Spy - Good for taking out sentries, played quite a lot.
 * Engineer - The backbone of any defense, most teams have at least one.

Competition
Several online gaming leagues exist, where players compete each week for dominance with their team, or clan. Since TFC is naturally a team game, it lends itself well to this aspect.

But you don't have to be in a formal team to play TFC right now. All you need is a copy of Half-Life and join any public server. It is likely populated with players like you&mdash;if not, pick another&mdash;and start shooting away. For beginners, a class like soldier or HWGuy is recommended.

Game types
The multitude of ways entities can interact in Team Fortess and Team Fortess Classic allow for an almost limitless amount of different game modes. This is one of the reasons the mods were such successes. This is a list of some of the major game modes, complete with examples of maps (somewhat popular).

Capture the flag
A simple mode where you have to get the flag from the enemies' base to your own base to score. Several game modes based on this exists, including ones where you instead have to get your flag to the enemies' base and modes with multiple flags.
 * 2fort
 * flagrun
 * push

Territory control
These maps consists of several command points that a player can capture by either standing on it or bringing a flag there (depending on map). When a team controls all command points that team scores.
 * cz2
 * warpath

Invade/defend
One team defends a base and another team tries to capture that base by bringing a flag to a capture point situated deep inside the base.
 * dustbowl
 * avanti

Hunted-style
One player gets to play the Civilian class, he is supposed to get to an escape zone without being killed by the assassin team. A third team is supposed to guard the civilian.
 * hunted
 * betrayed

Shutdown-style
A variation of capture the flag, you have to disable a laser by pressing a button to get access to the flag.
 * shutdown2
 * openfire_l

Skill maps
Skill maps/practise maps, for perfecting certain skills - concjumping, rocketjumping, strafejumping, etc. These maps consist of increasingly hard jumps that players have to complete to reach the end of the map. Most maps have some kind of reward in the end.
 * concmap_r
 * concmap_speed
 * quad_rocket

Contemporary issues
Since its release in 1999, the developers of the game, Valve Software, have introduced various changes into the game. Perhaps the most momentous was TFC 1.5, which, amongst other things, "rebalanced" the game in an effort to make certain classes less dominant or more competitive.

Serious groups of players, clans, have seen the rise of playing for money in tournaments like the CPL. However, TFC's popularity has probably seen its peak, and CPL prizes have not seen the heights of $100,000 for the Counter-Strike champion.

TFC can no longer be played on the WON network as Valve Software has shut it down. In order to play TFC, users must now use the Steam platform to download the game.