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 action packed games of capture the flag, escorting a VIP, territory control, and many other missions. It was ported to Half-Life by the developers of the Team Fortress mod for Quake in collaboration with Valve Software.

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. For example, the scout is the fastest class in the game, but can easily be fragged (killed) by a heavy weapons guy (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 (clan matches and public servers where clan members play seriously) are dominated by soldiers and medics. This list describes the strengths and weaknesses of each class:

Scout
Fastest class, weakly armed and armored, can strip spy of its disguise.

Coupled with his concussion grenades, concjumping Scouts are very hard to defeat unless you have a sentry gun or something to block him with. A Scout's weapons are hardly effective against other players, no chance at all against an Engineer + Soldier combo. There is often one on each team in clangames, generally employed for flag-capturing and little else.

Sniper
Deadly sniper rifle with zoom; notice lack of any other abilities.

Not used in clan matches, often limited, said to slow games down. The sniper is powerful, having both a one-hit kill weapon and a good auto rifle he can stand a chance at the longer ranges. At close range however, he is easily defeated by most any class. His only defense in close combat is his grenades which will often kill both players thanks to their large radius. Almost never played in clangames thanks to the limitations. In casual / non-clan games, the Sniper is very popular due to his insta-gib weapon; the best defense against him, however, is another Sniper, and they will often become too involved in shooting each other to take on any other targets. Some servers limit the number of Snipers for this reason.

Soldier
RPG launcher, heavily armored.

The best overall class, lots of armor and health, great weapons, slow yet acceptable speed, many grenades, very mobile thanks to rocketjumping. Very common in games, almost never limited. The majority of the team in clangames.

Demoman
Can lay pipebombs and detpacks (large, timed bombs).

The Demoman can break through defenses with his powerful explosives, he can also defend with them. His weakness is close combat though, in most cases he will lose against a Soldier. One exception if is the Demoman has mastered the grenade launcher which is very powerful when mastered. Each team in a clangame might have one, offense or defense.

Medic
Can infect enemies and heal teammates (including curing disease).

Has great weapons, great speed (nearly as fast as the Scout) and great mobility. Can stand a chance against the Soldier, especially when relying on grenades. Despite his profession and the bright red cross on his chest, he is the offense in clangames. His ability to infect enemies can also be an enormous distraction, but only in games where Medics do not see (much) use.

HWGuy (Heavy Weapons Guy)
Heavy armor, powerful Gatling gun, slowest class.

Very powerful and hard to kill, a master will kill any class at close range, most classes at medium range and some at long range. Often limited in games thanks to that. Not intended for offense, but still quite effective at it. In clangames each team will have one at defense, possibly more if allowed.

Pyro
Flamethrower, napalm missiles, and napalm grenades.

Not best at anything and not better than the Soldier overall. Has flaming grenades which temporarily deny territory to opponents and his flamethrower will cover an enemy player's display with large pixelated flames, but these can be gotten around with a little determination. Rarely played in clangames, works at defense and offense.

Spy
Can disguise as a member of another team and remove enemies' disguises; can kill in one stab with knife.

The single use of the Spy is getting past/destroying sentry guns. In clangames this class is often used on the offense, rules often forbid defending with the Spy.

Engineer
Can build automatic sentry guns, one-way teleporters, ammunition dispensers, can repair teammates' armor, has EMP grenades.

The backbone of any defense, as his Sentry Guns are practically infallible defenders; most teams have at least one. His EMP grenades, which detonate any explosives within their radius, are practically instant death to classes like Demomen and HWGuys which carry many cells. As the Engineer (unlike the Medic) has few offensive applications, he is rarely used for offense in matches.

The classes most vulnerable to EMP grenades are Pyros, Demomen, other Engineers, and to a lesser degree Soldiers and HWGuys. Pyros, Demomen, and Engineers gib when EMPed. Soldiers and HWGuys can avoid lethal damage by picking up one or no ammunition packs and pressing their "discard" key after picking up any ammunition, though they'll be severely wounded, and due to a bug where Scouts cannot drop cells they pick up, Scouts explode into a shower of gibs if they get hit with an EMP after picking up an ammo pack.

With the move to Valve's Steam platform, the Engineer has the ability to construct one-way teleporter pads, mentioned above. These are extremely useful for offense, and can be used for a variety of purposes.

Civilian
Only found 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.

Patches have been released to try to fix issues involving class balance by increasing the Pyro's firepower and decreasing the HWGuy's firepower. This has not significantly helped though.

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 popular maps.

Capture the flag
Capture the flag (CTF) is a simple mode where players must get a flag from the enemies' base and return it to your own base to score. Several game modes based on CTF exist, including ones where players instead have take their flag to the enemies' base and modes with multiple flags.

Territory control
Territory control maps consist of several command points that a player can capture by either standing on it or bringing a flag there (depending on map). A team scores by controlling all command points.

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.

Hunted-style
One player is the VIP/Civilian class, he is supposed to get to an escape zone without being killed by the assassin team. Another team guards the civilian.

Shutdown-style
Shutdown is a variation of capture the flag where the players must disable a laser by pressing a button to get access to the flag.

Skill maps
Skill maps or practice maps are for perfecting certain skills, such as concjumping, rocketjumping, and strafejumping. 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.

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 Heavy Weapons is recommended. Leagues include:
 * IGL
 * STA
 * TFL

History
Before TFC there was Team Fortress, a 1996 QuakeWorld mod. TF's developers were working on Team Fortress 2 as a standalone game, but later joined Valve Software and ported the original as a mod for Half-Life called Team Fortress Classic in early 1999. Despite the company's 1998 statement that Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms would be released "soon", the game is still supposedly in development and has been listed in the top five of Wired magazine's vaporware list for 2001, 2002, and 2003.

Contemporary issues
Since its release in 1999, Valve has introduced various changes into the game. Perhaps the most momentous was TFC 1.5 (released on October 25, 2000), which, amongst other things, increased the Pyro's flame damage and reduced the HWGuy's chaingun damage.

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 (unless you know the IP of the server you want to play on) as Valve Software has shut it down. In order to play TFC, users must now use the Steam platform.