Overview

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eam Fortress started as a "classic" Quake mod, and found wild success as one of the most played Quake mods ever. Plans for a Team Fortress 2 mod for Quake II were in place at one time, but changed prior to the release of Half-Life from Sierra and Valve. The creators of Team Fortress decided to create Team Fortress 2 as free add-on for Half-Life. (Thanks to Sluggo for correcting my info above)

Somewhere along the way, a decision was made to create Team Fortress 2 as a stand-alone game, using the Half-Life engine, which is bases on a combination of the Quake, Quakeworld and Quake II engines. To keep it's promises, Valve decided they would release Team Fortress Classic, an attempt at a direct port of the original Team Fortress mod, as a free add-on for Half-Life.

I confess that I was never an original Team Fortress fan. At the height of it's popularity, I was a dial-up user in a rural area with very poor dial-up access. By the time I was up to 28Kbs, Quake 2 was out and DM became my passion. I have just recently fallen under the spell of large-scale squad based games, such as Tribes and Team Fortress Classic. Therefore, I won't pretend to be qualified to compare Valve's TFC to the original Team Fortress for Quake. I can say that while some comments I've seen while playing raise doubts if TFC will replace the original, other comments indicate a successful port.

Interface

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alve has put a lot of effort into making add-on's easy to install and play. By selecting a particular add-on (Team Fortress being the only one available at this time), the entire front-end is replaced with that of the add-on. From the Half-Life start-up menu, you can select a "Custom Game" from a list of those installed, and then "Activate" it. After that, the add-on's menu is available. Controls can be customized for each add-on, with key bindings specific to the mod showing up in the configuration dialog (rather than binding them manually in a console environment). Very nice. From there, typical Half-Life features are available, including the server browser, automatic download of updates and more.

After joining a server, you're presented with a choice of teams to join, or "autoselect" which puts you on the team with the least players to keep things balanced--highly recommended. You're also given a brief overview of the type of game and your objectives. A nice touch for people not familiar with Team Fortress.

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All Screenshots

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