CATEGORY: OtherTF

Fortressmen of the Month #2 goes big, bringing together the key developers behind Quake 4 Fortress—an ambitious project that built hype, attracted community support, hosted playtests, and fostered a growing player base between 2004 and 2006. Development came to an abrupt end, with the work that had been completed wrapped up in a “v1.5” release. For those who played it during its lifetime, Q4F remains a project remembered with nostalgia and a lingering sense of what might have been.

Now, after nearly twenty years in the games industry, Q4F lead developer Jeremy “photeknix” Raymond and lead programmer Jared “3j” Cone look back on their journey. They begin by discussing the history of Team Fortress as they experienced it as teenagers before turning to the Fortress mod they created as young adults. They reflect on Q4F’s ambitions, its distinctive design, its road to QuakeCon 2006 and meeting Splash Damage, and, despite all of its promise, its eventual downfall. Finally, they offer a glimpse into the game industry careers they have built since those early modding days.

x-term from QWTF.RU (“.NET”) community has recently been uploading 20+ years old Q3F and Enemy Territory Fortress (port of Q3F to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) footage to https://vk.com/etfortress. The content varies from the old 8v8 clan match days of Q3F and ETF to the recent 4v4 gathers (pick-up games) of ETF v2.0. The goal is to document the legacy, to showcase it, and to lure more people into playing Q3F and ETF.

The last time Q3F played was in 2024, according to x-term, at a game night organized by QWTF.RU. Interested players are encouraged to follow the vk page (especially the East European users), join the QWTF.RU Discord server and say hi in the #q3f channel.

I don’t have anything particulary new. I just like to play ETF, Q3F, sometimes even QWTF. And I want to help bring in new players, so I’m trying to show them the game and get them interested. It’s not an easy task, since I can’t compete with Valve and EA. – x-term

While he desires to offer some old-school Q3F games for the beginners, the main and the more realistic focus is to revive the live ETF Discord server, which has been struggling to run its gathers lately. Anyone willing to help make it happen can join and queue up, and ping sharky (@eLSharko), bill, x-term, Güven or Toes for a 1v1 soldier deathmatch in the meantime.