CATEGORY: Event

GoldSrc Saturdays (GSS) has selected Team Fortress Classic as its Week 252 game. The gaming community which has been raiding a different GoldSrc-engine game every Saturday since 2021 will return to TFC on October 17^th, following an Opposing Force deathmatch session this Saturday. The event kicks off at 19:00 UTC (21:00 CEST / 3PM EST) and will run for up to four hours on GSS TFC server at 91.191.213.98:27016. More than twenty players are expected to participate. This will be GSS’s third TFC session this year, with the first one coinciding with the TFC night of Classic Revival Week on February 28^th. If you have never joined this community of GoldSrc lovers, this is a great opportunity to meet fellow fans of the classics and journey back to the late 1990s together. Join their Discord server to stay up to date, and visit their website for more information.

FFridays are back to Fortress Forever, with the subtitle REVENGE. After the slow decline of A/D Saturdays organized starting from May this year, the young folk at Old Fortress Collective, specifically Reptid, stepped in to bring the old tradition back. The public games will be held at 3 PM Eastern Time every Friday, on the SDK2013 version, which is still being developed by hlieb and hithere while BrokenBenny is working on the TF2 SDK migration. The server is likely to be MaxTF – Classic Server at 164.132.202.176:27095, a community favorite. Join the Fortress Forever and OFC Discord servers to get the latest updates and reminders for FFridays.

Team Fortress turns 30 years old this week, and so far, we have received three presents. The first and the biggest one came from the developer team behind Team Fortress 2 Classified (TF2C), a.k.a. Eminoma, who released the Team Fortress 30th update. The update introduces a holiday feature to TF2C that will be active every year from August 23^rd to 25^th. During those three days, features like ported old-school maps will be available in the game. This year we got Fortress Forever’s Dustbowl, QuakeWorld Team Fortress’ (QWTF) Canal Zone, and two more maps from Team Fortress Classic. The update also introduces the Classic Vision feature, allowing players to see all the classes and Sentry Guns using their QWTF models. Unlike the holiday, this feature is not time-limited, and can be enabled at any point from now on.

Perhaps even more intriguing, especially for the romantics and the historians, is the masterfully created update page. Its timeline takes you through almost all the major Team Fortress mods. It is reminiscent of what united.tf hoped to achieve with The Wall, but Eminoma’s timeline comes with the team’s usual level of visuals and presentation– makes it genuinely difficult to believe that this is the work of a non-commercial mod rather than an official sequel. And then there are the old teamfortress.com-styled links at the bottom of the page– a small detail, but an absolute delight to see. TF2C takes one for the whole team, honoring the 30^th anniversary by releasing a major update packed with phenomenal content and paying the utmost respect to the legacy on behalf of us all.

30 years of TF is actually 30 years of QuakeWorld TF. And if hard forks are set aside (MegaTF, CuTF, AGR etc.), the only active public (casual) game community that has survived around it is QWTF.RU. They gather every Tuesday and Thursday night in the European time zone; follow their Discord server for notifications. HaMMeR and other members of the community prepared a delightful article with a special focus on the Moscow TF League that lasted longer than other local efforts. The article also points to other worthwhile pieces of TF history, so you can dig even deeper.

The final surprise is a genuine public game session in QWTF Live (formerly known as FortressOne), a 2019 fork of QWTF. Modernized, fast-paced, and enhanced with anti-lag tech making intercontinental play smoother than ever. These days, QWTF Live is organized only around pickup games (competitive sessions) through its Discord server, but the young folks at Old Fortress Collective (OFC) Discord server have decided to change that for one day: September 5^th. To join, mind that you first need to obtain a token from the QWTF Live Discord server and associate it with your FortressOne client before connecting the server. Any technical or gameplay questions can be directed to the OFC or QWTF Live Discord servers. They hope to see you there– in the game that started the saga 30 years ago.

Every year since 2018, “Snoozer” LAN brings players from all over Australia together in Sydney for QuakeWorld competitions across its various modes including Team Fortress. This year, held on 7-9 August with sponsorship and prize pool provided by Scorptec Computers, the LAN celebrated the 30^th anniversary of Quake with 21 attendees competing in Duelmenia (1v1) and Team Deathmatch (4v4) tournaments. Although TF could not be included in the last two years, the LAN featured some of the best QWTF players, including wm and Wolverine.

Two of the attendees flew more than five hours from the other side of Australia, while the captain of the winning 4v4 team, Mortuary, drove ten hours from Melbourne. The winner of Duelmania, meanwhile, was Reload. The live streams of both Day 1 and Day 2 are available on Youtube, showcasing some top-class Quake gameplay.

CustomTF is the QuakeWorld mod where alongside the standard 9 TF classes, players are presented with the option to build a custom class, purchasing its weapons and specialities with a fixed amount of credits they are initially granted. It offers one of the most alive pub scenes in Quake, and is still being maintained by one of the few most prolific developers of its three-decades-long history, along with a FuhQuake-based dedicated client called “Prozac”.

Quake 2, some people’s favorite in the series, has never had a playable Fortress mod, let alone being blessed with their variety as Quake 1/QW is. Although there is evidence that a Quake 2 Fortress development had started and died back in the day, the mod Quake 2 is remembered by has always been Action Quake 2, the spiritual predecessor of Counter-Strike. However, for more than a year now, CustomTF is being developed for Quake 2, and is weekly getting beta-tested. The playtests were given a break during spring, but recently took off again, and is happening at Kilam’s server, quake.kesselle.org, every Thursday at 8 PM EST. Join the Prozac CustomTF Discord server for instructions on how to get the client and connect.

I think the Quake 2 engine usage for this mod really improves the experience. I invite everyone to play with us on Thursdays, even if it’s still in beta stage. It’s fun! – OfteN, Developer

The original CustomTF on QW has 15 class-building menus, each presenting 7 purchasable weapons or specialities. OfteN reports that 75% of the weapons are implemented, and overall 90% of the whole mod. They are still lacking stuff like class models, but everything will come around eventually. Join up on Thursdays to be a part of the latest Fortress expansion.