Community Group Hug

by Turbine 2

My job is going to be to help to ensure that the townsfolk continue to run city hall. One of the most overused and misunderstood words on the Internet is "community". One cannot throw up a gas station and a few stores and call it a community, as is the case throughout the Internet. This community is not a game, a company, nor something that could exist on it's own like a headless body. The community is you.

I was thinking about how society and culture change yet people don't. It has been said that organized religion succeeded in its quest to become relevant to society but in doing so became relevant to nothing. What happened to the people? One sees the world apparently searching in earnest for a cosmic cliff to leap from; a blue marble headed for the kiln, infested by a population comfortable wallowing in denial. A race exhibiting the symptoms of lab rats in an overcrowded box milling about with no regard or awareness of the culture of which they are a part.

In the midst of this seemingly cold, existentialist society however one finds a certain oasis in what many would think of as the driest places in the desert. There is a certain irony in the fact that a close community exists among a group of such bloodthirsty folks as us Team Fortress players. I wonder how sociologists and shrinks would define this one? Certainly those of the Freudian persuasion would have a time of it.

I find it more than remarkable that a culture, a community exists that does not appear to be on the verge of succumbing to its anchor. The counterculture of the late sixties and early seventies lost it's identity to drugs which should have been no more than a small part of it and later lost it's idealism to become just another part of the capitalist society which it had fought for so many years. Some saw it though as an example of retribalization in the middle of a fragmenting culture. Could it be then that the Quake and even more so, the Team Fortress community is a magnet for those in our society that are tribal men at heart? One would be hard pressed to deny the similarities.

Ironically it hasn't been until recent years that many now look at the American Indians of old and realize that they and their tribal culture were born well ahead of their time, not behind as our presumptuous ancestors thought. Although it is true that the main thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history at all, it certainly appears that certain things seem to trigger genetically implanted tendencies in some of us and sometimes history can give us a clue as to what is going on. That may help to explain how out of an extremely violent game played on the Internet has sprung a true community based on what may be some of the oldest urges in our race.

©1998 - "Turbine 2" - All Rights Reserved

Players Sportsmanship and Respect

by Phrogman
I’m not going to mention any names of players or clans here, that is not my job, but the kind of people I am talking about in this editorial know which kind of player they are.

Ifind that it is not easy to find people that have respect for TF and the people who play it nowadays. The way I see it now is that there are 2 types of people playing games. The people who respect you and treat you good and the people who treat you like trash and talk shmack to you all the time.

This is something that has affected the Team Fortress Community all around. Back when TF came out, you could hop onto a TF server and actually play a good, strong game of TF. People would actually work together and not many people sat on the server and talked a lot of shmack to your face. These were the days that TF was at its most humble peak. Even though TF is so much more popular these days, it is very hard to find a server where all the people work together. It is also hard to find a server where there will not be rude, ignorant fools out to get you. Games where people actually play as a team is not totally gone though. Once in a while you might hop onto a random server and things work out… Once in a while… When I say this, I mean there is not one person who is a total prick that tries to ruin everybody’s game, and everybody on your team works together to get the enemy flag. When you do find servers like this, they usually will require a key to play on them, but this is not always the case though. The fact is that is doesn’t make it easy to get into one of these games. However, if you show that you are a real man of the TF code to one of the server operators, then they will probably give you the key to get on. This probably won’t be the case if the server operator(s) just happen to be one of the rude guys. Obviously, the amount of people on the server does not matter a bit. I have gone to servers with 2 people on them and they both happened to be rude. I am not trying to say that any server with two players on it will probably consist of two guys trying to ruin the day for you, I am just saying that no matter where you go, or how many people are on the server, there is still a good chance that there will be people on it that try to ruin the game for you.

O ther than the pure luck of finding a good server, you would probably have to be an elite player to the TF community or have to be in an elite TF clan that still believes in the honor and sportsmanship ways of playing. I will not name off any clans or people that are true sportsmen or are not sportsmen at all, but I will tell you that you won’t have trouble finding them. There are thousands of elite players still out there, but keep in mind that there are thousands of pricks out there as well.

II am not in a clan, But I know of many clans that I would love to be in for the fact that the clans constructed of people that love TF and they treat the game as well as the players like brothers. It doesn’t matter how old a clan is or how many people are in them in any way. There are clans that popped up when TF came out that are still packed with honor and sportsmanship, then there are clans that popped up last week that are packed with honor and sportsmanship, even if they only have a few members. I don’t judge clans by how many wins or losses they have, I judge them by how many of their players have honor and sportsmanship. This is a good thing to keep in mind if you are tossing around the idea of joining a clan.

In my opinion, the current community of TF players is head-n-head. You don’t have to be a person that has been playing TF for a long time to be considered a sportsman. There are still some old TF players that make complete asses of them selves. There are also newbies to TF that are true sportsmen by nature. Naturally I consider myself a sportsman. I don’t hop onto servers and start yelling at people or telling them I’m god. Most of the time I’ll get onto a server and just play. If someone shoots me, I don’t say something like “You stupid prick!” I would say “Nice shot dude!” You may not be a prick; you may just be annoying. When I say this, I mean that some people might not say harsh things, they may however like to brag about their frags or flood your console with things like “HAHAHAH! DIE!”.

In conclusion, I would just like to say thanks to all of the people that still try to make the TF community a good place filled with sportsmanship and honor. Without these people, TF would probably not as popular as it is today. Thanks guys! No matter how many people try to tell you otherwise, your doing a great job!

If you agree with me or disagree with me in any ways here, let me know what you thought!

©1998 - "Phrogman" - All Rights Reserved

TFS, what have you done?

by Bundy
That is a question I see on message boards occasionally, usually by some whiner complaining about TF2 being a commercial product. I am willing to bet these are the same wankers who pirated their Quake disk to play on to begin with. Well, let me tell you something - you get what you pay for.

Team Fortress has endured to become the most popular Quake mod ever made, even surpassing (ugh) Death Match. I don't have the figures, but I believe it is the most popular FPS game on the internet. Why? Not because it is free, although that didn't hurt. That certainly introduced the mod to many tens of thousands of players around the world who may never have otherwise seen it. Not because they invented the best gaming engine around. No, they used the existing Quake engine. Well, you may ask, why then is it so popular? Because it appeals to so many people. There is something for just about anyone in Team Fortress.

First of all, there is the cooperative aspect. Well, CTF is cooperative, isn't it? Yes, but... CTF does't have the appeal for many that TF does. TF is a class-based game, with various classes having distinct strengths and weaknesses. But there are other mods that use classes, aren't they? Of course there are. Battle of the Sexes (BOTS) is a good example. It was made for Quake 2 and is (-ahem-) very similar to TF but it doesn't have the following that TF does. Well, what is it then?

I believe it is all these things - cooperative aspect (team play), different classes and let's not forget strategy. A good TF game is much more than DMWC (death match with classes). It is challenging without being overwhelming. One reason I totally quit Death Match was because you had to be an lpb to even think about doing anything. With the team behind you, you don't have to run for your life and fight campers for powerups. You help them and they help you as you work together to achieve the goals of the map. This is a good thing.

Speaking of classes, there are classes that suit just about anyone's fancy. If you just want to bull your way through with ordnance, there is the Soldier. If you like being covert and working behind the enemy lines, there is the Spy. If you like building things and helping your team, there is the Engineer. By the way, the Engineer is excellent if you have a poor connection. The Sentry Gun has no ping ;) There are other classes, but I prefer the Sniper. You know, silent death and all that.

Back to my topic, TFS, what have you done? I'll tell you what they have done. They were acquired by Valve Software. Valve is the company who is making TF1998 Adrenaline Vault E3 Awards at E3 Expo held in Atlanta, Georgia. They won the Best of Show and Best Action Game. And guess what? The game hasn't even been released yet :) Valve leased Quake1 and Quake2 engine technology and is modifying them to provide what I believe will be the best gaming engine ever seen. On top of this, they have an excellent staff of modellers, artists and AI (artificial intelligence) people, possible the best in the business.

Gabe Newell, the Founder/Managing Director of Valve has pledged the support of all of Valve's assets. This means that their professional modellers and artists will be able to turn their efforts to TF2 while the TFS guys do what they do best - design Team Fortress. All this doesn't come free.

TF2 is a totally different game than TF1. Of course there will be similarities, but Robin Walker (TFS Lead Designer), John Cook (TFS Head Programmer), Ian Caughley (TFS Manager) and the rest of the TFS guys (I would love to mention all of you but space doesn't permit) are able to do what they do best: make Team Fortress :) Gabe has also committed to follow-on projects regarding Team Fortress. This team has an excellent distributer, Sierra On-Line, and they know how to promote and market games.

So, how is this good for Team Fortess junkies?

This means they will turn a profit. That isn't a horrible concept, is it? How long do you think the TFS guys could continue to give away the fruits of their labors? They took a big gamble and won. I say more power to them! Not only because they are nice guys and I like them, but because they will have the means to continue making Team Fortress, and it will be even better because of all the assets they have available at Valve. Did you know that Gabe has authorized modifying the Valve engine to accommodate some features that TFS wanted? How about that? This means that we won't be limited to whatever engine was available for them to base Team Fortress upon. This means that they basically have a custom engine designed for TF. That is amazing.
I don't want to hear any more whining about spending a few bucks on TF2. Some of us willingly donated to TF1 when they were trying to make a go of it. I am proud to say that I was one of the very first. I may have been the first had they opened my letter first ;) If you can find money to buy that neat-o CD for your boom box or you can find a hundred or two dollars for that pair of tennis shoes, you can certainly find money to buy something that will give you hundreds and hundreds of hours enjoyment. If you can't, let me give you a novel approach: get a job! Save your money and go buy the darned thing :)

In summary, I will answer my original question. "TFS, what have you done?" You have given me almost two years (yes, two years) of enjoyment. You have helped me make new friends and humiliate a few wankers :) You have pulled off a major feat in combining your resources with Valve and are going to continue to give us the best FPS game we can ever imagine.

For this, I have but one thing to say. Thank you, TFS. Thank you very much.

©1998 - "Bundy" - All Rights Reserved

One Time Talk

by Turbine 2, 7/28/98

For those of you brave enough to read some of my editorials here -- in hopes of finding a sane individual hidden somewhere in the paragraphs strewn about in my ramblings: Good Luck!

This will be the only time you will hear this stuff. I felt it could be useful in determining whether or not you want to bother reading postings by someone when you better know what they are about. So, for the first and last time, here's who I am:

Philosophy on Life

• Love...it's all there is -- the rest is just "fill".

Favorite Sayings...

• "A good day is when you've dodged a bullet with your name on it."
• "The reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory."

Things I Love...

• my wife.

She is everything to me. I gave up flying just to be near her. Don't regret it a bit. I would die for her -- Have I got it bad or what?

No...no..no....I'm not just saying that because I know she will read this or because I want that new video card. I mean it. Really.

Things I Like...

• my wife
• Team Fortress
• 2Forts (see "fill" below)
• honest people & people with more questions than answers
• Bushmills - Neat
• Great coffee and more of it
• More garlic in my food
• Good sense of humor
• And writing editorials :-)

On To The "Fill"

Beyond that, I believe in loyalty to TF Software, promoting teamwork in the game and the community. I used to believe in America but hated apple pie. Now I wonder about both of those sometimes. I just thought you might want to know.

What do I want to contribute here?

First of all, I want to talk about whatever it is that you want discussed. Get the hint? Yes, I need letters. If it is about Team Fortress, send it in. Just bring up the old Pegasus and send me an email on whatever it is. I won't do hate stuff or personal attacks but will address any other items that you think would be worth a minute of your time.

Editorial pages can be sometimes laughable, boring, insulting or just worthless and I know that there are some of you out there that are creative enough to want to help make this a different place. So pulllleeeze help make this your site to contribute ideas to by sending them in. It just helps out tremendously because then when people complain, I will then have you to blame.

Now then...

I gotta ask this question: What is it with the Border thing? I mean, I am known to miss a few things here and there but I just can't see it. There is a local dedicated border/hunted server and sometimes when I feel I deserve punishment for some deed I will drop in there.

First of all, you know who the lpb's are there because they are the mib's and border patrol. The rest are either scraping their fingernails off on the wall or standing on top of a truck, waving an axe at the sniper who is calmly pulling the trigger as his dot centers on their left eyeball. It looks like you kicked an anthill. Not to mention that every time I have visited that server it has already degenerated to the point where some illegal has pissed off one of the mib's and he has begun to grenade all of them as soon as they respawn into another short lived, miserable life. Honestly, this server should be renamed to be "Lamer Central". Is it a magnet or what?

There are two other servers there, one with a sniper map and the other with a decent map rotation. Predictably, there are usually a few folks there but the one with the map rotation is almost always empty. Not a soul. You could go on there anytime and drop your uniform pants and run around and no one will know which I bet a lot of you have wanted to do. I don't care though what time of what day it is but you can go on to that border/hunted server and there are going to be eight or ten players fragging away. Some fairly decent players but inevitably there are also the token lamers on there picking fights and calling each other names.

Obviously there must be an entertainment value there that I have not yet found so I must be missing something. Then again, I am one of those blindly following Hal and think that 2forts was the best of all maps.

Well, anyway, send in those cards and letters.

©1998 - "Turbine 2" - All Rights Reserved

Skill Vs. Tech

by M.o.D[BrB], 8/5/98

    First of all, allow me to introduce myself. I am M.o.D[BrB], some of you may know me as M.o.D2[AA]. I consider myself pretty well known in the Team Fortress Community, but what I am well known for sets me apart from the rest. I am known for the three following reasons:

1) My horrendous reputation for sucking
2) Playing TF with arguably the shittiest TF system out there
3) Playing TF with arguably the shittiest connection out there

    I will not go into detail over the first reason but I will go into detail on the next two. I play TF with a Packard Bell pentium 75mhz, 24 megs of RAM, a Packard Bell video card with 1 MB of memory and capable of a maximum resolution of 640x480, a 14" monitor with computer speakers attached to the sides...pretty crappy eh? To give you an idea of the performance I get on this bad boy, I play in 320x200 resolution with d_mipcap 3 and the screen minimized four times from full screen (as in I push the - key four times from full screen). With all that I get about 8 fps on the bridge in 2fort5 and even lower if something is happening and about 20 fps in a dark corner. My ping isn't nearly as bad, I can ping 250 to a good server but what is bad are my ping spikes. My ping spikes up to 500+ about every 10 sec I play regardless of server with lots of phone jacks in between. Why did I just tell you all this? I told you to show that I have experience on the topic I'm going to address.

    When I first played TF I didn't do too bad. I could play about as good as the better out there and I would get beat by the better players. As time passed I noticed that something was wrong, a lot of the better players were getting beat by new players and I was one of the people getting beat. Then someone introduced me to two magical acronyms, HPB and LPB. When I finally understood the meaning of those two I didn't think much of it, I figured I was a good player and that I would shine no matter what the conditions. But as time passed some more I noticed more people on servers with those lovely double digit pings and I was sitting back with my lovely triple digit spiking ping. I did some research and discovered that pinging low has surprsingly numerous benefits besides the obvious. The obvious is that an LPB can fire faster. If an LPB and an HPB hit the fire key at the same time the LPB's projectile will fire before the HPB's. But there's also the little things. An LPB can set his rate higher because he is able to receive more information at once. This means that he is able to "take in more" of the surroundings and react to them faster where an HPB will seem slow or sluggish because he can't receive the information quite as fast. Imagine how much easier you could play TF if you could react faster than others.

    Enough with the ping for now, as time progressed computer technology also progressed. When I started playing TF a pentium 200 was the "prime system." Now it's a pentium II 400 with lots of goodies in it. A pentium 2 400 with 128 megs of ram and a voodoo 2 card can run glquake at an amazing resolution with an amazing fps. Now before you say "yea but how many people have a system like that" let me say that more people have a system comparable to that than you think. Many TFers are equipped with pentium II 350's with 80 RAM and so on. In fact double digit pentium's like mine are almost non existant in the TF world. I know of one other person with a pentium 75 and another one with a pentium 90. I know of very few with pentium 133's or 150's and the majority have really advanced systems in the high 200's to 300's with many of them being pentium pros or pentium II's. Now this brings up an interesting fact. The fps difference between a pentium 300 and a pentium 100 is extraordinary. It's almost disgusting to see how much of a difference it is. Now if someone is using a pentium 2 400 the difference is so huge that it isn't a laughing matter. Now what does fps do? Fps contributes to ping, the reason for this is unknown to me but it is a proven fact. If your ping is 350 and you have an fps of 20, if your fps increases to 40 your ping will decrease. And when ping decreases...well see the above matter on ping. Also because more frames are coming in more information is also coming in. There is no choppiness in play which causes you to walk choppily or sluggishly and you see what is going on every second in a very smooth and evenly manner.

    So what has TF come to? Is it still a competition of honing skills or has it become a race to equip oneself with the latest technological advances? Keep in mind this is happening in other competitive events as well. Golfers are using titanium reinforced golf clubs to hit balls further than Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer could imagine. Tennis players are using aerodynamicly shaped super light weight racquets to achieve serve speeds far beyond the imagination of John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors. They are dealing with the same issues we are. Is it skill or technology? Would a newbie TF player with a pentium 2 400 and a 50 ping be a better player than a very experienced TF player who has established himself but plays with a pentium 100 and a 350 ping? There are extremes to both sides, and the so called "best" TF player would probably have both skill and technology. A TFer can have all the technology he wants but still won't beable to compete if he doesn't know how to use grenades well. But on the other hand a TFer with a poor system will lose to an equally skilled player or even a slightly less skiller player with a better system. As to which is more important I believe that skill is still more important to a TF player but the margin is quickly fading and I believe that a good system will outbid skill in the future. In fact many clans have started recruiting LPB's only and even some are going so far to ask recruits about what kind of system they are running. So the question on my mind...is technology becoming too big a factor in TF? You can e-mail me your opinion at [email protected]

©1998 - "M.o.D[BrB]" - All Rights Reserved

Who is PhD?

by Turbine 2, 8/5/98

    All right. No one sent me any letters this week so I will have to write about my own topic.

    Just who is this Phat Dragon and who does he think he is? Bundy seems to know who he is and I hear other staff members talking about him but do you think that anyone would clue me in? No. But then again, nobody tells me anything around here. Do you have to have been abducted by aliens like Bundy was to find out anything in this place?

    I mean, I know that none of the staff respect me in this place, but you would think that I could get a few questions answered around here once in a while. But no, when I walk into the staff conference the room goes silent except for some wise ass coughs out "geritolboy" and then some general snickering in the room. And I don't think Phrogman sitting in the corner and sticking pins in some doll is funny one little bit. Tell you what, Phrog, just cause you were the Just Say No posterboy for the antidrug campaign don't mean squat to me. Then of course Bundy sits over there and reads his National Rifleman magazine and every time someone brings up a good idea (which is rare here) his only reply is "We didn't do it that way in 'Nam" at which point he just sits there, staring at me while patting that holster he wears, the one with with Jody Foster's picture painted on it. Occasionally he looks over at Hal and says, "You talkin to me"? Problem is that by that point in the meeting Hal is usually snoring away and I have go put a towel on the table by his head to catch the drool. Sometimes he mumbles something in his sleep like "Oh, please don't hit me any more, honey." Then we have Spif sitting over there, all by himself. Look, Spif, if you would quit coming to the staff meeting wearing that dress, maybe people wouldn't mind sitting near you. Yes, I know you just wear that stuff cause it is comfortable and lets you feel that cool breeze but not everone understands that. Then we have to put up with that Joost guy who occasionally runs in and jumps up on the table with his storm trooper boots, giving us that Nazi salute thing and yelling "Worship Me!" Well, if you folks are wondering why we are so messed up around here, now you know why, but I digress.

     Look, Phat Dragon, I don't care who you are, you are not getting on my ICQ list. Quit begging me and saying, Oh, Pleeeaassse, turbine2, cn ib on ur lest. What is that???? Speak American. And stop sending me money. Unlike some other people around here, I can't be bought. I did like those photos of your cat though.

©1998 - "Turbine 2" - All Rights Reserved