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Team Fortress, also known as Quake Team Fortress or Quake World Team Fortress, is a 1996 FPS Mod of Quake, by Robin Walker, John Cook, and Ian Caughley for the PC. The rights to the series were officially bought by Valve and remade on the Goldsource engine as Team Fortress Classic in 1999.

Team Fortress was not the way we know it today upon it's original release, instead it evolved through updates released throughout 1996 and 97, resulting in the levels, game modes, and all nine player classes we know and love today.

Gameplay[ | ]

Team Fortress is an online first person shooter video game, that pits two teams, Red & Blue(and in some cases 3 or 4 teams, yellow and green) against each other in a variety of game modes. Each team features a total of 9 classes, Scout, Soldier, Pyromaniac, Demolitions, heavy weapons, Engineer, Sniper, Medic, and spy, which each feature their own signature weapons, skills, and health statistics.

Game Modes[ | ]

  • Capture the flag - each team must infiltrate the enemy base and capture their flag, and return it to their own base.

Classes[ | ]

Scout[ | ]

Scout qwtf

Health: Low

Speed: Highest


Soldier[ | ]

Health: High

Speed: Low


Pyromaniac[ | ]

Quake world pyromaniac class

Health: Medium

Speed: Medium


Demolitions Man[ | ]

Quake world demoman class

Health: Medium

Speed: Medium

Medium speed and health, the demo man carries a grenade launcher as it's primary weapon.


Heavy Weapons[ | ]

Quake world heavy weapons guy class

Health: Highest

Speed: Low

Slow speed and good health, the heavy weapons class carries a minigun as it's primary weapon.


Engineer[ | ]

Health:Low

Speed:Medium


Sniper[ | ]

Health: Medium

Speed: Medium


Medic[ | ]

Health:Medium

Speed:Very High


Spy[ | ]

Quake world spy class

Health: Medium

Speed: Medium


Trivia[ | ]

  • The spy class originated from a glitch in the game, where the player could accidentally appear as the color of the enemy team.
  • Team Fortress marks the first use of "head shots" in FPS video games.

Videos[ | ]

Evolution[ | ]

Team Fortress has evolved into an entire genre as fans of the original modification have created a multitude of slightly different versions for various games:

  • Fortress Evolution for Quake III Arena was intended to create a very close replica of the original QWTF but was canceled and last released as an alpha build. It has recently returned as a standalone mod built upon Evolution Q3 but as a completely different project.
  • A mod titled Q3F, for Quake III Fortress, was developed for Quake III Arena in 2001. This mod was further developed into the Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory mod Enemy Territory Fortress, or ETF, in 2005; it had a notable initial following and many servers still operate where pickup gathers take place on a daily basis.
  • Team Fortress Classic was an extremely popular mod for Half-Life created in April 1999. There are still servers for and players of Team Fortress Classic today.
  • NeoTF is a modification of Team Fortress Classic, originally created by BillDoor and further developed by Hitokiri_Battousai in 2001. NeoTF adds many new elements to the game that can turn it into a completely different experience. After Hitokiri_Battousai (HB) took over, he added many new features and created a larger fan-base than the original creator. There are still many servers hosting this once-famous modification.
  • Unreal Fortress (abbreviated as UnF) existed for Unreal Tournament. Unf was heavily modified version of TF, with a strong emphasis on team rather than individual play. Thus scoring was not for flags retrieved but for individual class effort. Each class was renamed and heavily modified, like MegaTF classes had a wide range of capabilities, and were designed to help each other rather being a variation on the soldier class, for instance turrets could be upgraded by various classes.
  • Unreal Fortress: Evolution first started out as UnF 2003 for Unreal Tournament 2003 but was made into a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 when Epic released the newer version of the game. It has never left the beta stage.
  • Another evolution of TF is the multi-games mod Weapons Factory that has several considerable modifications to TF classes which results in different gameplay, resulting in many servers having to put limits on specialists (non-soldier classes).
  • There is also a large Custom TF community presently active. Custom TF by Bill Kerney (aka Shaka[UVM]) has the normal classes of TF but also includes a "custom" option, where players have a set amount of money with which to buy weapons, armour and skills.
  • MegaTF was another popular Team Fortress mod which featured new enhancements to each class like proximity mines, laser drones and airMirvs. The community slimmed after the popular East Coast and West Coast Biscuit servers were shut down for unknown reasons. There is a MegaTF mod currently in development for the Amnesia server called "MegaTF United" being developed by XavioR and other Team Fortress modders.
  • Fortress Forever is a mod for the Source engine heavily influenced by Team Fortress Classic.
  • Team Fortress 2 is a stand-alone multiplayer game created by the original designers who now work for Valve Software. The game has a cartoon-like look to it. Team Fortress 2 was in development for more than nine years and has had many changes to it along the way.
  • AvP2 Team Fortress is a mod that brings Team Fortress like gameplay and character classes to the Aliens versus Predator 2 game. The game modes are slightly different than Team Fortress Classic but they still rely heavily on teamwork. What's notable about this mod is that various classes are assigned to various species (i.e. the scout is an alien runner, predators act as spies and so on).
  • Quake 4 Fortress, a mod focused on the fast paced action of the original Team Fortress, first started as a mod for Doom 3, but because of lacking network support moved on to be developed for Quake 4. Q4F 1.5 was released but production ceased early because of the lack of a Quake 4 player community. Jeremy Raymond (aka photeknix) and Jared Cone (aka 3j) also focused on professional careers in the industry around the same time. Jeremy is a Designer at ZeniMax Online Studios and Jared is a Programmer at Psyonix Studios.
  • Gang Garrison 2 is an open source demake of Team Fortress 2.
  • The yet unreleased Korean game H.A.V.E. Online appears to be heavily influenced by Team Fortress 2.
  • Doom Fortress is a Team Fortress mod currently under development for the Skulltag engine.

External links[ | ]

News[ | ]

Software[ | ]

History[ | ]

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