The Fort 2

...

PainKilleR — 2001-09-12T03:45:00Z

I can't think of a lot to say here, but I feel the need to say something. I think a lot of people feel the same way, and that's evident in most of the forums I've seen so far. What happened today (or yesterday in most of the world) on the east coast of the US is obviously something that most of us will not have a full grasp on for some time.

The US has not seen this level of destruction and loss of life inflicted on our own soil since our Civil War, and it's made all the worse by the fact that it only took possibly a handful of people to carry it out, and maybe fewer still to plan and fund it. People will debate it's historical significance until it becomes historically insignificant (probably by some cataclysm that removes most of humanity, or just whipes the US off the face of the planet).

I tend to be the kind of person that makes jokes to deal with adversity, even if I don't find the jokes funny myself. I also tend to follow tangents wherever they may arise. The combination makes me, possibly, one of the worst people to write about this. Such a combination of rage and loss as I can never have possibly felt in my lifetime lives within me now, and I live on the other side of the country, with no relatives or close friends near the particular areas stricken. Of course, I'm sure there will be members of the TFC community, perhaps even people I felt close to, as close as I could be to someone in this community anyway, lost in this tragedy. But that will be something we can only find out with time, and is sometimes easier to handle because our relationships can be so far abstracted online.

Whatever the purpose of these attacks was, the only way in which they succeeded was in the destruction of property and human life that they brought. Where they may have sought terror and chaos, they were met only with an orderly response, and this calm, cool rage that must burn within every one of us now; along with the sorrow that must be felt by any rational person when this many lives are taken.

The only thing I ask, is that our response to this remain orderly, calm, and rational. Letting the rage inside us overtake rational thought leads down the same path as the terror and chaos they initially sought. Rage is only good when channelled into rational actions and controller by rational thoughts. To respond in any other way makes us no better than them.

Footnotes and recommended reading

PainKilleR — 2001-07-06T08:15:00Z

I was skimming through Teatime's editorial, and decided to give some footnotes for you all. Some of it is for the sake of understanding the history of this game, and some is just to learn more about the game itself. For anyone that hasn't played the original TF for Quake, I highly recommend finding a copy of Quake (I recently picked up a boxed full-version Quake CD at my local nation-wide software chain for $6 to replace a broken CD), and just giving it a run, to get a hang of what it took to get into a game of TF in the first place, and also to get a look at what over 700 people were doing at a time when the last big hit online game had had 300 players. It's akin to comparing the number of people that play CS to the number of people that play Quake 2 Red Rover (fun mod btw ;p )

Also, some of this information is still pertinent to HL and TFC. In fact, reading through one of these files, I found the script that eventually became the 'detscript' which revealed a bug in the demoman's pipe detonation delay in TFC. The files are as follows: TF2.8 Readme.txt file (yeah, 2.8 was the last client version of TF before TFC came along), TF Versions change history, and the Quake Tech Info help file. The first two files came in the TF2.8 client download, the 3rd came in one of the patches for Quake.

Anyway, just thought I'd share, since I had this stuff sitting on my hard drive anyway. I was one of those 700 people playing QWTF for a while, and then, as much as now, I often took time away to do something else from time to time, but TF's a hard one to shake off. There's something to be said about smaller communities in online gaming, you're more accountable for your actions because everyone knows everyone else. I really started paying a lot more attention to the way I play when I started recognizing the people I was playing the game with, and even moreso when they started recognizing me. On top of that, if someone asks a question, and you know the answer, it takes a lot less time to answer the question and go on with the game than to chide the person for not knowing something that you probably had to ask about as well. It's not the new players destroying the game, so much as the somewhat older players not helping the new players. The gap in skill that a script can make up for is so minute that it's laughable that people would go to such great lengths to protect it. The things that matter: how you move, the weapons you choose to use, the timing of your approach on an enemy, the way you work with your teammates, the way you communicate, can not be made up for with a script, and if you can't stand out above the newbie on the basis of those points alone, then who are you to chastise and chide the newbie for asking?

Hanging Up

PainKilleR — 2001-05-31T04:10:00Z

I don't know why I keep doing this, but I've realized that I stretched myself too thin. I thought it would be ok, most of the PFL stuff stays on Monday nites (yeah right), TFTech is a matter of answering a few (*cough*as long as there isn't a patch*cough*) emails a day, which usually only take a minute or two each, I'd get to updating the page eventually. The TFC Reform page couldn't be much different, so I can handle that, too. What's an editorial once in a while?

Well, I've realized something. The only reason I installed Half-life on my system the last time I formatted my hard drive was to spectate matches and watch demos for the PFL. I haven't done a single thing but answer a couple of emails and collect them for TFC Reform so far, and TFTech hasn't been updated in so long that the copyright notice on the page is 2 years old and most of the links to patches and tweaks are dead.

The game itself doesn't do much for me any more. A random pub server is a constant reminder of what Valve still needs to fix in this game, since the llamas really love the stupid pet tricks that we call bugs. The pubs I used to frequent, generally filled with well skilled clan level players, tend to bring a share of bunnyhoppers and cheaters. Watching demos on a weekly basis, I can now provide a decent list of problems with the 'fixed' demo playback in TFC. Well, at least the demos play back.

I sincerely apologize to Slick (Warthog? yeah, and this message is coming to you from Vizeroth, thanks; sorry man, you're still Slick and I'm still PainKilleR, it's awefully hard to change these things) and everyone else here for saying I'd do these things when I should've known I could not handle them. I apologize even more that you'll have to read this in the same place that everyone else will.

Starting tomorrow evening, I'm not going to bother answering the emails sent to the tftech and reform addresses. I hate to do that to those people looking for help, but I really can't stand the questions any more, and I won't be able to keep up when another patch or two come along and the game generates even more errors, without fixing the old ones. I'll be filtering through the email at painkiller@planetfortress.com and getting back to anyone that needs any information I may have regarding tftech and TFC Reform until such time as someone sees fit to shut off the email address on planetfortress' side.

Final notes:

-apologies to Valve, this is the second time I've taken a position in which I was given what could have been good connections with you guys to take care of some of the things that's wrong with your game, and then dropped the ball on my end. I'll try not to do it again

-I no longer wish to have anything to do with GSI. They've shown to me repeatedly that the communities that form around their sites don't mean a damned thing to them. If they knew a little more about marketing and public relations they'd be dangerous, but they don't, so they just come off as what they are: a bunch of people trying to hard and far too often taking the wrong turn and just barely finding their way back.

-And my final apologies: sorry to anyone here at planetfortress that catches hell for this last pair of notes. PF's been a great place, but GSI's sucking the soul out of it, just as they did most of the other sites in their network.

Warpath

PainKilleR — 2001-05-05T17:30:00Z

Here I thought I didn't have much to write about, though I'm not exactly happy with the way the game is at the moment, I'm not all that angry about it, either, and then here comes Teatime's Epicenter rant...

First, the roof, well, someone HAD to put the roof there to begin with, you don't get a rooftop in a map if the map's author doesn't put one in there. Yes, they really do need to fix the ability to shoot into (and out of!) the respawn there, and it'd be nice if it had a cleaner look to the area, but still, the roof didn't just appear there by itself. If you take into account the lack of conc jumps as well, then it makes sense to not have a ladder there, as you force people to use some life (rocket/pipe/gren jump) to get up there. It's a good position for defense and offense alike, when used properly. Great for killing sentries and for taking that long jump to the point.
As for the fence and the ability to jump over it, I'll be the first to admit I'm one of the ones that has no problems repeatedly doing this in pub games, but I must say it's nearly impossible to do when the map is defended properly (something rarely seen). Quite frankly, I think the biggest mistake people make is trying to defend the map with sentry guns, as a pair of hwguys and a soldier or two can lock it down quite easily (and again, I've been known to defend the map as an engineer quite often as well). There are no really good positions for a gun on this map, plus, especially with conc jumps, the engineer's going to have medics in his face while he's trying to build if the rest of the defense can't manage to keep them away. As a conc jumping medic it takes just as long to get to the APC near the enemy base as it does for the defending engineer. That's why there's a delay on the flag gates opening, to give the defense some chance of setting up, and a large part of the map's strategic value (what little there is) comes on the part of the offense that aren't dedicated to capping the flag, the job of which should be to suppress the defense until the flag capper gets there.

The sad fact of the matter is that, while the map is fairly well balanced, a good flag capper is never going to get a positive score greater than zero on this map. I sometimes wonder how many people out there cap on it simply to hear people whine and complain about having to restart the whole mess all over again. Most of the time this map seems to draw out the people saying 'no caps' and turns into a deathmatch brawl, and the whole point of the reset is lost on those that have trouble grasping the map's balances. Personally, I'd just like to see them fix the roof so that the respawn is not open to bombardment (and outside people not open to interior sentry guns mowing them down unseen). As the map currently is, a lone scout cannot break a well placed defense, but can absolutely destroy the standard pub setup in a heartbeat. Scouts can't get past guns that are set well, nor do they stand a chance against an hwguy, and if you move to medic you need to be sure that your defense is doing better than the enemy's defense. If you don't want people jumping the fence, ask a teammate to stand in front of it and shoot people, it's really not that hard.

As for dustbowl, I think the map's author should be burned, but cjumping isn't really a problem anyway, since you're never going to find a scout or medic that can wrestle the lone gren bag from the sniper. Warpath's all about the hwguys, engineers, and snipers having a big TFC Arena fragfest at CP 3, and it's quite rare for a scout or medic to have a chance at hitting the far 2 points anyway, let alone manage the 2 quick conc jumps required to cap the last one before the 2nd to last is available. Besides, good teamwork would mean that you could get to the last one and have your teammate cap the 2nd to last while you're standing on the thing, instead of going at it alone.

Of course, we could always get a couple of bunnyhopping hwguys in there and really have some fun, all three of these maps are good for that.

Why do we play this game

PainKilleR — 2001-04-02T15:30:00Z

This question has been plaguing me lately, and I've noticed that a good amount of the community has been as well. Perhaps it's the game's age getting to some of us. Perhaps it's the game undergoing changes to gameplay and to the way it looks. Perhaps it's the bugs that continue to live on in the game after all of these revisions.

While writing this up, I changed direction a bit. Therefore, things at the beginning may seem unrelated to things at the end. However, I feel that it all intertwines somewhere along the way, and at the least gives you all a bit of an introduction to where I'm coming from, and some of the things I believe in. It's probably one of the worst samples of my writing you'll ever see, but it all needed to be said eventually. May as well get it out of the way now.

I played TF in many of it's revisions for NetQuake and QuakeWorld, taking occasional breaks to play other games that caught my eye. Still, I couldn't let go of TF completely, even with Quake2 CTF, Diablo, and numerous other games pulling for my time. While I was waiting for TFC, which promised a much needed visual update to the game I spent so much time playing, I continued with TF, staying mostly to a particular Canalzon server that lives only in our memories now.

TFC brought something else that really drew my attention, something other than the visual updates. It brought a much-needed end to the cheating that plagued QuakeWorld after 2-3 years of it's existance. It also brought a fresh community that seemed mostly untainted by the arrogance that existed among many in the TF clan scene.

I'm beginning to think that perhaps that arrogance is a part of a game's age, something that grows within a community as the newbies that were dealt harsh blows by their elders become elders themselves, and the elders that believed in helping others and spreading honour in the community decide that it's no longer worth their effort, usually leaving the game behind for something else.

As I've played this game, I've gone from a veteran of the TF pubs to a player just on the virge of completely giving up on the TFC pubs. When that happened, though, there was a group that caught my eye. I had been opposed to playing in clans in TF because the bad side of that particular community was very evident when I started looking. TF had gone through some nasty cheating scandals, and some of the arrogant few were winning matches, feeding their arrogance even more. However, when I started looking at TFC clans, the vast majority (with one noted exception) were upholding honour in the game and showing that you could play a straight up game and get the wins. The TFC clan scene was, at that time, the pillars of the community.

Somehow, for reasons barely known even to myself, I managed to make my way into the best clan in the game at that time. Their beliefs were the same as my own, that the game was to be played for fun, that cheating was not to be tolerated, and that although winning was not the sole purpose of playing, it was something worth working for.

Somewhere along the way, my clanmates started to grow tired of the harsh regimine of practice that we held, and of the game itself. Many of them had been playing the game equally as long as I had, however most of them had never had the occasional breaks that I had taken as a pub player. New mods came along for Half-life that had playing styles that, while rehashed to someone like myself that had spent time with various Quake 2 mods, were new to people that had not spent much time with that particular game. Needless to say, I didn't agree with my clanmates, though I needed a break as well.

I took a month off, barely even touching TFC for 2-3 weeks of that time. The TF1.5 patch came out during my time off, and pushed me a little further from the game, making it easier to spend that time away. Still, eventually, something called me back. The game was different, but it still held the same call. It wasn't long before I found a new group of people that held similar beliefs, and was back to playing clan matches again. It also wasn't very long before I started noticing that, with 2 or 3 of the major forces in the clan scene gone in a short time period, the scene had started to change.

I guess, to some extent, this shift had started much earlier, it was just hidden to an extent. There were numerous flame wars between various clans regarding the tactics people chose to play. Some clans play the game to win, and some play for fun. Unfortunately, on occasion the tactics used to win don't leave a lot of room for a fun game on the parts of the clans being played against. This leaves a clan that came to have fun feeling cheated, even if they won.

What does this mean to everyone out there that isn't in a clan? Well, think about why you play this game. Think about how your actions effect the other players in the game. Are you in the game to have fun, or to win? Is your idea of fun or winning causing problems for other players on the server that may be trying to have fun? Respawn campers are usually having fun, so are the cheaters, but the people being camped aren't having fun, and in many cases neither are the people being cheated. It may be fun to ask for an all-crowbars game every once in a while, but what about the people that came to play a real game of TFC? The players that wish to play offense are often discouraged in a pub game by the incredibly heavy defense. The players that are highly skilled at defense are often discouraged by the near total lack of offense.

People have lost site of why they play the game. When people stop having fun, even if their reason for playing is to have fun, they never just leave the game. It doesn't work that way for most people. We drag it out, we try to find the fun again, we ask for other people to change things to make it fun again. I went and joined another clan, with which I had a great deal of fun, but slowly certain things started wearing on me again. It wasn't the fault of the clan I was with, the game just stopped being fun again.

Still, I'm here, ranting about bunnyhopping and running a league that mandates use of Punkbuster to detect cheaters and expose them, effectively keeping them out. From time to time I've also been known to rant about chasing, turtling, respawn camping, and a few other choice issues. In the last week I spent an hour spectating TFC matches, one hour actually playing TFC, 8 hours playing Black & White, and 4 hours playing Tribes 2. I've also spent 4 hours working on a program that some people might find useful, should I ever manage to finish it (it's certainly not the first time I've started work on a similar project).

Why am I still here? As much as I hate the state this game is in, the changes are possible. Maybe if I shout loud enough, pound on the walls hard enough, people will start to listen, and the changes will happen.

Punkbuster mandated in every league and playing on more of the public servers is just a start in the right direction. It's time to start removing the dark seeds that have tainted this community. The end does not justify the means. There is no substitute for honour and a game well played. Dishonour should not be met with flames and angry villagers, it should be met with a brick wall and solid refusal to accept it as part of the game or the community that has formed around the game.

(For more information on Punkbuster, visit Punkbuster, for more information on Black & White and Tribes 2, visit PlanetBlackandWhite and PlanetTribes , respectively).

Turtling and backtracking

PainKilleR — 2000-10-28T12:00:00Z

Normally, the focus at the Fort is on honour, sportsmanship, and fair play in public games. Teatime's been gracious enough to offer me a guest spot here to express my opinions on such matters if I should ever come up with something that I thought was worth taking the time to write about. Well, I came up with something, but I first must stress that this has nothing to do with public games. What I want to discuss is honour, sportsmanship, and fair play in clan matches. I've been dragging a discussion through the message boards about this, and I think it's time I put my thoughts together in one place, where it might even get the ears of a few more of the clan members this really should be directed towards. Let's start by defining a few terms:

Chasing: also known as backtracking to our European friends. I define the act of chasing as the point at which a player, who's position in the game is that of an offensive player, actively chasing down enemy offensive players. The point at which the offensive player stops acting on behalf of his offensive teammates to cap the flag, and starts acting on behalf of his defensive teammates to prevent the other team's offense from capping the flag, or more specifically, when an offensive player is running towards his own base, attacking an enemy offensive player, especially while the enemy flag remains inside the enemy base.

Turtling: otherwise known as going all D or heavy D. Any time a team decides to only provide a token offense, or no offense, in order to prevent the other team from capping the flag, whether it be for the remainder of a match, or simply every time their flag moves. Heavy D does not mean they're using all heavy classes on defense, but rather that a much larger percentage of their team is dedicated to defense than is normal. Generally, in a 9vs9 match, this would be 7+ defenders (4 or 5 would be normal, 6 would be a little excessive, though may not always be out of the ordinary, as a 3 person offense can still be quite effective on many maps). The idea is that, once a team has gotten a lead (no matter how slight), they no longer need to try to cap the flag, so they simply stop dedicating players to making such attempts, and dedicate as many people as possible to the role of preventing the other team from doing so.

When I started playing in TFC's clan scene, I was quite impressed with what I saw. Every game seemed to be fairly straight up, no chasing, no respawn camping, no heavy or all D moves, not even clans going with all or mostly soldiers. Everyone seemed to be playing the game to have fun, and most people seemed to be enjoying it. Maybe I was just lucky in that these were the only types of games I saw for a while, or maybe this was the experience that was shared by most clan members at the time. The TFC clan community was relatively young, and it seemed to have taken the best things from the TF clan community and left the crap behind.

Somewhere along the way, though, it became more important to win the game. Maybe people weren't having fun if they didn't win every match, or maybe they decided that it wasn't worth it to go out there and play the game if they didn't do everything they could to win the game. When I step forward and say that I don't feel that turtling and chasing are things that should be done in matches, people invariably step forward and say something along the lines of 'anything that can be done in the game, short of cheating, is fair game'. Sounds to me like someone's missing the point. 'Fair game' is not about what's possible within the construct of the game. Just because the game doesn't explicitly stop you from doing it, doesn't mean that you should. When everyone leaves the server at the end of the nite, those 'gg's should be meant by all. So, I have a question for all of you out there playing matches every week:

Does the win feel as good when you go all D and/or chase the enemy offense to their deaths as it does when you play a straight up game, pitting your O against their D, and vice versa, throughout the match, and come up with it at the end of a close, hard-fought match?

Shouldn't there be a little more to the game than winning a match? Is it that important to break the records set by clans of TFC's past? Will playing like this give you CE's 23-0 reign of the OGL, their 16-0 reign of the IGL, KiN's 36-0 streak in the Top10 Tourney, their 19-0 reign of the STA Gold? Or to bring it to the present, is it so important to break SD's 14 game reign of the Top10 Tourney, or PF's 14 game streak in the STA Gold that these tactics are the ones you would employ in order to do it? I can tell you right now, because I was there (and you can feel free to ask SD yourself), that these are not the tactics that were employed to break that particular streak by SD (and of course it helped that the map was Scrummage, which isn't a CTF map anyway). I can also say with some certainty that such tactics had no part in breaking CE's streak in the IGL or KiN's streak in the STA Gold, because, again, I was there for both.

The question of whether or not your clan should turtle up or chase shouldn't be one of whether or not it's within the realms of what the game allows. It should instead be a question of whether or not it's something that is honourable, fair, and in the spirit of good sportsmanship. It would be fairly interesting to see someone hold their head up high and say with pride that their clan chases and turtles, but I'd have to question where they got the idea that that is something of which to be proud.