TF2 beta with Orange Box Pre-Order

[Daverino]

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: KeithTalent
Does anyone have this running at 1920x1200? Everytime I try to change to any 16:10 resolution, the game freezes, with stuttering sound, then I have to shut it down. I'm stuck playing at 12 x something. :frown:

If anyone know of a solution, I'd love to hear it!

Thanks,
KT

when i switched to 1680x1050 it froze and stuttered for a little bit but then worked ok.

so are you guys all playing on different servers or do you have one set up for ATers?

It's definitely going to take a bit to learn all the classes and what they can do. I wish there was a tutorial, especially for people new to TF.

With the spy, when cloaked, are you completely invisible or if you move, can the enemy see you? Also, while cloaked, if you want to attack, you have to uncloak, right? Can you use the sapper while cloaked?
If you cloak while an enemy is looking at you, does the cloaking fail, can they still see you?
When you are disguised, are you completely disguised, like they have no idea you are an enemy unless they shoot you?

Can engineers repair another engineer's sentries and stuff or can you only repair your own? How do you repair, just whack it with your wrench?
I think it sucks that you only get so many points to build stuff. Sure, you can run back to resupply, but considering that, i don't really see the point in having points then.

Can the demoman detonate his sticky nades while they are being thrown? I thought I saw a guy do this last night but it didn't seem to work when I tried it.

Is a headshot always a one shot kill, no matter the gun used? I kept getting killed very quickly last night and it just seemed to be one shot kills, and they weren't snipers.

There's the director's commentary which has a good amount of information about the game. Not a tutorial, but definitely worth watching.

When cloaked as a spy, you're completely invisible. If you attack, you uncloak. You can sap contstructions when cloaked, but the engineer will get a warning in his HUD. He will also shout out 'Someone's sapping my XXX.' and the target will start to smoke. If an engy hits a construction being sapped with his wrench it will break the sap and he'll get a point. Opposite of TFC, spies do not bleed when shot. So on a FF server, you can tell who's a spy by shooting them in the opposite way. . . if they *don't* bleed, they're a spy. On a normal server, you can't tell by shooting them. One thing about getting rid of armor is that you're free to lay into anyone you think is a spy without penalty on a non-FF server. Also, with voice-com, if you have a decent team, you can always ask the person who you think is a spy to say something. If they respond on voicecom a voice icon appears over their head. If your suspect doesn't get the icon, it's a spy.

Engys can repair or upgrade anyone's buildings, and yes, you whack it with the wrench. Engys would be way overpowered if they didn't have to resupply, and that was part of the original game. Build a dispenser near by and you have a constant source of metal for upgrades and repairs.

Dunno about the demoman, haven't tried him.

Sniper headshots are still pretty much instant kill, if fully charged. I know that you can sometimes land 'critical hits' but I don't know how to do it. Like sometime you get your weapons supercharged. Haven't figured that out either.

 

[pontifex]

so you uncloak then attack or the act of attacking uncloaks you? when i played, it didn't seem to allow me to attack while cloaked.

Why would the engineer be overpowered with infinite points? you could still only build 1 of each thing. and isn't building the dispenser right next to the sentry overpowered anyway, especially if you are standing there to constantly repair it?

i noticed the critical hit marking on the enemy when i shoot them sometimes. not sure how that happens either.

 

[Daverino]

The issue with the engineer having infinite points would be how fast he could bring a L1 sentry gun (weak) to a L3 sentry gun (vicious). If he had infinite points, he could get a L3 into place very quickly, making him overpowered, and then be able to constantly repair it without having to restock metal. Ugh.

 

[Kev]

Wait, they don't have The Rock 2 or the Well?

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Originally posted by: KeithTalent
Is there a way to force the resolution, like adding Width:1920 Height:1200 at the end of the .exe or something like that?

Right-click 'Team Fortress 2' in Steam and click 'Properties'
Click 'Set launch options...'
Paste this string in, customising your width, height and refresh values:

-fullscreen -width 1440 -height 900 -refresh 60

I had to do this in order to get past the first game loading screen without a CTD.

I've always had some stuttering and a bit of a freeze up when changing resolutions on the video menu in Source games. It usually takes about 10 seconds to wake up and change. Quake Wars does it instantly (FTW!) so I guess it's an engine issue.

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Originally posted by: KeithTalent
It would be cool to see an AT server though. :thumbsup:

That would be sweet :thumbsup:

I've only played the game twice for an hour or two. I've never played TF so I'm learning the maps and the strategy. I must have found a server full of people even more noobz0r than me tonight cos I got 7 kills in a row as the demo man I love the way the models explode I was pleased to see my Steam community avatar in the scoreboard too.

 

[mb]

Tip: disable the 3d background map / start up menu in TF2.
Normally to do this, you edit valve.rc in the hl2 directory. For TF2, there is no valve.rc so all you have to do is make one with Notepad with the following line:

// startupmenu

I'm honestly not sure WHERE to put this file because I put it in two places and it didn't disable the background map on the menu. BUT I did put it in all the subdirectories of C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\usern@me\team fortress 2\ and now the game starts straight to the plain ol menu.

Even on my computer that damn 3d map background menu took forever to load, so I'm glad I figured out how to disable it.

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

To remove the startup videos and to disable the 3D background for the menu which takes an age to load:

Right-click 'Team Fortress 2' in Steam and click 'Properties'
Click 'Set launch options...'
Paste this string in (or add it to the end of your existing parameters):

-novid +map none

The menu loads so much faster now, it's ridiculous.

 

[duragezic]

Thanks for the tip. I started wondering the second and third times (most recent) I've played how long it was taking to load the main menu.

Do some servers not have the persistent stats turned on? Because I only played 30-40 minutes my first time then a like two hours the day after, but today when I went to play, my stats were pretty much empty and I was only from the first day. But I changed that with a couple hours straight of playing.

Back to playing.

edit: Just went to launch and there's a new update. One of the changes is loading background maps is disabled. Damn... my internet is messed up lately. I get 512kbps upload like I'm supposed to, but nowhere near the 5mbps down. I only pay for 3mbps but it was some 5mbps preview till 2008. I get maybe .8mbps max as of lately... so here I am impatiently waiting 5 minutes for it to download. I want it now, NOW NOW

 

[pontifex]

anyone know what the update is for?

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: pontifex
anyone know what the update is for?

[-] September 20, 2007 - Current Release

Changes/Additions
Linux Dedicated Server beta release
Disabled the loading of background maps

Bug fixes
Fixed not being able to issue rcon commands with empty strings like: rcon sv_password
Fixed refresh rate video mode issue
Fixed crash on opening the scoreboard after having changed between windowed and fullscreen
Fixed a hitch problem related to mouse updates happening too frequently
Fixed sentry muzzleflashes not drawing unless sentry was near the map origin
Fixed a crash during loading while starting the game in fullscreen mode
Exploit fix related to "join_team".

 

[mb]

Originally posted by: MmmSkyscraper
To remove the startup videos and to disable the 3D background for the menu which takes an age to load:

Right-click 'Team Fortress 2' in Steam and click 'Properties'
Click 'Set launch options...'
Paste this string in (or add it to the end of your existing parameters):

-novid +map none

The menu loads so much faster now, it's ridiculous.

Very nice. I did it the hard way
I even replaced the video with a locked 0kb txt file so it would skip it.

 

[mb]

Man, I was kicking ass as a medic yesterday

 

[pontifex]

i played some more last night but still not sure which class i like the best.

i seem to do the best as either the soldier or the demoman. played the medic a bit last night did ok with healing.

i still don't get how some people kill me so fast though. it's like 1 or 2 shots and i'm dead, yet it takes me 2 clips or more to kill a guy.

one thing i hate with the Heavy is that when you keep the barrels spinning, you walk even slower...why should spinning the barrels make you walk slower? i guess its for balance, but still, wtf?

 

[krotchy]

Wow, yesterday I had a crazy round in my clan server (with some pretty good people). I was a Demoman and managed to get 47 points and 30 kills on one life, and we were on assault, not defend. I ended the map with 105 points, it was ridiculous.

 

[pontifex]

goddamn i suck at this game.

 

[Balt]

Originally posted by: pontifex
goddamn i suck at this game.

What problems are you having and what classes are you playing?

Just remember that it's usually not advantageous to go out on your own unless your a spy. Like if you are a soldier, for example, stay behind a fatty (HWguy) getting healed and shoot rockets at the choke points from a safer distance. If you are in a 1 on 1 encounter sometimes it's also better to switch to the shotgun rather than waiting for a reload on the rocket launcher.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: Balt

Originally posted by: pontifex
goddamn i suck at this game.

What problems are you having and what classes are you playing?

Just remember that it's usually not advantageous to go out on your own unless your a spy. Like if you are a soldier, for example, stay behind a fatty (HWguy) getting healed and shoot rockets at the choke points from a safer distance. If you are in a 1 on 1 encounter sometimes it's also better to switch to the shotgun rather than waiting for a reload on the rocket launcher.

pretty much every class. I always get caught as the spy. It's like they know right away that I am a spy or everyone just shoots at all their teammates all the time or something. I try to act inconspicuous and try to go after guys that are by themselves. i also try to disguise myself as like a pyro or sniper or something lik that. My thinking is that one of these classes would still be sitting in their base for defense, plus it's not a class that would be having an active role, like a heavy or a medic.

the other problem is that i seem to get killed in 1 shot all the time or like 1 melee attack, even though I am facing my enemy. I never get one shot kill unless i'm a sniper or get a backstab as the spy.

 

[Balt]

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: Balt

Originally posted by: pontifex
goddamn i suck at this game.

What problems are you having and what classes are you playing?

Just remember that it's usually not advantageous to go out on your own unless your a spy. Like if you are a soldier, for example, stay behind a fatty (HWguy) getting healed and shoot rockets at the choke points from a safer distance. If you are in a 1 on 1 encounter sometimes it's also better to switch to the shotgun rather than waiting for a reload on the rocket launcher.

pretty much every class. I always get caught as the spy. It's like they know right away that I am a spy or everyone just shoots at all their teammates all the time or something. I try to act inconspicuous and try to go after guys that are by themselves. i also try to disguise myself as like a pyro or sniper or something lik that. My thinking is that one of these classes would still be sitting in their base for defense, plus it's not a class that would be having an active role, like a heavy or a medic.

the other problem is that i seem to get killed in 1 shot all the time or like 1 melee attack, even though I am facing my enemy. I never get one shot kill unless i'm a sniper or get a backstab as the spy.

Are you using the cloak effectively as a spy? The most important thing about deceiving people as a spy is to be coming from a direction that they expect their teammates to be coming from rather than their enemy. So basically what I do activate the cloak when I'm about to get within sight of the enemy, run past them, make sure no one is looking, decloak, backtrack, get behind someone, stab. It also helps sometimes to know the alternate route to where you are trying to go. That comes from just playing the map.

Also when you are uncloaked don't forget to be looking in the direction where someone from their team would be looking. Face the direction where their team would believe that enemies are going to be approaching from. If you are looking at them they are going to get suspicious.

For the record, I find soldier the easiest class to play in TF2 even though I felt they were pretty weak in TFC. Most maps seems to have various choke points where most of the conflict is going to be taking place. It's not too hard to stand back and just fire rockets into them to rack up a lot of kills.

 

[Skacer]

The soldier is the master of awesome. Even though rocket jumping is retarded in TF2, it can still be slightly rewarding.

 

[pontifex]

I like the sniper but on most maps right now, he is pretty useless.

 

[MrBond]

Originally posted by: pontifex

pretty much every class. I always get caught as the spy. It's like they know right away that I am a spy or everyone just shoots at all their teammates all the time or something. I try to act inconspicuous and try to go after guys that are by themselves. i also try to disguise myself as like a pyro or sniper or something lik that. My thinking is that one of these classes would still be sitting in their base for defense, plus it's not a class that would be having an active role, like a heavy or a medic.

the other problem is that i seem to get killed in 1 shot all the time or like 1 melee attack, even though I am facing my enemy. I never get one shot kill unless i'm a sniper or get a backstab as the spy.

When someone shoots you as a [disguised) spy, they can't tell you're actually a spy because there's no blood like there was in TFC. If you keep doing what you're doing and ignore it, they'll probably think you're on their team and leave you be. You've also got to make sure you're not disguising yourself as something that's not on their team (ie: you're a pyro but there's no pyros on their team).

I'm loving playing as the medic and engineer. Engineer was my favorite class in TFC and medic just might be in TF2. It's easy to rack up points as a medic if you hook up with a good Heavy, Pyro, or soldier and keep them healed. Stay out of the way - most people go for the main offensive threat, not the person who's healing them.

 

[duragezic]

I wish there was more CTF maps (hopefully there will be on release). With about 6-8 hours of playtime, I've played 2fort exclusively for all but 20 minutes of that time which was on some CP map. I didn't like the CP map. What happened to well, rock, and all the classic TF maps that they could've simply remade. I know they have well but it's not CTF and it's been a long time, but it doesn't seem that similar to the old one.

Sniper is pretty much the only class I've played much of. I was quite good with him in TF and he's still very capable in this one. And playing 2fort, he's very useful. I've gotten to becoming better at playing defense with the sniper in various areas other than the standard sniper areas. When there is 2 fatties coming with a medic behind, a sniper is one of the best to pick off the medic then get a fully charged critical hit to the head of a fatty. So when people bitch about wanting me to change to something else... well I'm not strictly sitting up there shooting at enemy snipers... I'm very effective at defense with him. I've always gotten crazy lucky shots with him in TF and it happens a lot now. I love when the scouts do a double jump to get on the bridge except the double jump keeps them in the air even longer so it's easy to hit them (even a fully charged hit to the feet will kill them I think).

Still, I have to play some other classes more. I've never liked fatties, pyro sucks, demo doesn't seem as good as in TF but it hard to master, soldier's RL isn't nearly as good as TF but I've seen 1 or 2 players who are awesome. I used to be quite good as a combat medic primarily in a TF clan but his weapon in TF2 completely sucks. The Super Nailgun as well as the super shotgun were awesome for him in TF. In TF2, you can be a combat engineer (think he's a little too powerful). I'm not a big fan of the spy and he's not very good for teamplay except when the other team has a couple of really good snipers that can't be touched as a sniper. I know... spies piss me of the most as a sniper, so they can be good, but the fact that 3-5 out of 12 people on a team are spies commonly is far too much.

edit: I tend to keep on eye on spies because of getting annoyed by them. So people like me will tend to someone figure you (pontifex) out, but I've seen some spies that are just really good and ALWAYS somehow get you without you having a clue. The fact that they don't bleed in TF2 when you shoot them makes it harder, but I still ALWAYS shoot any somewhat suspicious guy, because what a lot of the less experienced spies do is attack me as soon as I shoot them, thus proving it. I only shoot a couple machinepistol rounds at them to check, so the ones who just take the damage but don't attack me will often get by me. The only true giveaway is when they are named you.

Also, this should be obvious, but only disguise as someone who has a similar running speed. Seeing a HWGuy moving so fast is a dead giveaway, and Scouts are so damn fast that I'd notice a slow Scout. As said, use the cloak to get into their base, cause teammates running into your own base raises suspicion. Engineer is a common disguise, sniper can be good too.

 

[banksh0t]

Anyone having trouble running TF2? My computer locks up every time i join a game. I can play CS:S and DoD:S all on max settings and i have no problem. Its driving me crazy that i can't play. I have a P4 3.2 1gig ram and a X800XT. Its an old system i know but it shouldn't have any trouble playing TF2. I even deleted TF2 and re-downloaded it to see if that would change anything. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: banksh0t
Anyone having trouble running TF2? My computer locks up every time i join a game. I can play CS:S and DoD:S all on max settings and i have no problem. Its driving me crazy that i can't play. I have a P4 3.2 1gig ram and a X800XT. Its an old system i know but it shouldn't have any trouble playing TF2. I even deleted TF2 and re-downloaded it to see if that would change anything. Anyone have any ideas?

First time I played it was great for over a half hour. The past two times I've played it's been locking up. Not locking up like running slow, but locking up like totally freezing and having to restart my system. I have an A64 3200+, gig of RAM, X800 XL. When it IS running, it runs plenty smooth on the highest settings. Just every so often it will start to stutter and then it's irrecoverable.