[this guide is currently a work in progress - suggestions are welcome!]

Hello! Somehow you've found my notes on this game from 1999. If you have a question I hope the answer can be found below - if not, please leave a comment or message me on Steam and I'll see what I can do!

I'm writing this guide more than two decades after I started playing Team Fortress Classic because this game (like many others of its era) has a lot of little quirks, a pretty incredible learning curve, and a nearly overwhelming amount of depth and variety.

This guide is intended to be a general resource, but my main goal is to answer the question:
"How can I play TFC?"

If you're looking for the answer to more difficult questions like "how can I get good at TFC?" then please let me know when you find the answer, I want to know too!
But to get you started here's an excellent resource put together by nuki and various collaborators: https://sites.google.com/view/nlc-tfc

Due to the age of the game there are a couple quirks which may make getting started more complicated than simply launching the game and jumping into a server. In case you're having issues, here are some common solutions.

• If the game launches to a black screen, try using the old OpenGL renderer by adding -nofbo to the launch options.
  
• Disable HD models in Options\Video. This will prevent error messages when attempting to connect to servers.
  
• Are you experiencing some other issue that's preventing you from playing? Please post it in the comments!

While the defaults are technically fine to start with, it's probably worth opening Options from the main menu and looking at each tab to ensure things are configured the way you like. Here's a couple I think are noteworthy:

• Options\Multiplayer\Advanced: Switch weapons immediately: Enabled (so you don't have to click an extra time to change weapons)
  
• Options\Mouse: Raw Mouse Input: Enabled (this is crucial for being able to bhop accurately, more on that later)
  
• Options\Video: Enabled HD models if available: Disabled (this causes issues, just turn it off)

You may want to adjust the controls to suit your preferences; it'll be important to be able to easily press and hold either of the two grenade keys, discarding bags and throwing flags can be crucial in some situations, and you may want to consider adding jump to mousewheel up or down for bhop (more on that later).
[TODO: talk about configs, binds, aliases?]

Okay enough of all that, let's start playing already! Technically you don't need other people (or even an internet connection) to play TFC, you could set up a local offline game using FoxBot [citation needed], but odds are you're wanting to play either on a public server or in a structured/organized game.

The public server experience is often chaotic and unorganized. Players of all skill levels will be investing varying amounts of effort, with everyone doing their own thing (which may or may not include trying to capture or defend a flag). Class synergies and team play may be an afterthought.
You may spend a frustrating round trying to capture the enemy flag by yourself while the rest of your team hangs out in your base and the enemy team runs exclusively snipers, heavies, and engineers - or you may join forces with a passionate and helpful teammate(s), shift the tides of battle and have an incredible experience.

Joining a public server is easy: just select Find Servers from the main menu, adjust any filters as desired, and join a server. Due to the age of this game there's probably only going to be a handful of servers that actually have players in them - you're certainly welcome to jump into an empty server and see if anyone else joins you, but to get you started here are some popular options as of this writing:

• OldSchool TFC (45.32.203.198:27035) - mostly ADL maps (attack/defend) which is different than the more traditional CTF (capture the flag) style but works great in a public server because the teams have clearly defined roles.
  
• -[EVIL]-BattleZone (66.151.244.170:27015) - regular CTF style pub, with a couple plugins to give a more 'classic' feel
  
• -X- BotServer (23.227.200.203:27015) - bots vs humans
  
• Twisted Dustbowl (142.54.164.26:27015) - dustbowl was the first big ADL map, so if you enjoy ADL but aren't ready for OST server this is a good option
  
• Drippy's 2fort (172.93.101.194:27015) - one of the more popular pubs, but has some arbitrary restrictions and aims for a very specific style of TFC that does not align with the 'competitive' meta
  
• Squishy's Batcave (68.232.160.177:27015) - skill maps server (more on this later)

Servers may have passwords, may be empty, may have bots, may be running lots of crazy plugins that turn TFC into a whole different game (I personally do not enjoy NeoTF, but to each their own!), but hopefully this gets you started. If all else fails, grab a friend or 3 and join an empty one and start playing!

If no servers show up at all there's probably something wrong and/or you may be on Linux.

If you're looking for a more organized/competitive experience, or just want to try a different flavor of TFC, you may be interested in pickups or matches.

In a pickup game each player will be choosing a class and a position and pursuing specific goals in collaboration with their team. In contrast with pub play where individual score/performance may be the main (or only) objective, the primary focus of a pickup game is the success of your team as a whole.

Pickup games are generally organized in Discord these days, and are typically 4v4 (although options may include anything from 2v2 to a full 8v8 game).
4v4 pickups are Offense vs Defense over 2 rounds, so teams are picked in Discord, everyone joins the server and team A play offense (usually on Blue) while team B plays defense (on Red) for one 15 minute round, then teams swap sides and another 15 minute round is played.

The most popular Discord servers for TFC pickups as of this writing are:

• Coach's Office (https://discord.gg/2AuUCZYnKv) - primarily plays 4v4, averages 12+ games per day, can start as early as noon eastern but generally gets at least a few games in during the evening
  
• Outhouse (https://discord.gg/fbqqpt8n8e) - more of a social hangout but occasionally plays tfc, more likely to play non-4v4 games if possible
  
• Inhouse (invite only, I think) - games usually start around midnight eastern, generally much more competitive (mostly TFC veterans)

If you're interested in playing pickup games one of the best ways to get started is just to join a discord server and ask to spectate a game. Most players will be happy to help you get started.

If you like the organized structure of pickups but want to play with the same people more regularly, work on your chemistry and develop strategies as a team, and compete with other teams to see how you stack up in the rankings, check out one of the currently active TFC leagues!

• 4GL (https://discord.gg/cCzZFZR) - 4v4 Offense vs Defense league
  
• TBL (https://discord.gg/dEVjx6Y) - Beer League

Although the active player base today is a tiny fraction of what it once was, league TFC is still the epitome of the ideal Team Fortress Classic experience.

Certain aspects of TFC have taken on a life of their own - players and mapmakers have built entire communities around things like rocket jumping, conc jumping, ramp sliding, and more. If you enjoy certain mechanics of the game this stuff may open up a whole new world for you, totally separate from the traditional flag-based CTF/ADL competitions.

Other than Squishy's (or another public skill maps server) I honestly don't know what the best way is to get into this unique and nuanced side of TFC. Any input for this section would be welcome!

TFC is an old game but we can make use of modern display features like high resolutions and adaptive sync to make it look a little nicer. Since it uses an old (and apparently poorly optimized) version of OpenGL, there are a couple of tricks to ensure the game runs smoothly.

TFC has various mechanics that are affected by your fps. In general, higher fps is better, but there are a couple problems that start to occur (or become more common) at higher fps, and depending on your monitor and resolution some fps values may be more likely to cause tearing - unless you use vsync, more on that later. In general you'll probably want to set fps_max to a value somewhere between 110 and 250. Values lower than 100 will put you at a mechanical disadvantage. The chances of getting stuck while rampsliding gradually increase as fps increases - it's pretty uncommon to get stuck at 150 fps, intermittent at 240 fps, and quite common at 300+ fps. If you never slide up ramps, set your fps as high as you want :)

By default, TFC will try to run at 72 fps and will not allow you use fps_max values higher than 100 until you enable fps_override 1. This is a fast-paced game and we want to be able to move quickly and smoothly, so enter fps_override 1 in your console, and keep reading to figure out what fps_max should be for your hardware.


First, let's open the NVIDIA Control Panel to check the setting for Vertical Sync in the Manage 3D Settings menu:
Personally I recommend setting vertical sync to 'Use the 3D application setting' - this will let you enable or disable vsync using in-game settings (gl_vsync). If this is set to On or Off then changing gl_vsync in tfc won't change anything, it'll always be set to whatever is shown here.

While you're in the NVIDIA Control Panel you can also check your resolution and refresh rate (no changes needed, just make note of the values):

You can also check these settings in Windows, under Display Settings and Advanced Display Settings:

Resolution is really just personal preference - I recommend setting TFC's resolution to the same as your desktop resolution, but if that's higher than 1920x1080 some text may be too small to read easily, so 1920x1080 may be a better starting point.

Now the next steps depend on your monitor's refresh rate:

• 75Hz or less: Anything under 110Hz is not really going to be able to take advantage of vsync properly.
  Set gl_vsync to 0 (or disable vertical sync in NVCP) and set fps_max to whatever feels and looks the best to you - you may notice a 'tearing' visual effect that becomes more obvious at certain fps values, so try increasing or decreasing fps_max until the tearing is tolerable).
  I recommend starting at fps_max 239.5 (the game rounds up by a half frame) and decreasing until you find a value you're happy with - or start at 119.5 and increase until it's comfortable.
  
• 120-144Hz: In this range you may or may not benefit from enabling vsync.
  If you don't notice any noteworthy 'tearing' visual effects, feel free to leave gl_vsync at 0 and set fps_max to whatever feels and looks best to you (for example at 120Hz you may try max_fps 119.5, or 115 or slightly lower if that doesn't feel right).
  Alternatively, you can set gl_vsync to 1 and set your fps_max approximately 5 less than your refresh rate (see the Tearing/Tuning section below).
  I recommend gl_vsync 0 personally, but that's because I don't notice / don't mind tearing. If your eyes are better than mine (and they probably are) it's worth trying out gl_vsync 1, but be sure to use a latency measurement tool like PresentMon to ensure vsync isn't adding unnecessary rendering latency (see Tearing/Tuning section below).
  
• 240Hz or more: Congratulations, your monitor can emit photons faster than Team Fortress Classic can effectively process commands!
  Set gl_vsync to 1 and set your fps_max approximately 5 less than your refresh rate - see the Tearing/Tuning section below to find the fps value that minimizes additional latency.

If you aren't sure what tearing looks like, launch TFC and start up 2fort, go to the ramproom ramps with the metal texture, look straight down and walk forwards and backwards.
You should see a horizontal row of pixels that doesn't quite look the same as the others while you're moving (it may appear at different locations on your screen and/or move up and down). That's the tearing effect.

If you don't see any tearing at all, you may already have vertical sync enabled. Double check your NVCP 3D settings to see what Vertical Sync is set to, and make sure gl_vsync is 0.

If you see tearing but it's barely noticeable and/or doesn't bother you enough to fix it, you're all set! Go play tfc :)

If you see the tearing and want to fix it, keep reading:

• First, enable adaptive sync and ensure GSync is enabled in NVCP:
  
• Next you'll need a tool like PresentMon to measure latency changes. There's a console version available on github (https://github.com/GameTechDev/PresentMon) but I like the GUI version available here: https://game.intel.com/story/intel-presentmon/
  
• Configure your PresentMon to show Gfx Latency Render and Gfx Latency Display, then launch TFC and check the values with gl_vsync 0. It should look something like this (maybe 0.4 or 0.5 ms latency depending on your machine):
  
• Set fps_max to your refresh rate minus 3 (for example at 240Hz, try fps_max 237) and check the Latency numbers in PresentMon. If the Latency is significantly higher than with gl_vsync disabled, change fps_max to a lower number (perhaps refresh rate minus 5, or minus 10) and try again.
  
• Note that the Latency values may be subjective, and consistency may be more relevant than the exact number (for example a steady 2 ms value may feel smoother than a value that fluctuates between 0.5 and 1.5). Personally I like to aim for latency values below 1 ms, but I need to use 200 fps on my 240Hz monitor to achieve that. Meanwhile, at least one of the best players in the game plays with 3-5 ms latency by setting their fps to 117 on a 120Hz monitor..

Once you've identified the fps value that works for you, I recommend setting fps_max in your autoexec.cfg or userconfig.cfg to make sure it stays that way.

Enjoy smooth, responsive, and tear-free TFC!

I don't think it's useful to go into the specific details of each class in this guide, right? That information is all available ingame or elsewhere on the internet.

What I think might be useful to have here is some info about whether each class is generally considered Strong, Average, or Weak in terms of their ability to perform a particular role in a given game type (pub, pug, adl).

Here's a table that aims to briefly approximate that sort of info:

[TODO: put stuff in here.]


- Rampslide
- Sharking
- Chopping
- Down-trimp

[TODO: add some basic guides for common maps - typical defense setups, offense routes, maybe gameplay footage?]

[TODO: add links for relevant discord servers, sites like mrclan for customizations, sites like tfcresources for scripts/configs, sites like the tfc map archive for maps, relevant twitch/youtube channels, site with list of console commands, maybe include some scripts here also?]

The Catacombs https://discord.gg/2CDwcgk
This is probably the most central location to start looking for anything TFC-related - check out the #directory channel for links to other communities and resources.

Old School TFC https://discord.gg/WCBBMSF
Home of the OST public server, hosts regular ADL pickups, great group of folks. Lots of resources available, and plenty of smart people around if you have questions.

Outhouse http://www.discord.gg/outhouse
Hosts CTF pickups, a 1v1 ladder, and plays various other games.

Team Fortress PUGs https://discord.gg/dVsdggHuZX


Maps
Customizations
Scripts/configs
Streamers
Mapping
Other