Posts Tagged ‘fortress-forever.com’

News: FF 2.41 Released!

2.41 is mostly a bugfix patch. It was supposed to have been released only a few weeks after 2.4, but that didn't end up happening. Enjoy!

Click here for the changelog

The new concussion explosion effect on ff_roasted

Client Installer

2.4 to 2.41 Patch
AE Clan (.EXE)
Mininova (.EXE, TORRENT)
hl2sm.com (.EXE)
Mervaka.co.uk (.EXE)
FFPickup.com (.EXE)

2.41 Full
AE Clan (.EXE)
Mininova (.EXE, TORRENT)
hl2sm.com (.EXE)
Mervaka.co.uk (.EXE)
FFPickup.com (.EXE)

Server Packages

2.4 to 2.41 Patch
AE Clan (.ZIP)
AE Clan (.TAR.GZ)
hl2sm.com (.ZIP)
hl2sm.com (.TAR.GZ)
Mervaka.co.uk (.ZIP)
Mervaka.co.uk (.TAR.GZ)
FFPickup.com (.ZIP)
FFPickup.com (.TAR.GZ)

2.41 Full
AE Clan (.ZIP)
AE Clan (.TAR.GZ)
hl2sm.com (.ZIP)
hl2sm.com (.TAR.GZ)
Mervaka.co.uk (.ZIP)
Mervaka.co.uk (.TAR.GZ)
FFPickup.com (.ZIP)
FFPickup.com (.TAR.GZ)

Tags: fortress-forever.com
Filed under Team Fortress News : Comments (0) : Feb 26th, 2010

News: 2.4 Status Update

It's definitely about time we tell you what has been going on.

The 2.4 patch has been coming along nicely. All that is left to do is a few small tweaks and some more testing. However, no release date has been set just yet.

Here are some screenshots of four (that's right, four) new maps that will be included in this upcoming patch.

Genesis (Type: Attack and Defend the Zone)Brand new map and gametype. One team tries to get to and stay in the zone while the other tries to keep them out. Teams switch roles 3 times (4 quarters)

Ksour (Type: Invade/Defend)Remake of a TFC map by Zouave of the same name.

Fusion (Type: Invade/Defend the Zone)Brand new map and gametype. Similar to Attack and Defend the Zone, but with multiple zones. Teams switch roles after one team captures all 3 zones.

Napoli (Type: Invade/Defend)Complete re-imagining of a CS:S map of the same name.

Tags: fortress-forever.com
Filed under Team Fortress News : Comments (0) : Dec 17th, 2009

News: FF 2.4 Released!

2.4 is finally here. Downloads are below. Changelog is here. And here is a wonderful video showcasing Fortress Forever:

Client Installer

Patch
AE Clan Hosting (.EXE)
SNT, University of Twente (EU) (.EXE)
hl2sm.com(.EXE)
FFPickup.com (.EXE)
Trepid.net (.EXE)

Full
AE Clan Hosting (.EXE)
SNT, University of Twente (EU) (.EXE)
hl2sm.com (.EXE)
FFPickup.com (.EXE)
Trepid.net (.EXE)

Server Packages

Patch
ModDB (.ZIP)
ModDB (.TAR.GZ)
AE Clan Hosting (.ZIP)
AE Clan Hosting (.TAR.GZ)
SNT, University of Twente (EU) (.ZIP)
SNT, University of Twente (EU) (.TAR.GZ)
hl2sm.com (.ZIP)
hl2sm.com (.TAR.GZ)
3pxl.com (.ZIP)
3pxl.com (.TAR.GZ)
FFPickup.com (.ZIP)
FFPickup.com (.TAR.GZ)
Trepid.net (.ZIP)
Trepid.net (.TAR.GZ)

Full
ModDB (.ZIP)
ModDB (.TAR.GZ)
AE Clan Hosting (.ZIP )
AE Clan Hosting (.TAR.GZ)
SNT, University of Twente (EU) (.ZIP)
SNT, University of Twente (EU) (.TAR.GZ)
hl2sm.com (.ZIP)
hl2sm.com (.TAR.GZ)
3pxl.com (.ZIP)
3pxl.com (.TAR.GZ)
FFPickup.com (.ZIP)
FFPickup.com (.TAR.GZ)
Trepid.net (.ZIP)
Trepid.net (.TAR.GZ)

Tags: fortress-forever.com
Filed under Team Fortress News : Comments (0) : May 19th, 2009

News: Now Accepting Beta Applications!

Fortress Forever is now accepting beta applications!

Simply go to this link and follow the instructions there.

The question I've heard most lately is "Why now?", with just plain "Why?" in a close second. There's a few good reasons.

Previously, we had something on the order of 200 beta testers. Only a handful of them were still active after 2.3 was released. This first and foremost was a security risk - that's more accounts that aren't being used that could be easily compromised. Moreover, it made things an organizational mess.

We had been talking about what to do about the situation in the dev forums and decided the fairest and best thing to do was to simply clean out the beta and start fresh. We archived the old forums and cooked up some new ones. We set standards that we are going to hold our testers to. We've upgraded our organization and security in countless ways.

All of our old beta testers are on a list available to us, and those that wish to reapply may be welcomed back depending on numerous factors that I am not going to get into. A few of our best took the beta reorganization as the chance to relieve themselves of a responsibility that they no longer had time for - to you guys (and all of our past testers), we wish you the best in your new endeavors.

That's the why. As for the "Why now?"...

2.4 is shaping up and we have, as usual, a lot of fun things in store. The Orange Box port is coming along gradually and that is going to, frankly, introduce a whole world of new problems. The more eyes on the problem, the better. The FF Team is getting their act together and we're trying to hold ourselves to a standard representative of the excellent legacy that we are trying to keep alive - the very spirit of Fortress.

So what are we looking for in a tester? If you're a talented FF player who can conc circles around the enemy defense, well... we have a lot of those guys already. You're very much welcome to apply. If you have no experience with Fortress games at all, that is equally - if not more - important to us. We want to get a wide variety of perspectives on our beta team.

In other news, I'm busting my butt as usual trying to get the good word out about Fortress Forever. Any good P.R. guy will tell you that you never go into specifics until the deal is sealed, so I won't. Keep your eyes on the front page and our forums. Things are only going to get better from here.

Lollipops and Sunshine and RRRRRR,
Ihmhi

Tags: fortress-forever.com
Filed under Team Fortress News : Comments (0) : Apr 12th, 2009

News: Now Accepting Beta Applications!

Lollipops and Sunshine and RRRRRR,
Ihmhi

Tags: fortress-forever.com
Filed under Team Fortress News : Comments (0) : Apr 12th, 2009

News: 2.4 Delay, Surprise

The Linux server build is giving us trouble (as usual), and therefore 2.4 will be delayed until we can get it fixed. But, as a result, we are "leaking" the official Ksour for you guys to play while you wait.

Download:
FF_Ksour_Leak (.ZIP)
FF_Ksour_Leak (.RAR)

Ksour (Type: Invade/Defend)Remake of a TFC map by Zouave of the same name.Enjoy!

Tags: fortress-forever.com
Filed under Team Fortress News : Comments (0) : Apr 9th, 2009

News: Forums Back Up!

Our forums are back online thanks to the hard work of Scuzzy and the rest of our team!We're glad to be back.

We still have a few remaining issues.

First and foremost, we regret to say that our password database is effectively broke beyond repair. As such, everyone - regular users, betas, and devs - have to reset their passwords. If you go to our forum you will see further instructions at the top of the page related to this issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Secondly, you may notice that practically all of our staff is listed as "Retired FF Staff". Please be assured that everyone on the team has not just gotten up and left. This is a temporary solution as the fine people in charge confirm the identity of each of our devs one by one and reauthorize them for developer status.

A general message to the community: we are accepting beta applications. Keep an eye on the forums and see if anything pops up related to that. Past testers are welcome to reapply as well.

Well that's it guys! Thanks for sticking around during this tough time. We appreciate the suppot of the community and we're getting our butts back to work on all things Fortress!

Tags: fortress-forever.com
Filed under Team Fortress News : Comments (0) : Apr 8th, 2009

Dev. Journal: redux

Just to show you guys that we aren't exactly idle.

Check out pF's kick ass texture set!

Tags: fortress-forever.com
Filed under Team Fortress News : Comments (0) : Mar 22nd, 2009

Dev. Journal: Ihmhi

There's a lot we'd like to do with FF. I'm going to give you guys some examples of excellent ideas that have been posted in the beta and dev forums.

HUD Customizations
What if you never look at the map time? Perhaps you don't even both with looking at your armor count - you just care about your health. Maybe you want your armor and health to be on the right side above your ammo count. Maybe you want it to be [I]below[/I] your ammo count.

We'd love to have a customizable HUD to a degree that hasn't really been seen in any game yet. You could drag around the individual elements of the HUD and place them where you'd feel comfortable. This would also, of course, support custom HUDs that the user can put in so they can really pimp out their own personal copy of Fortress Forever. Speaking of customizations...

HUD Refinements / Additions
That bar over the disguise area when the Spy disguises is one of many things we would like to do to improve the HUD. The short list:

Cloak Cooldown Timer - You know that whole "You cannot cloak so soon!" message? A simple little bar or something that shows the cloak recharge time.
Spy Disguised Weapon - A little-known feature that we'd like to make more obvious. If you have the nailgun out and you're disguised as a Soldier, it will show the Soldier's RPG. If you have the knife out, it shows the crowbar, and so on. You should be able to see what weapon your disguise is showing on the HUD.
Detpack Countdown Timer - Shows the time until your planted detpack goes off.
Sabotage Countdown Timer - Shows the time until your sabotage(s) run out. If you have multiple sabotages, it shows multiple timers - up to a limit. Basically, it would show the same icons as the Engy's SG and dispenser, perhaps like this:
- ICON - Sabotaged Buildable Location - Time Left
Jump Pad Timer - How much time you have left before your jump pad goes kaplooie.
Navigational Refinements - A lot of newbies get lost. We've been discussing some kind of entity-based waypoint system where its easier for newbies to navigate a map - basically the objective icon on crack.
Team-Colored HUD Improvements - The Team-Colored HUD works decently at best - the text can be difficult to read with some colors and its a bit buggy. We'd like to make it look more professional and less buggy overall.

Customization Management
Replacing standard files is so 1998.

Right now, if you wanted to use a custom model you would have to replace the existing ones. Rather than do this, we'd like to set up a menu where you could select from a variety of models.

Instead of all of the models being put in one folder, there would be a variety of folders divided by purpose and class. For example, a few of the main folders would be Weapons, Grenades, and Classes. The Weapons folder would have subfolders for every weapon - Crowbar, Single Shotgun, etc.

Moreover, if you change a weapon it also replaces it globally in the current version of Fortress Forever. This means if you have a custom crowbar, every class that has a crowbar would have that custom model. Aside from being able to just pick from different models, you would be able to set each model by class - so your Scout could have a giant fish crowbar and your Soldier could have a lightsaber crowbar.

Background Image
Pretty much the same thing as above. Right now, to replace it you would have to replace a certain file in your FF directory. I don't see why you shouldn't have a drop-down menu where you can pick from whichever one you'd like to use.

Converting images to textures is also a bit of a hassle for the average user, so if it could use .jpgs that'd be sweet as well, wouldn't it?

Multi-language support
The Source engine actually supports multiple languages. We have a project in our forums to get some translation work going, and implementing it would be relatively trivial.

But while we can swap out text messages (like "You have the flag!"), swapping out other stuff in-game would be a bit more problematic. For instance, the signs in the game are textures (like the ones that say "Flag Room") wouldn't be affected by the language change.

One idea is to make different versions of the textures - one for every language we support. When you choose Spanish, it switches out Flag Room sign texture with one that says "Flag Room" in Spanish.

Melee Hit Detection
Melee Weapons in Source are spotty at best - they're basically a one pixel dot that you have to hit the target with.

The first improvement we'd like to make is to just have the crowbar, medkit, etc. work better. One idea that has gained favor is that a melee swing is actually an explosion (or series of small explosions) in regards to the code - if an enemy is hit with the explosion, it does damage to them. This would make it easier to hit with melee (and we may reduce damage as a result).

From there, we'd like to work on giving each class their own melee weapon (something many people have assumed that we'd like to do, it's obvious) and have them be unique in their own way. Right now, these are our melee weapons:

Crowbar - The Scout, Sniper, Soldier, Demoman, HWGuy, and Pyro currently have this weapon. Your standard melee "do damage" weapon.
Medkit - The Medic's melee weapon. It heals allies up to maximum health in one shot and can overheal allies. It also infects enemies with a poison that kills them slowly and can only be cured by other Medics.
Knife - Does twice the melee damage of the crowbar. A backstab is an instant kill on any class, regardless of their health or armor.
Spanner (Wrench) - Reloads/repairs Sentry Guns and Dispensers and it can restore teammate's armor (at the cost of cells). Otherwise, it does the same melee damage as the Crowbar.
Umbrella - The Civilian's melee weapon. I think it does the same damage as the Crowbar, but I'm not quite sure. For all intents and purposes it's a crowbar clone.

So there's our melee weapons. We have 6 classes sharing the same melee weapon and we'd like to change that in the future. For instance, one suggestion was that a class had a melee weapon that gave a conc effect when you hit someone. Another suggestion was a weapon that could reflect projectiles/grenades - if someone shot a rocket at you and you timed it right, you could bounce it back at them. Most of them would just be "Damage dealers", but we can deal damage in different ways. The crowbar could be the standard quick taps like it is now. Perhaps the HW Guy could have a huge, slow, melee weapon that does damage in a wide, sweeping arc. Stuff like that!

Orange Box Stuff
We made a lot of modifications to the Source Engine. Our current build of the Orange Box broke a lot of the stuff that our coders have written over the years and we're going to probably have to rebuild a few things. That's a problem, but the bigger obstacle is the all the cool stuff we'd like to do with Orange Box - global stats (finally!), achievements (a possibility), integrating community stuff (your Steam icon & info), and tons of other stuff that trepid_jon is so excited about that he's having seizures in his computer chair.

Conclusion... FF needs YOUR help!
Why am I telling you guys all this stuff?

One (small) reason is that I wanted to give you guys insight on the kinds of ideas and plans we have floating around in the dev forums. Some of this stuff is solid, some of it is experimental, and some of it we haven't decided on yet. We'd love to get to work on it.

Sadly, we only have a couple of coders at our disposal. A lot of the stuff holding up more frequent patches is coding work. FF needs more coders.

If you or someone you know is skilled with coding in Source SDK and you can provide a few examples of your work, we'd probably bring you on board to help out! Any interested parties can send an e-mail to ihmhi [AT} fortress-forever {DOT] com.

Tags: fortress-forever.com
Filed under Team Fortress News : Comments (0) : Mar 10th, 2009