Be Excellent To Each Other

Right. Team Fortress 2 won the poll, with Left '4' Dead a distant runner-up. I hereby nominate 7pm this Wednesday 20th July to be the time of our first game.

If there is mass objection to this time, let it be expressed here, and let one hundred schools of thought contend.

I also suggest we use a third party voice chat client, as in-game voice chat is a bit ropey and makes me sound marginally less like some kind of molester, thus weakening my psychological offensive. Suggestions here please, and if there's no real answer we can default to in-game if need be (text chat is an option anyway, so if you have no microphone or are embarassed by your pasquale-esque voice or something, you can still play along).

I HATES TEAM FORTRESS!

Um, I might show up.

I may be up for this.

I'm up for this! I'm back on Steam, phew, eh?

I don't have a micromophone thingy, any recommended ones? I might just use text, to be honest. I dislike my recorded voice.

Don't worry, we won't be recording you.

<calls NOTW>

Busy on Wednesday, sorry.

I can probably make this, but I have never played TF2 (or even TF) also, I don't have it. I should probably get it before playing, it will make things easier I guess?

Bet to give it a whirl, yeah. It's actually quite easy to pick up, although the new menu is a bit all over the place. Probably wouldn't take more than a half hour for you to get the idea behind every class, and then it's just a case of figuring out the common tricks and getting used to the maps (I still only know about three well, not least because it's hard to find a server that actually uses most of the maps). But you don't need to be great to enjoy it or to play with us or with randoms, so don't worry about that.

This is another reason it'd be good reason to hang around in the chat room when free - we could perhaps get a quick practice go in first.

There's now a fairly groovy offline practice botmatch mode, for trying out classes, learning maps etc.

I can make Wednesday, but wont be home until about 7:45. So 8 O'clock or any other day is best for me.

a) What are the logistics of this? Servers etc?
b) Ingame vocie chat is fine! Sure, it doesnt' have mumble-esque autoatenuation or overlays etc, but it's less complicated as all you do is press V. (possibly tick a box in the options menu first?)
c) If you've never played before:

Start downloading it now. I haven't downloaded it in years, but I imagine, with all the cumulative patches, the download is many gigabytes large.

The heart of the game is a pretty basic FPS. Just load up the game and go into the practice mode. (Can't remember how to do this: I'm at work. There's probably a button with a little 'graduate' hat or something). If you're asked to choose a class, choose Soldier or Heavy. It's obvious what they do. Soldier shoots rockets. Heavy shoots bullets and laughs manically. Both are slow, but hardy. With each class, just spam all the keys you know. Press mouse1 and mouse2 with each different gun, just to see what happens. (Rocket Launcher and shotgun doesn't do anything with mouse2, for instance. But the heavy's minigun will keep spinning, and you swing the heavy's left and right fists with the respective buttons). Don't worry about hats or items or any of that shit. If you're told you've got a new weapons just say "OK GO AWAY" and it'll put it in your backpack. You can figure all that out later. It's not important and the default weapons are the things mostly used, anyway.

What keys should you try mashing?

WSAD+mouse1, mouse2 are the main keys you need to know. Jump is space. Duck is ctrl. E makes your dood shout MEDIC! and puts a little cross above his else. I rarely use any other buttons than this, other than pressing C 4 or something to make the Heavy shout stupid things when I'm boxing people's faces in. Change weapons by mashing 12345 or using the scrollwheel. Change team and class with , and .. Spam your friends and enemy with text y, u, or with voice v.

The most important ones, and really the only ones you need to remember, are WASD, mouse1, mouse2, y to all-talk to ask for help and , to change class. (Or is it .? I just muscle memory that without thinking).

Most of the time you'll be on blue team, trying to push a giant bomb along some train tracks, or on red, trying to stop them. Or perhaps you'll be on red/blue trying to capture control points. It's pretty obvious what you're doing. For the most part simply shooting the enemy in the face will do wonders for your team. So try doing that as much as possible.

What pod said, although if you play online, I'd also suggest medic, as they're easy to understand, don't need twitchy CS nerd shooting skills, and will let you see most other classes in action, to give you a feel for battle odds.

As for servers, it depends on turnout. I doubt we'll get enough to really bulk up a server, so it's probably best if we hijack a fairly quiet server, but with enough people in that it won't be desolate and crap.

I would personally prefer we play one that doesn't have mods, which rules out about 95% of servers, but means that the game won't be stupidly unbalanced or full of idiotic UT sound effects. It will also be fairer for our new players, as they can then try it with mods later and see what they prefer.

If your still playing at tenish, I'll be there!

I think Top Spin 4 is Thursday.

ohh could be tempted with this, don't have my mic set up at the moment but happy to run around and get shot lots

I'm in! I might bring a couple of chums along to make up the numbers n'all.

That's a good point actually - if anyone else wants to bring a friend or two along, do feel free. TF2 maps support up to 24 players, and the closer you get to that, the more fun it tends to be.

I'm sure we'll be playing for at least a couple of hours, so 10pm might mean there are still a fair few of us about. If not, there'll be other times.

I'd argue that perhaps other than Medic, the best starter character for a newbie is the Pyro. Why? Because you don't really have to aim and even if you die it's hilarious as you dive into a large pack of enemy flinging flame about, setting a few of them alight and if not killing them then at least getting assists and disrupting their nefarious plans. Good speed, average health, great weapon. I've not once hit someone with the secondry flare pistol weapon, though.

I think the Scout is a good newbie character. Especially if you're used to fast-paced stuff such as CoD. Just leg it around shotgunning folk in the fiz-ace. They die pretty easily, though.

Also, if you haven't got TF2 yet - get it on the DL now! Steam's servers are great when they're running at full, er, steam, but if they're throwing a wobbler on Wednesday night, you'll be joining us when your download finishes at 1AM.

Pyro can be frustrating though as they don't go down quick unless you're point blank or using the backburner from behind.

It is a good one to start with, though. I actually love the flare gun - it was one of my favourite weapons even before it got upgraded. Setting people on fire from across the room is always fun. Snipers never expect a pyro to hurt them, but the smug gits sure panic when they light up.

I find the scout horrible to use. He's brilliant for capturing (I've triple flag captured in a single life before and scored many times without firing a shot), but I find him impossible to kill reliably with, as my aim gets thrown off by the speed. I miss at point blank more often than I hit at range with him.

My least favourite classes have to be soldier and demoman, though. Soldier has his uses, but I find demoman fucking irritating to use and to fight. His weapon just fels so vague and the damage and range his explosives have seem completely arbitrary. Handy for clearing out a turret in a narrow corridor, but I've used every other class about three times more than him.

I don't like the soldier because basically his greatest trick is rocket jumping, and I hate rocket jumping.

My faves in order:

Pyro - not often responsible for my most glorious moments, but has never let me down.
Demoman - Didn't get him at first, now find him easy and fun to use. Sticky bombs are great for mining doorways, just stick 'em to the sides and ceiling and not on the floor so they don't see 'em until late.
Soldier - I'm solid with this one.
Medic - Sometimes it's nice to help.
Engineer - I'm not that great with choosing turret locations but I've had memorable times with him.
Scout - Zippy fun, but I'm not terribly effective with him.
Heavy - I die a bit too quickly as you can't dodge well with the heavy and I'm not a fan of his lumbering run speed.
Sniper - never that big a fan of twitch shooting, but I sometimes dabble.
Spy - I am a completely useless spy.

I primarily play Medic (because I like other people doing all the work), but try to switch to whatever class the team needs at a given point. I'm a decent Engineer or Pyro (because age and guile trumps youth and skill) and a semi-decent Soldier but still a largely useless Scout, Spy, Sniper or Demo.

probably can't make this one.. steam crashe don downloading this btw..

FTFY

edit: Though the Scout from QWTF went at about a million miles an hour, but you get my point.

These kids don't know what Quake is! I was using a frame of reference they'd understand!

Even so, most of the characters of TF2 feel as 'fast' as COD. The scout feels faster to me.

Classes I like:....

Classes I dislike: Medic.

Classes that are ok, but I'm absolutely useless at: Everything else.

Anyway, its got a weapon limit, I thought that means its shit?

What's a weapon limit?

You must hate CoD and Battlefield then.

I think he might be referring to Duke Nukem Forever's weapon limit, which is stupid.

Who's playing tonight anyway?

Can you go prone?

Oi. Sort it out, you lot.

I've got potential for a game later but 7 is too early for me I'm afraid.. especially since the freezer door has been left open all day leaving me with a wide choice of squidgy meats for tea!

FUCKING STEAM.
Christ.

An hour and fuck knows how many stalls, got steam up and running.

download TF2 - 11 HOURS?

That's eternity!

Sooo, Mr Chris. You heard of TF2's legendary oft-updates. You hadn't played it for yonks. And you decide to only load it up moments prior to game-time?

Sorry, but not even the grace and nobility of your Calvin-Tiger avatar can save you from...

If only a really clever person had suggested the other day that we all get the downloads out of the way in advance.

It's an old FPS - how the fuck can it be 1gb? That's almost all the porn in the world.

I was expecting maybe an hour's download.

There is a LOT of new stuff. Robot Nixons, a giant battleship the shape of Chairman Mao, a battle in a biscuit factory*.

*These may be crushingly disappointing lies.

Well, I'll see you all at the next Be TF2 To Each Other then.

Have they stuffed it with high res textures or something? 1 GIG?!

1GB actually seems alarmingly small... When did you last play a computer game? 1997?

For an online only FPS, though?

Christ even Company of Heroes is barely that big.

Obv kissyfluff didnt get the memo. ;-)

10Gb, not 1, 10. Or at least it was for me on monday. Now I loaded it up, but I can't figure out how to play, where you are, if anyone is playing - apparently not.

TF2 is using nearly 7GB of HDD space on my machine... Pretty much par for the course these days. I suppose there is a lot of stuff crammed in there for an online-only game, mind, but I doubt it was ever as low as 1GB even on day one.

Ahem. Let's not start the Gb/GB confusion again!