Fortress-Forever News

Dev. Journal: trepid_jon

fortress-forever@gmail.com (trepid_jon) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:05:59 GMT

You're craz-you're crazy, man. You're crazy! I like you...but you're crazy.

Last week, I started converting FF's source code to the Orange Box code. It was an insane task, to say the least. First of all, nobody else wanted to do it. I mean, everyone wants FF to use the latest version of Source, but nobody wanted to do this psychotic conversion that Valve has forced on all the old mods. Granted, a mod would have an easy integration if it didn't modify any base files, using nothing but brand new files specifically created for that particular mod. FF's not like that, though. Yeah, FF's code uses a lot of unique files, but we also did a lot of base modifications. Luckily most of those modifications were commented well, and now even more of that is better commented and separated from the base stuff.

1 week, thousands of differing files, and hundreds of compile errors later, FF can now be played with the Orange Box engine. OOOoooOOOhhh!!! There are quite a few bugs to work out, however, so 2.1 won't be using this code unless we fix all the major bugs within a couple weeks.

After getting past the initial problems of FF crashing immediately upon startup, during map load, and lots of other similar spots, I finally got into the game...but I couldn't pick a team or class, and therefore couldn't spawn. I could go into thirdperson, though...

Wow, right? That's so Orange Box.

The first thing I noticed was this...THING...on the left. Said something about "Server" blah blah, like I cared. I later confirmed it's the chat window. Well, part of it. It's this little spot/coffin where all the received chat messages go to hang out forever. It's basically the worst thing imaginable.

Anyways, I couldn't move or look around in firstperson, but I could look around in thirdperson (as a side note, Valve greatly improved thirdperson mode with a moving camera that has collision, among other cool things). So once I could move the camera around, the next thing I noticed was that awesome Orange Box motion blur effect...

This is called a town. It's where everyone hates you and makes fun of you.

The problem with picking a team and class had to do with the way the new code handles console commands. FF has a special way of making some console commands, and most of the console commands use this special method (team, class, +gren1, dispenser, cloak, etc...pretty much everything you do in FF that's directly related to FF). Long story short, I fixed that crap and some other crap dealing with different crap and was then able to look, run, shoot, and do all that other minor stuff FF needs to be considered a game.

WARNING: if you don't like motion blur, you'll hate every single one of these screenshots, because I was literally shaking the mouse to make all of them blurry, haha...

In the Orange Box engine, your flashlight casts dynamic shadows off objects.
(including yourself when you're in thirdperson)

In 2.1, hunted's dirt hole is a vent (finally).

Blur slideshow, WOOH!

Apparently the flamethrower's particles aren't drawing.
Just another reason to revamp FF's effects using the new particle system.
It will be so nice.

More blurry 2.1 hunted.

Some blurry 2.1 cz2 as well.

I don't know if redux wants this seen yet, but it's blurry...so nobody's really seeing it.

2.1 has swim animations, y'all!

So by having FF use the Orange Box engine, we get motion blur.

The other new things like vgui videos, the new version of Hammer (lighting preview, what?), the new particle system, the material and commentary editors, steam avatars, and so forth...all of them mean nothing in comparison to the greatness that is motion blur.

r.

Dev. Journal: z0rt

fortress-forever@gmail.com (z0rt) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:32:57 GMT

Hi everyone! It's your neighborhood friendly DT. As you may have noticed, I have been inactive for the past several days. Why? Well... unfortunately, my laptop got infected by some new virus. Good job Symantec for nothing (long string of expletives)! I'm in the process of fixing the laptop, and don't expect to be active in development or beta testing for another week. Since the virus is new to the scene, I have to clean up manually, which can take God-knows-how-long... not to mention the many reboots and many many attempts.

In other news, the beta testing seems to be going very smoothly. Expect 2.1 to come around the Earth's aphelion.

Dev. Journal: Pon

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Pon) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:03:57 GMT

Hello. I'm Pon, a recent addition to the Dev team. I think they must have been desperate for Lua scripters, and I was better than nothing I guess :P

I figured I should do a journal, but I don't really know what to write. I mean, Lua, and programming in general isn't that interesting to most people. But, meh. I could say a few words about myself, my experience, and so forth, but I'd prefer people keep reading and not fall asleep :)

Maybe next journal.

So, inane rambling over, we come to the meat of all journals, and the only bit 99% of people reading this will care about - some info on what I've been working on:

Epicenter fixes - The three captures per round system has been fixed, and there will also be HUD icons to indicate the aforementioned captures. Should make it a lot easier to understand whats going on, hopefully.

ff_harbor - As Nezumi mentioned in his jernal, I'm working on the base Lua for that. Not much more to say other than what Nezumi already mentioned, aside from it'll hopefully be good gameplay, as well as a good looking map (which Nezumi's always are).

I'm also making another base Lua for a new map by one of the Devs. Can't really say much at this stage I guess, but I'm sure it'll have a positive impact on FF when it's ready.

Aside from that official FF work, it seems I've become a mapper's bitch of late, with Ihmhi and =AS=zE both pestering me night and day to make their maps work properly :P. Still, their maps should be worth it. At least in terms of the Lua :)

Also, I have a few concepts of my own that I'm planning to start on. Quadflag (posted in the official concepts thread) is one I've started on, and hope to finish a concept map soon. I'll also likely create a concept map for =AS=zE's Last Team Standing lua, seeing as his port of Agoraz was withdrawn. For both I'll release the source .vmf alongside, so that people can both make a decent map from it, and hopefully learn a little bit about Lua as well.

And thats it. Hope you managed to stay awake :)

Dev. Journal: Dexter

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Dexter) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:39:54 GMT

Hello, I'm Dexter! Many of you who frequent the :e0: server probably know me as that one soldier who always goes on O. Sorry, I come from Quake :(

Ok, I admit - I wanted to try this dev journal (Nezumi) thinger as well. I've been working on some base_*.lua files, making them more flexible. base_ad now works with any color combination teams for attackers and defenders and I fixed no flag return sounds in base_id, for example. Now I'll halp Nezumi with his cacti map and perhaps rework some of mervaka's code into a reusable form which gives him a total boner. And god forbid I have enough time to get into the source code.

Oh my hell, I think I'm getting a sunburn.

Dev. Journal: Sh4x

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Sh4x) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:57:42 GMT

I figured I'd make a dev journal too, mostly so you guys have an idea of what I'm working on right now. So here it is!

Since I joined the team, I've been trying to figure out exactly what I'd like to be working on for the next weeks. It's quite something for me because for the last 2-3 years, all I had on my mind was to finally finish this one freaking huge map that seemed like it would never end, ff_dropdown. I swear it gave me a hard time, mostly because I didn't know how to map when I first started it but also because it's a pretty complex map design wise and it's all original which makes it that much more difficult to do than a simple remake.

Anyways, like I was saying, I've been thinking about what I'd like to do next. It had to be smaller. I wanted something I could finish fast enough so I wouldn't get bored of it before completion. It had to be something else than standard CTF because that's the direction we're taking as a team right now. And it had to be something where dense fog would work because I just freakin' love fog and there's something I wanted to try with it.

So I started working on it a couple days ago and sshhhh don't tell other devs but I think it's by far the best looking map on this mod already!

I'll keep you posted!

Dev. Journal: Elmo-

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Elmo-) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:41:25 GMT

Ello Ello... it's Elmo!

Woo, it's awesome to be on this side of the fence after sitting on the other side for so long, waiting for these dev journals and announcements to explain WTF the/us FF devs are actually doing!?

It's awesome to be on the team but not because I get to see the bits that haven't been released yet, but because they frequently TALK to one another, find out what tasks are required and just get on with it! I have much faith for FF�s success yet! I think this influx of new devs (like me) has really brought some extra life and progress to the mod too. I can't seem sit here for more than half an hour without there being a reply to read on the dev forum!!

Right, now on to the stuff you may care about! I'll be Optimising some of the existing maps, starting with ff_monkey, and boy do I have my work cut out for me. I've almost done one base, as you will see if you haven't already skipped to the links.

PLEASE NOTE: This is work in progress - IT ISNT FINISHED!! I am aware there are some things missing around the level and that water is far from finished, dont worry. Also I don't have any env_cubemaps in, this means anything that has a reflective material is only reflecting the skybox and not its surroundings e.g. water & objects.

I'll explain what I've done so far... I've rebuilt it... completely... almost every brush... I don�t plan on doing that for the others in order to optimise/clean them up but ff_monkey really was made badly and there are quite a few improvements I�ve made already.

1. For those of you that ramp slide on the left ramp from front door and have got stuck halfway up on that stupid physically nonexistent lip, you'll be glad to be know it has gone. The ramp was - for no reason - made up of two (perfectly aligned) brushes; it�s now one, problem solved, simple.

2. Texture alignment is now/will be as perfect as I can make it throughout the base. Once I've completed the base I will probably �nodraw� it all and apply all the textures again to be sure! I�m a perfectionist...

Texture Alignment Example (Ceiling Curve)

3. Previous Lazy mapping is no more... such as cutting the heads off those 'poor' T monkeys :( and no more gaps behind wall props.

T Monkies (Heads)
Wall Prop Gaps (Gone...)

4. OPTIMISATION � Now that I've mapped it properly, you WILL have considerably better FPS in most areas, comparisons are below but you will mainly notice the improvement during full game play. No more standing in flag room rendering fights going on in the ramp room/lower spawn/water way that you can�t actually see!! No more standing in ramp room rendering the water from the route beneath the base! No more crossing mid map and rendering too much of the action inside the base, which was increasing the strain from the already detailed mid map. No more standing here there and everywhere using more resources than necessary.... You get the point so here are the comparisons.

Flag Room 1
Flag Room 2 (T Junction)
Ramp Room 1
Ramp Room 2 (In Top Spawn)

5. Lighting is currently darker in some places but only because I haven�t grabbed some of the floating lights. I don�t believe in adding lights unless there�s a prop to act as a believable light source. I WILL ensure the lighting is PERFECT for the released version but that will be the last thing to be adjusted.

Some more General Comparisons
Flag Room
T Junction
Ramp Room
Lower Spawn
Water Entrence
Water

So what left to be done??

With regards to ff_monkey, I have almost completed one base, which can then be copied and flipped for the red side, I will remake the front of the bases but the mid map shouldn't be too much of problem as I will be copying a lot from the original.

I will now explain my current workings. I've been having some trouble deciding on how to �map� the water way with regards to how it previously linked to the mid map; beforehand, one could look towards mid map and see the trees in the distance. Rendering areas other than the one you are in is usually undesirable for performance issues, but in this case it added a nice depth to the map.

I hadn�t needed to consider this for the rest of the base but I felt this depth would be missed if I weren�t to include it. I have now reached �the point� during mapping that I have to deal with it and have realised that I need to change my mapping technique to get it. The same mapping technique I�ve been using to make my custom map ff_medieval, and if you�re interested, I will elaborate further... just you try and stop me (lol).

Think of the map (any well made map) as being made up of a series of closed boxes, the sides of these boxes are made up of key walls in the base, anything that should considerably block the players visibility from drawing what�s behind it.

Just to explain, ff_monkey was not made in this sealed box manor, or rather there were unwanted �links� or rather suitably named leaks through to the other parts � �boxes� in the map, which is why it ran so badly and why I couldn�t just simply �add optimisation� to improve performance.

ANYWAY, these boxes are normally ONLY linked with doorways and/or corridors. Okay? Well In order for me to get my desired outside depth (distant trees), this method of sealing the player�s visibility into boxes isn�t quite appropriate. Let�s say all of these �boxes� have a sort of lid, be it the ceiling or the sky. To get my desired depth in ff_monkey, the water and mid map �boxes�, need to, in effect, have their sky lids removed and then be sealed again by a new sky box placed over the top of them both.

So that you can picture it:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Image:Hint_example3.jpg

Brown = mid map/yard
Yellow = water way
Red = skybox
White Line = hint

^^ The hint is some good old optimisation, I�m not going to explain hints, if you�re interested read up on them for yourself here. In this example hints kind of act as a way of maintaining the original box forms, it maintains that lid we took off. So ONLY if you�re looking through the lid will you see its contents, unless of course its contents are sticking out of its box.... the tops of the trees! My desired depth is now possible and controlled to minimise on PC strain.

The engine now knows that (only) the trees in mid map, can be seen from water and so are allowed to be rendered once again; it�s simple really. Honest. I use this technique as described above all over the level, hint brushes within these �boxes�, placed off corners and higher platforms to make smaller boxes, separating the level. Then add some well placed area portals (that�s another thing) and your optimisation is complete!

Now I can finally shut up and actually get on with it I guess. Even if you don�t understand what I said above, it may at least give you some confidence that I know what I�m doing! *Strokes Fortress Forever* �Ah, yes, you can be calm now... my precious!�

Not sure what I'll be working on once ff_monkey is finished, and I am unsure when I will finish it as I'm off to download festival in 3 days for 5 days.

Eventually signing out after two and a half pages in a word document... hmm I wonder what the word count is... ~1,300! lol Taken me days to finish this post! 12hr day of work then 3 hour bike ride to end up at 1230am finally finishing this!

Elmo! :D

Dev. Journal: Nezumi

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Nezumi) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:46:42 GMT

OMG.

WTF.

You guys, seriously, I'm not. Even. Joking. I'm on the dev team!
So I thought I'd write y'all a little dev jernal [sic].

I'm making maps. Actually, as some of you may know, I'm making a lot of maps. Some of them may now actually get finished. One of them, ff_tiger, did get finished recently. (Btw, if you're reading this and you're Arne 'Cynic' Lund, plz email me kthx). I think tiger will be included in version 2.1. I'm really excited about the opportunity to make an update without running into version conflicts, or having things like an _r1 version.

Cacti should also be done sometime soon too, now that I can get a little help from FF's modelers, scripters, and lua coders. I'm tingling with excitement (even now) at the thought of being able to work on a map as part of a team. There's always things that are probably very simple, but would take me so long to figure out on my own. Just a few very basic props, a little lua fixup, a line here or there added to sentences.txt so I can get some Ellen McLain in the map. Beta testing will be handy too.

Finally, there's Harbor. I've always been an advocate of new gameplay types, so I'd like to get this one released. It's kinda like hunted, except there are 2 VIPs and each has a team of bodyguards. There's no goal to escort your VIP to, and instead each team must try to kill the enemy VIP before they do the same to you. If a VIP kills the enemy VIP, then you team gets an extra large pile of points. Instead of being civilians, the VIPs can pick from any of the normal 9 classes. I'm imagining them being spy, and trying to stab their rival, or being a medic and concing to a rooftop to hide, or being a soldier and sitting behind a wall of defenders, and so on. The map takes place in a fairly realistic looking harbor area (although far less open than tiger), and there are 7 bases around the map. Each team randomly rotates to another base each time a VIP is killed, and some bases are much easier to defend than others. Pon is being awesome and writing the LUA for me, and for the first time ever I'm going to knock up the level with dev textures and playtest it that way, so I can rearrange it if necessary.

So, uh, that's the plan anyway. Remember everyone, don't press the carve button.

News: Brushin' off the cobwebs.

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Circuitous) — Mon, 26 May 2008 23:18:00 GMT

Hey, how y'all doin'? Circuitous here. I know, right? Very exciting.

Okay, so, we've been a little quieter than necessary. I apologize for that.

As has been mentioned on the forums, the main reason things haven't been updated outside of the forums is that, well, no one had any access to it. While this sadly remains true for the ModDB page, it's no longer the case for the website - squeek and I are now wielding proper control, and have already brought about much-needed edits to its cobweb-infested, yet standards-compliant, DIVs.

That said, even more work has been going on behind the scenes - many of the cornerstones of the 2.1 update are being completed. Squeek's been rocking socks on the training front, DrEvil continues to pound away at the bot code, and 2fort once more is seeing the light of day.

So, what's the timeline? Despite our best efforts, that remains to be seen. It's an unfortunate fact that many prominent devs from the 2.0 patch and prior have now parted ways with Fortress Forever, or simply become less active, and what devs remain have a lot on their plates.

Suffice it to say, we could use some new people.

If you happen to be skilled in any of the following fields, or know someone who is, get in contact with the team - either through the forums, or by e-mail. Our job openings page has the goods.

Model Animator
Level Designer
Texture Artist
Prop Artist
Programmer
Level Optimization and Clean Up
Lua Scripter

We want to get as many people on board as we can - recruitment behind the scenes has already been moving steadily along. You probably already know them, but I'll introduce them here anyway.

Welcome to:

Programmer

DT
Professional

Mappers

Sh4x
BlisTer
redux
Nezumi

Map Optimization

Elmo-

Modeling/Animating

-pF-

Props

Crazycarl

and hopefully more on the way.

People, we can do this. And with a few more folks on hand, it'll be that much quicker. All we need is the support and understanding of the community, and this patch will be out sooner than you think, and with a lot more to expect on the horizon.

News: Fortress Forever 2.0 Released!

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:49:00 GMT

Patch time: (See post below for SERVER installs)

CLIENT Patch (1.11 to 2.0)
AE 83689's Hosting (AKA Zip)
AE 5316's Hosting
FileFront
Multiplay UK - UK only
Multiplay UK - worldwide
Wireplay UK

Professional's Download Mirror
Clan Goodfella's FTP

We also have 3 official EU servers up (hosted by wireplay)
#1: 194.154.191.30:27015 Funmaps + spam (epicenter/waterpolo/push/hunted/well)
#2: 194.154.191.30:27017 Clanstyle CTF (openfire/sd2/monkey/aardvark/dropdown)
#3: 194.154.191.30:27019 3rd server, undecided what this is yet :-)

So if you want to come chat to me i'll probably be hanging out there!

CHANGELOG:

GENERIC / Misc stuff:

Walls no longer apply friction to grenades, concmaps should be possible now!
Small auto-conc for HH concs when you dont jump
Frag grenade damage up to 145 (patch 1.0 was 180, patch 1.11 was 126). Radius the same.
Throwing the flag is now upwards slightly rather than skidding along the floor
Re-added recoil for some weapons (e.g. IC)
Suiciding no longer causes you to lose 100 fortress points
bhop now 1.20 up from 1.10
Better intermission scoreboard/player handling
Made the currently held grenade timer bar more visible than the dropped ones
pyro scream time only triggers once every 1.7 seconds now
Added cl_reducedexplosions to help fps problems
Added a cvar for ragdoll lifetime
NEW!! assault cannon fire sound

Visuals:

Grenades now have trails and halo's around them
Blue and yellow pipes now have trails
Player models have been tweaked to increase visibility
Grenade models have been tweaked to increase visibility
SG models have been tweaked to increase visibility
SG now throws out sparks when it's below 50% health
Flags now GLOW
Single Shotgun reload animation (thanks a084)
New IC model!
No more ugly background for build timers
New HUD security icons for shutdown style maps
Shotgun muzzle flash more visible
Many visuals now line up correctly in widescreen modes (damage indicators, Context menus etc)
New EMP effect
HUD health / armor no longer flashes red when you are hit. It'll only flash red when you are < 25% health to prevent confusion. (instead it flashes white when hit)
Grenade 2 timer up a bit so it's not so far down
New explosion scorch decal which doesnt make your whole base black.
'on fire' hud HUD redness reduced a lot
Cvars for turning off targets + gren trails (also in options menu)
Teamcolour hud can now go back to normal again

Bug fixes:

Grenade target timing bug (
Medkit fix. Should be much easier to heal people with medkit and spanner now, as friendlies are lag predicted now.
Dispenser / SG health now displays properly on the HUD even if you are far away.
CL_CopyExistingEntity crash fixed at last (!!)
SG now tracks properly when built on a slope
Death by burning is no longer a suicide
Fixed LUA error causing security icons to disappear when players connected
Fix for spies being able to sabotage when they're dead
Demoman grenades hopefully dont bounce of people any more
Readded interpolation for projectiles
Put in a fix for grenade timers not showing up

Class-specific changes:
Scout:

Caltrops and radar have been removed. Instead they have a buildable jump pad on +attack2. Jumppad is invincible - det it by double right-tapping. You can only carry one, similar to a detpack. They last 60 seconds before auto-detting. Any team can use them.
Players can only use a jump pad once every second, so they dont get multiple triggers.
Max conc speed after using the jumppad
Reduced conc time for Scout down to Medic level
Scouts now don't take fall damage.

Sniper:

Sniper rifle base damage has been reduced from 42 to 35
Radiotag duration reduced from 60 to 15 seconds.
AR damage down from 7 to 5.5

Soldier:

RPG damage radius increased slightly (from 108 to 125).
RPG reload time decreased from 1.0 to 0.9 seconds.
Nail grens tweaked a lot.
Soldier special now quickswitches between shotgun and RPG.

Demoman:

Blue pipe fuse timer dramatically decreased (from 2.5 to 1.1 seconds). Pipetrap explosion radius increased from 125 to 150.

Medic:

Right click now discards medpacks for teammates to use (thanks mirv). These take 10 cells to use and the medic slowly recharges cells over time. Medpacks last 5 seconds before disappearing so the person you are throwing to has to pick them up soon (you can't leave a supply for your defenders for example)

HWGuy:

New HW AC System! : Overheat removed (!), rof changed from 0.06-0.12 to 0.05-0.15. cof changed from 0.10-0.15 to 0.05-0.30.
New AC clamp system - hold right mouse to clamp, let go to unclamp. Also fires when you are clamping so you can hold right mouse to clamp + fire (you dont have to hold mouse1 and mouse2)

Pyro:

IC base damage has come down (from 60 to 50).
Flamethrower damage increased to 16 from 13
Flamethrower pushforce cap increased to 850 from 550.
Pyro special now quickswitches between flamethrower and IC.
Pyro vs Pyro now takes 100% damage up from 50%
Flamethrower uppush up to 110 from 50.

Spy:

Spy now has a 'last disguise' option on the menu
knife damage up to 50 from 32.
Disguise time halved.

Engineer:

SG health has come down to 113% from 120% of TFC level(ish).
SG bulletpush now works on the ground (thanks jiggs!).
SG air bulletpush reduced to 15 from 24

ALL CLASSES (except medic):

Melee weapons now do more damage. Crowbar + spanner up to 30 from 18. Knife up to 50 from 32.

New functionality:

New splash screen to tell you about any updates to FF if you are playing an old version.
New options screen with a load more stuff on it.

Map changes

Epicenter:

New scoring system, capping flag results in that teams flag being reset back to cage, other team unaffected and can continue capturing. First to 3 captures wins and everyone resets.
Extended balcony area around cap point for additional SG position
Epicenter ammo bags now give a slight amount of health/armor (thanks gingerlord)
Epicenter 3-cap LUA system added, some various tweaks
Epicenter tweaks

Crossover

VIS fixed, massive performance increase
Test middle area structure for additional route
Misc brush fixes
Crossover2: More obvious Capture Point, lasers in air lift.(thanks gingerlord)
Various crossover tweaks including a revamped midmap
Crossover tweaks

Openfire

Revamped version of ff_openfire_b2, with better lighting, clipped lights, decent water, better flag-security system, custom teamcoloured security buttons and stuff

Monkey

monkey is now Red vs Blue
monkey FPS vastly improved

Well

Well front door buttons removed, walk up to it = it opens

Dustbowl

Dustbowl now compiles properly, various visual fixes (gaps in ceilings etc)

Dropdown

New, polished, bug-fixed version of the community map. Thanks Yann "Sh4x" Richer

Waterpolo

New revamped version

I know i've missed a shedload of stuff out... Everythings changed, enjoy the game! :-)

News: Fortress Forever 2.0 - Server available!

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:11:00 GMT

EDIT: Here's the server install files:

Current list of mirrors: (will update)

-----------------

Copy the files straight on top of any 1.11 install you have. Please put 2.0 in your server title so people know which server to join!

------------------

We're finally finished with the 2.0 patch!

Currently we're distributing the server package to all the mirrors we can find - if you can mirror, let us know! The server update package is only 115 MB.

Currently we are only hosting the server update package from 1.11 -> 2.0 patch. (we are not hosting the full 600 meg 2.0 server install right now)

This is because
a) 99% of people interested in running an FF server already have 1.11 running
b) If you don't have 1.11 running, you can download 1.11 full whilst you wait for us to get patch mirrors up, which gives you a headstart.
c) It gives the current server owners a little nod. (thanks for sticking with us!)

When the client installs are up, we will be hosting a 2.0 full patch (600+ meg), 1.11 -> 2.0 update patch (90 meg) and 1.0 -> 2.0 update patch (160 meg).

This means, if you don't have 1.11 installed and you want to give 2.0 a go, save some time by downloading 1.11 now!

News: Next patch is in beta!

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:21:00 GMT

Hi Guys,

Progress update on the next patch:

We are now in BETA! Which means most of the changes have been finalised and are undergoing balance testing. We had an extremely successful beta test last weekend, and I can safely say that you will LOVE the next patch :-)

I won't paste the entire beta changelog because (a) it's far too long and (b) some stuff is still being tweaked. But the major changes:

GAMEPLAY

Scout: Caltrops and radar have been removed. Instead they have a buildable jump pad on +attack2.
Sniper: AR and Sniper rifle base damage has been reduced. (AR much moreso than SR)
Soldier: RPG damage radius increased to more TFC-like. RPG reload time decreased slightly. Nail gren code has been rewritten: they now own SGs again, and use much less server resources to use.
Demoman: Blue pipe fuse timer dramatically decreased (from 2.5 to 1.1 seconds). Pipetrap + blue pipe explosion radius increased (pipetrap moreso than blues).
Medic: Medic's special ability now throws medpacks for teammates to use (still undergoing tweaking)
HWGuy: New overheat system. You no longer overheat and there is no need for tapping (yay!) (still undergoing tw
Pyro: IC base damage has come down. Pyro vs Pyro flame damage increased from 50% to 100% of base (affects IC and flamethrower), but Pyro's still can't be lit on fire.
Spy: knife damage up to 50 from 32. Disguise time halved.
Engineer: SG health has come down to 113% from 120% (ish). Bullet push reduced.
ALL CLASSES (except medic): Melee weapons now do more damage. Crowbar + spanner up to 30 from 18. Knife up to 50 from 32. Frag gren dmg increased slightly (they were decreased 30% in the 1.11 patch - they are now about halfway). Bhop cap increased to 1.15 from 1.10 (when i mentioned 1.08% it was my error - we never tested that value on beta and the correct value is 1.15)

Also if you are on the ground when hand-held concing (and you don't jump), then you will perform a small conc jump rather than nothing happening. This will make it much easier for new players to understand what's going on, and less frustrating to switch between floor concs and HH concs.

VISUALS

Grenades now have trails and halo's around them (thanks mirv)
Blue and yellow pipes now have trails (thanks mirv / jiggles)
Nails now have a slight glow behind them to increase visibility
Player models have been tweaked to increase visibility (thanks 5316)
Grenade models have been tweaked to increase visibility (thanks 5316)
SG models have been tweaked to increase visibility (thanks 5316)
SG now throws out sparks when it's below 50% health (thanks jiggles)
New IC model! (well, a retextured RPG with some parts cut off, thanks omen + 5316 + decs)
No more ugly background for build timers (thanks mirv)
New HUD security icons for shutdown style maps (thanks 5316)
New FOV change on speed effect. Work in progress. Can turn this off/on from the fortress options menu item. (thanks mirv)
Shotgun muzzle flash more visible (thanks mirv)
Many visuals now line up correctly in widescreen modes (damage indicators, Context menu (thanks mirv)
Acceleration blur has changed, try it see what you think (thanks mirv)
AC firing blur has changed, try it see what you think (thanks mirv)
Fixed a conc/EMP effect issue (thanks mirv)
HUD health / armor no longer flashes red when you are hit. It'll only flash red when you are < 25% health to prevent confusion. (instead it flashes white when hit)
Grenade 2 timer up a bit so it's not so far down (thanks mirv)

BUGS / FIXES:
- Medkit fix. Should be much easier to heal people with medkit and spanner now, as friendlies are lag predicted now. (thanks jiggles)
- Suiciding no longer causes you to lose 100 fortress points

New functionality

New splash screen to tell you about any updates to FF if you are playing an old version.
New options screen with a load more stuff on it.

Wow, i guess i ended up pasting most of the beta changelog, haha. Basically the soldier is awesome to play now. Can pop people up in the air much easier than before, airshot more etc. He's really fun to play. Demoman is awesome now that blues are actually usable. He can DM like a beast now (but obv still has pretty low health, and no super shotgun) - so you dont just hide in a corner waiting to det a trap any more, you have more of an active role. HW should be much less annoying, personally I think the new charge system is awesome, but hey i would say that, i wrote it, lol. The jump pad is awesome but the physics are still undergoing tweaks. Basically means that the scout enables heavier offense classes and has a much more usable special (caltrops and radar were both pretty lame). The visuals are awesome.. everything is better! I'd better stop writing!

Anyway, the good news is, we're almost finished. Unfortunately this means stats probably won't make this patch but we decided to focus on fixing gameplay first, as if there's nobody playing the game, then there won't be any stats anyway :-) Stats hopefully next patch!

All that's left to do is tweak the jump pad values and the overheat system and a few other bits and bobs.

We're aiming to get everything locked down this weekend then a patch a week later, so hopefully first week in february-ish!

News: Progress update

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:01:00 GMT

Hi Guys,

Just a small update as to where we are, and the progress over the last few weeks.

Firstly, we have a team working on improving the wiki (thanks to Ihmhi for heading this up!). Lots of content has been added, templates up and running, screenshots and tutorials are under way.

We have hired a new texture artist - welcome to [AE]5316. He's been improving the visability of player models, Sentry Guns, grenades, projectiles - you name it. The distinction between certain player models is a lot easier to see now and will continue to get better - watch this space. He's also knocked up some proper security icons (for the hud) which will be in next patch.

Schtop is now well into construction as is 2fort.

Recent code changes:

We now have a working 'explosion radius' piece of code (thanks DrEvil!). Previously, explosion radius was done simply on the damage of the explosion. This means we can raise the impact distance of rockets (so it's easier to push people around with them), whilst maintaining the same damage.
The HUD animations for taking damage has been altered, so it is much easier to tell when you are low on health, whilst in the middle of a firefight.
Nail grenade has been tweaked so it doesnt destroy server CPU any more. This should decrease lag and increase FPS.
The speedometer is now visible in its entirety (thanks Zatoichi!)
SG's and dispensers now spark when they are low on health. We're playing with different effects to see whats the coolest.
Bunny hop cap has been raised slightly

A lot of other code changes are under way but are more complex (e.g. coding a custom vertex shader to make models glow) and are taking a while to implement/test, so i'll let you guys know when they are done.

In the community, it seems activity has picked up and we are seeing an increased playerbase across the board. I don't know if this is because everyone upgraded their PCs at christmas, or some people are giving 1.11 a go after giving up at version 1.0. Either way, we are certainly excited to see the numbers start rising again, and hope that the next patch will further increase player numbers.

News: New Project Lead: AfterShock

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:47:00 GMT

Greetings Fortress Fans! I am delighted to say that I (AfterShock) have taken over the project lead position, following in the footsteps of Schtoofa and Phish.

Having enjoyed the relative quiet that followed the mod's release, I am now back hungering for more fortress action. Here's some of the stuff we will be focusing on in the next month or two:

Squashing more bugs. Jiggles has already started fixing some nice major ones, DrEvil and Mulchman are still going strong.
Increasing bunny hop cap back to 108%. Upwards trimping looked at.
Grenade throw speed slightly higher.
More community-facing interaction. We're going to keep you up to date on the latest goings on, and ideas being kicked around. I want to include the community in dev decisions as much as possible. I'll be frequenting IRC, the forums, and servers.
Updated website. Much of the site is out of date and will be updated.
Improved visuals: to make models easier to see, including SGs, grenades, player models etc. Possibility of removing motion blurs, improving conc visuals etc as options.
Continued innovation. There is still much to improve on - Watch out for Dev I+S threads over the next few weeks. To give you a taster of what we'll be discussing over the next few weeks:
- Scout - replacement for radar
- Sniper - Enabling him to work inside the base, not just in the mid-map.
- Soldier - Nail grenade changes / combo's with weapons
- Demoman - Improving blue grenade launcher
- Pyro - Reaching burn 3 without napalm nades
- Spy - Improving backstabs, the gas grenade, sabotage user-friendliness
Helping new players. The manual and training videos are almost complete.
Official servers to provide a base for the community (passworded clan server), a place to learn how to play (help the newbies server) and possibly others such as funmaps, skill servers etc. We'll need a fair amount of admins for this.
End of game stats / awards
Increasing FPS and decreasing loading times
Patch 2.0 with all the changes synchronised with a big PR campaign, advertising on Steam.
Recruitment: We'll need a few more guys to help fill out the dev team, not only for development but for PR, leagues, website updating and more. I'll post more on the positions available when they come up.
New maps: We want to finish 2fort of course, but also schtop and openfire converts. Funmaps and skillmaps are also needed. If you're interested in doing any of these, get in touch.

I'll be leading by example, coding/writing as much as I can, whilst listening and keeping up to date as to what the community wants.

See you on the forums & servers!

AfterShock

News: Wiki!

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:58:00 GMT

Hey, here's a wiki: click me!

It might not be the most up to date document but here it is. Thanks to mirvin_monkey for making it public.

News: Fortress Forever 1.11 is out!

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 10:44:00 GMT

Hi folks, version 1.11 is out. This is a small patch to address some issues found in 1.1. You will need to have version 1.1 already (ie. this patch is incremental).

If you're a CrosuS user simply click this text here to get the latest version (doesn't matter what version you currently have). Don't have CrosuS? Click here! If you're not a CrosuS user then you'll have to download from our amazing selection of mirrors listed below. (If you can mirror the file please do so and let us know the url!)

Please make sure to back up your scripts or any content that could get lost should files be overwritten!

Changelog:

Added blur effect option to menu
Added some missing map files
Fixed waterpolo Lua script
Reduced AC spinup
Fixed AC firing huge salvo
Reverted accidental conc physics change thing kthx

Amazing Selection of Mirrors:

Summary:

This is an incremental update - you need 1.1 (or just go through CrosuS by clicking here)
Backup any scripts/configs/anything you'd be upset to lose (just to be safe)
It's named 1.11 to try and trick you all! See, that's 1.1 with an extra 1!
A huge thanks to DrEvil for making this patch possible

News: Fortress Forever 1.1 is out!

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:12:00 GMT

The 1.1 patch is out!

Edited in note:
1. Be sure to back up any configs you have as they'll get overwritten it seems!
2. We accidentally added a handful of incomplete maps. Most of them aren't even playable or up to date; they were included by mistake. I.e. if the map wasn't in the initial release, don't run it on your server unless you want to empty it.

We recommend downloading it through CrosuS - if you have CrosuS then click here!. Don't have CrosuS? Click here!

Otherwise there is a full 597 MB version or an 87 MB version to take you from 1.0 to 1.1:

Incremental (1.0 to 1.1):

Full:

Mirrors will be added as they become available.

News: 1.1 Patch Imminent

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:26:00 GMT

Just a heads up that the 1.1 patch is about to come out - like tonight (Wednesday) PST or tomorrow morning (Thursday) PST.

We're planning to primarily release through CrosuS (click this text to go to the site) with torrents as well. CrosuS is similar to STEAM - here's a blurb from the site:

CrosuS is a complete game management system. It provides a central download and update mechanism for an ever-expanding list of games and mods, plus it displays a browsable list of games along with screenshots, descriptions, user ratings and comments to help you find new things to play. In addition to the download features, CrosuS also contains a built-in IRC chat client to help find other players to talk to, it contains a news notification system to keep you updated on Isotx or game developments, and we're planning to host some game tournaments through CrosuS.

Our vision for CrosuS is for it to become a community-driven tool. We allow users add mods to CrosuS themselves so that content appears quickly, and reflects what the gaming community want, we're working on a matchmaking system to help schedule games, and we're working on integrating more of these items into the Hive website.

Through CrosuS you'll be able to easily update your 1.0 version of Fortress Forever to 1.1 by only downloading the files that have changed (and all with the click of one button).

DrEvil says:

Why are we using Crosus?

There is a lot to gain by having the ability to provide small incremental updates to the game, especially for a small team. Had we released 1.0 on CrosuS we could have been rolling out more frequent updates all this time. The 'release early and often' concept is very difficult to pull off on a small team. Alot of effort goes into just the packaging and uploading of distributable content, finding mirrors, etc. CrosuS saves time on the developer and user side.

We'll also have a full 1.1 .zip file (597 MB) and a 1.0->1.1 incremental .zip file (87.1 MB) available via .torrent from the start.

If you would like to host a mirror please let us know somehow.

Dev. Journal: Defrag

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Defrag) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:48:25 GMT

I may as well drop a quick update on the goings on at FF towers. I'd post it on the front page, but I don't think it's a good idea to bump the file links down the page just yet.

Firstly, I want to extend a huge thank you to Kyle (PHISH) for taking charge of the good ship FF and sacrificing his sleep for a week. I reckon the poor chap was probably out on his feet for the last couple of days, but he contributed in so many areas and made the release happen despite the rather testing circumstances. Also, thanks to all of the devs who have been around and working really hard, the dedicated members of the beta testing team and also to the forum moderators. Finally, thanks to all you guys who downloaded the mod and hosted servers & files.

We had a slight mishap with the linux dedicated server where a tester identified a crashing problem, but it turned out to be entirely unrelated to FF. The dedicated server does have a few warnings here and there, but it's proven to be very stable on release. We've had guys running servers that have been rock solid from release time right up 'til this moment. That's a great feeling! There are a few server crash problems out there, but they are very minor; more on that later.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive; while we were proud of our work, there is always a slight sense of trepidation regarding what the response will be like; in this case, our fears were unfounded! In short, I think we have a solid base to build on. Over 350 servers appeared over 36 hours immediately following the release, and we've had a consistent 900-1600 people playing every time I check the stats. The devs have had a blast jumping onto servers and playing with everyone.

Now, I'll quickly move on to the problems we'll be looking to remedy with a patch. There is no official date set (what with us being awesome with release dates, how about September 2035?) but you can expect it ... soon. For the first patch or two, our focus will be on fixing client crashes & the most visible / annoying bugs. You can expect constantly support in the future and gameplay balancing & tweaking etc. but right now, we're only concerned with patching the bigger bugs. You can see a known bug list here. There are more that we know about, and we'll keep adding them to that list until we have a better bug reporting mechanism in place.

Client crashing
There have been numerous reports of clients crashing. Now, a lot of people have been looking forward to FF for a long time and, sometimes, this is the first game they've played in ages. We're finding that quite a few of the crashes are either hardware problems (PC not used to the stresses of modern games / overheating etc.), driver based (changing drivers fixes the problem) or source based (PC crashes in identical circumstances when attempting to play other source mods or games). Also, there was an update to the Source SDK base (which is what the mod runs with) on the night of release, so that also complicated matters slightly. Please bear these factors in mind if you crash; it may not be a FF specific problem.

However, there definitely are FF-specific crashes mixed in and we're looking to solve these very shortly. If you have a crash and feel it is likely FF-specific, then please feel free to drop by our forums and read the stickied threads. If these do not help you resolve the issue, then please leave your .mdmp files for us to debug. You can find this thread (with instructions) here. These files act as a black box flight recorder and help us to zone in on problem areas.

Scores & notices breaking
Sometimes on a server, the scoreboard & kill notices will simply stop updating and displaying respectively. This did happen during our beta testing, but it was so infrequent that it was difficult to reproduce & solve. Unfortunately, when we released it seems to have started cropping up with a lot more frequency. We'll be looking to sort this out as soon as possible.

Death slant
This one is a known issue and is fairly well known to us. Unfortunately we didn't manage to fix it before we released the mod. If it happens to you, you have two options. One: Kill yourself (not in real life, I may add). Two: Get Creative.

We should hopefully have a fix for this coming very soon. We have a decent idea of how to fix it thanks to DrEvil.

Voice icons
For some reason unknown to us, the voice icons have disappeared. I've got no idea what happened as they worked in beta right up to the release. We're working on getting these back (so you can figure out who is singing "Go West" to the rest of the server and then applaud their amazing talents).

Server crashing
There are some infrequent server crashes out there (I've got 5 .mdmp files sitting here where the server has crashed in the same place) so we'll be working on fixing those. I should stress that these crashes are very infrequent for the majority of server operators and that I've yet to hear players complaining about server crash issues.

I'll round this off by saying thanks again. There's more to come from the dev team. Also, community geezers, get mapping & customising FF!

News: Client available

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:15:00 GMT

Fortress Fans, the time you've been waiting for is here! Whether you've followed the mod since the beginning, or are just looking to tide yourself over before TF2 it matters not. Team Fortress is a game we love, and we invite you to give the mod a try:

The client package is now available: Fortress Forever Client

Additional mirrors
HL2 Filefront
Fragland
Gamespot
Extreme-Players
fangaming
Internode
Multiplay .co.uk
Jolt.co.uk
Boomtown.net
GSNW
BiTT News

Please see the previous news post for the server packages. The linux server package is now up. This is THE SAME build that was uploaded and then withdrawn, so if you already snagged it before we pulled the links, you don't have to re-download it.

Be sure to scour our forums for more information!

News: Dedicated server available

fortress-forever@gmail.com (Fortress Forever Team) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 11:25:00 GMT

Update
We initially thought there was a problem with the linux server, but it would now appear that the error was a false positive; I'm very happy to report that the linux server should work fine! To clarify: The Linux server package is exactly the same as the one that was previously uploaded & then removed from the site, so if you already have it, you don't need to re-download. See below for links.

Windows Dedicated Server
Fileplanet
Hl2 filefront
Torrent

Linux Dedicated Server
Fileplanet
HL2 filefront
Torrent