Fortress Forever


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Fortress Forever
Developer(s) Fortress Forever Development Team
Engine Source engine
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release date(s) 2007-09-13[1]
Genre(s) First-person shooter
Mode(s) Multiplayer
System requirements Source SDK Base
(i.e. Half Life 2)
Input methods Keyboard, mouse

Fortress Forever is a Half-Life 2 mod that uses the game's Source Engine. The game is based on Team Fortress, but has been created entirely from scratch by the Fortress Forever development team. The intended scope of Fortress Forever is to please older Team Fortress Classic fans, while at the same time creating a game enjoyable enough to players new to Team Fortress styled games.

Fortress Forever was released on September 13, 2007.[1] The game is freely available to all who have purchased Half-Life 2. As of September 12th 2008, Fortress Forever is on build 2.1.

Contents

Differences from Valve's Team Fortress Classic

New or changed class abilities

A few class abilities and weapons have been changed, either to keep the game closer to the original Team Fortress, or to compensate for a limitation in Source technology. As an example of the former, buildable teleporters, an item engineers can build in Team Fortress Classic, but not the original Team Fortress, are not included in Fortress Forever.

Some of these issues are to redress issues players have had with past iterations of Team Fortress. For example, the Soldier's rockets have an increased hitbox, and grenade splash radii have been decreased. In addition, the Civilian can only be damaged by the sniper rifle, melee weapons (crowbar or knife), and the spy's Tranq Gun. Even the Scout's signature caltrops have been removed in favor of a buildable jumppad.

In addition, the Sniper's auto-rifle (AR) has reduced accuracy, a slower rate of fire, and his sniper rifle can now radio tag enemy players, marking their position on the HUD of teammates even through walls. The Engineer's railgun charges up, and overcharging gives the engineer 40 cells. A fully charged shot from the railgun is explosive. The Heavy Weapons Guy's assault cannon has reduced power. The AC is now limited by an overheating mechanism that the longer it fires the bigger the cone of fire therefore less accurate over long distances.

Finally, the Pyro's Incendiary Cannon, which, though similar to the standard Soldier's rocket launcher, differs in that it fires in an arc, and enemies caught in its radius are lit on fire. The Incendiary Cannon is not as useful for rocketjumping.

Gameplay mechanics differences

Bunnyhopping in Fortress Forever differs from Team Fortress Classic's current system of bunnyhopping (allowing for a maximum of 170% speed limit). In Fortress Forever, the need for Jump-scripts (Macros which use the jump function multiple times for each keypress) has been removed with the addition of Quake-style jump stacking. This simply means that pressing and holding jump in mid air causes you to perfectly jump as soon as you touch the ground, removing the aforementioned need for scripts and allowing jump timing to be much easier. The developers have stated the difference should please veterans and newcomers alike. Bunnyhopping can't be changed server-side. Bunnyhopping is capped, but in a much smoother way than TFC's instant-cap.

In addition, Fortress Forever includes a Quake style of jumping called trimping. (Ramp sliding is still available, but you have to choose which to use prior to hitting the ramp.) Another change is that Sentry Guns, dispensers, and detpacks are in weapons slots (as well as in the command menu list, or GUI). The Sentry guns are more intelligent than their Team Fortress Classic counterparts, according to its developers.

A visual grenade timer is included, as well as a selection of audible grenade timers. Finally, players are no longer able to pick up resupply bags if they already have a full stock of ammo (same for grenade bags).

GUI and coding differences

Fortress Forever utilizes Lua scripting for its map gameplay setups, allowing maps to be much more customizable than TFC with its goal entity system (which is still very customizable compared to many other games). The game also includes vectorized crosshairs with "inner" and "outer" pieces for something close to 1,248 combinations (24 inner x 52 outer). Color, scale, and translucency is also customizable. There is no mouth movement on player models when in-game voice transmission is used (unlike TFC's newer models). The nail grenade glitch has also been fixed.

In addition to the %a and %h chat tokens (representing the player's armor and health, respectively), Fortress Forever includes %l and %c, which relay your location and class, respectively. The developers have also expressed intent to include a built-in bot system called Omni-bot in a future release. The in-game text has been localized in all the "main languages." .

Similarities to Valve's Team Fortress Classic

Though Fortress Forever is not a direct port of TFC, major gameplay dynamics do not change, except for the features noted above. Fortress Forever includes all 10 classes (which includes the Civilian who has been modified to resemble Winston Churchill in Fortress Forever). Fortress Forever also includes other game types besides the typical capture the flag (CTF) style (see maps below).

History

According to a developer team member, Fortress Forever was in development (planning phase) for more than a year before the Half-Life 2 SDK was released.[2][3] Unfortunately it released at the same time as Team Fortress 2 and was ignored by the majority of the gaming community. The release of Team Fortress 2 is mostly credited for the small community, though one or two full servers can usually be found.

Maps by Fortress Forever

Fortress Forever comes with a large selection of maps. The following are maps included in the mod download:

Notable mentions

 Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (February 2007)

Reviews

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Fortress Forever news (2007-09-13). Official release date: September 13th. Retrieved 2007-09-13.
  2. ^ The Far2Cool Network forums. TFC:S 3rd Party MOD - Fortress Forever Announced. Retrieved 2007-03-23.
  3. ^ The Catacombs forums. Fortress Forever - A Team Fortress Mod for HL2. Retrieved 2007-03-23.

External links

v • d • e
Third-party modifications on the Source engine
Single-player
Multiplayer






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