TF2 Free Weekend

By Shamus Posted Friday Jun 11, 2010

Filed under: Notices 54 comments

306

I really miss having a dedicated TF2 server for Twenty Sided. (I let it lapse because the server was usually empty whenever I wasn’t playing, and I just didn’t have time to play. I wish I’d have been able to get the thing into some sort of self-sustaining state with a few regular admins.) This new influx of Mac users is going to create a need for low-intensity, newbie-friendly servers. I hate to think of all those new players being introduced to this incredible game during a round of “SNIPER FAGGIT!!!!” mic spam. Alas.

How often do Mac and PC players get to play together like this? It’s not often, I’m sure. This is bringing us still closer to my dream of being able to play some sort of co-op with my friends regardless of whether they are PC, Mac, or Xbox.

EDIT:

If you want a friendly server, Valaqil suggests:

When the D20 server went down, a group of people who played on it that visit Chocolate Hammer, Giant In The Playground, and here, all banded together to start a TF2 server. Newbies are always welcome. We love having players there, and, most nights, stay at least at half-capacity. It's entirely community-run, community-funded. We each chip in, and view the server as our little place to hang out and have fun with friends. Without further ado:

68.232.183.52:27015

If you want to join into the random talking and fun times, or send a little token toward the server after playing, check out the current server thread at GITP: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152580

Additional: When I do play, this is my go-to server.

 


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54 thoughts on “TF2 Free Weekend

  1. Drexer says:

    The only thing bad thing about this is the sudden influx of Mac racism from various point and communities. Seriously, these examples across the web only paint gamers in a worst form.

    When we should be celebrating about a new group of gamers, we’ve got stupid ones insulting them. >_>

    And all because of some headphones.

    1. DaveMc says:

      That’s pretty amazingly bad, I agree.

      On the other hand, Mac users do themselves no favours when they act like users of all other systems are to be pitied, patronized, ridiculed, or all of the above. I use Macs exclusively, and they work very well for me, but I’m fine with anyone using whatever they like. In the big picture, this is like fighting over which flavour of ice cream is “best”, and the Vanilla fans scornfully refuse to play with those awful Strawberry-likers. (Linux would be, um, pistachio or something.)

      So, fellow Mac users, the next time you’re about the write something about Windoze, or Micro$oft, think twice (especially since I hear that Apple is bigger than MS, now, or something?). Then two more times. Somebody has to lead by example.

    2. At least that retarded group has only 2 members. (A windows user)

      Do you want to view the status of ALL 2 MEMBER made me LOL it’s like steams forum is even taking the piss.

    3. OMFG WHAT ARE VALVE DOING!
      Blu team = Macs
      Red team = Pc’s

      TF2 = The new battlefield for more litteral Flame Wars (HehHe Pyro.)

      And PC user like me. Will be living in jelous awe over our non-earbuded head forever!

      *Heads to m8 to beg him to log on usin his Mac Just Once!, PLEASE JUST ONCE!*

    4. Eric T says:

      That’s great. That has to be a joke group.

  2. Meredith says:

    I would love to play on a Twenty Sided server with people I know to be reasonable. A low-intensity, newbie-friendly server would also be good. I really want to try this awesome game, but I hesitate to make my first foray into online multiplayer with something everyone’s been playing for so long and is so skilled in (I’m not necessarily good at shooters, but it looks so fun and I already own it). Can anyone recommend a good friendly place to play?

    1. Someone says:

      Training mode to the rescue!

      You, and everyone else joining the party late should see this:
      http://www.teamfortress.com/macupdate/training/

      If you are already past that stage, you might as well jump in on any server. TF2 community, in my experience, has proven itself to be more friendly and mature than any other online FPS community ive seen. Which isnt to say there are no juvenile idiots, lolfags and other unpleasant characters… Just stay away from 32 player servers and fastrespawn tag, you will be fine.

      1. Gandaug says:

        That link is hilarious.

        1. Andrew says:

          Seconded. Soldier is awesome.

      2. Meredith says:

        Thanks, Someone. I’ll have to load up the game this weekend and try this training/bot stuff. Perhaps I’ll get brave enough to try a real game soon. :)

        1. Someone says:

          Its not that hard, really. Even if you have really terrible aim/ dont know the maps/ whatever, you can always play as a medic or an engineer. Also I advise you to try “the real game” during the free weekend, there is always a massive influx of newbies trying TF2 for their first time during free periods so you wont feel so outskilled and outgunned.

          1. Jabor says:

            Seconded this. Also, the best classes to start with and feel like you’re actually contributing are:

            – Medic (as long as your team has enough actual combat classes, instead of tons of snipers and spies)
            – Engineer (if you’re defending on an A/D or Payload map)
            – Heavy (if your team has enough medics and there aren’t too many snipers on the enemy team)
            – Soldier/Demoman (if none of the above apply)

            Regardless of what you’re doing, with those classes you’ll at least be doing *something* that helps your team (spamming out damage, holding a choke point, helping your team survive), and then you’ll improve through experience.

            1. Someone says:

              Id say start with the medic. Run around a bit, watch your patients and learn the game tactics and tricks, popular sentry positions, get a feel of the maps. I dont reccomend trying the Heavy right away. Its a great class if you have crappy aim but it is played strategically, you have to know when and where to spin up your gun or take cover, how to protect your medic and so on.

        2. Adeon says:

          Yeah as Someone said don’t stress a lack of skill to much. I’m pretty useless at aiming but I go on and spam rockets at people (or run around pretending I can play Scout) and have a lot of fun.

  3. SireCh says:

    this new wave of mac games is nice for us mac users, but thanks to bootcamp it has been pretty easy to play from a mac for a while. Not that I’ll complain if they continue with the ports!

  4. Ellery says:

    I stopped playing tf2 when the [d20] server went down. I wasn’t on there super regular, but without your server it wasn’t worth playing at all :-D

    Add one vote for bringing it back!

    Sorry I have no admin experience, otherwise I would volunteer to help out.

  5. Jimmie says:

    Yeah, this is a game that should pull me right in but probably won’t. Like Meredith, I feel myself too far behind the rest of the world to enjoy very much. Even if I did, I don’t like how Steam works. Be nice if I could just buy the game w/o Steam and play it a while myself with some AI bots (like I can with the older Unreal Tournament).

  6. Fenix says:

    Oh how I miss playing that game. I had to stop because of a virus and needed to reformat, I took the opportunity to convert over to linux in the process.
    I dual-boot (Windows 7/Linux) now and could probably play but switching over to the windows partition really makes it more trouble than it’s worth.
    When (I really hope it is When) steam gets ported to linux along with TF2 I’ll start playing regularly again. Tis a shame the server couldn’t stay though.

  7. HeroOfHyla says:

    The influx of new users (from macs and from the free weekend) has actually been making it hard to get online sometimes. For about 2 hours yesterday I couldn’t connect because the steam servers were too busy.

    I actually haven’t seen any Mac or PC hating in game, except for one server where everyone was wearing tags based on their affiliation. I think it was supposed to be PCs on RED and Macs on BLU, but there weren’t enough mac players to balance the teams.

    I doubt there will be connectivity between the computer and console players, because of issues with updating the console version. I think I heard that Microsoft wouldn’t let valve release the updates for free.

    It’s pretty easy to install the steam dedicated server stuff on a server if you have ssh access. I have a virtual private server from photonVPS (I use it to host my website and whatever PHP experimentation I try to do), and it was quite simple to follow the instructions in the TF wiki for installing the TF2 stuff. The server has very low specs (512 MB of RAM, bursts to 1 GB, 50 GB bandwith per month), but it can handle a couple players and some bots alright. I haven’t been able to test it much though, because no one I know is ever online at the right time.

    EDIT:
    Maybe someone’s mentioned it already, but there’s a new training mode that’s been released for TF2. It starts with simple target practice, and then it has you play a game on dustbowl with some bots. It’s not bad, actually. I gave it a shot just to see how the developers think soldier should be played (that’s the only class you can play as in training), and discovered they expect people to use the shotgun way more than I do. I don’t even have it equipped right now; I swapped it out for the gunboats.

    1. Adeon says:

      Personally I would never trade the shotgun for the gunboats. I do occasionally use the buff banner but the shotgun is an important tool in the soldiers arsenal.

      1. Someone says:

        The gunboats are good for training to rocketjump and allow for extra mobility. They are very good on 2fort, you can jump into the enemy fort without losing health and retrieve the intel.

        Its actually pretty rare to see a soldier with a shotgun these days. I myself almost entirely forgot how to use it after a month with gunboats.

        1. Jabor says:

          I find myself using the shotgun a lot. You get a lot more staying power when you can finish off a juggled opponent without wasting another rocket on them.

  8. Daktylo says:

    I think I may have to try this game out finally. I’ve been avoiding it for a while because I figured I’d be the newbie target on every server I would join.

  9. Grant says:

    I’d love to see a Twenty-Sided server come back. I picked TF2 up for the first time a few weeks ago when it was on sale, and I absolutely love it. Only problem is I’m not great, so I always feel like I’m weighing down whatever team I happen to play on. It’d be nice to have a place where being new wasn’t a huge issue.

  10. Someone says:

    I think the question bothering all of the pc veterans is: How can you play first person shooters without right mouse button???

    Seriously though, Valve did it again. Even if you arent a mac user I advise you to check out the update page, they have put up a hilarious new comic and a new video featuring a possible new shotgun for the engineer.

    Personally, Im interested in a possible Mac vs. PC WAR! update, the video seemed to suggest something like this might happen. Previous WAR! update was great fun. Then again, considering the amount of bile splashing around in various hardware holywars, Valve might not want to go there.

    1. Rayen says:

      this has been said time and again, a) you can use a mouse with a right mouse button on a mac. b) ctrl+click is the standard right click variation for macs. it will be difficult for newer people but mac users usually have a limber pinky for this purpose.

      1. Eggbert says:

        Also, laptop Macs can right click by clicking with two fingers on the trackpad.

      2. Valaqil says:

        I would have to use Ctrl-Click. I have the Magic Mouse! (Still only one button, but multi-touch!)

        1. Chris K says:

          With the magic mouse you can enable right clicking. It’s just hard to get used to holding up the other finger completely when right-clicking, though.

      3. Kdansky says:

        Well, the “PC veterans” are just ignorant. OS-X is perfectly able to right-click.

    2. Someone says:

      UPD: Only now I realised that ad in the post leads to the steam page of the game.

      Here’s a link to the devblog for extra awesome
      http://www.teamfortress.com/macupdate/

  11. Rayen says:

    as a new player (started three weeks ago and one week i was on vacation) i have never felt like i was playing halo multiplayer while playing team fortress. There was not alot of mic spamming and sure i’d get killed faster than a hamster at the running of the bulls but usually i could laugh it off. A couple of times i’ve even had people on give useful commentary about the level and classes like i was playing spoiler warning.

    except once. I played one game where i felt like i was on an xbox live game. mic spamming included; One guy pretending to be a howler monkey, one person with a voice changer to sound like a 5 year old girl, one person with who could apparently only say the word “faggot” and could only scream it, and one person who must have been a sailor becasue the string of cussing whenever he died was nauseating.

    that one time though i mixed up my usual gaming time. i work in the evenings usually 6-12. so i play during the day, 11-5. i played in the evening. so i learned not to do that again. so my advice to new players; play during the daylight hours if you can. If you can’t well good luck. also don’t the bomb reach a checkpoint.

    1. guy says:

      That’s what the mute button is for.

    2. Drue says:

      most servers have a set of rules that show up when you first connect. It was probably a no rules server. Otherwise there are usually admins that will baninate people.

  12. BaCoN says:

    Shamus, was playing L4D2 with bbot last night, and I said to him, I said, “Boy, I wish we had Shamus here. Or Ruts.” Mostly because we had a bot, but also because I miss the delightly commentary and questioning of odd things you always did.

    1. Neil Polenske says:

      Yeah, I’d take L4D over TF2 any day. Sure that server was almost always empty, but it was still fun whenever someone WAS on. Certainly better than the pick up games that are nothing but a roll of the dice that I now deal with. And I’d LOVE to try an expert run of the Silent Hill campaign with folks round here.

  13. Valaqil says:

    Shamus, feel free to highlight, or remove this as you see fit.

    When the D20 server went down, a group of people who played on it that visit Chocolate Hammer, Giant In The Playground, and here, all banded together to start a TF2 server. Newbies are always welcome. We love having players there, and, most nights, stay at least at half-capacity. It’s entirely community-run, community-funded. We each chip in, and view the server as our little place to hang out and have fun with friends. Without further ado:

    68.232.183.52:27015

    If you want to join into the random talking and fun times, or send a little token toward the server after playing, check out the current server thread at GITP: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152580

    1. Volatar says:

      I will be there making sure there are no “faggot” spewing idiots.

    2. Pickly says:

      Cool, I’ll be checking it out sometime. (I haven’t played for several months now, and recently have gotten an urge to try to pick up this game again.)

    3. Wil K. says:

      Thanks for pointing this gem out! I just picked up TF2 over the weekend, and the people at this server definitely seem nice.
      -anaphysik

  14. Coffee says:

    So yeah, it turns out I *can* be swayed by a good deal on something I’ve wanted for a while… Combined with the continued good things I hear about Steam…

    Combined with the fact that six pounds ninety-nine makes me feel not bad for having “grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, an’ brotha… I hurt people” as my ring tone for literally years…

  15. Lord Xyfets says:

    YES
    YES THIS SO MUCH

    As a Mac user more by chance than by choice, this is totally awesome for me. =D

  16. Usually Insane says:

    I must be missing something because I can’t find any download link for this “Free Weekend” :(

    1. Someone says:

      If I recall correctly, you need to add TF2 to your library on steam and press “download local content” there, or something along those lines.

      1. Usually Insane says:

        found it. The annoying thing is that I have seleced it to show installed games only, because otherwise I get a list of all the Mac games I can install if I want.

        thank you very much :)

  17. Kdansky says:

    The GITP/Chocolate Hammer server might be friendly, but it has a horrible connection to Europe compared to the one you had, Shamus. I get above 200 ms ping, which is pretty much not playable anymore.

    1. Zerotime says:

      Kids these days. When I were a lad, we played Quake with 300ms pings and we liked it.

      1. HarveyNick says:

        Well when I were a lad, we ‘ad to draw ‘ screens wi’ a pen, and shout across ‘ road to find out what t’other feller were doing.

        1. Irridium says:

          Back in my day, if we wanted to play multiplayer, we brought a small TV and our NES to a friends house and played Super Mario Brothers side-by-side, and raced to see who could beat the game first.

          Old school multiplayer.

          Also, my ping constantly goes from 100 to 300. And thats on good days.

  18. Rosseloh says:

    This post reminded me of TF2 – I already owned the game, but a friend just picked it up and that convinced me to start playing finally. (people with amazing memories may recall I once commented on this site that the learning curve was a bit much with people jumping around all the time)

    Helluva blast, I tell ya. I’m glad I finally got into it. Medic is my primary class at the moment, followed by Heavy. I definitely advise people to pick it up if you’re looking for a teamwork-oriented “deathmatch” FPS.

  19. glassdirigible says:

    I’ve been playing TF2 for about a year now. As I have a Windows desktop and a laptop running OSX I have made it my duty to dominate as many people as possible while wearing the earbuds.

    I have a few servers I frequent that are well-behaved, but I still end up hopping to random servers sometimes.

  20. Blanko2 says:

    FLAME: I DONT LIKE STEAM
    done with flame.
    i do love the games on it

  21. SonofMakuta says:

    I jumped in on the GitP server yesterday to try out a game I’ve been wanting to have a shot at for aaaages but never really wanted to risk paying for something that (due to the online component) could turn out quite unpleasant. I’m glad to say that I had an absolute blast! The game’s great fun, people play in a generally mature way and (although I died a *lot*) I managed to score about fourth or fifth place each time, so didn’t find it too difficult.

    So far I’m liking the Soldier class. He’s a bit slow, but I can jump around and exchange splash damage with people, i.e. my favourite playstyle in UT. Demoman, Pyro and Scout are also good fun, although it’s taking me a while to get the hang of the Demo’s grenade launcher (I miss my flak cannon). I tried Medic, but found that while healing people is quite rewarding, I think I prefer having a bit more autonomy (and explosives). Heavy’s too slow for me and lacks the ability to dodge rockets with a well-timed jump or sidestep. Haven’t had a proper go with Sniper, Spy or Engineer yet – at the moment I’m just enjoying running around capturing objectives and blowing stuff up.

    So yeah, major thanks to the people on this server! I did actually go and buy the game in the end, so I’ll be around from time to time. I masquerade as Jesus, because it brings up amusing kill messages in Unreal Tournament, although I might change it to SonofMakuta for better recognisability.

  22. Irridium says:

    This has been fun.

    I played on the D20 server once, but when I played it was all randoms and wasn’t very pleasant.

    Ah well, I’ve since found a few decent servers with decent people.

    And as for this Mac-racism or whatever its called, its no different from the Halo hate. When Valve gave out the Halo’s, there was a huge outburst and basically the same thing happened as they did with this. Everyone complained, and one day later everyone just moved on.

    I swear, Valve’s community is one of the whiniest I’ve ever seen. No matter what Valve does, the whole community complains.

    Ah well, with this, give it time and everything will be fine. Hell I only met one guy out of about 6 public servers that actually hated me for having the earbuds, and everyone else on the server pretty much made fun of him for hating me over something so trivial.

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