A Brief History of Team Fortress Classic and the Importance of Game Mods

The history of gaming modifications is quite extensive and one that I've been fortunate enough to participate in quite a lot over the years. Game modifications, or just more simply mods, can come in quite a large number of forms from simple texture mods to entire game overhauls where everything from mechanics to gameplay are completely changed. The only real requirement for something to be called a "mod", in my opinion, is for it to exist within the same engine as the original for which it claims to be a modification of.

A number of the mods which I have played, or modded versions of games that I've played are as follows: Team Fortress Classic, Counter-Strike, Wanted!, Sven Co-Op, Day of Defeat, Ricochet, Death Match Classic, Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto IV, DOTA, and Black Mesa.

Mods have always held great appeal to me personally because they offer a way to completely revitalize an aging game and also bring completely new and unique gameplay all for the incredibly expensive cost of zero dollars and zero cents. And that's what really makes mods so great. They're usually completely fan driven and completely free.

The final project for my CS 108, computer game design class focuses around the modification of Team Fortress and its rise to fame.

Team Fortress originally started many many years ago and was built inside of the original quake games. It used the preexisting engine to create a team-based multiplayer combat game of capture the flag with multiple unique classes each with their own special guns and grenades. This turned the traditional straightforward deathmatch multiplayer quake into a wonderful team-based game of skill and diversity with each class bringing something awesome to the table. Below is an evolution of the history of the Team Fortress mod and its classes throughout the years:

The original Team Fortress idea came from Quake and was incredibly popular

Team Fortress was quickly ported to Half-Life as Team Fortress Classic following Half-Life's release 

New high res models helped the Half-Life engine live a good long life through the Team Fortress Classic Mod

Valve immortalized the concept of Team Fortress in Team Fortress 2, the massively successful game

But over the years the concepts behind Team Fortress' success always stayed the same: fast-paced team action and distinct classes with unique skillsets that each brought something to the table to make a team successful as a unit.

I enjoyed the thrilling break-neck pace of Team Fortress Classic for many years, some even in competitive clan play and they were the most exciting years of gameplay that I've ever had.

In competitive play Team Fortress was an entirely different animal than in pub games. Competitively, each class had either defensive or offensive orientation and teams would align themselves 9v9 with 5 playing defense and 4 on offense on each team and both teams would play two 30 minute matches to see who could capture more flags than the other team across both rounds. Certain "meta" rules soon evolved such as offenses not shooting at each other (the goal in the end was to test one team's offense vs another's defense) because if the offenses shot at each other, the defense would never have anything to do inside the base as both team's offenses would just be fighting in the middle space of the map between both defenses or the "no man's land".

The game also suffered from multiple glitches in the engine and many were accepted into formal and competitive gameplay such as bunny hopping which allowed a player to exceed it's classes defined maximum speed and reach the game engine's maximum speed as displayed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_1LvSQgTWk Another very common engine glitch was known as "sharking" where users could skate across the top of a body of water in order to maintain their incoming speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0rpJug_Hbc

To get a better idea of professional clan play in Team Fortress Classic, here are two videos of top tier players on offense and defense listed by position, player name, and class respectively.

Offense, Wheaties, Scout / Medic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho4vBRnV_vo

Defense, Reptile, Soldier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0TkPkzt5mk

But what is the point of all this besides me being entirely too nostalgic for an old game that's long dead? The point is that everything about Team Fortress since it's inception has been intended as a free addon to a game. And this free addon was so damn good it traversed its way through multiple engines until Valve finally realized how much money they could make off of the idea so they took all the core concepts of Team Fortress, made them a bit easier to learn and lowered the learning curve a bit, added hats, and voila! One of the most popular multiplayer games of our time was created. But many lacked the understand and appreciation of its backstory which is a bit sad. But to Valve's credit they managed to monetize the game in a completely new model no one had ever done before: by selling hats. As ridiculous as it sounds it allowed them to keep the game free to play and accessible to the general public just like the original mod and for that I have to give them tons of credit.

And that's why I will always support game mods and open game engines themselves every step of the way because you never know what a group of fans out there will be able to envision when they get a hold of your engine. It could just be the next Team Fortress. And that's certainly not a bad thing.

On Sexuality in Video Games And Our Preconceived Notions of It As Male Designers

To many of us it's painfully clear that there's an incredible lack of diversity among certain fields of study at a collegiate level and the three of note for this blog post happen to be: engineering, programming, and video game study & design. This manifests as classrooms generally filled with 90%+ males but it also has different effects as well on things like student clubs and also, if only subtly, our preconceived notions of what women are interested in vs. what we think women should be interested in. (hint: they should be the same)

Source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/start.cfm

I don't think most men whose classes are filled predominantly with men would agree they prefer them that way however it is the scenario we find ourselves in frequently (again, when in the above fields of study). The question then becomes how does that affect both our view of sex and women in general? The answer is far from simple because few classes, if any, with CS 108 as the exception, even bring the topic up. And what happens with topics that don't get brought up? We reinforce our own preconceived notions of them inside our head and continue to go down paths which can be incredibly unhealthy to develop totally incorrect conclusions and hold them until correctly challenged.

Therefore it is rather enlightening to bring up this topic once and for all and not only see the ways in which a lack of femininity in both certain academic and professional settings changes our perspective on things but to also hear from women themselves who are in the minority in these settings. And this was the case with our most recent CS 108 class: we unabashedly brought up the topic of sex in video games and all the incorrect ways a male-dominated industry represents, or more accurately misrepresents, women.


We talked at length about stereotypical female characters which tend to dominate the video game industry and all the ways they are physically altered from equivalent male characters in order to stress their "femininity" as if in this incredibly complex age with multiple scales upon which to interpret one's own gender or sexuality, that giving a character a bow on their head would magically make them a "female" or "feminine". Not only is this stupid in a superficial manner and also a huge cop out by designers but it's also an insult to any women who doesn't think a character with a bow on its head is an archetypical model of them.

All the ways in which pac man developers thought a "woman" needed to be differentiated:

Source: http://n7ugc.disney.go.com/item/Golden7934/199_2gs11k6X4Tn100001004wQo0-h-9782c5-as/Pacman%20and%20Mrs.%20Pacman__600_450_q50.jpg

I think there are multiple reasons why video game designers do the ridiculous things they do in order to feminize (is that a word?) characters and none of them are good. They all stem from the fact that women just don't have enough presence in the video game industry either as players, programmers, or designers. And again, it's not like us video game playing men are sitting here wishing it was this way. It's merely the scenario we find ourselves in. But it does affect us. And the ways it affects us are quite simple: we make terrible decisions about how to represent women merely because we aren't women ourselves and we don't have enough input from them in the first place. We could hardly call ourselves experts on the incredibly complex subject of being a female. The phrase "out of sight, out of mind" comes to mind when contemplating this problem and why it exists.

The solution I feel then is two fold. Men should take a more active approach to correctly representing any character or characters in a more fair way based on sex and try not to typify them in physical, outdated, or stereotypical ways like adding bows to their heads or huge breasts to their chest but to consider that life is nearly a perfect mix of 50/50 male:female and thus women deserve not only equal representation but also equal depth when it comes to characters and their development or backstory. This isn't even purely an argument from fairness and sexual equality: shallow characters suck no matter what sex they are. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for any of these crappy characters in the future that's for sure.

I'll end with one of my more favorite female characters I've played in recent memory: Mona Sax from the Max Payne series. She's not perfect, even sexualized a bit heavily at points, but her and Max Payne, the main character, do develop a relationship based on mutual respect and acknowledgement. While Max might get more screen time as the main character, he isn't necessarily above her in any way. Mona's even using the bigger gun! She's using a desert eagle while Max's gun of choice is a 9mm Beretta:

Source: Max Payne 1. Remedy Games. http://remedygames.com/

Meta Video Gaming or The Things We Can Learn By Watching Other People Play Games

The latest adventures in the CS 108 class sees us finally doing something that I've been looking forward to most in this class and that's observing other people play games. While someone does indeed need to take a lot of time to code a game from start to finish, there are also tons of people who need to make sure that the idea, philosophy, and play design in front of the coding, physics, and physical mechanics is sound. In essence, watching someone play a video game while adopting the ideas and design philosophies of a game designer is a unique experience and one that was truly interesting to me. Not only does it reveal a lot about the game that someone is playing but it also reveals a lot about humans in general and their ability to problem solve and how they approach things like puzzles, challenges, timers, and various game mechanics like moving and jumping.

I observed a fellow student named Mel play a slew of games, all of which had their own interesting characteristics and I will now discuss not only my observations of watching Mel play but also the ways in which the games piqued my interests.


The very first game is called Canabalt. It's a fast-paced side-scroller game that many people will recognize as having made an appearance in a humble indie bundle or three. I've lost track. Either way it's a game that makes for an awesome trailer because it seems fast paced, exciting, and it's actually incredibly beautiful in its own way. Personally I love how everything is slightly pixelated and now in a way that makes the game look bad but in a way that makes the game look nostalgic. Now at its core, Canabalt is a game about timing and movement but more specifically only running forward and jumping. That's all the game requires. And it takes you through a thrilling set of levels at break-neck pace which requires the player to very quickly assess their surroundings and adapt to the situation that they're currently finding their self in.

I watched Mel play the first level multiple times because the game was new and I noticed something very interesting that I've never really thought about before: even though the level is the same every single time, the way in which he interacted with the level and performed all the various movement commands was completely different. Sometimes he went on great streaks through the level with no hesitation and others he wasn't so sure. In essence, he had memorized the contents of the level but they still posed a challenge to him which is something I found very interesting and something I haven't though about a lot before because the game isn't about a health bar it's about not falling through holes and not hitting obstacles. You don't really have wiggle room to do something 90% right. You either didn't fall into the hole or you did. If you did, you lost. There's no inbetween. This means that you either have to completely memorize a routine to get through the level and avoid dying or you have to take it one step at a time and think about each maneuver even though you might've already done it 10 or 20 times before because you have no way of being absolutely sure of doing it perfect the next time unless you take your time.

I also noticed multiple times where the pure pace of the game caused Mel to stumble as he was unable to keep up with the level as it was speeding by him. There were multiple times he fell into holes or hit objects straight on and had no idea they were coming. The speed mechanic behind the game is what continues to make it challenging then even for someone who has already played it a few times or even knows what's coming up ahead.

And while the game might be incredibly simple; arguably simpler than even Mario it has one core thing that keeps it both interesting and fun: the game world that you're interacting with is actually quite beautiful. You really feel like you're in a new world or environment up in the skyscrapers kinda like spider-man actually. Overall I thought very highly of the game and look forward to trying it on my own free time sometime.

Canabalt

The second game I observed Mel play was the ever-famous and ever-popular QWOP. This is a game that I've heard referenced all over the internet but had never seen directly in person before or ever attempted to play myself as this isn't the stereotypical kind of game and it certainly isn't the kind of game that attracted me before taking this class.

QWOP is famous because it's not only incredibly difficult but it's just as ridiculous. The keys are incredibly simple and there's only 4: Q,W,O, and P. And you have to use these to move a person's legs in an attempt to run a race for an unspecified country in the olympics. The only problem here being that the keys do seemingly random things. There are ways to beat QWOP as I've observed on YouTube and they all seem to border on repetition of a core mechanic to move the legs in a predictable and controlled manner the only problem is that normal people attempting the game for even the first 15 or 20 times still have no idea what this core movement mechanic is or how to master it. I watched Mel play QWOP over and over again and the only thing that was consistent from play to play was that there was no consistency with his play every single time. Sometimes he went far, sometimes he didn't, and other times he went backwards and scored negative meters. Overall QWOP to me is something that's interesting and fun for all of about 5 minutes. But credit where credit is due during those first 5 minutes you're laughing uncontrollably as the player's model contorts into unrealistic and unimaginable poses before falling forward onto their face or backwards onto their head. The funny thing about QWOP is that the run where Mel tried to take the controls seriously and employ strategy rather than spamming QWOP in a seemingly random fashion is the one run where he did the worst! Overall I think QWOP is a showcase for a couple very powerful ideas but on the whole is a pretty terrible game.

QWOP

Coming up third is the game Super Puzzle Platform which looked like a pretty awesome game actually. The game itself takes a classic game, tetris, and puts a unique spin on it. Instead of choosing where the blocks fall, the blocks fall automatically and the user has to shoot them in order to destroy them. Sounds easy but they fall faster than you can shoot them which means the user actually needs to shoot combinations of blocks at the same time in order to keep up with the pace of the falling blocks. The trick here is that the player has to stand on blocks or otherwise fall below the level and lose which means you can't shoot all the block and always have to leave some room to stand inside the game or you'll lose. Mel figured out the game pretty quickly as it was rather straight forward but still a very fun game.

The idea behind Super Puzzle Platform though isn't that the core mechanics are hard but rather that once the player gets further and further into the game it gets successively harder and harder to keep up with the falling blocks. These are the games that I really enjoy playing as they're super fast to pick up but still allow the user to demonstrate a high level of skill or mastery if they've been playing the game a long time by making it very far into the game itself and getting to the higher levels. This is also the game that Mel enjoyed the most, or at least portrayed visually that he was enjoying the most since I guess that's a big subjective. Mel might really like seemingly-impossible and ridiculous games like QWOP but he certainly didn't physically display that.

Super Puzzle Platform

Up fourth is Hot Throttle. Honestly I could've written 4,000 words alone on Hot Throttle and analyze every single small piece of it but there's just not enough time for that and in fact sadly I'm not sure I fully understood it. It's the game that Mel played the longest simply because it caught his and my curiosity so intensely right off of the bat but also was the hardest to fully master and understand. QWOP is the hardest to master because of the dumb mechanics that are hard to measure but at least you understand in essence what your character should be doing, even if you aren't capable of making it do that due to lack of skill. In Hot Throttle, even after 10 minutes, neither I nor Mel could really figure out all of the mechanics and what was going on with the player at all points. The immediate gist of the game is that humans that are sweating are racing each other with their clothes off. Initially it seems pretty straight forward but there's a "mood" that the player cycles through as they go through the racing levels (which are in 2d). The entire game seemed to be created to be "edgy" as there were bums and drug addicts on the sides of the streets while racing and they are performing obscene acts as you run by them. There's some kind of mechanic to make the player go faster that looks reminiscent of some kind of explosion out of the player's anus. All in all Mel played for over 10 minutes and never finished better than last place in a race. It's quite a strange game that even involves an item pickup mechanic. Overall it would very hard to recommend Hot Throttle to someone as it's hard to recommend a game to someone that you can't even comprehend. It's made worse by the fact that all the videos like the intro and outros are filled with humans making obscene faces while sweating profusely and saying things that are completely nonsensical. I'd have to interview the creator to have any kind of idea about what's going on or the point the game itself is trying to make.

Hot Throttle

The fifth and final game was called This is the Only Level which got a lot of coverage from both Mel and in class as we watched a student play it at the front of the class. It did a great job of demonstrating a very simple idea with multiple powerful mechanics behind it. Again there's only one level of consistency in This is the Only Level and that's that each time you play it, the mechanics on beating that same level are different. So the title should be taken seriously, as there is only one level that the user ever sees or plays. However how they play that level is vastly different based on which iteration through the level that they're currently playing through. Overall I like This is the Only Level but I feel that it wears a bit as time goes on. It's an incredibly simplistic game which is a good way to research new ways of thinking about human-computer interaction but that's about it for me.

This is the Only Level