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Team Fortress Classic
Team Fortress Classic


Communications

One of the most important parts of any team game is communication, and Team Fortress Classic is no different. Teammates should always be communicating with each other, providing status reports, coordinating attacks, and alerting their defense of incoming enemies. You'll need to set a few things up to do this, though, and we're here to help you through it.



Basic Team Communications

The easiest way to communicate with your teammates is with the team chat command.  Bound to "U" by default, the "messagemode2" command will allow you to type a message that only your teammates can see. Use this to alert your teammates of anything that they need to know during the game. (I keep this bound to "M", but only because that's where I was used to it in CTF.)

If you want to switch keys for the team chat command, simply change it from TFC's configuration menu.



Advanced Team Communications

After using the "team chat" command a few times, you'll quickly find that it's very versatile, but also very time-consuming. You certainly can't stop to type a message while you're in the middle of a fight, so what you'll need are a few macros that send messages to your teammates with the press of a single key.

The command for the team chat macro is "say_team". Unfortunately, there's no way to create messages with this command from the TFC configuration menu, so you'll have to do it manually.

Let's say you wanted to create a message telling your team that there are enemies incoming to your base. Pull down the console (using the "~" key), and type:

  • bind i "say_team Alert to Base! Incoming Enemy!"

and press Enter. Now, when you press the 'i' key, this message will be sent to your teammates, letting them know that enemies are on the way. You can bind as many keys as you want this way, just be sure not to spam your teammates with too many unnecessary messages. Saying something once should be enough; if you abuse the communications feature by rapid-firing too many messages in a short period of time, you'll auotmatically be banned from communicating for a few seconds.



Creating a Communications Config Script

Now that you've bound a few messages using the "say_team" command, you'll want to create a configuration script for Team Fortress Classic. Among other things, this will make it easy for you to edit and keep track of your communications and other TFC settings. Below I've included my TFC config, which you can use an example to create your own config. Here's what to do:

  1. Get this tfc.cfg file and put it in your half-life/tfc directory.

  2. In your /tfc directory, open your autoexec.cfg file and open it. (Notepad will do fine.)

  3. At the bottom of the file, add the line exec tfc.cfg. Make sure there's a carriage return (an extra line or two will do) after this command. 

When you start TFC, it should automatically execute your autoexec.cfg and the tfc.cfg along with it. If for some reason it doesn't seem to be working, simply pull down the console and type exec autoexec.cfg.

Here's the contents of the tfc.cfg file - you can edit this any way you want, just be sure not to overwrite any keys you normally use to move, shoot, etc. :)


// *** TEAM FORTRESS CLASSIC.CFG FILE ***
// Sal "Sluggo" Accardo

// 03-31-1999 (gotta be Y2K, ya know)

// **** TEAM COMMUNICATIONS ****
bind m "messagemode2"         // team chat prompt

// Team responses
bind y "say_team affirmative" // "yes"
bind n "say_team negative"    // "no"

// Team Radio
bind i "say_team Alert to Base! Incoming Enemy!"
bind b "say_team Is Base Clear?"

bind f5 "say_team Attacking in 10 seconds"
bind f6 "say_team Attacking NOW"
bind f7 "say_team On Defense"
bind f8 "say_team Need help at base!"
bind f9 "say_team Guarding dropped flag - need backup"
bind f10 "say_team Coming to Base"

// Basic comments
bind f2 "say_team nice job team!"
bind f3 "say whoo-hoo!"
bind f4 "say dammit"

// *** OTHER TFC COMMANDS ***
bind "MOUSE3" "+attack2"    // use special skill
bind t "+gren1"             // use Grenade type 1   
bind g "+gren2"             // use Grenade type 2
bind h "say_team MEDIC!!!"  // Help!
bind x "flaginfo"           // give flag status
bind backspace "dropflag"   // drop flag
bind f12 "snapshot"         // rebind screenshot to f12

// Detpacks (demoman only)
bind ins "+det5"             // 5 second detpack delay
bind home "+det10"          // 10 second detpack delay
bind pgup "+det20"          // 20 second detpack delay

// Sluggo

 


Using Special Map and Class Configurations

Once you get used to creating your own TFC configurations, you can create specialized ones for each map or class. If you look in your /tfc directory, you'll see .cfg files for each map and class. These are automatically executed every time you join a new map or choose a class, and are basically blank slates that you can add commands to and edit any way you choose.

These config files open up all sorts of options to advanced players, such as having certain keys dedicated to level-specific messages that change from level to level. As an example, you could have a certain key dedicated to say "guarding a specific point" and have the message change from map to map. You could do the same with the class.cfg's such as having a key or two set up to print different messages depending on what class you're playing.

The one thing to keep in mind is if a key is bound in both the map.cfg and class.cfg, the command in the class.cfg will take precedence (as it will be the last one executed). It's probably a good idea to have certain keys dedicated to "map" messages, and others dedicated to "class" messages, to keep everything as organized as possible.




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