TF2 Questions

So lately Halo 3 and F.E.A.R have lost their luster; I’m now on the hunt for a new FPS to keep my thirst for fast paced gun rooted carnage quenched. So as I’m sure you the reader has figured out I’m looking into getting TF2 for the PC. Now before I go a spend the $25.00 - $30.00 on this game I have a few questions.

Question one. How demanding is this game graphically? I have heard that if you are able to run Halo at a decent speed with full settings you should be able to run TF2 at a decent pace. My PC is not the greatest but I am able to run Halo to it’s fullest and I am also capable of running F.E.A.R multiplayer at a decent setting with a good amount of speed. Will I be able to play TF2 at all?

Question two. What is the replay value of TF2? Is this the kind of game that will get you hooked on the first game and keep your attention for months to come? Or is it the kind of game that needs to grow on you before you really get into it?

Last is Question 3. What is the player community like? Yes I know every game has their share of idiots running around who live to be total jerks to everyone who is unfortunate enough to get in their way. But how mature would you say the average player base is? Is it something like Halo where you are almost guaranteed to have an 11 year old kid and an arrogant teen screaming in your ear? Or is it a much more mellow and cooler crowd I’ll be playing with the majority of the time.

Well that’s all I want to know, thanks in advance to those of you who give me a quick and clean answer.

Oh and yes I have considered getting the Orange box.

1)If you post your specs, we can tell you if you can run it or not. The PC specs in your profile are not helping either.... Anyways, you can always check here and run the test with TF2. But if you can run F.E.A.R, you might just be able to pull it off.
2)I got hooked the first time I played. If you like games where you choose a special class like the BF series, then you will love this game.
3)HUUUGE community. Currently about 1-4k servers. There are a share of idiots, and screaming kids, but there are alot of mature gamers that play on the servers. Usually seen 16-25ish crowds on servers.

Sorry about that, I'll post my spec as soon as I get to my home computer. On my school laptop at the moment=/

Edit: ah well I can tell you right off the bat my system memory and current graphics card. It's been some time since my last upgrade. ATM I'm using a cheap nvidia ge force fx5500 with 1.7 gigs of RAM. I'll get the rest my info to you ASAP.

If you can run FEAR, you can run TF2. When I first got TF2 I couldn't even run FEAR, but I could play it at medium.

The game is extremely easy to pick up but tough to master, so it has plenty of replay value.

Finally there's a disproportionately large number of mature players compared to any other FPS out there, probably as a result of the game inheriting the older Team Fortress and TFC communities. It's possible to play TF2 all weekend and never run into any idiots, so long as you avoid the FPSB servers.

TF2 Runs like a dream.

i ran the game on low settings for over 2 months before i realized.
turned it up max and the difference isnt really that big The cartoony look helps your PC :D

Thanks for the replys guys! Omega I just ran that program you linked me and it looks like I passed and will be able to play the game at an above medium pace. :D although I will want to upgrade my graphics card to really make the game fly;which is good because I was palnning to soon.Looks like I'm getting TF2.


EDIT: is there a Demo out there I can try so I knw my limitations. I have searched for one a few time but come up with nothing )=

No demo that I know of... There's plenty of awesome videos of it out there though (especially of spy gameplay)

Demo to test FPS != Gameplay Videos :P

You can, however, get steam (if you don't have it) and try out the Half Life 2 demo. That'll give you an idea of how it'll run on your system. Still, it is REALLY tweakable, so you'll find a way to run it on your system.

The source engine is amazing. You will run the game fine. I've got 1,5GB RAM and an Nvidia FX 5200. You won't be able to run HDR, but you can max out your settings (models and textures are the only noticable ones) and still run the game at a solid FPS.

Replay value is high. Valve is constantly (lots of small updates, big ones like new maps once in a valve time) updating the game (for free) with all kinds of content. There are custom maps to longen your stay at TF2.

Communitywise the game is great too. Sure, there will be the random screaming fagget, but mute is your friend. I actually hear people coordinating quite often.

Damn now I want TF2.

you mean you didnt want it before?

Ur crayz meister.

No, I wanted it before, but I wasn't giddy like you guys were.

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Originally Posted by Syuusuke

No, I wanted it before, but I wasn't giddy like you guys were.

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Well, I can tell you TF2 completely kicks the shit out of CSS.

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Originally Posted by Pooky

Well, I can tell you TF2 completely kicks the shit out of CSS.

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That's not saying much. I could code a game better than that with my limited knowledge of VB in less than a day. :v:

But on the topic of the community, I had the most infuriating game I've ever had last night. There were these 2 medics, and they simply refused to heal. I mean seriously, I'm standing in front of them (they seemed to know each other and had been healing each other exclusively) after I'd taken out an engy and his toy down in the intel area of 2fort (I was a scout btw). I'd grabbed the intel and asked the medics for a heal (6 health :X). They just stood there spamming "no" over radio.

I then did my best to cap (got as far as the battlements) and then a minute later those two douche's score and proceed to lecture the team on why they are the best. I suggested that the only reason they were able to cap was because I'd sorted out the engy and got the intel most of the way out of their base. They then said "yeah but you died because you suck and were better".

I think they misread the game's name. Team Fortress 2. :eyesroll:

Ofcourse, there are some exceptions to the good community :v:

TF2 is awesome, and if you can run FEAR, you can run TF2 on high settings and get 30 FPS pretty consistently.

Lies. I could run FEAR and I get 20 FPS constantly! On DX8! >:o

But you'll still be able to run it.

Back guys, and with another question. So while I wait to gather up the money I’ll require to buy the game (17 going on 18 and still no job >_<) I have been messing around with steam. I noticed that I can just download the game (or perhaps its ordered) straight from their site. Figured that I would just spend $35.00 and get the TF2 + GMod pack. Is this a good idea or should I just purchase a retail copy of TF2 and get GMod separate?

Oh and Terin I took your advice. I got hold of the Half-life 2 Demo. It runs great on my computer and at full settings. Oh and man have I been missing out on a great game. Half life 2 is another must on my list of FPS games to buy. Oh and episode 2 asuming my computer can run that. Bah, I'll just get the whole series.

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Originally Posted by Caboos001

Back guys, and with another question. So while I wait to gather up the money I’ll require to buy the game (17 going on 18 and still no job >_<) I have been messing around with steam. I noticed that I can just download the game (or perhaps its ordered) straight from their site. Figured that I would just spend $35.00 and get the TF2 + GMod pack. Is this a good idea or should I just purchase a retail copy of TF2 and get GMod separate?

Oh and Terin I took your advice. I got hold of the Half-life 2 Demo. It runs great on my computer and at full settings. Oh and man have I been missing out on a great game. Half life 2 is another must on my list of FPS games to buy. Oh and episode 2 asuming my computer can run that. Bah, I'll just get the whole series.

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Just so you know, Episode 2 and TF2 are a lot more graphically advanced than HL2 proper.

Also, retail fails, get the Steam version.

Yes, Source 2007 is more advanced than the HL2 Source engine, but if it runs well on the HL2 engine, then the Source 2007 should run decently.

alright sounds good, thanks guys.

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Originally Posted by Terin

Yes, Source 2007 is more advanced than the HL2 Source engine, but if it runs well on the HL2 engine, then the Source 2007 should run decently.

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Its not just the engine move, they both use higher res textures and more detailed models, and the like.

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Originally Posted by Pooky

Just so you know, Episode 2 and TF2 are a lot more graphically advanced than HL2 proper.

Also, retail fails, get the Steam version.

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No, fuck you.

Buy the Orange Box retail so you don't have to download half the amount of shit. (then you've got TF2, Portal and all the HL2 games).

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Originally Posted by n00b1n8R

Buy the Orange Box retail so you don't have to download half the amount of shit. (then you've got TF2, Portal and all the HL2 games).

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Orange box yeah, but afaik he only wanted TF2.... TF2 retail is a ripoff.

If you're getting the entire orange box package (which you really may as well because its an incredible deal) then yes do retail because you'll kill yourself waiting for steam to download all the games.

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Originally Posted by Caboos001

Oh and Terin I took your advice. I got hold of the Half-life 2 Demo. It runs great on my computer and at full settings. Oh and man have I been missing out on a great game. Half life 2 is another must on my list of FPS games to buy. Oh and episode 2 asuming my computer can run that. Bah, I'll just get the whole series.

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It helps when you read. :p

And if he wants HL2 as well, he may as well go and buy them all like this (I imagine it would work out cheaper, and even if it doesn't he gets portal :awesome:)

You WILL be able to run all of the Orange Box. If for some reason the FX5500 is worse than my FX5200, then you won't, but you will be able to run it all.

Sorry for this bump but I’d rather not create a new topic just to give you an update. Last night I finely Downloaded TF2 (and GMod :D). I haven’t really had much playing time, as the majority of servers with people in them are so full my frame rate is eaten down to nothing. Would anyone have any recommendation for a good server to play on that does not have above 16 players? Also, I have a graphics question; while playing almost everyone has a blue like tint to them and it makes it rather difficult to decipher what team is what. Any clue as to what is causing this and how I can get rid of it. I’ll mess around more with the graphics settings to see if I can’t figure it out myself once I get home.

And last, does anyone have any game play tips that might help me turn down the suck? Things like what class dominates what or tactics to consider. The classes I’m looking into playing the most are Spy and Scout so any tips for them would be greatly appreciated. I’ll watch some montages as well to get a better idea for my classes.

http://www.youtube.com/user/EvilDaedalus
Great class tutorials^

E; and these aren't so much tutorials as demonstrations, but still good (ignore the dispenser vids :p)V
http://www.youtube.com/user/pharadox05

Caboos, post a screenshot please to show that blue tint of yours.

Here is the picture you requested MNC, I guess the tint all depends on the lighting because it's yellow here.

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4732/bonkdg4.jpg

I have no idea what the problem is. My friend thinks it may be my color correction option in my graphics settings which is turned off and grayed out. The funny thing is that when I play in custom game this does not happen.

You could try downloading some of the no-phong models because that might be causing your problem.

Links and or guieds as to how I would go about doing this?

search fpsbanana

By the looks of it he's not running DX9, which already means he has no phong... Let's see... I'm just gonna sum some stuff up. I might be wrong about you not running dx_level 90. So try dx_level 81 or 80, see if that does anything. If not, try mat_specular 0 or some other mat commands. When I have the time I'll see which ones might fix it.

Unfortunately for me, I am unable to change those options, they are grayed out. Guess my last option is to update my graphics card? I’m just confused as to why everything is fine on custom maps and not the official maps.

Before you do, I'd suggest you make a thread about if over at the steam forums to see if they can help. The whole thing with user created maps makes it seem verry weird.

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Originally Posted by Caboos001

Unfortunately for me, I am unable to change those options, they are grayed out. Guess my last option is to update my graphics card? I’m just confused as to why everything is fine on custom maps and not the official maps.

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Sorry, I should've been more specific, they're console commands, so they can't be grayed out. press the Tilde ~ and enter those commands and see if anything happens ingame.

The console commands, they do nothing. Guess it's off the the Steam forums for me. Tanks for the help anyway guys.