I therefore compiled a list of tips and tricks describing certain aspects of Team Fortress 2 that make the game more enjoyable and your character more competitive when competing against other players and teams online.

If you have more tips post them in the comments. This is not a complete collection of course but contains some good pointers for beginning Team Fortress 2 players.

General Tips:

Activate Fast Weapon Switching in the options to switch the weapons faster when using the mouse wheel.
A good teamplayer selects a class that is needed to play in a certain situation. That means you do not start as Sniper if your team already has 4 and no Engineer at all.
Every weapon makes less damage over distance except the rifle of the Sniper and the nades of the Demoman
You can almost walk through team members, if you meet someone that is blocking it is most likely a spy.
Hitting or coming close to an invisible spy reveals his location for a short time.
Players exit teleporters always facing the same direction
Water stops the flames if players have been hit by a Pyro if the character can swim in it. As does a Medic Gun and a Dispenser. This

Team Fortress 2 Classes:

A capping scout counts as two players
A medic boosts health of the player that he hits his medic gun with by 150 Hitpoints.
Overcharge lasts for ten seconds
Overcharge fills faster when healing injured team members. Use this to your advantage on maps where you have to wait 50 seconds before they start by healing either a Demoman or a Soldier who do Rocket / Bombjumps. Overcharge will be ready when the map begins, switch to a heavy then.
Use Rocketjumps and Bombjumps to reach roofs or places that other players can’t. This includes the houses in Gravelpit, the hole when entering the base in 2Fort or the balcony in 2Fort.
A good medic is able to make two players invulnerable with his medic gun by pointing it to each player alternately.
Don’t place Sentries, Dispensers or Teleporters in places that can be seen from a distance. This way everyone can take them out from that distance without getting hurt at all. The best place is behind or under objects.
A sentry gun can kill the Engineer who build it if he stands in the way of the rockets and bullets.
Pyros are less effective when running after someone.
Spies always use a nickname of the enemy team when disguised. Use this to your advantage
Spies: First the sentry, then the Engineer. (Attacking the Engineer reveals the true colors of the spy which means the Sentry gun will attack him.
Use your sapper while in disguise as a spy. Remember to change classes that you disguise as frequently.
Don’t disguise as classes that are either faster or slower than a Spy. This means no Heavy, no Soldier, no Scout. No Medic as well because it becomes obvious that you are a spy if you do not heal someone that requests it.
Engineer: First the Sentry, then the Dispenser. Reverse order in Sudden Death games unless the enemy is know for rushing your base.
Engineer: Build Teleporters. Start when the map begins by placing an entrance next to your base, run back in to get your metal filled up and continue. Move Teleporter entries and exits frequently if the situation changes.
Sentry Guns, Dispenser and Teleporters can be placed in the water as well. A Dispenser heals faster than staying to long in the water subtracts
Engineers: Hit anyone coming near your position, it could be a spy. Remove sappers and repair Sentries and other equipments with your Wrench. A good hit with the Wrench can kill a spy.
Don’t try to kill something from the distance with a Heavy. You crit far more often when close by because of the immense amount of bullets in your gun. Hit Sentries from close range only.
Heavy: A Medic is your best friend. Treat him better than your gun. That means have an eye on him and kill everything that attacks him. Use your body to block enemy bullets from reaching your Medic.Know when to retreat.
If you are injured and near your own base go into the cabinets in Resupply to heal completely.
Snipers do more damage when the lightning symbol is fully charged.
The Demoman is the best character to defend. Place sticky bombs around a capturing point or entrance / exit / way to stop the enemy advance
If the enemy is charging in with overcharge hide and concentrate on damage reduction. Try to hit other enemies that are vulnerable
The Scout is mighty powerful. They can take down Heavies with some shots from their Scattergun if close by.
Use the Double-jump ability to reach areas that other players can’t reach from there. An example is jumping from the bridge in 2Fort to the enemy balcony which is actually the fastest way in and out of the base
Pyros are great in buildings and winding hallways. Also great when a lot of enemies are standing in one place, e.g. when capping. Most players flee when they are ignited.

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The default value is 0 which seems to reduce the sharpness of the textures somehow. Changing that to the value -0.9 which is the lowest value that you can choose without being kicked from servers that are protected against cheating is effecting the graphic quality of the game tremendously.

If you have troubles opening the console try the following: Right-click on Team Fortress 2 in Steam and select properties. Add -console to the launch options. This opens the console by default and will bring it back whenever you hit escape in the game to see the menu.

Take a look at some of the before after screenshots to see what I mean:

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You need a software called GFCScape to do this. It’s just a small application that requires the Windows .net Framework 2 to run. Run GFCScape after installing it and click on File > Open in the menu. Navigate to your steamapps folder on your hardrive and select one of the files in the list.

All games benefit from defragmenting the files starting with source 2007 while defragmenting the files named like the games benefit only those games. GFCScape will load the file and display information about its contents. Click on View > Columns to add the Fragmentation column to the menu.

Every value greater than 0,0 means that the file is fragmented and will benefit from defragmentation. To be able to defragment the files you need to enable Write Access which can be done in Options > Write Access.

I had to load a new file afterwards to be able to defragment it. To start the defragmentation of the files click on Tools > Defragment. This should only take a matter of seconds and display the fragmentation score of 0,0 after loading the game again.

This way you are able to fragment games like Counter Strike Source, Half-life 2 and Team Fortress 2 resulting in a speed up.

Read More:

GCFScape Download

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To fix this disadvantage German players can install a so called bloodpatch which works fine with the German version of Team Fortress 2. All you need to do is place a few files into one of the Team Fortress 2 directories to enable the patch. Unfortunately though the language of the game has to be changed to German as well if not already done so.

Download and unpack the file tf_german.rar from the first link given below and place all of its contents in your steamapps\account name\team fortress 2\ folder. This enables the blood in the game.

If you leave it that way you got German text, German menus and the blood. If you prefer to read and hear English text and voices you need to download the second file and place it into steamapps\account name\team fortress 2\tf\resource

This changes the voices and most menus back to English.

Read More:

Team Fortress 2 German Bloodpatch
Team Fortress 2 English

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I got an 10% discount of the $49.95 retail price in October and was able to download Team Fortress 2 right away. This had another advantage: The rush on this game will be immense and it can very well be that the Steam servers will have bandwidth troubles in the first days of the release.

The other included games, Half-life Episode 2 and Portals have not been released as of now and have to be downloaded once the Orange Box comes out on October 10th.

I say that it is worth it. You pay less, get to play it early and can pwn all your friends once they get the game on October 10th.

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I could tell you how great I think the artwork is, how I like the maps, the characters but to be honest, it comes all down to one element and that is fun. It looks to be fun to play, not taking itself that seriously like all those other WWII shooters and Good Cop Bad Terrorist ones. I played them all and find all new ones incredibly boring. They come with better graphics and the same shitty gameplay.

In Team Fortress 2 you take on the role of one of nice characters all with their distinctive strenghts and weaknesses. The following character movies have already been released that can be played in Team Fortress 2:

The Soldier:

Heavy Weapons Guy:

The Engineer:

Short Team Fortress 2 Teaser with all characters:

The movies are really incredible if you ask me but that is nothing compared to the gameplay movies. Take a look at some of the first Team Fortress 2 ingame movies that have been released:

I will definitely buy The Orange Box of Half-life 2 that contains Team Fortress 2 plus Half-life 2 Episode 2 and that portals game. Will be awesome for sure. What about you, will you buy Team Fortress 2 ?

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I would never go there myself because you get overrun by fanatic teenagers who are filling the space in no time with their high pitched voices and never ending babbling. Press day seems to be the only day that could be nice actually because you have enough time to talk to the developers and ask them a few questions.

I decided to collect the best trailers of this years Games Convention – also known as GC 2007, GC 2k7 – and publish them here at ghacks. Part 2 will follow in the next days, enjoy the show:

Team Fortress 2 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Black Site (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Prototype (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Half-life 2 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

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