I like GNU/Linux and the fact that Valve is releasing their Steam and Team Fortress Classic clients on it. I also like mapping for TFC and just recently picked it up again. Due to my recent decision to move to Debian Wheezy on my gaming / desktop computer I have been denied the pleasure of mapping with native mapping tools so far. The Valve Hammer Editor (formerly Worldcraft) is a win32 programme, other editors could be an option, but I prefer the “offiical” tools. I wrote Alfred Reynolds [Steam] [GitHub] an e-mail about this, since he’s currently one of the main GoldSrc developers at Valve.

So I just recently picked up mapping for Team Fortress Classic again. I hadn’t done it for a few years, so I was actually surprised how well everything worked with my new computer, operating system and all. Except one thing: The wad.txt would not be included properly, as seen below. This happens when your wad.txt looks somewhat like this: halflife.wad zhlt.wad This actually has a very simple fix: Just add a backslash (\) to the beginning of every line and it should work perfectly fine. \halflife.wad \zhlt.wad

Well, one year later, this offer is still valid. I didn’t get too much of an echo, unfortunately - Come on, lazy pickup players! Come back, all the Italians in that closed TFC group on facebook! :| Could we just do this one last time, and then I’ll shut up, ok? Just one. last. time. I’ll let you all live your stupid little real lives that are NOT filled with TFC. Just, please? It’s really not that much work, really. It’s JUST TFC. People, you can’t keep nagging and being all sad about how TFC was the greatest game 10 years ago.

Well, here we go again, first post of the year for the second time in a row! GGDB I finally got GTFCDB fixed - or should I say GGDB, because that’s what I call it now. The Global GoldSrc Database. I’ve always liked Ricochet and I also wanted to extend it to DMC - after some days it was clear to me that the easiest thing to do was just to open it for all GoldSrc games directly, before creating graphics for only Team Fortress Classic (TFC), Ricochet and Deathmatch Classic (DMC) and then having to create other images for possible extensions like Half-Life Deathmatch (HLDM) or Opposing Force (Opp4).

Well, this is my first post in almost a year, hooray! I can’t say I’ve been too busy.. I wasn’t bored, I just never came around to blog again.. So, here’s the status. GTFCDB is down for maintanance - this is taking forever. I should just take one week to only work on that so it’ll finally be done.. I also tried introducing WCTFC II as a short event, no great response yet. It’s public for one and a half week now. I’m glad that the old admins are back for the action and I can also announce some new crew, Mighty and Demon.

So yesterday, the World Championship of Team Fortress Classic had its opening game… ATCHIT vs. ES, and it was a good game. ES was always only 2 caps in advance, often only one - but that was enough for victory. :) What else, what else. It’s 11 teams now. Rules are done since a week or two. We found some servers…. Yes, “we”, I hired admins. The WCTFC admins are (chronologically) me, Era, culomb0 and tuffty. :D

I originally wanted to build my own website, but that is too much effort for such a little cause. Then I wanted to use the interfaces of other leagues. My thoughts were NTFCL, Wireplay, someone even said ETF2L. Nothing really worked out. Now I will use the free tourney.cc interface. It looks ok and is easy to set up. Now I am prepared for the league. :) wctfc.tourney.cc

The 17th Xenomorphs LAN was held from December 18th through 20th, and it was awesome. It was the first time for me, but it won’t be the last; it was really nice to meet the people you play with and against online. We played TF2, L4D2, WC3TFT, a very bit TFC (just some minutes, sadly), WWP and teeworld. Did you ever grill at -15°C? No? Me neither, but it was weird in an awesome way!

Since the last week I stopped including new code or new features into GTFCIaFDB and start updating and optimizing the old code. Two days ago I made some notable steps with the server section: It now shows the Password, Bots and VAC icons from the Steam server list. One of the bigger changes will be the updated match tracking system. When it’s done it will be faster, better and more accurate. And the fixes will wipe out many, many bugs. All this will not go public yet, of course. Well, I’ll just go on and improve the code.. ;)

As you may or may not know, I’m trying to organize a world championship for the Half-Life Mod Team Fortress Classic. This is getting more and more difficult, because there are not many players left. The teams that are (almost) full are 🇺🇸USA, 🇨🇦Canada, 🇩🇪Germany, 🇬🇧UK, 🇵🇱Poland, probably 🇫🇮Finland and perhaps 🇪🇸Spain. Now it’s the question what to do.