TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

The moon hangs low in the sky, casting a pallid sheen over the cobblestones below. The night fills with anticipation and dread. Tensions mounting, the survivors huddle together, waiting, preparing for their final fight.

Then they hear it. Footsteps crashing down the streets. The lumbering horde appears, and rushes toward the last hope for humanity, fists and bats flailing.

A shimmering crimson streak leaps forward into a fiery explosion, reducing the horde to a bloody pile of assorted pieces. A victory cry rings through the empty streets,
“MAGGOTS!”

More than an excuse to write TF2-themed zombie fanfic, this post actually has a point. Wow! I feel it fair to warn you that there is awesomeness below.

Every Friday night, from 10 PM EST (7 PST) until midnight (9 PST), on server #6, we are having Zombie Fortress. Oh yes.

If you have a bad memory, join Jigen’s Custom Crew, and you’ll get a reminder before it begins. You’ll also get the fast track on map playtests and other nifty stuff, so join the group and be awesome.

Back to business. If you haven’t played Zombie Fortress before, this is a really fun TF2 mod that pits the zombie BLU team (consisting of melee-only scouts, heavies, and spies) against the survivor RED team (consisting of everybody else with modified weapons). When a survivor dies, he becomes a zombie. When a zombie dies, he respawns. When all the survivors die, the zombies win. When time runs out, the survivors win. Easy as that.

I don’t remember all the special rules that apply to the classes, but they’re all explained when you spawn. I know demos get health for bottle kills, and I know sentries don’t supply ammo or metal (they’re more of a barrier than anything). I think snipers get ammo for headshots too, but again, I’m not sure. You should join and play as each class to help me learn. I think that’s a wonderful idea.

We have a set of maps intended for Zombie play. These don’t have capture points or intel (but we can play on regular CP and CTF maps too), so the only way to win is to kill everyone, or not get killed at all, depending on what team you’re on.

These maps are, in no particular order:
Zombie Dustbowl – Exactly what it sounds like. It’s Dustbowl, tweaked for maximum zombie effectiveness. This seems to consist mostly of turning the lights down and making things spooky. Works for me! Oh, and all 6 points are in one main area, not split up into three stages. And they take longer to cap. And zombies spawn all around them.

Twilight – No wussy vampires here, only zombies and big guns. And some trucks. And a hole in the floor that will kill you if you walk in it. Anyway, this is a pretty small zombie map, but it’s a lot of fun. Multiple routes through the buildings, and a great place for the survivors to toss up a bottleneck and spam to their hearts’ content.

Just a note, there’s a gap in this map that can allow a survivor to get into the little forest behind the fence, and thus be very hard for the zombies to reach. Fair warning: If you jump off into the trees, you will most likely be kicked. Keep it fair, everybody.

Asylum – A zombie outbreak in an insane asylum. Oh man, that’s a bad combo. Includes destructible environments and a bell that lets the zombies spawn in the basement if they manage to ring it. Good luck, survivors. You might need it.

Panic – No link for this one since FPSBanana seems to have lost it. Anyway, this one’s set in what looks like some sort of hotel or lodge. I can’t really tell which. More destructible environments, moveable map objects that you can make barricades out of, and some pretty cool breakable windows. Smashy-smashy!

We might be playing some other maps, but those are the big 4. Jigen is hard at work testing any new maps that come out, and your participation can help influence which maps we use in future events. We have a forum thread for Zombie Fortress discussions (Which you can find here), so come on by, give us feedback, discuss how much fun it was, and so on and so forth.

If you were there for last week’s zombie killing, we have removed Lake because it was broken, and next time we won’t turn Alltalk on. So if you’re alone on the Survivor team, you are really alone. So very, very alone. And tasty-looking.

Remember, that’s Friday, 10PM Eastern, server #6!

See you there!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.