2000

First off, Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you are all having a wonderful and safe holiday.  Secondly, MultiCron, one of the TFQ message board regulars, has released a treat for you all, I won't even tell you the map name, only provide you with the link.  Let me say, if you at all know your Transformers history (as you very well should. :)  You will be greatly surprised by what MultiCron has managed to pull off within the Quake 2 engine.

First of all have a very safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday, and drive safely, both in real life and in TFQ. :)  Second of all, I have a new file for you guys today, I created it myself, its the TFQ Skin Pack, and since its for Quake 2, Transformer models, they are in .pcx format, which makes this skin pack weight in at a grand total of 5 megs, that may not sound like a lot, but believe me, it is.  :)  I managed to get this skin pack uploaded onto TFQ's file ftp server, at 3ddownloads, so without any further delay, here is the link to the file.  Enjoy :)

Visit the below link, it provides some rather detailed information on the status and availability of most Transformer Quake 2 models, so authors won't be making the same popular character. :)  It also provides downloads for each available model.

http://members.nbci.com/albnok/tfqlist.htm

Hello everyone, been awhile since any updates, so I thought I would provide you with some new information about what is going on here behind the scenes of TFQ.  The beta .03 release is due real soon now, and as such, I thought I would let you know what is planned for this release:

1.  Plug in Player model support.  This also allows you to rename the actual display name of the character shown on the character selection screen.  For example:  Say I want to use the sideswipe model, besides the default list.txt which contains the character sideswipe, I can rename sideswipe to Depth Charge, and my name would be there, on the selection screen, rather then sideswipe's and still be using the sideswipe model, this also applies to skins, you can select a skin that the model will default to, once you make your selection.  This also applies to models, you can now add your own model, to any of our available classes, which will all be listed for ease of use.  Please note, the server does have control over what content to allow the player to select, minimizing the chance of client cheats, making this a great system, assuming the server admin. doesn't abuse this him/herself :)

2.  In addition to the car and tank classes featured in beta .02, we have a huge amount of new classes and, as a natural result, new characters to choose from to go with these classes.  More information will be disclosed once everything for the next release is established.

3.  Some other/unconfirmed features are in the works as of this writing, stay tuned...TFQ is upon us once again :)

Just a quick little news post for all y'all.  IronMagnus and Depth Charge took a bunch of screenies of two characters to be added to TFQ in a future release:  Swoop and Grimlock.  Here's two thumbnail links to larger pics.   If you want to take a look at all the pics that they took go here.

Hm.  Almost two months and no update.  You'll notice that in that time we've updated the list of servers that we know of.  Contact me if you know of any others.  Please visit the servers page for all needed info.  Also, on that page there is a server tutorial created by Can o' bis.  It's all you need to start your own server.  Check it out.

As usual, I haven't been at the message board and I haven't put the character pages up.  I'll give the work/life/starting school soon excuse right now (if you work tech support 9 hours a day, the last thing you want to do is sit in front of a PC in your free time), but the pages will be done.  Nothing extravagant.  I know I'll catch flak for them, but such is the way of the world. 

Small update on the game:  We recently received a new dll from Phantasiere and after playing it both Jay and I were tasting shoe leather right after our jaws hit the floor.  It's shaping up nicely.  Some of the more specific customizations are coming together and you will be amazed.  That is all.

Happy Mother's Day!  The post is a day or two late, but we'd like to announce that Phuky has released his Swoop model to the public.  Grab it here.

Also, Phuky has been hard at work on updating his Grimlock model.  At this point he's got the model ready for skinning and animating.   Here's a progress pic...

Just a quick note:  Our message board has been put up on the Community Showcase of www.ezboard.com   Thanks to all of you who visit the board.  For those that haven't been there yet, click here.

Finally, Gears has come to TFQ.  Can you smell what Phuky is cookin'?  Phukyumoto releases his Gears model today.  Without getting too kinky, you can now play as me (not with me, get your mind out of the gutter!) in Quake 2 deathmatch.  Grab me here!   NO! Not there! It hurts when you do that. Grab me HERE.

New images from a future player model.  Don't I look good?

Just with to clear something up with the files we just released, because I may not have explained them perfectly.  The TFQv02.exe is the entire collection of game files for people who can run the executable which will install the files.  The TFQv02.zip was made because some people had written in and said they can't run .exe files on their Macintosh computers.  But the files inside the .zip are exectly the same.

On a side note, I have no way of knowing just how well the game will work on the Mac platform, as I only have a PC.  I've been told that the models and sounds work just fine.  No word yet on if the new code works or not.  If any Mac users have troubles, feel to write me and we'll try to determine if the problem is a bug inherent to our game, or whether it's due to incompatibility.

Been quite some time.  Got a lot to cover in this post, so I'll get right into it.

We've got a new build of the game posted for download.  Not too many changes to note, but you can now play as the foreboding Soundwave in deathmatch.   We've also updated the docs to include instructions on starting the game with the sentry guns disabled.  This is something a lot of people have been requesting because the sentries can be a major source of lag in games with many people, as well as being just plain annoying.  :)  We included two new batch files as well, to make starting sentry-free games easily.  One starts a normal game with no sentries (tfqNoSentries.bat), the other starts a game with no sentries and cheats enabled (tfqcheatNS.bat).  Just double click them to start, they will be found in the Quake2 directory.

Three versions of the update are available for download:  (1) an installer for the entire mod, including all original and new files (2) an installer that simply adds the new files for those that already have the first version (3) the long-awaited zip file for Mac users.  Extract the files from the zip retaining their directory structure.  They will be put in a Quake2/ directory, so extract to the directory above Quake2 for everything to fall right into place.  Otherwise just unzip them to a temporary location and move them manually.  Here are the download links:

Full game (20 Megs):                        TFQv02.exe
Update from v01 to v02 (2 Megs):       TFQv1-2.exe
Zip of full game (21 Megs):                TFQv02.zip

If you have troubles getting the download to work, try sending your browser to telefragged's file directory for TFQ.  You should see the above files on that page.  Click on the desired file to download.  **Note that the browser is currently showing the files to be much smaller than they actually should be.  Please let us know if there's anything wrong with these files, and we'll reupload them.**

Now...

If you've been following the message board in the past month or so, you've read a lot of debate over the future of TFQ.  In short, we are stuck in a limbo with no end in site, because I haven't heard back from our programmer at all this year.   The problem is he never gave me his source code, so we can't pick up from where he left off.  That means no new weapons, power-ups, or most importantly, characters can be added to the game.  That leaves us with the option of starting over on Q2, or beginning from scratch on a new platform (like Q3 or Unreal Tournament).  However, you can tell by my lack of posts lately that free time has been hard to come by.  And it's going to get worse, because I'm beginning night course at a local college soon.   SO, in light of that, I've decided to end my work on the game at this point, and make TFQv02 the last 'official' release. 

We intend to keep the site up for some time yet, and everyone's welcome to keep using the message boards.  I hope people will still do skins for the characters, and especially hope that those who have started making maps will finish them.   There's no reason not to, as they can just be added to the maps folder and be instantly playable. 

Working on this project has been a good experience.  Sometimes frustrating, often fun.  Got to meet a lot of people, and it's cool to know there a plenty of transformers fans out there who are into this stuff pretty deeply.  It's been a good ride, and something I'm proud to have been part of.

We got two new sites for you to visit.  First up, the new home of the Cybertronian Warriors:  http://cwarriors.dhs.org  

Second, there is a site up that is looking to serve as a focal point for TF skins:   http://www.angelfire.com/oh3/bt/tfskins/index.html   Props to my man Mick Foley for taking on such a project.  If you want skins for TF models, go there.  If you have skins for TF models, get them up there.

Sorry for the changes, but due to technical limitations encountered with the Bulletin Board offered by Telefragged, we have decided to open a new message board at EZBoard.com.   The link on the main page has been updated to reflect this.  The url for the board is:  http://pub5.ezboard.com/btfqaquake2tc.   We sincerely apologize for the 60 or so "lost" posts that are on the old board and we encourage you to visit us on the new board.

Some good stuff for you all today.  =)

First, we've posted the zip for a collection of Sideswipe skins that members of the Cybertron Warriors clan commonly use.  Pretty cool stuff.  Download the zip from here, and put it into Quake2/tfq/players/Sideswipe/.  Then just unzip all the files into that same directory and you're good to go.

Next, we figured out how to get the custom maps to show up on the multiplayer startup screen. Download this maps.lst by right clicking on the link and selecting Save As...  Save the file to your Quake2/tfq directory and they will appear when you create a multiplayer game.  If you ever add more maps to the game and want them to show up on the menu, just open up the map.lst file in a text editor and add the new map to the list.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we now have a public messageboard up so you can all talk shop about Transformers.  It should also be a help if you want to hook up with other TFQ players for heavy metal deathmatching.  Check it out.

Short update this time.  Andrew Dowis is hoping to set up a TFQ server and play deathmatch with some fellow transformers fans.   Just email him to let him know you're interested, and he can send you his IP when he starts up a server.

We're going to try to get a messageboard from telefragged for the site.  Once that's up, TFQ players will be able to find each other and set up games, as well as talk about general transformer stuff.  Might also be helpful for those who want to trade troubleshooting tips.

Older news from 1999