Hey Josh, check out these TF2 mods if you're interested.
TF2Classic attempts to return to a simpler time when there weren't many weapons other than stock, and there are no hats. There are also 4-team game modes, and a few new weapons such as a tranquilizer gun for spy and a hunting revolver for sniper.
Open Fortress is basically just Quake deathmatch but it looks and feels like TF2. It's very fun to bunnyhop around and build up speed while you simply focus on getting kills without any objective like a payload or control point to distract you. You can really get into the zone on this one, if you can adapt to the faster pace afforded by the movement mechanics and weapon spawns. It's also easier to just hop in and hop out for a quick game because you don't need a well balanced 12v12 match to have a good time, it's just ~10 players trying to kill each other.
Also as a bonus, there was some copyright related bullshit recently. Scroll down on the TF2Classic site to read about it. Basically Valve sent takedown notices to both TF2Classic and Open Fortress some months ago, but never responded to the emails they received in return. So both dev teams simply decided to resume modding since Valve literally did not reply to their requests for more information or anything. It is noteworthy that the Valve software service agreement "forbids the use of reverse-engineering", which doesn't seem quite right to me for reasons which should be obvious. Overall a very strange situation. I suppose Valve just didn't manage to come to an agreement internally, and simply went back to making billions of dollars passively from owning and operating steam, and not fixing the bot problem in TF2. Did I mention that there are no fucking god damn bots that ruin the match in TF2Classic and Open Fortress? It's pretty nice.
In addition, I would suggest hosting a KF server for TF2 and/or these mods, but would also strongly recommend that any potential players make new, separate steam accounts. All three of them integrate into steam which includes user profiles/friends/groups/etc, and as we've been reminded by Flamenco, a large amount of unwanted drama can simply be avoided by basic opsec measures like this. They're all are free to play, so there's no need to buy anything on a new steam account. Maybe once you've settled your shit and have gotten a nice groove going, give hosting a server some thought. It would also be a nice game to stream and play with your viewers.
Thanks for everything, and have a nice day.
