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Team Fortress 2 Has PC/360 Cross Platform Play
IGN has an in-depth article with Valve Engineer Robin Walker, TF2 Project Lead Charlie Brown, and Marketing Director Doug Lombardi, talking all about the Team Fortress 2 project. Along with details on class clarification, the look of the game, and map design decisions, the Valve folks confirm that 360/PC cross platform play is already in the game. "IGN: So you're actually playing now on Xbox 360s connected to PCs? Doug Lombardi: Technically it's done. Robin Walker: From our perspective, we did the Xbox port of Half-Life internally, and we did that because we wanted to have the expertise from doing that. Like controller expertise and all the sorts of decisions you've got to make that are different on consoles we wanted to have that in-house because we knew we'd be doing more Xbox titles and more console titles. And so the same guys that did that are working on TF2, we have all the tweaks we did to the controls, the sticks and everything."
a chance to demonstrate why KB+M > gamepad for FPS
I mean this is amazing, no one has ever done this before. Those guys must be so talented.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Looks like the old "Joypad vs Mouse+Keyboard" debate might finally be resolved then.
When all of us PC gamers pwn the 360 players to hell, daily, using our superior control mechanism.
Err...yeah...sorry...that was my inner fanboy speaking.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
1) Console players will get owned by PC players. Console gamers will either segregate to their own servers or give up.
2) They give console players auto-aim or some other cheat. There won't be a level playing field so you won't be able to tell how good a player actually is.
That X360 servers will be limited to 16 players. PC players can fight against 24 (or more). What motivation is there for PC and X360 players to fight in the same server, especially given the difficulty in balancing keyboard&mouse with the Xbox controller?
..to all you 360 owners, you're gonna get pwnd!
It should be noted that back when development on TF2 started, they had this feature working, but at that time it was to connect the Commodore 64 and the NES versions. Due to delays in development, though, they switched to more modern systems over the years several times (I was most looking forward to the Tandy-SNES linkup, myself.)
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
I love TFC, played it for years, but Valve lost a customer the day they added adverts to Counter strike. They were done extremely poorly and they did not belong in the game to begin with.
Hence good luck Valve, but you pissed on your chips with this guy.
I like muppets.
Differences in control schemes will make a difference, possibly eliminating a level playing field. This leads me to two conclusions: either they're going to somehow tweak the Xbox control scheme (and by "tweak", I mean "enable cheating"), or they're going to dumb down the PC control scheme. Odds on favorite: the latter.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
I want to be there on Day One when the smack-talking 12-year-olds join their first game and get trounced before they can turn halfway around.
Of course, it's possible that 360 will support key+mouse. Even so, XBox Live is a cesspool of pubescent filth. I tried it exactly once and it convinced me NEVER to invest in a USB headset.
The link in the summary links to the 2nd page. Don't miss the first page for great information about class changes.
Maybe it's the geeks I know, but they're just as comfortable with a 360 controller as they are with a Keyboard and Mouse. They all grew up on PC shooters from Wolfenstein on up. This whole debate has always struck me as largely a form of elitism on the part of PC gamers who are starting to get really marginalized by the newer consoles.
As I recall from my (extremely heavy) TFC playing days, there are several classes for whom precision of aiming isn't really a concern. You don't have to be super fast to lay a bomb trap, for instance, and I don't think having a mouse will make a turret more effective. Unless they've completely gimped the classes to make them all Battefield style shooters, I don't really see this as being an issue. Console players will just tend towards the non-precision classes and things will probably even out.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I was having this discussion with my X-Box toting friends a couple weeks ago, and what really stood out from the conversation was the fact that to them, the KB/M is wierd to use when playing FPS games. One of them uses a console keyboard/Mouse setup because he couldn't make the transition to controllers, and he does not have a clear advantage over his thumb-sticking counterparts.
I feel this debate is a lot like arguing over which musical instrument is better. Obviously, its the one you've been playing with for 5+ years.
Yes, as far as I can tell, TF2 plays PRECISELY as well on my PC as it does on my XboX360.
Somehow, I'm less than satisfied, however. Do you think they will remember my pre-rder from what, 1998?
-Styopa
As being a computer game player and an xbox game player, and have played Quake 4 on both... There's no way that I can do a 180 diagnal turn while falling from 200 feet and rail a guy that's also falling shooting at me with a plasma gun on an xbox with a controller... But I can do it all the time on the computer with a keyboard and mouse!
It's not just about the aim. It's about the ability to turn 90 or 180 degrees with the flick of a wrist. The same "insta-aim" that is possible with a mouse also makes for instant turning and THAT is a huge advantage that seems to be overlooked every time this debate comes up.
Whether it be TF2 or Fortress Forever, we need something to come out that can breath new life into my beloved Girlpower server.
Someone hates these cans.
Why should the mouse position be directly proportional to the angle of the character? It's the way it's usually done, but it reduces it to point and click if you don't have to take into account the physical properties of the character. Imagine playing super mario brothers or r-type using a mouse, where the character directly follows the cursour around the screen. It would certainly be easier, but in what way would it be more fun or rewarding?
A player will expect _not_ to be in direct control of the characters position (something hits you, you can fall, etc), so why expect to be in direct control of the direction he's pointing? Gamepad controls usually impose a maximum angular rate for the character, you could do the same for mouse (I'm sure some games have done this already).
Q: How do you call a PC player surrounded by a bunch of console players?
A: A Jedi.