Nek's Library

An Unexhaustive and Unsorted Aggregation of Everything I Know About Team Fortress 2 !

About this Guide

I will try to resume my knowledge

This guide may feature a list of links to external tools, some "hidden" knowledge about the game, and maybe some tricks that works only on few servers or some maps.

Few things here will help you to win the rounds more efficiently, but it could help you to understand some mechanics inside the game, to discover features, and to better understand other players behaviors.

You may obviously find a lot of things you already know.

I will not try to be exaustive, nor organizated ; my work is "iterative" and "incremential". That mean I can update this guide at any moment to add or modify something. That does not mean it will stay updated.

There is only few things here I discovered myself (maybe nothing). Many many things presented here are also told in plenty of other guides, websites or youtube videos. I invite you to not settle for this guide and go further in researches if something interrests you.

I'm french and my english is crap. Good luck, grammar nazis.

I'm not linked in any way with the authors of the tools / websites referenced.

Don't hesitate to let a comment if you know some more nice things about the game :-)

Third-party Tools

Sorted by random

https://cfg.tf/ is an open-source hub dedicated to Team Fortress 2 configuration.

Use this tool to optimize your tf2 client. Using corectly this website should result in a better hitreg, more fps, less visual pollution and better control over your character.

TOON HUD[toonhud.com] is a highly customizable heads-up display for Team Fortress 2.

If you're like me, and you like things when you have the control over it, ToonHud is the best hud. You can setup a lot of things, disable what you don't need. Like a lot of custom hud, it unlock some features that miss from the native hud. I recommand you to adapt your hud to your need, it's
certainly more efficient for your brain than to adapt yourself to a "pre-made" hud.
Features I like the most :

• You can add an animated crosshair that change when you hit.
  
• You can add custom buttons that execute custom commands. For example, I made buttons with "connect <ip>" commands to connect to my favorite community servers.
  
• You can change the way the killfeed is displayed : how long stay any toast, how are they displayed etc.
  
• There is a console button

https://huds.tf/

There are a lot of other HUD you can find here. As I already said, a lot of them comes with custom features, like an extended scoreboard, a different order in class selection, a button to open console, etc.

Jengerer's Item Manager[www.jengerer.com] is a Windows desktop application that allows you to manage your TF2 inventory without having to open Team Fortress 2.

If you have a lot of items, this application is god sent : you can move multiple items at once. It's still updated this days.

http://scrap.tf is an automated banking site that "changes the way you trade".

It's a very usefull website if you want to unlock any weapons in the game and choose some crappy hats. You can also buy steam trading card completed collections with metal. You will not make any benefits, but you will save a lot of time.

http://backpack.tf is the "leading economic resource for Team Fortress 2".

It's a trade network. You can see players backpacks sorted as you wish, you can see your backpack price, your items prices etc. If you want to trade, it's a mandatory website.

Gamebanana[gamebanana.com] is a very old game modding community

Music during gameplay, female scout model or "iphone" dead ringer, remade viewmodel animations, your favorite youtuber hitsound, memes, community made fixes or features, or even mods providing some strategic advantages over other players, this website is a cavern with wonders.

https://teamwork.tf/ is a third party community hub providing a community "quickplay" feature.

If you don't like the serious text based ingame community server explorer, this website provide a list of servers sortered by gamemodes. Very usefull to discover new gamemodes and new servers.

VTF Spray Converter for TF2[mishcatt.github.io] is a great tool to make awesome high definition / fading spray.

It's not trivial to use (especially for fading sprays), but I garanty it works.

Yttrium's competitive viewmodels[www.teamfortress.tv] is a customization tool to choose which weapons have a transparent viewmodel and which are hidden.

If you used cfg scripts to hide your viewmodel, you know it's a pain and it never work as intended. That tool is the perfect solution.
Here is the releases folder : https://github.com/Yttrium-tYcLief/CompVMInstaller/tree/master/Releases

man I never noticed how heavy hand is big next to the shotgun. It looks like a toy in his hand !

Mastercomfig[www.mastercomfig.com] is a modern Team Fortress 2 performance and customization config.

It provide a great fps boost, disabling un-optimized options, without making the game too bad. I use this since years ! There is a Discord where players with great knowledge can help you if you have problems with your tf2 config.

Guides

I'm happy thoses guides are here when I need them :

• How To Make Full-Colour Conscientious Objectors

Prestigious Engineer Tricks

Certainly it's useless ! But how does he achieve to do that !?

pda_click

This command makes your character appear clicking on his "4th" weapon. It only work as engineer or spy. You wont see the animation on your client (even if you switch to third person) but the others players will see it.

Conga-porter

Build a teleporter exit somewhere, start to conga, and then build an enter where your character stop (against a wall). Now, you can conga between your entrance and your exit for eternity. Maybe someone is reading that thinking "whoa ! I Never thought you could do that" !

Teleported taunt enigma (with solutions)

If you start a partner taunt (high five, RPS) on a connected teleporter entrance, you will be teleported during animation. You will end being stand on the exit waiting for someone to answer your taunt, but as you've been teleported at the center of the teleporter exit, no one will be able to anwser your taunt.
Three known solutions :

• The engineer (if it's not you) can destroy his exit
  
• Another engineer can build a teleporter in front of you (and then anyone who walk on it can answer your taunt)

There is another version that need a friend to help you: do le partner taunt, and then, your friend build a teleporter in front of you. Nobody will be able to answer your taunt while this teleporter is standing here. Solution enemies can destroy the buildings

Conga on my sentry

I love this one because I never saw someone achieve it despite it seems simple and it's very shiny. You build a sentry, you go on it and then you conga in circle over it, using the "wrangler" to make "party lasers". The trick is to use the "+moveup" or "+movedown" command to slow down your movement while you're taunting (so you don't fall). But remember, thoses commands also slow down your movement when you're not taunting (so don't bind them)...

Eureka Effect teleport destination

You can change your Eureka Effect teleport destination during animation. I use this bind setup to be able to teleport maximum speed :

// engineer.cfg
alias +eureka_tp_exit "+reload";
alias -eureka_tp_exit "-reload;eureka_teleport 1";

bind "r" "+eureka_tp_exit"

It behave like this :
- If I have no exit, teleport to the spawn
- If I have exit, teleport to the exit
- show menu while teleporting, so I can change destination while the animation is playing (you have to wait at least 1 second after animation started to make it work)

Some more knowledge

- If you use your wrangler to make your sentry harmless, you can hit your sentry 3 time with you're wrench then depoy the wrangler, before it start firing. It will make the "detection" sound if there is an enemy. If you want a perfectly silent sentry (to stay unspotted), hit it twice only between your wrangler deployments.

Unsorted Facts

You call them "bugs", but it's like that since so long I expect the software to behave like this...

• If your character is doing a "loop taunt" at the end of a round, there is a great chance it will bug, showing this loop animation during the next round. If that were a taunt using a prop, the prop wont show.
  
• If you quickly open then close the contract window, while you're character has an equipped contract tracker, and then you taunt, it may bug, showing the contract tracker animation instead of your taunt, but with your taunt prop and unusual effect.
  
• If you're playing on a community server, you can know how many kills a player done. Just check the servers infos : the "points" are in fact the kills, not the scoreboard points. As you can check the time played on the server, you can even compare "kpm" (kills per minutes) and ppm (points per minutes) for each players.
  
• If you taunt as blu spy using an aussie knife|/b], the game will show the red colored prop (like shown in the picture of the intro chapter). It work with the black rose on some taunts.
  
• "+quickswitch" opens a menu where you can change preset / equipped weapons during gameplay. This command is not always working as intended, but it works. You still have to touch the resupply or change in spawn to get your change applied.
  
• "say_party" allow you to talk in the "matchmaking party" chat during gameplay
  
• You can spawn instantly on certain servers if you change class while your dead. But spamming class switch commands can result in a "too many commands" kick.
  Here is the bind setup to change class using the keypad numbers :
  

  bind "KP_END"           "join_class scout"
  bind "KP_DOWNARROW"     "join_class soldier"
  bind "KP_PGDN"          "join_class pyro"
  bind "KP_LEFTARROW"     "join_class demoman"
  bind "KP_5"             "join_class heavyweapons"
  bind "KP_RIGHTARROW"    "join_class engineer"
  bind "KP_HOME"          "join_class medic"
  bind "KP_UPARROW"       "join_class sniper"
  bind "KP_PGUP"          "join_class spy"

• When nobody can vote for the next map in casual, you can try to enter "hud_reloadscheme" in console to reload your HUD and solve the problem (only for you). It may cause a "too many commands" kick ; but if it doesn't, you're the only one who can vote for the next map !
  
• Using TAB allow you to look around you and to taunt when you're screen is locked after the end of a round, or before the start in casual.
  
• Any server that play "tr_walkaway_rc2" have cheats activated ( sv_cheat 1 ) for the map to work. Can be usefull to know if you want to play with "ent_create" and "addcon" commands in multiplayer... Some training servers have an additionnal security layer that prevent you from cheating.
  
• You can capture / defend points from behind some walls. example

Some additional ideas

• I binded mousewheel up and down to vocal commands.
  Here is a sample of cfg I commented about my vocal command spam binds :
  

  // first, lets define some human readable names to the voice commands
  
  alias "v_medic" "voicemenu 0 0"
  alias "v_thanks" "voicemenu 0 1"
  alias "v_gogogo" "voicemenu 0 2"
  alias "v_moveup" "voicemenu 0 3"
  alias "v_goleft" "voicemenu 0 4"
  alias "v_goright" "voicemenu 0 5"
  alias "v_yes" "voicemenu 0 6"
  alias "v_no" "voicemenu 0 7"
  
  alias "v_incoming" "voicemenu 1 0"
  alias "v_cloakedspy" "voicemenu 1 1"
  alias "v_sentryahead" "voicemenu 1 2"
  alias "v_teleporterhere" "voicemenu 1 3"
  alias "v_dispenserhere" "voicemenu 1 4"
  alias "v_sentryhere" "voicemenu 1 5"
  alias "v_activateuber" "voicemenu 1 6"
  alias "v_uberready" "voicemenu 1 7"
  
  alias "v_help" "voicemenu 2 0"
  alias "v_battlecry" "voicemenu 2 1"
  alias "v_cheers" "voicemenu 2 2"
  alias "v_jeers" "voicemenu 2 3"
  alias "v_positive" "voicemenu 2 4"
  alias "v_negative" "voicemenu 2 5"
  alias "v_niceshot" "voicemenu 2 6"
  alias "v_goodjob" "voicemenu 2 7"
  
  // you can bind thoses commands to keys : 
  bind "F1" "v_incoming"
  bind "F2" "v_dispenserhere"
  bind "F3" "v_sentryahead"
  
  
  // but you also can define "custom commands"
  // For example, I use voice_thanks to cycle to voice commands that reward players
  
  // voice_thanks1 mean : "say thanks, then voice_thanks mean voice_thanks2"
  alias voice_thanks1 "v_thanks;alias voice_thanks voice_thanks2"
  // voice_thanks2 mean : say "cheers"
  alias voice_thanks2 "v_cheers;alias voice_thanks voice_thanks3"
  // etc
  alias voice_thanks3 "v_niceshot;alias voice_thanks voice_thanks4"
  alias voice_thanks4 "v_positive;alias voice_thanks voice_thanks5"
  // at the end, it say "goodjob", then come back to "thank"
  alias voice_thanks5 "v_goodjob;alias voice_thanks voice_thanks1"
  
  // then initialization of voice_thanks to voice_thanks1
  alias voice_thanks voice_thanks1
  // binding to the mousedown
  bind MWHEELDOWN voice_thanks
  
  // same thing for mouseup, to motivate my teamates
  
  alias voice_go1 "v_gogogo;alias voice_go voice_go2"
  alias voice_go2 "v_help;alias voice_go voice_go3"
  alias voice_go3 "v_battlecry;alias voice_go voice_go1"
  
  alias voice_go voice_go1
  bind MWHEELUP voice_go
  

Credits and Thanks

I would like to thanks the respectives authors of the third party tools I referenced here, and the authors of the guides / tf2 wiki pages, who provided me all this knowledge.

Remember, this guide is not complete and will never be.

Here, see ? A todo list :

• Add a reference to the "magic bind" (the bind that solve all the client-side problems)
  
• Add an entire chapter about auto demo recording (how to save and watch easily your bests achievments again and again) - Maybe I should search an existing guide...
  
• talk about how the game handle latency, why are there facestabs, etc
  
• add more points in the todolist and remove the last todo list point because it's meta and useless

This todo list has not be updated since the guide has been released !!!

Something important is missing, is wrong or outdated ? Try to keep me in touch with a comment.
I won't provide free personnal support about using the tools or setting up your tf2 client.

Knowledge is power. To share it is to multiply it.

But it takes times to share knowledge. Not like sharing tf2 items...

[revolver CHEH]

[Nek]

[ＮＩＫＯ]

Nice guide m8, it's very interesting, adding this to favourites, looking forward for updates