Team Fortress 2 Goes Highlander

A new mode called ‘Highlander’ has been introduced into Team Fortress 2 (TF2). This mode is a nine against nine mode where there will only be allowed one of each class in the game, making the saying “there can be only one” as true as ever.

The South African TF2 community has been playing their own version of the ‘Highlander’ mode for quite some time already with a Pickup Bot being put in a TF2 channel to form teams of nine.

Telkom Do Gaming caught up with Reino ‘skillbill’ Jansen van Rensburg from the TF2 community to hear his thoughts on the new update.

“Nobody really expected Valve to implement it (Highlander) as an official gameplay mode. It’s pretty easy to organise the mode without actually needing it to be hard coded into the game itself, but this is great for public games.

“A server admin can set up an 18 slot server and set it to Highlander mode, and it’s all sorted, so from a competitive or Pickup point of view, its not going to change much but public games running in this mode will be quite enjoyable,” he says.

Here are the more technical changes made by Valve to the game:

Engine

Enabled Steam Cloud support for key bindings and custom spray paint images.
Added Options->Multiplayer->Advanced option to toggle off/on: default is on.

Team Fortress 2

• Added new Highlander mode
  
• Nine players allowed per team
  
• Restricts each team to one of each class
  
• Use mp_highlander (0/1) to toggle off/on: default is 0
  
• Added "bots" to the server's sv_tags convar if the server is running bots
  
• Fixed a weapon name localization issue
  
• Fixed the "tf_teamtalk" server convar not controlling text chat between living/dead teammates
  
• Updated the map CTF_DoubleCross
  
• Fixed the map not ending correctly when using mp_timelimit
  
• Changed to prevent Engineers from building on top of the shack in each base
  
• Updated the map Arena_WatchTower
  
• Fixed a case where players could open and get stuck on the starting gates before the round start
  
• Improved clipping to prevent people from getting out of the map
  
• Optimized the map for better performance.