Spam is repeated use of more than one grenade in one part of a map in the quake mod Team Fortress. It also broadly incorporates overuse of the in-game messaging system and excessive setting of detpacks (large-scale explosions). Team Fortress (also written as TeamFortress and abbreviated as TF or QWTF) is a multiplayer computer game mod for QuakeWorld that was originally created by Australians Robin Walker, John Cook, and Ian Caughley in 1996. ...

Grenades commonly used to spam

• Gas Grenade (Emits choking gas - lethal if exposed for more than 4 seconds)
• MIRV Grenade (Explodes and sends out a shower of 6 more grenades - deadly)
• Nail Grenade (Spins and emits showers of nails before exploding)
• Concussion Grenade (Causes a player's view to spin wildly out of control)

Maps susceptible to spam

• Arenasix: Comprising of 6 arenas, Arenasix's first arena is just a large box. Into the arena is pumped a series of spam grenades and detpacks. Arenasix has been dubbed "Spam Arena" by its detractors.

• Gmskeet: Originally intended as a Clan sniper practice map, newer versions of Team Fortress have allowed other classes to be played on the map. The result is an extremely small map ruined by spam.

• Engbat: It was originally designed for only engineers to play. On certain servers, however, other classes were allowed to play. A sentry gun or tesla can be taken out by a single MIRV, and the respawns are open to gas spam on such servers.

• Town2: Consists of three teams (red, blue and yellow) pitted against each other. The battle invariably takes place in the red spawn point and truck, with blue using nail grenades to spam the truck and gas grenades being spammed everywhere else in the red "house".

In computer and video gaming, a clan is a group of players who regularly play together in a particular multiplayer game, generally as a team. ...

Downsides of spam

Aside from the obvious complaints that spam ruins a game and is used by non-skilled players, spam has more detrimental effects. When a nail grenade is thrown, for instance, the server must calculate the path of each nail, output it to each client (player) and continue to do this until the grenade explodes. If there are too many nail grenades, the server cannot cope with the amount of information it must compute. The server slows down and each player experiences lag. Lag often refers to delays experienced in computing communications, however it may also apply to written or other forms of communication. ...

Combatting spam

Nowadays, newer versions of team fortress incorporate a certain amount of resitance to spam. For instance, each team can only have one frag grenade in operation at any given time. If a player tries to fire another one they get a warning message thus: "Your team already has a spam grenade in the world".

At the player level, however, there are a number of ways to combat spam. The first, and most obvious, is to kill a spammer as quickly as possible before he can launch a tirade of grenades. The second is to choose a custom class (if available) and buy an airfist. The airfist sends out a puff of air, which is perfect for blowing grenades and other objects away from the player. If done correctly, spam grenades can be blown back at the person who threw them. Finally, engineers can build field generators (if available) which are like forcefields that stop grenades getting through.

External links

• Custom TF Homepage
• PlanetFortress