it's now come to my realization that there is a very very very good chance i played with richter unknowingly on tf2 when I was 7

We surrendered this when the vast majority of devs grouped cheaters and modders into the same category and made their game files contained

im kinda sad I missed most of TF2's hayday. Was never into Source stuff until I was about 17. All I really know of is bots, unchanging meta, and lack of updates. Still it's really fun and I have made a lot of friends/memories from it :)

"When and how did we surrender this?" The GAMES AS A SERVICE model came and stole it from us.

Richter, I highly recommend covering Parkour Fortress. It was another set of maps and gamemode lost to time, but was revived by a dedicated cult following. It deserves love and donations.

We didn’t surrender it; we just got older and hoped someone would pick up the slack but not that many people were interested in modding so it pretty much died slowly.

The fact that this man was 9 when this game was 4 years old, he's now 19, and the game is still relevant speaks volumes to how special this game is.

back in like 2015 i was server-hopping with a friend one night. we found a server with a custom map that felt like a fever dream. there were flying bread pugs .pngs in the sky and a kinda Pyroland design (it was like Pyroland but honestly done better). we played on the server for a few hours before heading off. when we tried to play on the server again later it was gone, and i haven't been able to find anything about a server or map like that since and my memory of it has become so faded that the pugs and Pyroland-esque map design are the only key details i remember. EDIT: it was koth_nippletwister! thank you guy who deleted their reply

Mr. Richter Overtime, I must inform you that I love you and your content.

the guys over at the discord actually managed to find the map and fix some issues causing the map to crash, the map is playable now.

Lost maps are a really interesting concept to me. There's hundreds, hell, thousands of maps for Source Engine games that are just inaccessible, that were deleted from the Steam Workshop and can't be found anymore. And yet, despite that they're still most likely just sitting on someone's hard drive even to this day. Hopefully someday, more attention is given to lost maps like these and are found! Personally, there was this MLP server I used to play on back in the day, I still have some screenshots of it on my Steam profile and I managed to find a video of it, but the maps it ran are completely lost to time. It's a bit cringy, but it's part of history, hope it gets found someday. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hqhnqbl2x5qwYqc.html

i thought nobody else remembered this map. i still have a bunch of screenshots of it on my steam profile from 2011 when i used to hop onto it after school every day. There were like floating spawnrooms that would gradually fall onto the main tower and into the water sometimes, and a secret little trade plaza you could get to by exploring in the water. i always wondered what happened to it, seeing as it was always pretty populated back then.

one of the reasons old weapon mods died off is when valve transitioned from a View model V_ and World model W_ file format to a combined C_ model format, that's why stock tf2 had nicer looking stock weapons in first person, any custom animations for one weapon would be applied to all of them of the same class, making things confusing.

I remember playing on this map. Might have been a day but you opened up a memory long forgotten. Sad to see things go like this, but maybe this map will resurface one day for the sake of nostalgia.

We're truly a long way from those golden age days of the game. I remember like it was just yesterday running around vsh maps and trade minecraft servers.

i think a big reason we dont see modding in modern games as much anymore is because of Esports. when devs put in stronger and stronger anticheats it prevents modding which is good for people who play games super seriously but it makes having actual fun much harder.

Oh man I saw that thumbnail and I was like “I remember that map!” I spent dozens upon dozens of hours on Mana’s Super Awesome Trade Server, to the point that I remembered the name of the server before you mentioned it, after not playing on it in what must be about a decade. It felt like there was always something new to discover on the map with random ass teleports and hidden rooms.

There's actually a similar thing with a map that I'm sure a bunch of people here are familiar with by now through another certain TF2 KZfaqr; trade_suncity_a16 For some baffling reason, the creators of the map made it so the server could not be used without their custom plugins, which were lost to time...Until they were remade from scratch and made to work with modern TF2 so the map could be brought back online. Maybe something similar can be done here? Who knows.

We probably surrendered the goofy mods when we drifted towards competitiveness and accepted anti cheats into our lives

This map was honestly integral to my community server experience as a kid/early teen. I eventually saw someone keep the wooden building at the top of the tower in the air using teleporters, which then became my M.O whenever I played there. I also remember trying, usually in vain, to try and move the large pillars from the top to be able to walk around. I'd love to be able to play on it again.

The thing about that death of modding stuff is that they really didn't surrender it, it's just that due to the shift in focus most if not all multiplayer games had on making everyone know you look cool killed that aspect for those games in particular; a company wouldn't exactly want to foster a ecosystem that actively makes them less direct money, coupled with the big industry focus on multiplayer gaming skyrocketing, it just feels dead in general. Single player games generally don't have that death unless the game itself is imo, older Sonic games are still being modded to this day for example.

Anyone else remember just playing on trade idle servers not even knowing the game had objectives? Those were the days

As for the modding scene, I definitely agree it’s been a lot more difficult for people to do clever and unique things. However, I think the recent VScript update may be exactly what we need to breathe new life into TF2 as a whole.

There was this one map I really remember. It was a map with a big circular center point where you could fight, and it was resembling a bottom of a well- open ceiling to the sky and rock walls. There was a spawn on each side that had the TF2 building interior style, and had glass walls that let you look into the center point.

I have ~220 community maps accumulated over the years on a nearly-dead HDD. If I can salvage them, I might have some weird semi-lost ones on there.

for me tf2 is just a reminder of how much better things used to be with each new year becoming more unbearable than the last

I used to play on this server all the time, I used to be called killer421. Didn't ever expect to see a video about it though, lol.

Never seen a Lost Community Map, Feels like we're going to the TF2 Community Archives! Anyway, Good video Overtime!

It's restored on the workshop now, someone got the file and found it was some light corruption. Entities restored and the map is back

I actually remember playing on phystower when I was young as well; the spawn points being those house-like things (to the left of the pyro in the picture) each corresponding to their color while having a few breakable pole parts that support it. Not only that, I vaguely remember that there was a pillar in the middle with a wide platform up top with explosive barrels and beach balls that if you continue to break parts of the pillar, each chunk will fall out until the whole tower just collapses. I’d say that map was the best one I liked, even today. Hope the ones who have it are kind enough to bring back this work of art.

Valve has a history of releasing major updates to source and breaking custom server scripts. Used to play on a CSS zombie server that created their own scripts from scratch instead of using the community one and it was such a great experience. Once they released the major update back in the day, it broke the server. I'm guessing this is probably what happened to that map server

that part about the loss of "classic" modding hit hard for me. part of the fun was just downloading the dumbest shit you could find and seeing it even ran. the only place i've seen something similar nowadays is with the vr game bonelab, which has native modding support through unity and a provided sdk, but even then the community is so small the real wacky shit is few and far between.

The internet felt so much more free with all it’s craziness, I feel like it has to do with things on the internet being more about how viral something is and the money and fame attached with that now. Also businesses and corporations in general having more of a presence.

It's sad that modding games is slowly fading away. I remember playing tf2 with changed textures on wierd maps, i was playing tf2 every week back in 2014. Now almost a decade later i'm affraid to join any server, because every time i don't even have the smallest amount of fun i used to have. Thanks for reading and watch out for those spinning snipers

Amazing video man! Made me feel extremely nostalgic showing all of those old iconic modded maps. I will forever miss the feeling of playing old source games in their prime.

mana's trade server was my favorite server to play. glad im not the only one who remembers trade phys tower.

This was a real trip down memory lane. To me the golden days of TF2 ended wtih Love and War / Halloween 2014. When Gun Mettle came wtih all the changes to the update structure (Skins, Contracts, Tiered cases, etc), things never felt the same again.

I get WHY Valve removed mod support from official servers (to stop people from doing things like making every wall transparent and stuff like that), but did they really have to go so far as to disable weapon and character reskins? Seems like such an odd move to make for a company usually so mod-friendly.

3:48 It's called a lump file btw...

Never heard of this map before or played it but it's sad to see this map is kinda impossible to play now or find because of plugins, also it's good that you brought up custom stuff man I hate that valve did that I wish you could still use custom models like the iPhone dead ringer, it's sad.

It makes me sad that I missed out on most of the old tf2/ source game’s community and maps since I started playing in 2014 but still I have many wonderful memories

sad to see such a good map gone. thanks for shedding some light onto it, rectangular.

The video started and I instantly thought of the exact map you then posted! Bro what!? I miss that map so much!

I remember when I was little and seeing a sandman being replace with spongebob textures. Shit was so fun back in the day

i missed a lot of things that people talk about when looking back on their childhood, like cartoons and music from their era, but I'm really happy to have been able to grow up with valve/source. I don't remember this map specifically but I did all sorts of stupid shit on gmod and tf2, and the bit where you're talking about the absurd modding scene really made me nostalgic. whether or not hl3, tf3 or portal 3 end up coming out isn't as much of a concern anymore, I'm just glad that we got what we did.

Thanks for this upload Richter.

That part about mods gave me an idea for a new Gmod video I can upload. Thanks, Richter! Probs gonna make and upload it this weekend.

One family of maps I have fond memories of playing on circa 2011, that I can't find in active use anymore are 2fort_Desert, 2fort_Dusty & 2fort_Egypt - all Egyptian desert themes versions of 2fort with additional basement routes and accessible roofspace for sniping from.

If this server is the one I remembered, it also had a secret area in the sky that you could only get to by walking up a very complex and invisible ramp. You really could only get up there using an Engineer’s blueprint to see where the solid ground was. I’ll forever miss that server, been searching forever for it

Man, now this is making me remember a time when I tried to search for the very first custom map I ever played on in TF2, but came up with no results... I genuinely don't even remember the name of the map, just a lot of the features of it. If only I could find that map today and have closure...

I've been on TF2 since 2008 and I have seen so many maps that are long forgotten (servers shut down) but let me share some honorable experiences : - There was a french trade server I used to play on a lot back in 2014-2016. That was a "re-skin" version of trade_plaza with more robotic-like textures & set in space like a space station. But the reason I was playing here wasn't for the trading but because the map creators did something very cool to this map : they made a long route with many ways to travel the map. You had to travel a large room to access a half-open door, place a TP and you ended in a large corridor. To travel it, you had to do a "teleport/sentry boost" and then travel an underwater maze. I don't remember much of the next parts but you also had to pass a room with 4 enemy sentries, travel a large corridor where the floor transport you back to the beginning & a room with a massive gate where you had to enter a hidden vent to activate the door. And once you travel that door, you were greeted with... literally a my little pony world. Yeah, a ultra meh reward for your efforts but that run journey with a dozen players was a blast to do. The server shut down years ago but luckily I still have the map which, I think, can't be obtained online or in workshop. - One very long forgotten map was the WAR! Update "box maps" where either Soldier/Demo players were in a hole & other players were killing them to raise up the kill score during that event. - "achievement_turbo" on GamingDeluxe used to be full every days back in 2009-2012 and that map with the Pyro House & more was imo the greatest Achievement map to ever exist. The server is still running but some map errors can't let you play on the server anymore. A shame. - "SLAG servers" like Parkour Fortress, Super Zombie Fortress (with Left 4 Dead mechanics), Advanced Weaponizer & it's custom backpack + drop system...

There was an Australian server that ran this map 24/7, sometime during 2013-2014. Distinctly remember the insane battles that were had because of those physic towers, the secret Japanese garden area which you had to respawn to get out of, Scouts & Spies owning the staircase which leads up to the middle structure and likely my first ever proper online experience with scammers. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Great video, warming to see new channels propping up that're carrying the Source engine fandom legacy.

i remember MANY maps i played in the days of HL2 Deathmatch. There were coop maps where you mowed down hordes of HL2 Enemies, Weird "rats" deathmatch maps (like a halloween & christmas tree one) & a few other desthmatch maps that had pictures of Diggles in them for some reason, also this one house mao that really stuck in my memory. wish i could find them.

What a blast richter, this is how I've felt about games losing modding support over the years. I remember using the halo rocket launcher, among a lot of other mods that no longer work. I severely reduced my time on tf2 ever since they made sv_pure 1 mandatory on casual servers. Can't even change weapon sounds on those servers but voicemods like the jerma soundmod work just fine.

3:34 Cortex Command soundtrack will never stop being epic sounding

Honestly I think finding out a game has so many lost maps kind of…is a good thing. Yes it’s sad, but it truly shows just how big that game was/still is. I mean think about the original Counter-Strike, think of how many fanmade maps got made for that thing.

we've lost modding multiplayer games for 4 reasons 1. monetization, this ones self explanatory 2. the rise of anti cheats, a game with anti cheat by its very nature can't be modded, its why VAC sucks, VAC tried to be an anti cheat that allowed modding and it made it so easy to get around 3. consoles getting more popular for multiplayer games, back when modding multiplayer games was at its peak online play on consoles was still new and primitive, so devs wanted to support the modding scene since a very large majority of their player were PC players, now that PC players make up at best 1/2 there is less incentive for devs to support modding 4. this is the biggest one, cross play, games with cross play can't have modding, consoles can't mod so as long as PC players play can with console players modding is an impossibility, sure you could have PC only servers that support modding but they would be dead as dirt since most players are probably just going to use the matchmaking

seeing a richter overtime notification on my phone is like a christmas miracle for me

I remember playing on these type of special servers back in the day. It’s sad to see most of them faded away in the past.

I swear, you make every single one of you're vids somewhat scary in a goofy way and I love it. 3:20

Thank you Mr Overtime, this had inspired me to mod the hell out of my TF2

Never knew about the map, something truly amazing.

I already felt this exact sort of existential dread with Unreal Tournament. By 2012 it was almost impossible to keep finding any of the custom content for that game - Gamespy died, Beyond Unreal had some sort of massive data loss, Levels 4 You shut down, etc. There was another site that ended up with a lot of the old content too, but the last time I checked that the actual downloads had the same issue as Beyond Unreal, and a trawl through their forums showed that they almost didn't even realize something was wrong. Then Epic made it worse by delisting them all for no reason other than that every developer, when they get big enough, will inevitably become a villain.

Honestly I'm betting someone will remake that portal mod with v-script sometime. (I hope)

Realizing Richter is my age is surreal both because it means it is more than possible we could have by chance played together back in my TF2 hayday but also because it makes me realize the next generation of cool ass content creators are already my generation.

I remember map that was kinda like that It was surf map with a lot of deathmatch and a Secret area for snipers No server is active with that map doe file is still available I used to play on that map a lot around 2013 it was very popular but today it's forgotten.

Omg bro I cant believe you used some of my footage in your video, it was such a great server to play on and i have multiple videos from Manas server up on my channel still

UPDATE: trade_phys_tower_b9 has been fully restored by Nafrayu and ficool2 and is now on the TF2 workshop!

2:02 hey about that link, there's actually an archive of that download link on the wayback machine, i would post the link but my comment keeps getting removed UPDATE: map has been recovered, search up the name of it on the workshop you'll find it

I remember that map well. Sniping off the corner towers. It's because of what you pointed out in this video that games like CS:S (hopefully) won't die. The HeLL jailbreak server is still bustling over a decade later

holy shit. i never thought i’d ever know the name of that map, much less hear about it in general again. it was the first community map i joined when i was a free to play. was the map i accused someone of hacking, which subsequently led me to being taught how the dead ringer worked (happened in that teleport room below). i remember spending countless hours having sniper duels in the spawn towers, making builds and being friendly in the center, and learned about how to trade. even remember in the later months how the server was getting super dead and there was barely 4 people at a time. damn... thank you so much for helping me remember something i thought was entirely gone, and while it is for the most part, i at least have those memories of it.

I dont know if its just me, but do to being a part of a younger generation i feel extremely left out from things that sound like a ton of fun. Like the memory on 5:56, i mean yea i could do the same now, its not like its impossible to do, but its not about if you can do something, its about when you do something. Especially in the case of memories from someones past. Wouldnt it be kinda like coming back to a play ground you used to play on after growing up, and acting as if nothing had change? Im pretty sure its just me, but i still feel left out and lonely when i hear about stuff like LAN partys and such. Idk why i wrote this nobody will bother to read this anyway :/ meh fuck it

Team Fortress 2

I remember the map had a lot of hidden sections. There was a huge underwater part and if you touched the ground beneath each spawn, you would teleport to an arena. Inside there there was a door to what we all called "The Alamo" which was a large wooden fort with two levels. If you died in the low-grav elevator there you would have low grav until you left the server, which made it very fun to zoom around as demoknight or soldier. Lots of memories there, thanks for reminding me of them. I probably have 20 or so screenshots of the map if anyone wants to check them out.

0:40 that's called dementia

I hope this map gets recovered and archived because I kinda want to play it.

Just like a really wise man once said If it's working perfectly fine don't fix it This is what happened to the modding community of TF2 since valve changed so many stuff that custom weapons , models etc couldn't be used anymore due to the restrictions that were applied. Oh and also Richter you should also cover Parkour Fortress

Someone named ficool2 recreated the map (to the best of their ability) and it's up on the TF2 Workshop!

You just whiplashed me with nostalgia when you brought that map up.

We didn't "surrender" it, it was quietly taken away from us. Modding gets in the way of them monetizing every aspect of the game. They go so far that they don't even let us make content like maps, which they don't even make money off of anyway [and often don't want to make themselves]. They also don't give us server browsers anymore because they are "too complicated" (projecting brain issue lmao)

I've always wanted to play TF2

6 years ago I played a lot of flash games. Now, I can't remember half of them. This is the same sort of predicament

Thank you for bringing this up, hopefully someone finds it.

i want our lips to connect richter PLEASE

Damn i have so much nostalgia to two specific tf2 custom server maps and i remember how many hours i spent playing on it and even though they're both dead most of the time it's great to visit!

there's a lot of tf2 modded game modes that now have tons of broken maps. parkour fortress comes to mind, I miss it so much

Why did we surrender wacky mods? MLG. Everyone wanted to be pro in 2012, so game devs that catered to that mindset became the norm. Everything has to be balanced with a micrometer-accurate level. Mods are inherently unbalanced, so they can only be played on community servers. Community servers that developers don't believe communities are to be trusted with server software. Add on a decade of that mindset solidifying, and now everyone's wondering why gaming isn't silly anymore, and praising crap like Fortnite for giving you the privilege to spend $20 and let Rick Sanchez do your favorite Tik Tok dance. (this is all outside of the indie scene, of course, but that's a whole different can of worms.)

Great video, I believe i played on this map a few times but it has been so long... I started playing around 2010 and there was so many community servers, some of them just for being friendly, doing mic spam of songs and memes from that time and doing the default taunts and crouching, the closest thing we had to somewhat dance in the game (we didn't had any equippable taunts at the time) There was this server called SLAG Gaming that had tons of custom game modes and maps, it was awesome. Parkour Fortress, TF2Ware, Zombie Fortress, Smash Fortress, there was a map that a bunch of spycrabs had to race until the finish line while some snipers keep shooting arrows... Lot of good stuff and mostly gone :9 i believe the A Hat in Time creator is involved in all of that mods under the nickname of Mecha the Slag I remember checking his website from time to time and there was a video from a cancelled mod called Nightmare Fortress. It had someone playing Scout in a dark-florest like map and a monster appears, them the video just ends with a "coming soon" His website is still on the web archive, but sadly the video is not available anymore. I wish to know what happened to that mod, why it was cancelled... good times

2:15 big chongus. Cool video! After some time, all sinks in sands of time, so did this map.

My favorite map/server back in the day wasn't gone, but it's now so different it's just not the same. It felt like a whole new map.

the link at 2:03 is archived trough the wayback machine if anyone wishes to tinker with it, it sitll has the zero entities issue, and judging by what i've found it requires a plugin to work, unless someone somehow RE's the plugin the map used, i'd say functionality-wise it's lost

0:19 nice name

I played on Pokemon Goldenrod Town map in a trade community, i think it was Reo’s Servers, or something. Everyone knew each other and you’d have a lot of dumb fun, like fighting over the DJ room, or a conga line party at RED spawn. I stopped going on by high school, and earlier last year I checked the server again, which shockingly enough it was still open. It didn’t overwhelm me, but it unlocked a lot of happy memories of coming home from school and wasting the entire day taunting at people. I checked on their discord and no-one from that time kept in touch. Sad how memories like that are so disconnected, but i’m happy for the experience

THE CHURCH OF MANA, god I spent so much time on that map/server, thank you for this video. This had crossed my mind a while ago but I gave up when I couldn't get the map to run on my computer.

If this map never gets found l do hope at very least that people with memories and access to some files relating to this map can make a restore it from the grounds up which could be possible looking at previous TF2 restorations like pre fortress 2

Games with amazing modding communities are still around, maybe not on pc, but with vr games with steam workshop support theres plenty of random workshop mods to have fun with friends like what custom servers used to be

I used to eagerly customise Team Fortress 2 with mods on the regular. Weapon Model replacements (So many *quality* options in that regard!), Sound replacements, Viewmodel FOV fixes, occasional Character Model mods like Two-Eyed Demoman, Stylish Spy or Engy-without-Goggles (I did indeed also use The Fanciest of Pants's 'Femme Pyro' as renovated by Sage or nowadays Sierra Foxtrot, but I always used the Sub-Zero Suit as part of a "Can this be used without accusations of being horny?", but Corvalho & Alaxe's Female Pyro options these days largely shake off The Fanciest of Pant's exaggerated proportions that part of me thinks was trying to comply with the standard hitbox, but it probably always was "He-he-heh jigglebones"). It really was a great time that always kept me going back to even the official Valve Servers as they also approved mods for a good amount of time. In the end, I think concerns of cheating ended up making Valve disable modding on their servers outside of their small whitelist with many community servers that were vanilla-experience-focused opting for the same (I know the Skial server providers at one time had a tool to check your .VPKs for any "mods that can be exploited for cheating" that allowed me to continue using my custom preferences when Valve stopped allowing it, but I wouldn't know about today). At least, that's why I think Left 4 Dead 2 Versus official servers also disabled mods practically outright as well not long ago (The amount of fun options & QoL improvements that prevents legitimate players using there must've annoyed a lot of them without a doubt). As for other games... yeah, it's *usually* just so they can have a market of selling that stuff to you for money. But in regards to maps, we still have *so many* wonderful options out there old & new, but it's still tragic to hear we've got examples of Online-DRMed community maps out there like this one (As if mods don't typically have enough against them for compatibility outside of the authors' input in the long run!).

The idea of mod/custom map related lost media is something I love!

I didnt even know the name of this map, it was my first introduction to tf2 playing it at 3 am with my best friend while he tried to show me the ropes and one of the three trade/silly servers I used to frequent on my loaner laptop that even with lower graphics mode ran at like 13 fps on a good day. Still one of my favorite maps to play on and I loved being a turtle engie on the secret teleport under the base spawn, I had no idea it is lost lost, makes me wonder about the other two maps I played on. Really good and interesting video!

I remember Mana’s server and this map! It was a real blast, here’s hoping it can be recovered .