Troubleshooting

This page attempts to document common problems with TF2 Classic, and their solutions.

I get an error when I try to extract the game!

This error is known to occur when using Windows Explorer's built-in ZIP extractor. You're required to instead use third-party archivers (see below) to extract the game's files.

Tested and supported options include 7-Zip, PeaZip, and WinZip (not free). WinRAR will likely also work, however it is discouraged as it's been known to randomly botch extractions in the past, along with being proprietary.

The launcher tells me that SDK2013 isn't installed, but it is!

This can happen if Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer is installed onto a separate drive from Steam itself. It must be installed onto the same drive that the Steam client is on.

The launcher says that SDK2013 needs to be updated, but it is!

You should try to launch SDK2013 from Steam once. Even if Steam claims it's fully installed, it may still require validation or other work, which Steam will only perform when you try to run it. After launching and closing it again, restart the launcher.

The launcher doesn't work!

If you run into any issues with the launcher, you're safe to ignore it entirely. The game should appear in your Steam library if it was installed correctly, and you can launch it through there instead.

My game doesn't appear in my Steam library!

First, restart Steam completely if you haven't since installing the game. Right-click Steam in your system tray, then click "Exit" from the menu that appears. Or click the Steam button in the top-left of the window, and click "Exit" from the dropdown. Then start Steam again, and see if it appears.

If that doesn't work, make sure your folder structure is correct. Inside your sourcemods folder, there should be a tf2classic folder, which should contain a gameinfo.txt file. If this doesn't perfectly line up, you extracted it incorrectly. If you have a path that looks like sourcemods/tf2classic-2.0.3/tf2classic or if all of your files are dumped loosely in sourcemods, that will cause it to be undetectable.

This issue can also appear if Steam and TF2 Classic are installed on separate disks (for instance, Steam on your C: drive and TF2 Classic on your E: drive). The solution is to create a "symlink", a folder in your Steam installation that redirects to a folder on your external disk. The steps to do this vary depending on your system.

On Windows:

1. Locate your sourcemods folder. If you can't find it, you can run reg query HKCU\Software\Valve\Steam /v SourceModInstallPath in Command Prompt to see the path.
2. Delete your sourcemods folder, otherwise the symlink can't be made. If any mods are still in there, transfer them over to your preferred new location.
3. Open Command Prompt as administrator.
4. Enter this command: mklink /d /j "path to steam sourcemods" "path to your sourcemods"

Replace "path to steam sourcemods" with your Steam sourcemods path, for instance: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\sourcemods"

Replace "path to your sourcemods" with whatever path you require, for instance: "D:\Games\sourcemods"

On Linux:

1. Delete your Steam sourcemods folder, usually found at ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/sourcemods
2. Open a terminal and run ln -s /path/to/your/sourcemods ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/sourcemods

Like you would Windows, exchange /path/to/your/sourcemods with the full path to the folder you wish to use on your external disk.

Note that any external disk used for running games must be readable and writable by your user, and you must have execute permissions. If this is an NTFS disk, follow Valve's guide on preparing it: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows.

My textures are missing/It says it "could not load library client"!

Re-extract the game, it might have gotten corrupted during extraction. If you used WinRAR or WinZip, try 7-Zip or PeaZip instead. If that doesn't work, delete your local copy, redownload a fresh archive of the game, and reinstall.

(Linux) My game can't connect to servers!/My in-game overlay doesn't work!

On Linux, TF2C requires a special launch option to function properly. Right-click the game in your Steam library, click "Properties", then paste this into the Launch Options field:

LD_PRELOAD="$HOME/.steam/steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so" %command% -steam -steam

This should fix the overlay, and allow you to connect to game servers.

"The server you are trying to connect to is running an older version of the game."

This error is partially erroneous. Most commonly, the server isn't running an older version of the game, you are. If you downloaded TF2C 2.0.0 from some third-party mirror, you'll receive this error when connecting to official servers. Hence, you'll need to reinstall the game from an archive using the latest version of the game.

Players are invisible in my game!

This tends to happen if your network is unreliable or your game stutters. It's possible to run a command to fix this, though you'll need to run this command every time it happens.

1. Enable the Developer Console in the game settings.
2. Press the ~ (tilde) key on your keyboard to open the console.
3. Run record demo;stop

See also

• Installation
• Discord server (post in the #technical-issues channel if your issue could not be resolved here)