Glitches

“

How could this happen? Click to listen — The Heavy

”

A glitch is a bug or error in the game or map. It is not to be mistaken for an exploit, which is abusable to the benefit of a player using them or general griefing. A glitch would be along the lines of not being able to load a menu screen or jumping out of the map by accident.

Console versions

Xbox 360

• Accessing Developer Console — Unlike the PC version, the console versions of TF2 are not allowed to access the developer console. Occasionally, the host of the game can accidentally access this console through modified save data. Before the last update, players could modify the binary data in any Orange Box save file and access the console via a bind to a specific button. After the last update, however, the developer console was completely blocked from any modification.

• Forced Lag — Another specific Xbox 360 glitch where a strange "Deadzone" on Gravel Pit would lag all other players if the host jumps into it. This can be done by only the host and by jumping into the water hose located outside the red spawn door on the left. (Occurs on Xbox 360)

• Invisible 2Fort Bridge Roof — Sometimes, a player will be able to see through the bridge roof on 2Fort. Shots cannot go through this invisible roof though. The cause is unknown.

• Over the Player Limit If the room has too many spectators, the game will see that the room is still in need of players to fill it up. So, it will still be considered an open room. More players will be able to join and thus, the game will be over the maximum player limit. When the room goes back to the lobby and then they play another match, the game will automatically boot the players who recently joined who made it over the limit.

Xbox 360/PlayStation 3

• Losing the Aiming Crosshairs — Occasionally, if a player leaves a laggy game and join a new game, their crosshair or aiming reticule will not be visible on screen.

• Losing Main Menu Sound Effects Occasionally, if a player leaves a laggy game or gets lagged out, they will not have any sound effects in the main menu.

• Mouth glitch — Sometimes when a player does a taunt or response, the characters' mouth will not open but the sound can still be heard. The Soldier will never open his mouth when doing a Shovel Taunt.

Windows/Mac

(Note that some of these glitches may appear in the console versions)

Gameplay-specific glitches

• Civilian - This is a glitch which causes the player to appear to have no weapons in third person view and enter a reference pose.

• Crab walking (Spy Crab) - This is an in-game animation glitch that can make the Spy move around in an amusing fashion that resembles a crab. It is triggered by crouching while at the same time looking up with the Disguise Kit equipped. Often used by players who can perform it to a humorous effect, it does not affect gameplay at all. This was later recognized by Valve in the Sniper vs. Spy Update as an Easter egg for the Disguise Kit Taunt (roughly a 1 in 10 chance of happening).

• Marking a Cloaked Spy Glitch - This glitch occurs when a Spy is marked with the Fan O'War. The skull indicator is still present even if the Spy cloaks himself. However, this may be an intentional form of Spy checking.

Inconsistency bugs

• Building Damaged Model - Sometimes, after repairing a building, it will still emit smoke and small electric sparks implying that it is still damaged, despite the Sentry Gun being at full health. This can be fixed by redeploying the building. (Partially fixed)

• Invisible Models - Occasionally occurs on the PC version if Alt-Tab is used while in full screen mode. Weapon fire can be seen but the player's or weapons' models can not. This usually only happens on one random player with the rest of the players still being visible, and can lead to the player seeing the glitch to think the invisible player is using hacks.
  • On PC, these bugs can be fixed by typing record demo; stop into the console.

• Glitched Reflections - Happens occasionally when entering a server, some surfaces (mainly water and windows) will, instead of reflecting the normal skybox, reflect a purple/black checkerboard texture. This is caused by an unbuilt cubemap.

• Taunt While Dead - If a player dies immediately before a taunt dialogue line begins, their character will still say the taunt and even lip-sync while dead. (Happens frequently when taunting with the Bat or Minigun)

• Taunt Loop - If a Sniper does the Huntsman Taunt to another Sniper equipped with the Huntsman, the enemy Sniper can counter with his own Arrow Taunt, even when stunned. It is possible to chain this infinitely until a third party intervenes or one of the two decides to end it. The same thing can also happen with a pair of Engineers using the Gunslinger's taunt stun, and a pair of Medics using the Übersaw.

• The Wrenchslinger - Sometimes a player has the Wrench equipped but it shows the Wrench being held by the Gunslinger. The method to do this is by equipping the Gunslinger, going to the resupply locker, changing to your Wrench, and going to the resupply locker once again.

• The Safety Glove Slinger - Similar to "The Wrenchslinger", sometimes a player's Engineer hand will look like a regular safety glove even though he is equipped with the Gunslinger. Whilst taunting with the Gunslinger the player will appear to have a robotic hand equipped.

A BLU Engineer demonstrating the Safety Glove Slinger

• Blinking Hats - Sometimes other players' hats will appear to "blink" from pure white to black in-game. It's unknown how this happens or why. The glitch stops upon re-joining or map change.

• Custom Model Glitch - Custom models for weapons and players can fail to appear, or appear in a Wireframe state, if the player enters a server with SV_Pure set to 1, instead of the default model loading. This error will continue to manifest until the player restarts TF2, even if they enter a server with SV_Pure set to 0. SV_Pure 2 servers do not cause this bug.

• Spy's Third Arm Glitch - When a player reloads his Revolver and quickly equips the Dead Ringer or any other form of cloaking device, a second left arm will be reloading the Revolver, while the first is holding the Dead Ringer.

• Wrong team HUD - Occasionally being automatically balanced to the other team results in parts of the HUD being the wrong team color.[2]
  • This bug can be fixed by typing hud_reloadscheme into the console.

• Floating crit/flame effect - Sometimes the kritz or flame effect will appear out of nowhere and float for sometime during gameplay.[3]

• Misplaced laser position - When guiding a Sentry Gun with a Wrangler, there may be moments where the laser beam will be misplaced but will still point to the target.[4]

• Incorrect Disguise Weapon Glitch - This glitch is caused when a Spy who is alone in a game disguises as a Heavy and switches his disguise weapon to fists. After this, if the Spy changes his disguise to the Engineer class, the Engineer's active weapon will still be shown as fists. This may or may not work with other classes or weapons.

• Taunt While Moving - If a player taunts just before running off a ledge (using the imminent slowdown as leverage to fall), they will see themselves taunt briefly before falling off the ledge, where they will return to full first-person control. To everybody else, however, they will still be doing the taunt animation even if the player is moving around. This trick also works with the Action item taunts.

Glitches caused by lag compensation

• Flamethrower range - Occurs all the time. Sometimes a player can be instantly killed even when swept by the extreme range of the Flamethrower, or the Flamethrower has simply more range (not a critical sweep).

• "Killed through a wall" - Being killed by someone (with a direct weapon like a Sniper Rifle), despite being out of its view (and sometimes out of range). This is an artifact of lag compensation and is not an unforeseen bug but an intentional design trade-off in the networking code.

• Sliding characters - Some characters will assume a default position (standing still) and slide instead of running around. The Civilian always assumes this position, and is not a lag glitch. This also frequently occurs as a result of pausing (with server cvar sv_pausable 1).

• Fire effects glitch - Sometimes due to latency issues/lag, a player will fire their weapon, release the primary fire key, and still have fire effects emitting from their weapon, although it has no effect.

• Face stabbing - A Spy is able to achieve a backstab by stabbing someone's front. There have been several changes trying to reduce its occurrence. It now occurs as an artifact of client to server latency, although it usually looks legitimate to the Spy.

• Mouse sliding - Occasionally, a user who was recently experiencing a lot of lag will find their movement keys no longer control their character, and the character is instead controlled by mouse movements. This is caused by the +mousemove command and can be resolved by entering -mousemove in console or by pressing a key bound to +mousemove (the Alt key by default).

Source Engine Glitches

• On Windows, using The Right Alt Key + Tab Key to minimize TF2 then returning to TF2 by maximizing it may cause a glitch which causes several problems such as the prevention of the console command from opening (if it's not already open), no longer being able to use the "Backspace" key to delete text, and copy and paste shortcuts not working (right clicking to copy and paste manually works).
  • The work around to this glitch is to use Alt + Esc to minimize TF2 instead of right Alt + Tab or use left Alt + Tab key.
• Since the November 2nd Update, the Mac version constantly crashes.
  • The reason for this is unknown, and has not been recognized by Valve.

Glitches that require verification

Glitches listed here may have been patched at some stage and therefore require verification.

• Opposite Team skins - If a player who was playing as a Spy changes class, he will sometimes have the opposite skin (red or blue) of the team he is on. When another player looks at this player, the game will interpret that he is still a Spy, and will display the "Disguised as enemy/friendly class" under his name, depending on the last disguise used. The actual cause of this glitch is unknown.

See also

• Exploits