Glitches

“

Grrrrr...[mumbles] Click to listen — The Engineer fed up with game-breaking glitches

”

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 Team Fortress 2 are denied access the developer console. Before the July 21, 2009 Patch (Xbox), 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 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.

• Invisible 2Fort Bridge Roof. Occasionally, a player will be able to see through the bridge roof on 2Fort. However, the roof remains solid. The cause is a texture error for the roof.

• Over the Player Limit. If the room has too many spectators, the game assumes players are still needed on the teams. Therefore, 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. After the room has gone back to the lobby and another match begins, the game will automatically boot the players who recently joined that made it over the limit.

Xbox 360/PlayStation 3

• Losing the Crosshairs. Occasionally, if a player leaves a laggy game and joins 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 game during lag or gets disconnected due to lag, they may not have any sound effects in the main menu.

• Closed Mouths. Occasionally when a player does a taunt or response, the characters' mouth will not play any animation, but the sound can still be heard. The Soldier will never open his mouth when doing a Shovel Taunt. This glitch can happen on Windows/MAC versions.

Windows/Linux/Mac

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

Gameplay-specific glitches

• Reference Pose (Civilian) - A glitch which causes the player to appear to have no weapons in on their world model, and causes their model to enter a reference pose.

• Respawn Timer Restart - a glitch where the respawn timer restarts, most commonly if the player is still selecting a class, a example of this can be found here

• Taunting On Round End - A glitch which, upon losing a round, causes all extra models for taunts such as weapons, the box For The (Box Trot), Grenade and Scotch for (Spent Well Spirits), etc. to be invisible/missing. This is similar to the viewing of certain taunts on the loadout screen.

Inconsistency bugs

• Building Damaged Model - Occasionally, 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)
  • Rarely, a Sapper can be seen on the Sentry Gun in the Sapper position, but the Sentry Gun will still remain fully functional. The Sapper will be shown in the Spy's HUD, though the building's remaining health will not decrease.

A BLU Sentry Gun with a Snack Attack model on it, though no damage is being dealt.

• Invisible Player Models - This glitch occurs on the PC version sometimes if the Alt+Tab shortcut is used while in full screen mode. Upon returning to the game weapon fire can be seen but the player's or weapons' models cannot. This usually happens on a random player with the rest of the players still being visible.
  • The player affected may be 'seen' on a random place on the map. The player's model and weapons will not be visible, but one may be able to see his name, the Intelligence if one is being carried, or particles such as water particles surrounding him. However, the player will not move from the location, but the particles may move.
  • On PC, these bugs can be fixed by typing record demo; stop into the console.

A RED Scout in spawn with an invisible model, carrying the Intelligence.

• Invisible Spawn Gate - This glitch is where a spawn gate is invisible or partly invisible. The effect is purely visual, and enemies still are unable to enter the spawn.
  • This glitch can be fixed in a similar fashion to the one above.

An invisible spawn gate for BLU on pl_thundermountain.

• Taunting 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 Ubersaw. Example of this bug.

• The Wrenchslinger - Occasionally, while a player has the Wrench equipped, 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 the Engineer's hand will look like a regular safety glove even though he is equipped with the Gunslinger. This may occur if the player is currently having lag. For some users, using the in-game overlay and searching something or watching a video will produce him/her the lagging. Whilst taunting with the Gunslinger the player will appear to have a robotic hand equipped. This glitch has also been observed when executing scripts and commands that change network settings.
  • This will always happen when using the command itemtest and testing the Gunslinger.

A BLU Engineer demonstrating the Safety Glove Slinger.

• Blinking Hats - Occasionally other player's hats will appear to "blink" from pure white to black in-game. 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. The glitch occurs when a player has their viewmodel_fov higher than 65. Another example is when the Spy is holding the Dead Ringer out with a weapon other than the default Sapper out, (say, the Knife) and switches to the Sapper. The Spy's left arm is holding the Dead Ringer, but a second left arm appears to turn on the Sapper. Also can happen when the player has equipped the Sharp Dresser and the Dead Ringer and the player has the viewmodel_fov higher than normal.

• Wrong Team HUD - Occasionally being automatically balanced to the other team results in parts of the HUD being the wrong team color.[1]
  • This bug can be fixed by typing hud_reloadscheme into the console.

• Floating Critical Hits/Flame Effect - Sometimes the critical hit or flame effect will appear out of nowhere and float for sometime during gameplay.

• 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.

• 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.
  • This might be caused by the default Shotgun being buggy when nobody is playing the class, since the game fails to load it in.

• Inability to lose on Mann Vs. Machine - It is possible that when the bomb detonates the game will continue without forcing a loss. The pit will appear exploded so when players from either team walk onto it they will die. This may only happen if there are only two to five players on the server.

• Infinite Reloading - If a player playing on the winning team is reloading their primary weapon when Humiliation ends, then when they respawn in the next round they will keep going through the reload animation until the player uses primary fire.

• Reloading while shooting - It is possible to reload while shooting, if the current weapon's magazine is not empty.

• Infinite Market Gardener Crit - If a player rocket jumps just between 0 to 1 sec of the waiting for players countdown, when the round starts the player's Market Gardener will crit until they die, rocket jump or hold the Rocket Launcher for too long.

• Wrong Health Hud - This bug occurs when using a custom hud, in which when a player dies, respawns with his health indicator stating he is at critical health. This can be fixed by typing hud_reloadscheme into the console.

• Cosmetics Floating - This bug occurs when there are lots of custom cosmetics and/or lag that can cause classes to appear "hatless" but still show they have cosmetics that will show if you view their items. Somewhere else their cosmetics will appear floating in a somewhat civilian pose order.

• Smoke coming from an invisible Spy - Sometimes, when a Spy is holding a Spycicle there can be "smoke" seen coming off of it, even though he is invisible.

• Vote-screen crash - If you open up the vote screen during the Killcam, as the camera is zooming into the person who killed you, the vote screen will remain as a static image on screen. This prevents the player from closing it and doing basically anything except moving side to side. Forcing the TF2 client to shutdown is the only fix.

• Kill Assist/Dominate Own Teammate - If a Medic heals an enemy Spy, and the Spy kills a player on the Medic's team, the Medic will get the kill assist. In the kill feed, the Medic's username will be the same color as that of the Spy's, despite the Medic not being on the Spy's team. The Medic can also dominate teammates by doing this.

• Partner taunts - During a partner taunt with an enemy (not a group taunt), you will temporarily 'join' the taunt starter's team, which can lead to exploits like taking enemy Teleporters.

Glitches caused by lag compensation

• Sliding characters - Some characters will assume a default position (standing still) and slide instead of playing their running animation. 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.

• 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 occasion, using the Alt+Tab shortcut then returning to TF2 may cause a glitch which causes several problems such as; the prevention of the developer's console from opening (if it's not already open), no longer being able to use the "backspace" key to delete text, and the copy and paste shortcuts not working (right clicking to copy and paste manually works).
  • The work around to this glitch is to press Alt again after returning, as after Alt+Tabbing, the game thinks you're still holding the key.
    • Another way to work around to this glitch is to use the Alt+Esc shortcut to minimize TF2 instead of the Alt+Tab shortcut.
  • Another glitch associated with Alt+Tab is the total loss of voice chat in-game on some systems, especially when playing in fullscreen. The only known remedy for this glitch is to quit the game itself and restart (and not Alt+Tab during gameplay).

Inventory glitches

Inventory glitches are glitches with the inventory system in the game. These usually result in items with abnormal traits, most frequently altered item qualities. These items are unique in that they are the product of short-term glitches that are usually fixed quickly, making them difficult to acquire without trading.

• Disappearing items - Some players have experienced at least one of their items totally disappearing from their backpacks, whether it be from crafting with no results or not receiving items they traded for, or other methods. Steam Support used to give back items upon request, although this is now denied with "no exceptions" in cases of hijacking since May 2016. However, in extraordinary exceptions such as items evidently disappearing from backpack, they may still rarely restore the item.

• Unable to craft - Occasionally, players have been unable to craft items or follow certain crafting blueprints in the menus (such as "Rebuild Headgear") with no apparent internet connection problems on either client or server sides, and thus unknown cause. Ability to craft tends to be randomly restored at a later time.

• Normal Stranges - In the Gun Mettle Update, several changes to the item schema led to, for a short time, some unboxed Strange-quality items being labeled as Normal while still retaining their kill-counting abilities. These included Australium weapons found in Mann Up. These items are extremely rare, especially the Australium variants, leading to them being extremely expensive and hard to find.

• Normal Bats - Among the first, if not the first glitched items, Normal Bats are still somewhat of a mystery. They are tradable variants of the stock Bat that retain their Normal quality, even after being renamed or described. According to glitched item collector Toxins, about 5 of these Bats exist, and all have the item level 0. Additionally, their internal attributes state that they were received via in-game item drops. How they came to be is still exactly unknown, but it is believed to be an early server glitch.

• Steam Support Normals - Steam Support sometimes makes mistakes granting players their items back properly. Among these mistakes is incorrectly granting players Normal-quality items that should be of Unique quality. For example, a Normal Ellis' Cap and a Normal Mann Co. Supply Crate Key both exist due to Steam Support.

• Steam Support Vintages - Steam Support is also responsible for a wave of Vintage-quality items, most popularly Vintage Bill's Hats and Vintage Earbuds. This was due to players abusing Steam Support's tendency of restoring deleted items in the Vintage quality by deleting their own items and requesting their restoration; this subsequently led to Steam Support rarely granting items back and only doing so in the proper quality.

• Painted Cow Mangler 5000 - For a very brief period of time, a glitch allowed for paint to be used on the Cow Mangler 5000 before being patched in the October 14, 2011 Patch. Very few of these Cow Mangler 5000s exist, making them extremely expensive and rare. Prior to the July 10, 2013 Patch, the Cow Mangler 5000's projectiles were also colored by the paint; a rework of the Cow Mangler 5000's particles fixed this issue.

See also

• Exploits