So, you thought Team Fortress: Classic doesn't support bots?! Well, you thought wrong! Or at least only partially wrong. Team Fortress: Classic does not support bots by default, and you will need to install a mod (specifically Foxbot) that will allow Team Fortress: Classic to support bots. You might be wondering why you would need a guide to install a simple mod and you'd be right to ask this, but Foxbot can be a little tricky to install, even with the directions included with the mod. Namely, Foxbot downloads in a somewhat "broken" state by default. This guide will save you a headache by providing instructions on how to install the mod correctly.

As stated previously, you will need a mod to enable bots in Team Fortress: Classic. The preferred mod is Foxbot. While it might sound a little scary, Foxbot has been around for years. At least 14+ years. It is easily the most popular bot implementation. Also, you will not be VAC banned for using it as it is a server side plugin that runs through metamod (and even older mod for tons of Valve games). Foxbot is still receiving updates all these years later and can be downloaded from Github here: https://github.com/APGRoboCop/foxbot/releases



Find the latest release and scroll down to assets. Click the one that says foxbot_087 (or whatever the latest release is). Ignore the source code files.

Open the newly downloaded Foxbot zip file. You should see a folder that says addons. Click and drag or copy/paste this folder into your Half-Life tfc folder.

Default location: C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Half-Life\tfc

Your folder should look something like this:

Now that we have Foxbot installed in the right location. We need to configure Metamod. In the Half-Life tfc folder, scroll down and open the file titled “liblist.gam”. Windows will prompt you on what app to use. Just open it with Notepad.



There isn’t a lot to look at here, but find the line that says gamedll "dlls\tfc.dll". Replace the text with this:
//gamedll "dlls\tfc.dll"
gamedll "addons\metamod\dlls\metamod.dll"

If you did it correctly, it should look like this:



Next, you should test it in game. Launch Team Fortress: Classic and create a server. Just pick a random map. Click the tilde button (`) on your keyboard to open the console and you should see something about Metamod loading.



If it is not working then double check the text that you entered above. It is case sensitive and will not work if you do not enter the text correctly.

This is the critical step that gave me the most headache. But it’s really simple compared to the last step. Go back to your Half-Life tfc folder. Open the addson folder. Then open Metamod. Open the Plugins.ini.

In the Plugins.ini check that win32 is loading Foxbot correctly. By default you will probably see something like addons\foxbot\foxbot_mm.dll. You just need to delete the “_mm” so that it looks like this: addons\foxbot\foxbot.dll

But if you want to be sure. Go back to the addson folder and open the foxbot folder. Note the filename for the foxbot.dll. This is what should be above in the Plugins.ini

The last step is optional, because if you did everything correctly above then Foxbot should be working with the default settings. But if you want you can change some things such as the number of bots to spawn, behavior, personalities, difficulty, etc.

To do this go to the addson folder. Open the foxbot folder. Open the tfc folder and then open the foxbot.cfg file using Notepad. Once open, you can change whatever options you want! I suggest increasing the bots to at least 18. (9 bots for each team + the player). This is found under the max bots setting. If you did everything correctly then when you launch the game and open the console you should see something like this:



Thanks and Have Fun!