Ok after helping some people set up qtf for their first time yesterday i thought i should write a tutorial to help people in future.
Despite what some websites say, you do NOT need to buy quake to run team fortress 2.8.
If you download and install the following 3 files in order, you should have yourself a working qtf setup... (working in windows 8.1 here)
Shareware Quake:
http://downloads.fat-suzy.tk/quaketf...p-beta099a.exe
FTE Quake:
http://fte.triptohell.info/ftedownlo...s/75-maintrunk
Choose the correct binary for your system, im using the opengl 64 version
Team Fortress 2.8:
http://downloads.fat-suzy.tk/quaketf/tf28.zip
So all you have to do is install the shareware version of quake (link 1), copy the FTEQuake exe into the install directory (link 2), and unzip tf28.zip into the install directory(link 3).
Run quake with the FTEquake exe you downloaded in link 2, then join a multiplayer game from the server list (you may have to refresh this).
With this setup you can join servers displaying "qw" and "fortress" in the "gamedir" column.