I actualy had a halflife 2 related dream once that had mini striders. They had a boxier head and no turret capability for their machine gun, they had to turn their head. But they could easily evade being hit by the bigger striders. They were for some reason controled by the rebels.
There were also mega striders wich were 10+ stories tall and had ultimate firepower. The main machine turret was much more powerfull, and they had a conventianal power one at each leg joint as well as two on the head. For their size their head was only marginaly bigger than on a regular strider leading to a very thin stilty look. Their main canon leveled large areas.
I was looking through the Source SDK C++ files and came across a whole bunch of references to TF2. Not that I really played TF1 much, but certainly I dont remember rideable guns, a mini-map or isometric commander view.
Extracts include...
"const.h"
MOVETYPE_ISOMETRIC, // For players -- in TF2 commander view, etc.
"c_baseplayer.h"
// Returns the view model if this is the local player. If you're in
// third person or this is a remote player, it returns the active
// weapon (and its appropriate left/right weapon if this is TF2).
"death.cpp"
// It should be positioned by TF2/HL2 separately, and TF2 should
// position it according to the minimap position
TF2 is something I can forget for months on end. But when a tiny snippet of info surfaces, I suffer from a short-term desire for it that borders on lust.
babyheadcrab: It's probably a commander view similar to what Tribes 2 implemented, in that you can view various team equipment and player locations, check status on them, etc.