The Capture The Flag mode - Make Captures Matter?

Developer discussion of experimental fixes, changes, and improvements.

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  • The last days I've been working a lot with CSQC. It all started when victim made a KeyHunt HUD in CSQC.
    To get rid of the engine's hud and thus making the whole thing more flexible, I remade the whole HUD and Scoreboard in CSQC, and also added victim's KH changes.
    Not only does that lead to improvements and changes, because CSQC can do a lot more:

    Here are some screenshots of the developement, you might get an idea where I'm going with this (if you haven't read the title of this topic already :P)
    http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard1.png
    http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard2.png
    http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard3.png
    http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoresboard4.png
    http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard5.png
    http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard6.png
    http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard7.png
    http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/make- ... matter.png
    http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/ctfscores2.png (No, I was in the blue team captured, and then joined red, so the blue team DOES have 1 cap, even though the bot has 0)

    The last 3 are the most recent and interesting ones.

    It is now possible to actually count and display the flag-captures for each player, and the team.
    However, RoKenn brought up some interesting points:
    1) flagwhores (as he calls them) will be rewarded - Defenders won't
      Well the thing is, the captures would count more than the frags of course. If the capture-score is 5:3, and the frag-score is 200:300, the first team would win. Although good defense also makes it harder to actually capture

    2) measuring the individual contribution
      Let's assume blue sucks, and the cap/frag scores (red:blue) are: 20:3/50:50. How'd you rate the contribution of the red defenders? Imagine Red treid to capture 20 times, and Blue 3 times, and comopare that to: Red trying to capture 50 times, and Blue trying to capture 3 times... or Red trying to capture 23 times and Blue trying to capture 50 times. The scores could still be the same in the end


    When does a match end?
    Well sure, you can say there's a capturelimit, and as soon as one team reaches the limit, it wins.

    Then, should you also get frags for capturing?

    Or, capturelimit is 0, so the game has a time limit, and when it ends:
    1) The team with more captures wins
    2) If they're equal, team with more frags wins
    3) If they're equal, there'll be overtime
    4) Both teams suck and go to hell


    OR:
    Just leave everything untouched...

    What are your thoughts?

    Of course, most likely there will be a cvar to choose between those modes...
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    Blµb
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Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:57 pm

  • I have an idea to encourage defence and teamplay that you could incorporate into the scoreboard.

    Create several "awards" categories to be displayed at the end of the game. For instance, a "best defender" based on the number of times someone KILLED the enemy flag carrier (not for flag returns, because the one who killed the enemy FC deserves more credit imo, but that's debatable). Maybe have a "best protector" award for killing enemies who are attacking your flag carrier, "most attentive" for picking up dropped flags, etc (just dropping these off the top of my head).

    That could extend to non-CTF-specific awards later too ("best sniper"/"biggest railbitch", "rocket whore", etc.)


    That might help to raise awareness of what people should be doing instead of spawncamping the enemy flag while their base and FC get raped elsewhere. It would also provide recognition for those who don't get a high frag/cap count even though they're make a great contribution to the team.
    Xeno
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Sun Jul 06, 2008 8:11 pm

  • It should be tested on a real public server, but I think :
    - the winning team is the one to reach the capturelimit
    - no overtime (it could take to much time for some maps, etc.).If the timelimit is reached and teams have the same number of capture, then the team with the most frags/points wins.
    - to reward people, a special screen at the end display for the winning team the best attacker (based on individual capture), the best defender (based on how many flag carrier fragged or/and the number of retrieved flags), and some other funny award (best snipper, most suicide, etc.)

    To manage the flagwhores problem, the frags/points could be :
    - counted only by the number of frags
    - counted by the number of frags, and to kill a flag carrier and retrieve the flag make additional points
    Ronan
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Sun Jul 06, 2008 8:29 pm

  • IIRC so far (without csqc) it wasn't possible to separate team score and individual scores. If it is now (like the team still having the cap, but it doesn't get assigned to anyone else when the scorer leaves) that would be a big improvement imho.

    And yes, there should either be something like a "best defender" award, or scores given for those things (capping, shooting efc, returning flag) to the individuals, but not the team. (Why should the team be rewarded for allowing its flag to be stolen anyway?)

    And now for something completely different: if it's not too complicated, wouldn't it be nice to have a "AND THE WINNING TEAM IS" screen at the end? Maybe split screen with the voting. The current "... wins" message just scroll away before anyone notices.
    [Tue Aug 5 2008] [00:15:01] <Ronan`> RoKenn, you're an evil person :P
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    RoKenn
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Sun Jul 06, 2008 8:40 pm

  • Showing the winner in the end is a good idea and I'll implement that. As far as the splitscreening is concerned, that might be a little harder. Although... even that might work since csqc also captures centerprinted texts...

    The award idea seems to be a good one too.
    And about killing the carrier and retrieving the flag - what should be done there? Should that be counted seperately too, just like the captures? Or added as frags? Like +5 for killing the carrier. Currently returning the flag gives some frags too afaik.
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    Blµb
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Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:03 am

  • the radical approach to rewarding defense, killing and returning the flag = same value as a capture. (lets say 1 cap is worth 50 frags, 25 for fc kill, 25 for return)

    also, what abt assists and sutch?

    progress looks great btw, keep up the good work =)
    HOF:
    <Diablo> the nex is a "game modification"
    <Diablo> quake1 never had a weapon like that.
    <Vordreller> there was no need for anything over 4GB untill Vista came along
    <Samua>]Idea: Fix it? :D
    <Samua>Lies, that only applies to other people.
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    tZork
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Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:41 am

  • Maybe captures shouldn't be rewarded with frags at all. A capture is worth more than frags anyway :)
    So order players with most captures first in scoreboard. And then by frags.
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    morfar
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Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:44 am

  • I dont think they should (get frags for cap), but when scores are summarized a cap must be equal to # frags methinks.. or perhaps add a second score, "game score" for caps/returns/etc and de-couple frags totaly from sin conditions.
    HOF:
    <Diablo> the nex is a "game modification"
    <Diablo> quake1 never had a weapon like that.
    <Vordreller> there was no need for anything over 4GB untill Vista came along
    <Samua>]Idea: Fix it? :D
    <Samua>Lies, that only applies to other people.
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    tZork
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Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:49 am

Mon Jul 07, 2008 6:41 pm

  • I think we need to start breaking this down into 2 scoreboards, one for during the game and one for post game. Here's what I came up with for during game.

    Image

    FIXED:
    Image

    Post game I'd like a tabbed scoreboard that uses the menu system div created showing off awards, shots fired and hit, etc. Div said the menu system is not currently coded to support this stating it runs off a static .dat file for performance reasons.


    Notes:
    [14:50:38] <morfar> Not sure about the column order though.. caps should be first in ctf

    Something I overlooked. I agree with morfar.
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    [-z-]
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Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:26 pm

  • the menu system idea has been rejected, nevertheless I can make it have tabs (assuming the mouse is working, that's one thing I forgot to test before 2.4)
    Look at that pic of yours, I'm so good, I can play in 2 teams!
    But how dare you gimme such a bad score? :P

    Yay, I do like the design of that thing, but it's gonna be some more coding work, and I'm not sure about the possibility to choose by which its ordered. Might add that some day but it's low priority. At least for the in-game scoreboard. Although that's not even much coding work.


    EDIT: UPDATE:
    So, the returning and killing the flag carrier wouldn't count as frag at all, but in the end will be added as "scores" internally to decide who wins, should the caps be equal and overtime be switched off...

    That ok? :)
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    Blµb
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Mon Jul 07, 2008 9:21 pm



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