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it became apearnt today in IRC that the current game modes are a bit outa whack in there consistency. So I'd like to write up a list of game modes (ways peopl play) so we can see about geting them properly defined in the game for 1.12


Team FFA ( aka Team DeathMatch ).
Current FFA mode. 1-4 teams battle for top kill score. Team total. Rouges may be added, they are counted as indivduals. Team kills are peanalised. Tank color determines team.

Open FFA ( proper Deathmatch ).
True Free For All. No teams, highst score wins. Tank color does not infer team. Same color kills are NOT peanalised.

CTF ( capture the flag ).
Team game. One colored base per team color. Tank color determines team. Rouges may be added, they are counted as indivduals .Team kills are peanalised. Flag capture kills all players of caputred color. Tank kills are not scored, score is only based on captures ( this is a sugested change ).

Open HTF ( Hold the flag ).
Free for all game ( no teams). Tank color does NOT determine team. One base is defined as the HTF base. All players spawn there as well as a single HTF flag ( yellow? ). Players must atempt to deliver the flag to a colored base on the map ( may be more then one ). Same Color kills are not peanalised. Tank kills are not scored. All other players die on a delivery ( capture stle). Score is based on deliversys (captures ).

Team HTF
Team game. Tank color does infer team. One base is defined as a HTF base. All players spawn there along with 1 HTF flag. Teams must work to deliver the HTF flag to there colored base. Team kills are pealised. . Rouges may be added, they are counted as indivduals. Tank kills are not scored. All other team's memberss die on delivery (capture). Score is based on captures.

Rabbit Chase
Free for all game. One tank is chosen to be the "rabbit" his tank is white. All other tanks are orange and labed "hunters". Hunters try to kill the rabbit. Rabit gets points for each 5 seconds s/he stays the rabbit. Huners are considerd to be on the same team. Hunter/hunter kills are punshed. Kills are not scored, only time as rabbit is scored. When a rabbit is killed, the player who killed the rabbit becomes the rabbit. Color has no effect on anything. Server has an optional reset time. ( this is all a sugested change )

Rabbit Hunt
Free for all game. One tank is chosen to be the "rabbit" his tank is white. All other tanks are orange and labed "hunters". Hunters try to kill the rabbit. Hunters get points for killing only the rabbit, the rabbit gets points only for killing hunters. Huners are considerd to be on the same team. Hunter/hunter kills are punshed. When the rabbit is killed a new rabbit is picked at random. Color has no effect on anything. Server has an optional reset time. ( this is all a sugested new mode)

Now HTF isn't really "hold" the flag
it's more like deliver the flag.

if it was hold then you would get points for time. and that is more like what rabbit mode should be.

perhaps it sould be called "deliver the package" or UPS or something?

we can also think about unlocking new colors for the true Open modes, since color dosn't mean team.

like allow the orange, and white tanks, and add colors like brown, yellow, pink, teal and others.

this would allow for more player expression ( allmost a skin ) in the open games.

But Pat, HTF isnt a team game...

elmer, that' is the discussion. Some people have said it could be a team game too.

The one you speak of is Open HTF. where there are no teams.

I am just trying to layout how I think all the difrent game modes should work. And to include what everyone plays them.

Added rabbit hunt, and updated rabbit chase

Ok, the way I see it there are four core game styles:

Free For All
The object of this style is to shoot other tanks. Points given for shooting tanks. Points lost for being shot.

Capture Someone Else's Flag (yes, it needs a better name. )
Go get someone else flag and bring it back to your base. Shooting other tanks does not affect your score. Points given for capturing a flag. Points lost for your flag being captured. You blow up, you and your flag return to your base when your flag is captured.

Capture The Flag
There's one target flag that everybody is trying to capture. Shooting other tanks does not affect your score. Points given for getting the flag to your base. Everyone else blows up when you capture.

Rabbit Hunt
One tank is selected to be the rabbit. The other tanks are hunters. Hunters get points by shooting the rabbit and lose points for being shot by the rabbit. The rabbit gets points by shooting the hunters and loses points for being shot by the hunters. A new rabbit is chosen when the current rabbit is shot.

Each of these styles can then be Team or Open. In Team games, there are no individual scores. The scoreboard should only display the teams' scores. Shooting a teammate should have a penalty. Without individual scores, this probably means you blow up. Repeated TKing should get you kicked. Open games have no teams. All tanks in an open game should probably be rogue-colored to reduce confusion.

look, just talk to the people that actually play htf and add it in their way. not some people that hear about it and say it would be cool with teams. it wasnt created to be a team game.

i dont want to go off topic here ..i do like the idea of straightening out all the gametypes for the future releases ..

just want to clear things up an point out alil history on HTF .

originally , HTF or Hold-The-Flag , started because a few of us regular CTF players were playing Capture the Flag but because there were an uneven amount of players at the time we devised another way of playing , allowing eveyone to play while keeping it even and fair . instead of 2 teams , there was only one team . and the point was to get the team flag and HOLD onto the flag as long as you can , while the other players hunt after you and try to be the flagholder . the longer you were able to hold the flag , and the more times you became the flagholder , showed that you were the better player . being the one with the flag was our way of indicating that you were now the "bunny" or main target . and that most times you were able to be the bunny because you were the one that killed the previous flagholder , thus gaining the right to be the next flagholder . this was way before the bunnyhunt concept came about . this was a way for us to play a "bunnyhunt" kind of game even before any actual coding was done for it .
capturing your own team flag and getting points for it came later , but by then it was already termed "HTF" or "Hold-the-flag" and the name has stayed with it ever since . thats where the term Hold-the-flag came from . so basically , bunnyhunt is now , what HTF used to be ...
in regular CTF games you do not get points for capturing , since capturing is suppose to be a team effort , and so it does not recognize individual contribution .
HTF changed to capturing team flags to help fill this gap , by giving long overdue credit to the actual tank that is playing for the capture , and not just for the kills .

also , i think HTF would be a neat addition to bzflag .
bzflags' charm is not in its graphics , but in its fun and simple gameplay . this helps it compete and stay popular over many of the other games that are in the present market . bzflag is more fun than some games out there that have fancy graphics but offer little else . basically "eyecandy" .
most First-Person-Shooter games out there now have the familiar player vs. bots(computer) , CTF , FFA and FFA team gamemodes , but nothing like HTF ..or even bunnyhunt ...

RC cola, yes many people like to play it, but when it was being discussed on how to add it to the game, there became confusion.

I am just trying to get them all out in the open so we can get them proerly defined and in the game. It seems many people play each game type a bit difrently.

I agree the current way you all play HTF is what I wrote as OpenHTF. You have to deal with Team kills, cus the current system puts everyone ( cept rouge) in a team. I am sugesting changing that so you all can have a proper No Team HTF, and let the game score it for you. No more of this using a bot to hold the green flag stuff.

The discusion came up that a true Team based HTF may be fun as well, so I wrote that up too.

Since we are talking about making a true teamless game ( something BZ does NOT do now ). It became apearnt that we could probably apply that same logic to other game types ( the Open FFA ). As most people play FFA don't really work as a team ( decks anyone? ). So it seems reasonable to call that a posible new game mode.

We have to start geting away from thinking of Team and Color as the same thing. When player skins are in, color will not = team. So may as well get started on that concept now. In a true Free for all, we can use color to just let people pick a color they like, and as I state open up some more colors. Since in your No Team HTF there should not be any teams it's seems reasonable to let people be any color, as long as we make the game code work with the rules you want ( 1 flag, everyone spawns at the HTF base ).

Elmer, we'd love to just add HTF, but so far we have seen a bunch of difrent ways people play it. And before we code it we need to get what HTF exactly is, defined. And based on how I've seen you all play it, this is how it's defined ( in the OpenHTF type ). lan65 is willing to code it up but there have been unanswered questions on how it should play.

Tho I agree with brygen, it does need a new name, but not for current CTF, it's close enough to how all the other games( yes there are other games out there, and yes BZ IS a FPS like them, just with a difrent set of rules that make it nice ) define CTF so it should stay. CTF is comonly accepted to be 1 flag per team, get the other team's flag, bring to your base, get points. I don't think we should change that name at all. It may not make sense to some, but it's an accepted name.

and yes RC cola, most other games have HTF ( it's called bombing run in UT 2k3 + or single flag CTF in others). You have just pulled the team requirement. And rabbit chase is commonly called CTC ( capture the chicken ).

As you say bz has no eye candy, people play for the game part, this is why we must define it as well as posible, cus that' is all bzflag REALLY is.

bryjen, I think we are saying the same thing, I just have some difrent names, and split up stuff into individual modes.

you can call my rabbit hunt your rabbit chase, and then just change my rabbit chase to "rabbit run" and we'd be ok there.

On a somewhat different, but still related topic. How hard would it be to implement some sort of filter on the server list screen?

Where you could choose the gametype that you wish to play, and have it only list servers running that gametype?

the info is there, it would just be the interface work to make it happen

Patlabor221 wrote:we can also think about unlocking new colors for the true Open modes, since color dosn't mean team.

like allow the orange, and white tanks, and add colors like brown, yellow, pink, teal and others.

this would allow for more player expression ( allmost a skin ) in the open games.

More team colors would be good, in my opinion. I think a game with 8 teams, two players per team, would be very interesting.

But, uh, let's skip the orange team color, OK?

that's just it, color does NOT mean team. 4 teams is enough for now. But in teamless games let them pick any skin color for just personal expession..


The team is color thinking is gonna have to be broken, tho I don't know if people can do that.

Re HTF: I have played HTF, not in the original way to just hold the flag, but in the often-played version of capturing your own flag. I like it very much. But this doesn't mean that one cannot envision other ways to play too. Both variants can be implemented. You can choose to play what suits you better.

Re the names: yes, HTF should probably be a real "Hold" the flag (with score based on time à la Rabbit Chase). And CTF is probably more appropriately as "everybody trying to capture the same flag". For what is currently known as CTF we could use the name CAF: Capture Any Flag (but yours ).

Re colors: beware of colorblind people. For red/green colorblinds, blue/purple are already hard enough to tell apart. Maybe we need some other mark than just plain color to tell teams apart. Some sign or something (maybe as an option for colorblind people).

Patlabor221 wrote:that's just it, color does NOT mean team. 4 teams is enough for now. But in teamless games let them pick any skin color for just personal expession..


The team is color thinking is gonna have to be broken, tho I don't know if people can do that.

Heh, you're right... but I'd like more team color options too

Anyway, teams ARE colors, but colors are not necessarily teams. Unless there is another good way on radar and main screen to indicate teams.

one thing at a time orange

Would Hoard The Flag be a better name for HTF where you capture the flag?

how about ..RTF? (Run-The-Flag?)

Flag-Bombing-Run?

Capture-Nuke-Flag?

or CYF? (Capture-Your-Flag?)
regular CTF could be redefined as Capture-Their-Flag instead of Capture-The-Flag...

or CHF (Carny-H8r-Flag ;)

lol j/k

Oblomov if you haven't played the original version of HTF you missed out on alot of fun! .. i used to prefer it over bunnyhunt because it sorta avoided the whole argument over who should rightfully be the next "bunny" target tank because it was simply decided by whoever could get their hands on the flag first .

..greed can be fun sometimes >;) heehe

whats also great about HTF was that there were no disputes over teamkilling other hunters , whether by accident or on purpose , because in true HTF , killing each an every other tank was part of the game >;)


bunnyhunt/chase is still a good gamestyle though for those that like to hunt in packs =)


"all's fair in love an war"

Run the flag sounds a good name, as it describes the point of the thing.

tho RTF sounds kinda funny

lol

ya RTF sounds kinda funny because it reminds me of "ROTFL" because everytime i play that game it cracks me up LoL


but i agree it does describe better the current way the gamestyle is played .

the revision looks good pat =)

or RTFM

we could stay it means, Run The Flag Man!!!

I've send a message to Tim asking if he is ok with standardising on these game modes. If he is I'll see if I can't get some developers to make the changes, I know lan56 is willing to do the HTF changes so long as he has a clear plan.