Capture the flag

From Free net encyclopedia

Capture the flag is a traditional outdoor game often played by children where two teams each have a flag and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base", and bring it back to their own base. It is also a popular paintball game.

One variation of the game includes a "jail" area in addition to the flag on each team's territory. If a member of one team gets tagged by a member of the second team in the second team's territory, the tagged person must sit in jail either for a pre-determined time limit, or until an untagged member runs through the jail.

Norwich Rules are typically played with three tennis balls in each base. This game was revolutionized by the famous Mann/Mosenthal team, who altered the rules slightly and drastically improved this game. The jail is set up as in the variation above. There is no time limit, and one person can only carry one tennis ball at a time. To get out of jail, you must be tagged by a member of your team, and you get a free walk back.

Software/games

Image:Bigscr1.gif In 1995, Richard Carr released a MS-DOS based game called Capture the Flag. It is a turn based strategy game with real time network / modem play (or play-by-mail) based around the traditional outdoor game.

A common gameplay mode called "Capture the Flag" (CTF) is found in many first-person shooters such as Quake, Unreal Tournament, and Tribes. Each team has a flag and the players attempt to take the enemy's flag from their base and bring it back to their own flag to score. CTF is most commonly played in multiplayer games.

Possibly the first FPS (and the first computer or video game) to feature CTF was Rise of the Triad, released in 1994. One of the multiplayer modes was called Capture the Triad, and conforms to the objectives stated above for CTF games in first person shooters, with the exception that the items to be captured/defended were triad symbols.

CTF was popularized when it was first introduced as a modification to Quake by the company Threewave. CTF is also a popular mode in the Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic mods for Quake and Half-Life respectively.

CTF mods are available for multiple first person shooters, and including Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory, which is a free download using the game engine from the popular Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Compared to a deathmatch game, CTF scenarios often feature some sort of transportation tool that can be used to travel faster and to reach areas which the player wouldn't normally be able to reach without this extra aid. Such tools might be a grappling hook (aka ninja rope) or a portable teleporter. In Battlefield 1942 CTF the many vehicles available in the game serve this role, though in ETF the vehicles move slower than the players, and are vulnerable objectives in most missions. The usual reason for including such equipment is because it allows players to outmanoeuvre the flag carrier on his way home, as the flag carrier is often not able to use transportation tools — or only certain vehicles such as in Unreal Tournament 2004 where only players in ground vehicles can hold and thus capture the flag, whereas useing air vehicles or the translocater (a personal teleporter/grappling hook) will cause the player to drop the flag. This feature gives the defenders an edge, thus making the game sessions last a bit longer.

There are also CTF variants for more than 2 teams (4 teams most commonly). In that case the scoring system can vary quite greatly.

The classic board game Stratego represents two armies attempting to capture the other's flag.

Computer security

In computer security, capture the flag (CTF) is an information warfare game. Each team is given a machine (or small network) to defend on an isolated network. Teams are scored on both their success in defending their assigned machine and on their success in attacking other team's machines. Depending on the nature of the particular CTF game, teams may either be attempting to take an opponent's flag from their machine or teams may be attempting to plant their own flag on their opponent's machine. CTF was popularized by the hacker conference DEF CON.

CTF is often used as an educational exercise to give participants experience in securing a machine, as well as in conducting and reacting to real attacks using commonly available tools, in order to demonstrate the level of effectiveness of their chosen defensive strategies and tools.

An international, academic CTF has been hosted twice by University of California, Santa Barbara. The winner of 2005 edition was the team from the Politecnico di Milano university in Italy.

Urban Gaming

Capture the Flag is among the games that have made a recent comeback among adults as part of the urban gaming trend (which includes games like Pacmanhattan and manhunt). The game is played on city streets and players use cellphones to communicate. News about the games spreads virally through the use of blogs and mailing lists. Urban Capture the Flag has been played in New York and Toronto by the groups newmindspace and nygames.da:Capture the flag de:Spielmodus (Computerspiel)#Capture the Flag he:הדגל nl:Capture the flag pl:Capture the Flag