Haii, it's been a while. I'm not back permanently but I couldn't pass up a 72hr jam. I'll probably be back after the summer, also I'm getting married in a week!

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Like with the campaign gamemode I made an interactive diagram for this gamemode which you can find it here

The gamemode has 4 points where they are captured in a circle until one team owns all 4. The games start with each team owning 2 points, the points are connected. Teams' rearmost point (against the flow of the order of points) is unlocked, if a team owns 2 or 3 points the front 1 or 2 are locked.
Default wavespawns are 6 seconds (I'm just guessing, this is meant to be a fast paced gamemode) where if a team owns 3 points their respawn time is decreased a bit and the other team is increased by a bit. This is both to counter the fact that on final point the defenders will spawn very close and the attacker's point to defend is on the other side of the map. When a team owns 3 points a door opens offering a shortcut that is more direct across the map rather than via their other point.
Teleports are set up in spawn rooms so that anyone idle will be moved along. The prefab also includes signs to signify when a spawn room is active and who owns it.
If the time runs out and both teams have 2 points 1 minute is added to overtime and the points become sudden death, instant capture to win so make sure you're standing on your point. At the end of the 1 minute overtime, stalemate.

This gamemode is intended for an asymmetrical style, because any team can spawn anywhere. Just be aware that when balancing you need to take note of where the winning team starts and ends, you need to balance per point regardless of team.

There are relays that exist to determine who owns a spawn room such that spawn rooms can look the colour of the team they are, please use it and don't have neutral spawn rooms. Also please make spawn rooms distinct, they cannot be the same box. Ideally wildly different like one could be spy tech, one could be outdoors, one could be in a wooden shack, and the other in a brick building, and all of them tinted to the team that owns them.

Prefab and You​

Contents, the goodies​

• 4 control points with a prop_dynamic in the middle and a control point entity to the side
• 4 spawn rooms with teleports, 16 spawn points, a teleport destination, and some barrels that will change colour based on ownership (as a bare minimum). 3 relays that fire if a spawn room is owned by red, blu, or none (feel free to ignore the none relay if you want spawns to match the control points, good for external details)
• 4 spawn doors (windowed, visibility is key for orientation), with a spawnroom visualiser placed away from the door for you to do as you wish (*cough* it'd be cool to have a little area outside of spawn that was safe but not big enough for buildings). A sign is included that will show which team, if any, owns the spawn room and can use it.
• 4 setup gates used for shortcuts. If you would like different sizes just copy the names of both the top and bottom half of the doors and ensure that they are not set to kill when they open (as default in ABS)
• Some nifty orange arrows, please don't use them tho

Spawn rooms, where the party begins​

Good spawn room design in this gamemode is vital. Spawn rooms should have a short travel time to exit and be visually distinct both between the other points but should also show what team a player is. I expect it to be common for someone to spawn in one spawn room, progress through the game, die, and end up spawning in the opposite spawn room. Until players get a feel for the map as much work should be done to reduce mental strain.

Spawn points should face towards the way to attack, players should then expect to turn right and leave to go to defend. This should be consistent such that it doesn't matter which spawnroom someone spawns in, w to attack, turn right and w to defend.

For example a map could have a spawn room that is spy tech, another that is outside, one that is in a wooden shack, and the last being in a brick building. They are each set up to change the walls so that the textures are team coloured and props that have a red and blu version are changed to red or blue.

In the diagrams and prefab I have made I have placed the spawn room behind the control point and away from the centre. I did this so that in 2:2 it's faster to run to defend than to attack. However you are by no means bound to keeping it.

Control points, otherwise it's deathmatch​

You are free to place them however you want, but I trialed various scales and found that a decent distance between points is around 2'500hu between (1792x1792 square with points on opposite corners), 3'000 was a bit too long. As the crow flies distances do not necessarily need to be exactly the same as some routes may be windier than others and would benefit for a shorter direct distance. Measure distances using time.

Short cuts, in elitest style​

These are for team members who own 3 points to travel backwards to the point they need to defend without going via the middle point. The middle out of bounds area I've found that 2048x2048 or smaller works well time wise. These shortcuts can be placed right up against the middle out of bounds area.

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Project history​

Everything released in this zip file was made during the 72hr jam, but I learnt some things beforehand that I would like to share.

This project started last year unsuccessfully, I tried a few different ways to do this, I learnt more about how the HUD's cap point layout really works and its annoying bug. The problem with control points is that they need a few seconds at the start of the round before they can be touched which limits the options of how to manage having points both be random but also orderly and known.

First attempt, witchcraft (Dec 2021)​

Between rounds most entities have their values reset, but not all of them. I'm blanking on the name (you know who you are and do deserve credit for telling me about this technique) told me about a way to make entities be untouched on round end, by using AddOutput and using `classname env_sprite`. Sadly however it didn't work with control points, but was a neat thing to learn.

Second attempt, enough control points for 2 (January 2022)​

The second attempt's premise was simple, each control point is actually 2 control points, 1 that starts red and one that starts blu. There are 4 stages and these pick the red or the blu. It worked perfectly, except for 2 things.

Firstly I could not figure out the cap point layout for it as it would shift around. I was expecting to do something like `0 1,6 7 2 3 2 3,4 5` (these are pairs of numbers so `0` or `1`. The duplication of `2 3` is for the space in the middle). However if point `0` was selected rather than `1` it would appear on the second line along with `6` or `7` and `2` or `3`. I went into the leaked source code and found that if a point is not in the stage if it has a comma after it it will be ignored so the solution was to do `0,1,6 7 2 3 2,3,4 5` where only 1 from each pair of commas will be acted upon.
Second was actually devestating, control points would be locked with no way to unlock them. In my campaign gamemode I had all points just look to their home point and so all points would be unlocked by default. But with this gamemode there was no point that would always be red or always be blu. I tried every method I could think of and I was still facing locked points.

I gave up on ccp because I hated the idea of a 5 second setup, and there was no need for a longer one.

Third attempt, 5 second setup​

I've had a lot of time to think recently and I came to the conclusion that a 5 second setup is actually perfect. This gamemode is hectic and with rapid respawns it might be worthwhile to be able to observe your team composition as well as a few seconds to get your bearings of where you are.

When the round starts it picks from 1 of 4 stages and you spawn in a spawn room with the enemy on the opposite side, all points start as neutral, in order for it to not be weird the control point hud is hidden. If you look out of the window towards your control point it appears to be your team, it's a real fake point. When the setup time finishes the points have their teams set, and are then shown.

This ended up being the simplest and works really nicely. I'm looking forward to playing any maps that utilise this (do ping me when you upload it to the bot).

Bonus, a state diagram​

I had fun figuring out the best way to draw this