Control Point Race: A strange idea.

Oxißoost

L1: Registered
Jun 20, 2012
6
1
Today I was bored out of my mind and started reading the Valve Developer Wiki, when a strange idea struck me. Without the whole entity structure in mind, and not even sure if it would be possible to map, I just took my stylus and made a quick draft of what could be an interesting gamemode.

Imagine there's 5 control points. That's easy to imagine, because it's something we're accustomed to. What is new then? Imagine this:
These 5 control points have a particular order:
Two of these control points are to be capped by RED team only, in succesion.
Two of these control points are to be capped by BLU team only, in succesion.
The neutral control point is the final point of the game and can only be capped after both previous control points have been captured.

Both teams must race to capture the points before the other and reach the final capture point. Something like this:

http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/7520/strangeq.png

Whether this kind of gamemode is possible to map, I do not really know, but it's pretty good to suggest new ideas and watch how the community answers or what suggestions come up, what could be done to fix the gamemode or discussions about how balance would work.

So yeah, what do you guys think?
 

henke37

aa
Sep 23, 2011
2,075
515
Very possible to rig up. A bit unusual for sure, but it just requires simple logic to force a game win for a team when the center point is captured by them. So two IO connections in total for all of the win logic.
 

Oxißoost

L1: Registered
Jun 20, 2012
6
1
Wait why would the teams start on the side of their own points

I don't understand what's so wrong with that.
Do you suggest making the RED team start in the BLU side of the mountain so that they would cross and inevitably battle?
 

Jeremy

L11: Posh Member
Oct 24, 2010
829
299
What I imagine is both teams are going to just rush at the control points, presumably after every team member has switched to Scout, and then there's a huge clusterfuck at the center of the map ending with one team earning an almost guaranteed victory. And the only actual combat is at the center of the map, causing the rest of the map to be unused.

Still, I could be wrong.
 
Oct 6, 2008
1,947
445
I'd put at least one of the other points on the other team's side because if you didn't - whoever has the most scouts win.

By doing it that way you force the teams to have to control both their 1 & 2 points at the same time to cap them - which can be hard if one of those points is in enemy territory.

I suggest a mirror type of map so that to dont's give one team an advantage over the other in terms of geography.

Then you would have to determine:

Cap time for last point - do you want a spy to cap it right way.

Unlocking capped points? Can one team unlock the other team's or is it perma locked - might be easier to do in terms of coding for the last part

or

perhaps you could insert a countdown timer that would unlock the other

or

the count down timer would give a victory over the other team (to avoid stalemates) the time could be reset if the other team also unlocked theirs - then the timer would reset and start sounting down - if neither team caps last point in that time the round ends in stalemate.
 

Oxißoost

L1: Registered
Jun 20, 2012
6
1
So, the problem relies on 'lack of contact between teams' and basically a scout race.

There are many ways to solve this, first of all, making the capture points take a medium to long time to capture.

Or maybe making the two capture points for each team "next to each other" as in "the same room".

Or just crisscrossing more and more.

4df5dc6c44384e542eea1061cff38ece.png


We could also turn the last checkpoint into a KOTH point, so that they don't have to just -capture it- but also defend it.
 
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TheKieranator

L6: Sharp Member
Mar 6, 2011
282
213
I worked on something similar last year, when someone brought up 'control point race' in the group chat. This was the concept art I quickly painted up:
CPRace.jpg


It doesn't quite show how it would work, so I made a prefab of sorts, including HUD setup.
2demo1.jpg

2demo2.jpg

2demo8.jpg


The overlays indicate which team captures which points and in what order. The last point for each team is directly in front of the other team's spawn. Capture times go from A being the longest to the final points being the shortest. Of course, it still ran into the same problems, and was not continued.

The files if anyone is interested.
 

Nyne

L1: Registered
Jun 20, 2012
5
0
This is a swell idea. It's not outside the realm of things you do in TF2, and is still original and allows for weird things to be done. I guess you could try one of these:
Dd6HM.png


I really wanted that whole player interaction thing. I agree having the last control point have to be held, but not for too long. The goal here is to force players next to each other so that there is competition and fighting. I guess you'd want to throw a few walls and such, but that's an idea for a layout. The picture isn't super clear, but hopefully it gets the point across. Those are TWO layouts, in case it wasn't implied.
 

re1wind

aa
Aug 12, 2009
644
588
The main problem with such a layout is making absolutely sure that new players know exactly what to do when they join.

First team to capture 3 cp out of 5 (majority) wins, but boils down to KOTH mechanics on the last point assuming a semi-conventional cp layout. most 1st time players will assume its a 'normal' 5cp map and will be a bit perplexed when the middle cp is lost, even with proper i/o and ui elements.
 

Oxißoost

L1: Registered
Jun 20, 2012
6
1
I worked on something similar last year, when someone brought up 'control point race' in the group chat. This was the concept art I quickly painted up:
CPRace.jpg


It doesn't quite show how it would work, so I made a prefab of sorts, including HUD setup.
2demo1.jpg

2demo2.jpg

2demo8.jpg


The overlays indicate which team captures which points and in what order. The last point for each team is directly in front of the other team's spawn. Capture times go from A being the longest to the final points being the shortest. Of course, it still ran into the same problems, and was not continued.

The files if anyone is interested.

EDIT: I just took a look at the I/Os and, while my knowledge is basic, I think I pretty much understand how it works! Thank you for bringing this into the thread, TheKieranator. This concept is exactly the one I was thinking of, maybe a bit different on the ending, but the concept is the same.
 
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