- Jul 30, 2021
- 813
- 511
If you know one thing about me, it's likely my custom maps spreadsheet. It's a resource that I am very proud of, and something that I will continue to improve upon, little by little, until the day I die. That is something I promise. My goal is to improve the knowledge of all mappers as much as I can with the limited toolset and skillset that I have, as well as provide a relatively easy database tool for players to quickly learn about different mapping-related things.
The most important thing I want to help people understand is the importance of Universal Terminology. What does it mean, you may ask? Well, to put it simply, it makes it so no matter where you are in the mapping sphere or what you design for, everyone has the same basic knowledge of what you are talking about. Let me give an example: One of the most common sources of confusion related to this comes into the ever-prevalent Reverse CTF vs. Invade CTF debate. Let's get one thing out of the way first and foremost: Reverse CTF describes Invade CTF, but Invade CTF does not describe Reverse CTF. Now, what do I mean? Well, let's look at the definitions in my custom mapping library:
On the surface level, they are one in the same; Just bring your flag to the enemy base. But again, that's surface level. The real difference between the gamemodes is the flag that there is a Neutral Flag exclusively in Invade CTF. This is why we have definitions behind gamemodes, so we can all understand just what the fuck each other is talking about. Sounds handy, right?
Now, look, I won't lie to you: I am not always the best source for naming schemes. I usually try to err on the side of practicality, however for some gamemodes I genuinely just don't know their name at the start or their name is so insanely long (Attack / Defense King of the Hill, I am looking at you.) that it's just not that great to write down as their original name. Sometimes it sticks (ex, CTK is supposed to mean "Capture the KOTH" but that sounds confusing & boring, so I went with "Control the Keep" when I found it originally.), and sometimes it doesn't. (The current "HTF" used to be called "Super Hold the Flag" because Hold the Flag was, at the time, a seperate gamemode from King of the Flag) What matters is the final product, the revision that we currently use. And that is why I publish patch notes for the spreadsheet now! It keeps everyone up to date, and for complete transparency, it makes me not accountable for you not reading it.
So you may ask "Well Katsu, why do you care about all this? You're just one chick with some kind of ego." and y'know what, fair. I am indeed just one person, and I do indeed have more of an ego than I probably deserve. But y'know what I care about more than long-winded self-deprecating jokes? I care about people knowing what the fuck each other is talking about. That stupid voice in the back of my head rings loud as a fire alarm when I see "Oh I love Invade CTF, y'know, the gamemode where you put the flag in your own base and run down the KOTH timer..." just, "NO!! WRONG!!!!" And honestly it's really frustrating seeing it because then it just further dilutes the meaning behind the words we use, which is not good. When you lose the depth of meaning behind a word, it becomes useless to people. A word or phrase without a definition that everyone knows may as well be an alien language, because while I may understand it, you may very well not! That's not great. Not great at all.
Let's go over it again in a more 'quick and dirty' kind of style, since that might've been a tangent:
My end goal here is to help the userbase. I may come off as an asshole in doing so, but please know that it comes from good intentions. You can write me off if you want, not like I can stop you, but I think you would be losing a valuable wealth of knowledge by just showing me the door immediately. I do not want to stifle creativity here; Creativity is what drives mapping, after all! But I do think it is of the utmost importance that we share our knowledge with each other when we can, and if nothing else I want to at least try to get the ball rolling.
Another big reason I think Universal Terminology is important is that there are just so, soooooo many gamemodes, and yet most people don't even know all of the stock gamemodes. Their quality is up to debate, sure, and your opinion of them is (shockingly) your opinion, but one thing that's hard to deny is that there is a lot of nuance that goes into each and every gamemode, even the most simple. I mean just look at the Plugin version of VSH versus the Vscript version of it, for example; They're the same gamemode, and yet the play completely different!! What ties them together however is that they are the same core idea: Beat up the singular boss as a bunch of little mercenaries. What creates a gamemode is the inner mechanics, the concept, and how people play it at the end of the day. You could make the world's best, most amazingly-crafted gamemode in the world, but if you can't explain how to play it, let alone build it... my friend, you better hope that it's all based in common sense or you are going to have waves of confused players.
Variant gamemodes are a good example of what I mean when it comes to nuance in gamemode design. Do you have any fucking idea how many flag-based Variant Modes there are? Because right now, when writing this post, THERE'S 29 OF THEM!!!!! Do you have any idea what even one of them is? No? Honestly I wouldn't blame you, but the fact that there's such a high volume of them speaks to how free and open TF2's engine really can be. And that's not even counting all the hybrid modes, all the standard map modes, all the- you get the point already. Now, sure, the number does go up and down occasionally with the discovery of new maps, but the basic premise of a "Variant" mode is that it is categorically different from the main mode (in this case, CTF because of flags) in some kind of manner that merits a new gamemode. This can be as simple as "It's Reverse CTF but the Cap Zone is at mid!" which, yes, could be argued as just being Reverse CTF, but it's not the same because mid is, in fact, not the enemy team's base. (Insert sarcastic quip here to complement this)
Universal Terminology is fantastic for one particular thing: You know those times where you make a map that's CTK, but someone calls it Invade CTF because they don't know any better, so then you have to explain "Well no it's actually Invade CTF where the flag stays in the enemy base when you cap it, and the flag has a timer that goes down while your team owns the flag, and the flag can be delivered by the other team to YOUR base after you've capped it-" no, no, fuckin' just call it Control the Keep! So much simpler, right? And sure, maybe someone doesn't know the definition off the top of your head, well guess what?
BAM! Just copy the dictionary ya silly, that'll get people up to speed really quickly, and all you yourself have to do is post an image. Now, sure, not all details of the gamemode are allways in the definition box, but this is why we write detailed guides. The dictionary ain't gonna cut it for everything, so we go into depth about things. That's the greatest way to share your knowledge: writing. Things can get misconstrued, misinterpreted, or just misunderstood in normal everyday talk. Doing it exclusively "by word of mouth" is how you get people confusing King of the Flag for Invade CTF. (How the hell did we get here?) I mean shoot, how in the world are you gonna go about writing a guide for a gamemode when nobody can even agree on a definition for it in the first place? It'd be like trying to teach a baby calculus! There'd be no point in describing how to design a map for a gamemode if we didn't all know what it even means! How else do you think we get so many iterations upon iterations of something like Invade CTF?
Look. I've talked pretty aggressively here, I know that. But y'know why I put so much oomph into my wording? It's cause I love this shit, dude!!! I love studying all the little intricacies of gamemodes, I love studying level design, I adore maps! It's why I collect em, duh! And I want to share my knowledge to the greater public. There is no greater disservice to the community, in my opinion, than not giving back what you reap the benefits of. Call me an asshole, call me a prick, call me an absolute cunt for all I care! But one thing I am that I will never let anyone take away from me is that I am devoted to TF2 Mapping as a whole. I want maps to succeed. I want them to flourish to the highest echelons that they can ACHIEVE! That's why I strive for higher-quality community assets. It'd be betraying my very care for mapping as a whole if I didn't make the stuff I do.
I urge you, please at least give this system a chance. It's not perfect by any means, but it is singlehandedly the best thing we've got to aid in communicating with each other better. No more confusion! No more "Uh, should this be here or...", no more annoying name discrepancies! Start at the dictionary, end at the encyclopedia in a few years' time! It'd absolutely be worth it to listen in, and begin the path to understanding the true depth at which TF2 gamemodes can reach.
Sincerely,
Minty "Katsu! :3" Aulenrose
The most important thing I want to help people understand is the importance of Universal Terminology. What does it mean, you may ask? Well, to put it simply, it makes it so no matter where you are in the mapping sphere or what you design for, everyone has the same basic knowledge of what you are talking about. Let me give an example: One of the most common sources of confusion related to this comes into the ever-prevalent Reverse CTF vs. Invade CTF debate. Let's get one thing out of the way first and foremost: Reverse CTF describes Invade CTF, but Invade CTF does not describe Reverse CTF. Now, what do I mean? Well, let's look at the definitions in my custom mapping library:
On the surface level, they are one in the same; Just bring your flag to the enemy base. But again, that's surface level. The real difference between the gamemodes is the flag that there is a Neutral Flag exclusively in Invade CTF. This is why we have definitions behind gamemodes, so we can all understand just what the fuck each other is talking about. Sounds handy, right?
Now, look, I won't lie to you: I am not always the best source for naming schemes. I usually try to err on the side of practicality, however for some gamemodes I genuinely just don't know their name at the start or their name is so insanely long (Attack / Defense King of the Hill, I am looking at you.) that it's just not that great to write down as their original name. Sometimes it sticks (ex, CTK is supposed to mean "Capture the KOTH" but that sounds confusing & boring, so I went with "Control the Keep" when I found it originally.), and sometimes it doesn't. (The current "HTF" used to be called "Super Hold the Flag" because Hold the Flag was, at the time, a seperate gamemode from King of the Flag) What matters is the final product, the revision that we currently use. And that is why I publish patch notes for the spreadsheet now! It keeps everyone up to date, and for complete transparency, it makes me not accountable for you not reading it.
So you may ask "Well Katsu, why do you care about all this? You're just one chick with some kind of ego." and y'know what, fair. I am indeed just one person, and I do indeed have more of an ego than I probably deserve. But y'know what I care about more than long-winded self-deprecating jokes? I care about people knowing what the fuck each other is talking about. That stupid voice in the back of my head rings loud as a fire alarm when I see "Oh I love Invade CTF, y'know, the gamemode where you put the flag in your own base and run down the KOTH timer..." just, "NO!! WRONG!!!!" And honestly it's really frustrating seeing it because then it just further dilutes the meaning behind the words we use, which is not good. When you lose the depth of meaning behind a word, it becomes useless to people. A word or phrase without a definition that everyone knows may as well be an alien language, because while I may understand it, you may very well not! That's not great. Not great at all.
Let's go over it again in a more 'quick and dirty' kind of style, since that might've been a tangent:
- Universal Terminology is a tool to help people understand things easier and more quickly.
- With better understanding and communication between users, conversations will natural get less sporadic and uninformed.
- With easier-to-make conversation, development and overall feedback quality could improve just that much more to what we need to make better and overall more-enjoyable maps!
My end goal here is to help the userbase. I may come off as an asshole in doing so, but please know that it comes from good intentions. You can write me off if you want, not like I can stop you, but I think you would be losing a valuable wealth of knowledge by just showing me the door immediately. I do not want to stifle creativity here; Creativity is what drives mapping, after all! But I do think it is of the utmost importance that we share our knowledge with each other when we can, and if nothing else I want to at least try to get the ball rolling.
Another big reason I think Universal Terminology is important is that there are just so, soooooo many gamemodes, and yet most people don't even know all of the stock gamemodes. Their quality is up to debate, sure, and your opinion of them is (shockingly) your opinion, but one thing that's hard to deny is that there is a lot of nuance that goes into each and every gamemode, even the most simple. I mean just look at the Plugin version of VSH versus the Vscript version of it, for example; They're the same gamemode, and yet the play completely different!! What ties them together however is that they are the same core idea: Beat up the singular boss as a bunch of little mercenaries. What creates a gamemode is the inner mechanics, the concept, and how people play it at the end of the day. You could make the world's best, most amazingly-crafted gamemode in the world, but if you can't explain how to play it, let alone build it... my friend, you better hope that it's all based in common sense or you are going to have waves of confused players.
Variant gamemodes are a good example of what I mean when it comes to nuance in gamemode design. Do you have any fucking idea how many flag-based Variant Modes there are? Because right now, when writing this post, THERE'S 29 OF THEM!!!!! Do you have any idea what even one of them is? No? Honestly I wouldn't blame you, but the fact that there's such a high volume of them speaks to how free and open TF2's engine really can be. And that's not even counting all the hybrid modes, all the standard map modes, all the- you get the point already. Now, sure, the number does go up and down occasionally with the discovery of new maps, but the basic premise of a "Variant" mode is that it is categorically different from the main mode (in this case, CTF because of flags) in some kind of manner that merits a new gamemode. This can be as simple as "It's Reverse CTF but the Cap Zone is at mid!" which, yes, could be argued as just being Reverse CTF, but it's not the same because mid is, in fact, not the enemy team's base. (Insert sarcastic quip here to complement this)
Universal Terminology is fantastic for one particular thing: You know those times where you make a map that's CTK, but someone calls it Invade CTF because they don't know any better, so then you have to explain "Well no it's actually Invade CTF where the flag stays in the enemy base when you cap it, and the flag has a timer that goes down while your team owns the flag, and the flag can be delivered by the other team to YOUR base after you've capped it-" no, no, fuckin' just call it Control the Keep! So much simpler, right? And sure, maybe someone doesn't know the definition off the top of your head, well guess what?
BAM! Just copy the dictionary ya silly, that'll get people up to speed really quickly, and all you yourself have to do is post an image. Now, sure, not all details of the gamemode are allways in the definition box, but this is why we write detailed guides. The dictionary ain't gonna cut it for everything, so we go into depth about things. That's the greatest way to share your knowledge: writing. Things can get misconstrued, misinterpreted, or just misunderstood in normal everyday talk. Doing it exclusively "by word of mouth" is how you get people confusing King of the Flag for Invade CTF. (How the hell did we get here?) I mean shoot, how in the world are you gonna go about writing a guide for a gamemode when nobody can even agree on a definition for it in the first place? It'd be like trying to teach a baby calculus! There'd be no point in describing how to design a map for a gamemode if we didn't all know what it even means! How else do you think we get so many iterations upon iterations of something like Invade CTF?
Look. I've talked pretty aggressively here, I know that. But y'know why I put so much oomph into my wording? It's cause I love this shit, dude!!! I love studying all the little intricacies of gamemodes, I love studying level design, I adore maps! It's why I collect em, duh! And I want to share my knowledge to the greater public. There is no greater disservice to the community, in my opinion, than not giving back what you reap the benefits of. Call me an asshole, call me a prick, call me an absolute cunt for all I care! But one thing I am that I will never let anyone take away from me is that I am devoted to TF2 Mapping as a whole. I want maps to succeed. I want them to flourish to the highest echelons that they can ACHIEVE! That's why I strive for higher-quality community assets. It'd be betraying my very care for mapping as a whole if I didn't make the stuff I do.
I urge you, please at least give this system a chance. It's not perfect by any means, but it is singlehandedly the best thing we've got to aid in communicating with each other better. No more confusion! No more "Uh, should this be here or...", no more annoying name discrepancies! Start at the dictionary, end at the encyclopedia in a few years' time! It'd absolutely be worth it to listen in, and begin the path to understanding the true depth at which TF2 gamemodes can reach.
Sincerely,
Minty "Katsu! :3" Aulenrose
