Why make CP linear?

[ryodoan]

I played a lot of Day of Defeat and one of the things I really like about it is the fact that capture points can be captured in any order. If your team is getting really bogged down on one point, you can send a small squad off to another point and start pushing them at two different areas. I feel that this can add some interesting aspects to a map that are missing in a lot of TF2 maps.

A map idea that I have been tossing around in my mind but lack the skills to implement would be a map with 4 bunkers, maybe arranged in a squarish pattern. Both teams start off in opposite corners controlling one bunker, with 2 bunkers uncontrolled. All bunkers are unlocked at all times.

Very rough, very basic, very abstract picture so you can visualize my thoughts:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/ryodoan/idea.jpg

Basically the light grey area is a sort of open yard area, not cleared, but open to the sky, but there would still be objects around for cover. Green stuff are the main routes that I could think of, if a team is turtling in one of the bases, you could pass them by and go capture another base.

Spawns would be activated in bases you had captured, but I dont know how you would determine which spawn people start in...

[killanator]

heres an idea...a map in the layout of fy_iceworld(cstrike map if you dont know it) but a lot bigger of course, each corner the middle and where the middle meets all the sides capturable(cept the 2 bases)

[ryodoan]

All bases capturable, thats the point, you win by capturing all the bases.

[Dox]

all your base are belong to us?

[ryodoan]

all your base are belong to us?

http://www.allyourbasearebelongtous.com/allyourbase.jpg

[Alexforcefive]

Too soon! (http://xkcd.com/286/)

Anyway, I think it's a cool idea. Kinda like gravelpit except both teams can attack, right?

[ryodoan]

Sort-of, I sorta side tracked myself with the map description, my real point of the post was that I like the idea of maps where you are not restricted to battling it out between two points at a time. Maps where all the bases are unlocked and can be captured / recaptured as the battle changes

[Logo]

The only problem with that type of gameplay for TF2 is that it'd be really easy to stalemate as trying to defend 3 points as you go to capture the 4th would be tough.

What you could do though is something like a 1-2-2-1 setup. Control both of the middle points and you can assault your enemies' final point. Otherwise only the two middle points are available for attack. Likewise something like a 1-3-1 or 1-2-2-1 setup of control points could also work.

[Shmitz]

I do like having choices on where to go, it makes the play experience more dynamic. However, it's possible to run into problems when you give players too many choices, particularly on most public servers where the teams are not actively coordinated. Then you have everyone going every which way and there aren't enough people on one focused front to make any real progress.

If it were me taking the original diagram you drew, I'd still make the red and blue points locked until both in the middle were capped, much like Alex said. It makes it so when a player spawns there are only two real destinations to choose from, until the final point is being fought after. Which is another point: I think it's important to have a "home" base. It adds a lot more excitement when defending or mounting offenses against.

[Big Nick Digger]

there is a command to make cp's capable in any order.

tf_caplinear

[Snipergen]

actually, this is a bit the concept of my map :)
best maps are always a square with ways to the ends where the bombsites/cps/flags are

[Cdsand]

In the contol point entity I saw an option for assigning spawn points. Maybe you could use that.

[Sacrifist]

I redid dm_overwatch into a map with this style. Its rather nuts and is best for around 16 players Id say. I was talked into adding spawnrooms so I got creative with them lol. We were working on a gamemode called push for HL2:CTF and we used this map with the same capture point layout with the same style of play and it was great. Just wanted to bring the style back to life. The only way that I have found to get these points to work at random is to use the hidden cvar tf_caplinear. Certain plugins, like our own pwnshop plugin will unlock this hidden cvar. Also sourcemod will unlock it by using sm_cvar tf_caplinear 0. I made seperate downloads for servers using either plugin as the map fires each command respectively. Being that its ent based, it doesnt matter what version a player downloads. Map downloads and screens along with chatter can be found here
http://forums.cgc-online.net/index.php/topic,582.0.html

[Half-Life_Maniac]

I've found a solution to this little problem actually, which doesn't require any secret hidden ents, and more importantly, no server variables.

What you need to do is set up your team_control_points as usual (I've used 5- starting with 3 neutral, and 1 for each team) each with their own name. Then the trick is to set each team_control_point's "RED Previous Required Point" / "BLU Previous Required Point" to the same name of that point.

My example VMF and BSP can be found here. (http://www.sendspace.com/file/xa6xoq)

[Sacrifist]

yup and I finalized my map with how you did it and it works great. Great job in finding a good way to implement it.

[Open Blade]

Day Of Defeat (DOD) rocked man..............what a blast that was to play. I haven't laid a finger on it though since TF2 Beta................lol.

[ryodoan]

Yeah, DoD is still my favorite FPS. I spent hours on Avalanche as the two teams would fight back and forth trying to get all the points.

[HoundDawg]

cp_meleebarn is designed with an A, B and C cap point (similar to gravel pit style). The main difference is that each team is fighting to capture and defend both A and B before C unlocks. For example, red will need to control A and B before they can capture C.

The caveat though, is that Blue team is unable to block C directly, like many players are used to in Attack/Defend style maps. Blue team is forced to either kill everyone on C or cap A or B before red captures C. To make it fair, I've made C take a little longer than A and B to capture.

For cp_meleebarn2, I'm going to attempt to allow direct blocking of C by implementing multiple capture zones that are triggered enable/disable on various conditions.

With a 4 point map with them possibly being a bit apart from eachother, it may become a sudden death map. This gameplay style will require several playtest versions to get everything tweaked. I recommend saving all map details until you have the capture point setup tweaked into a working and doable design.