Chaotic Dreams

Ok, I have to say that while I'm not usually into the whole fate thing, I think it's possible that Chaos and vCTF were 'meant to be'. As if Seti, looking on from the heavens, has been manipulating people and events since the days Mother Chaos, all for this moment to arrive.

I also think that vCTF is calling to me. And I don't mean "it sounds interesting", or "Gee whiz Jimmy, maybe we outta give that a try!"....,

I mean I can feel it inside of the marrow of my bones. A faint whisper coming from the woods (about return-your-flag rules, and dropped-flag-radar, and The Chaos B... ), behind my house as I walk outside. Daytime dreams clearly depicting (as I pull the car off to side of road) wave after wave of massive land and air assaults, resulting in unspeakable carnage, a thick fog of flak, body parts, dust, and Karma-covered shells of flaming vehicles flying past like so many cows and witches in Dorothy's little 'trip' outta Kansas....., from which emerges the torn and frayed Chaotic Warrior. Still burning from the napalm, yet still leading his mates, proudly riding atop a (insert Chaos vehicle here), surrounded by swirling spectator camera models, carrying only his blood-covered Bastard Sword, and both flags (on his back), pointing the way home.

Too much? Ok, perhaps, I'll give you that. But I was on a roll.

Seriously though, I've played some, and read much, about what people have to say about vCTF, comparing things like Tribes2 and Halo and whatnot, and I think Chaos is in a unique position to deliver something very fun.

When you look at the movement possibilities that the Anti-Gravity Belt and grappling hook bring (check our POTW), combined with other stuff like the lasers, the flash grenades and Kamikaze, packs of roaming, yammering proxies, and ....well, and some other ideas we're working on, I think something seriously cool could come out of this.

I would very much like to hear what other folks think of this. And I was hoping we could get a map or two from the community, and play this on Furry's server, along with some ONS of course, to start getting an idea of what was fun and what wasn't (ie: I like the idea now of No Locked Vehicles - all vehicles open to both teams), and Furry has tried to help, but there seems to be issues with the Map Vote thingy.

I did not forsee Epic releasing vCTF as a seperate game type. In my mind, I thought we could simply have CTF, that supported vehicles. So one mapper would put vehicles in his map, and another might not. We could then (if we wanted to) just put the server on CTF, and have vehicle maps and non-vehicle maps rotating all night.

I guess if MapVote stuff gets ironed out, that's not a huge issue, I can just vote vCTF each round, but I just don't get why it was needed to be seperated.

Anyway, I have many, many thoughts about vCTF. Most importantly I think is the same point that one guy in that one interview ( ) said about developing ONS - just make it fun. Everything else is secondary, just make it fun. And while there are no lack of threads around the net about the topic, I was hoping some folks might be willing to chip-in on what Chaos and vCTF might do to, and for, each other.

I just can't help but think that if done right, Happy Happy Joy Joy, for every girl and boy. Am I wrong? Please respond.

I didnt even know that Epic had included vctf . . .

anyway , Im all for it , a little over the top there tho flagg

PS. way to allmost let the cat out of the bag there . . .

I have the distinct feeling that this will come to pass.

You got my vote.

One of the key features which keeps ONS fun, for vehicles, and for players on foot, is the ability to transport from node to node, so that players on foot can get back to the action faster.

<img src="http://www.planetquake.com/chaotic/docs/teleport.jpg" align="left" hspace="5">
Well, one of the features that was already proposed for ChaosCTF (there is a rough draft design doc for ChaosCTF in our dev section), is the Team Teleporter, whis was inspired by the <a href="http://www.planetquake.com/chaotic/docs/items.htm" target="_blank">Personal Teleporter from Q2Chaos.</a> ( << that's it in the pic )

If implemented well (which is what we'd need to work out), they could in fact serve the same purpose as the node-transporting feature in ONS. Players on foot would be counting on their teammates, to help out by "constructing" places about the map, where they could transport to, and get back in the action (just as ONS nodes). We had the same idea they did, for keeping players on foot in the game, just going about it in a different, Mother Chaos-inspired way.


Chaos Team Teleporters, combined with moves like grapple-strafing, Raptor-gliding, Scorpion-skiing, and all the above used with GravBelts as well, means that we would in fact be able to play on maps that are large enough for vehicles to be fun, and yet at the same time allow players on foot to get all around, and in a hurry.

With this in mind, it might also be wise to at least consider a modified version of the ONS overhead map. For this type of team play, I think it would be best if it only showed friendly troop locations, your team's teleporter locations (NOT the enemy's), and maybe even the location of the flags themselves. Again, the idea here is to keep people back in the action, and to do it Now!

I also propose that if we were to do this, we do it with all vehicles 'unlocked', and available to both teams at all times. This also would be to keep it flowing. In the moments when a team teleport is not available, and the player's vehicle has been blown up, and they are a long way from home.

And again, we have more ideas in mind, I just don't wanna share all of it just yet.

R.Flagg wrote:I also propose that if we were to do this, we do it with all vehicles 'unlocked', and available to both teams at all times.

I like everything you've said except this. Every game I've played that has vehicles unlocked to all teams results in One team taking all the most powerful vehicles and using them to spawn camp.
Having the enemy sit in your base with 4 tanks gets boring real fast, no matter how well designed the levels are.
IMO the locking system Epic devised is one of the greatest gifts to Vehicle warfare

If i remember, someone made a team-teleporter mut about a month and a half ago and posted it on the atari/ina forums.

Yeah, I downloaded it but never tired it. Is it any good?

Anyway yeah I hear ya Rflagg, I can already imagine things like using the grappling hook to hook yourself on to a raptor and carrying an aivrl to take down other raptors/other vehicles and stuff while carrying the flag. One thing that could be nice, to give the game that tribes feel is maybe having deployable connecting shields.

DemonHunter wrote:Every game I've played that has vehicles unlocked to all teams results in One team taking all the most powerful vehicles and using them to spawn camp.
Having the enemy sit in your base with 4 tanks gets boring real fast, no matter how well designed the levels are.
IMO the locking system Epic devised is one of the greatest gifts to Vehicle warfare

True. But maybe we should take out vehicles like the tank and the leviathan completly. They're not pretty fast and way too powerful for CTF IMO. In ONS you'll always be able to avoid the enemy's leviathan and attack one of its nodes to render that vehicle useless until it moves back to the node you are attacking. In CTF you cannot, if someone in the leviathan has the flag, it is almost impossible to get it back fast.

On the other hand we could limit the whole vCTF idea to our own vehicles and start balancing from scratch. Might be worth it. EPIC's vehicles were designed for ONS only...

NeoNight wrote: is maybe having deployable connecting shields.

You mean U2 style? we've already brought those up in Devs . no promises though.

Or you could grapple an enemy Raptor and shoot it while you are connected to it! Look out bellow!

Who said you could carry the flag while driving a leviathan?

on maps with no flag drop on grapple you could have a flying taxi waiting for you(a raptor or scorpion)

A fun thing about the CUT2 VCTF , if we threw in our own vehicles, it would be nice to have one made solely for deploying level objects ,such as Mannable turrets , Teleport points , spawn points , and healthstations . . .

oh flagg . there are two VCTF maps over at www.utstats.com . I havent gotten em yet though, so I donno if theyre good.

In Chaos, we shouldn't have to worry about enemies stealing our vehicles even if they are unlocked. We can just put a bunch of laser mines under the vehicle. Then when an enemy gets in, the vehicle switches to enemy status and triggers the mines, and boom! That's Chaos, Mafia style!

Course, we'd have to make it so that friendlies can walk/drive through each other's laser mines without setting them off, but this too would be a good feature in team games IMO. Then, the mines will only go off when an enemy takes the vehicle. It's a good thing cuz we can still have unlocked vehicles, and it adds an extra level of strategy to the game as teams will have to make sure they keep thier vehicles trapped.

How about having the personal teleporter be a vehicle? Maybe its a mobile teleport booth and there are two of them per team. When you step into one, it teleports to the other. You can't steal them, but anyone can use the teleporter, so you couldn't just drop it in enemy territory for a quick invasion without the risk of the enemy doing the same thing back.

I don't think we should remove any vehicles, except maybe the leviathan simply because its just too much, especially for vCTF.