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[bwasonne]

My first ever suggestion ^^ I generally write in a stream-of-consciousness like style, so please bear with me.

OVERVIEW OF HOW I THINK A CTF MAP COULD WORK:
There will be two sides available once a player joins a CTF server - red and blue. Once a side has been chosen, each new member of the team will then spawn around a flag of their team's color; spawning on opposite sides of a gameplay-area bordered by four adminium walls and split into two equal halves with a wall made of osidian reaching from the sky to the bedrock layer. The osidian will be mine-able, but only with diamond picks.
As so:

The two teams will not be able to see each other through the border, nor will they be able to see the other team's chatlog.

GAMEPLAY MECHANICS:
The objective of each round will be to infiltrate the opponent's base and return to your own with their flag in hand. (Or invent.) Once there are equal members on both sides, then the round will begin. Players will be given a specified period of time (e.g. perhaps 9 in-game days for short games and two real-world weeks for long games) to gather resources and gear themselves up for the upcoming match; and a date for the battle will be announced.
This will be the time following which the mid-sectional border will dissolve into nothingness, and the two sides will be able to see what one another have been up to ever since the beginning of the game. They will then have a couple of minutes' time to either decide on tactics or take out their battle-gear.

THE FLAG:
The flag will be a colored wool block not movable by either team until the actual day of the match.* On the day, it will be the Blue team's job to take the red team's red wool block and place it ON TOP OF their own blue wool block in order to score. Like in most CTF games,
*Red/blue colored wool blocks will not be able to be crafted in the game in order to avoid confusion.

IN-GAME STORE:
Possibly, a store feature may be added in-game to even out the inequalities in mineral-spread caused by randomly generated terrain. I was thinking maybe this could be done through exchanging an in-game server-side tracked 'score' left over from previous games (Like in Jacob's CTF Server. Cough.) and gained or lost through completing a series of actions, e.g. For Killing a Monster(This makes killing monsters still worthwhile even during the later stages of the game.) killing other players, scoring a flag, returning a flag.
Players could also be ranked in this way; through the total amount of points that they have attained ever since first playing on the server.

POSSIBLE TACTICS:
It will be up to the players to decide whether or not they should 'wait it out' by continuing to make preparations for the actual date of the match or whether to mine a little entry-way through the osidian barrier and conduct raids to weaken their opponents' defences or gain intel before the actual day. Be wary of the fact that said entry-hole will be able to be used by the other side as well, making it a double-edged sword that can turn against you.

Tunnelling might be favored by some in order to stealthily gain access to the opponent's flag-room without having to reckon with his above-ground defences. Potentially countered with lava.
War-machines such as TNT cannons may be used to quickly take down thick walls. Ability to do so will depend on the amount of gunpowder from Creepers that the attackers have amassed during the resource-gathering period.

Elaborate mazes or redstone-locked doors may appeal as a defence against those who lack healthy exercise of the noggin. But then and again, they might just ignore them and blast their way through.

Not all defending has to be done in person - Make a monster farm with a one-way exit remote-triggered by redstone for when the going gets tough. Imagine the fear on your attackers' eyes when they finally break down the last wall of your heavily fortified castle and end up face-to-face with a skeleton spider. :3

And many many other possibilities...

Phwoar, t'was a long post. I'm totally out of finger-oomph now.
Would be totally marvelous if you guys gave me a bit of feedback as to how this thing can be improved. There are a few issues that I have on mind at the moment, to do with dysymmetrical maps and upsetting base-defences that I would really appreciate having some thoughts on as soon as I put them down on paper.

It'd totally be a dream come true if this was actually made. Yus it would.

[Everybody0523]

May I be the first to say that this is a brilliant idea and it would take SMP to the next level. Have a  .

I just have one question though. Would the size of the "arena" be fixed, or would it be able to be changed? As for worries about uneven terrain, wouldn't it be more or less simple to have identical (more or less) chunks?

I do disagree with not being able to move the flag though during the preparation time though. You should be able to move your flag from its starting position to that secret hidden room, covered in landmines and dispenser traps and whatnot in your (hopefully) impenetrable fortress during the preparation time.

One concern I do have is how long it would take to capture the flag though. A well organized team can hold off enemy players off for a long time, especially if one team was able to get lucky enough to find large amounts of redstone to make shitloads of traps.

[bwasonne]

Ohey there, thanks for the feedback! (:

The playing field can be made into any size you wish provided it can be split into two halves. ^^ That way, you can adjust it according to the amount of people you predict will be playing on a side, so to scale either up or down the difficulty involved in raiding an enemy base.
~
I was maybe thinking of maybe making the playing field symmetrical, so perhaps letting the level generator creating one side of the arena and mirroring it on the other side. Or perhaps having a more complex solution involving keeping the volume of block types same on each side but scrambling it around just enough to offer a tad more variety than a simple mirrored-world. Obviously, I myself have no experience with coding at all, so I realize that this may be too much to ask for for a simple CTF server. ^^

Come to think of it, I do agree with your point about moving the flag, although mayhaps some rules involving not turning the entire game into a gigantic hide-and seek for a single woollen block buried within an osidian pocket beneath a lava-lake might have to be added, or a means to make the rough whereabouts of the flag stand out a little better. :3
If you're a serious enough modder, then technically anything will be possible, but I'm just trying to get a rough idea up for now, right before I go to sleep and forget everything I was brainwaving in English class this afternoon. :3

[Everybody0523]

Well, how about this. You can ONLY move the flag during the preparation phrase. After that, you can't move it. What about letting each player spawn with a compass-like item that points ALWAYS to the enemy flag?

[bwasonne]

zomg, that's brilliant. Considering that compasses already point to your spawn-point in-game. Wicked ideas, bro. ^^

[cilibinarii]

I absolutely love this idea, 'tis a shame many good ideas get buried so quickly by other threads. I'd like to note that it would probably be rather hard to get people together on one set date, and then again on another date for a battle. Yet, ossum idea.  

[Everybody0523]

Only large clan-vs-clan battles would be on different dates. Quick matches would allow both teams to have maybe a few minecraft days (1 hour IRL maybe) to get ready, and then match is started.

[WoodsyCraft]

Omg! Hi Boisson! This is epic!

[bwasonne]

Bumpetty bump. As soon as Notch releases integrated mod-support, I'm totally going to go search everywhere and see if I'll be able to find a few coders who'll be willing to work on something like this for fun and   's.
Reaperonin, here, also raised up a few nice ideas as well, potentially to do with minimum size requirements for starting-bases and a class-based system. :3

[yokcos700]

I like
I agree that compasses should point to the enemy flag, however, they should still be crafted, NOT SPAWNED WITH. This would make people want to craft a compass more. Also, I like the idea of tunneling underground, through the obby wall, before the game starts, which would nicely allow the thieving of and the placement of  

[Deaven]

OMG this would be sooo much fun in SMP

however, Lapis lazuli blocks and roses should not exist in this, to avoid giving cheaters a chance to cheat be making a enemy 'flag' and scoreing a point as the game begins.

or, there could be a new block only for CTF, they could be the same colour, to make it easier to code, and when one team has both blocks at their flags starting point, they score a point.

... maybe the flag blocks would be sponges? edit: sponges that absorb water and lava in a 10x10 area, so you cant easily hide it with lava.

[RockBreaker]

I'll see what I can do about implementing this into my server

Easycraft..jetserver.com

[bwasonne]

^omg... YESSSSSS

[Zaldarr]

I love how you've fleshed this out! What you nhould do is make some banners, spread some awareness around. I was always very fond of CTF.

[Travesty]

Mm.. Several suggestions to vote on, so let's see here.

Overall: YES.  When you're playing in a multiplayer server where everything is up to the one running it, there's absolutely no reason why they can't create game types like this.  Implementing this idea as a bit of a standard for everyone to work off of would make it much easier to join a random CTF server and know what sort of rules to expect.

Now the individual details:

--The Flag:  A colored wool block does sound like the best idea after preventing anyone from crafting them.  I did like the suggestion of making them act a little like sponges in that you couldn't just drown them in lava or water, but the look of the wool is better so perhaps this should just be a behavior added to the wool for this game type.  As for moving the flag, I think it's a good idea to just work off the tried and true methods of other CTF games.  Make a team unable to move its own flag, but offer a way to return it to where it started.  In most games this involves just standing by the flag, but for Minecraft I'd say you have to mine your flag-block to return it to your base.  The mining times would have to be balanced so that enemies could mine and pick up your flag rather quickly, but mining your own to return it would take several seconds.

--The Playing Field:  Short vote here since it's already been suggested.  Part of Minecraft is always starting on a randomized world and working with what you have.  It's just luck of the draw without any bias toward a specific team.  But you do need to keep it balanced so, as already suggested, make it so one side is randomly generated, and then the other side is generated to have roughly the same materials but in random locations.

--The Compass:  You have to make everything else in your set-up phase, so you should have to make your own compass as well.  As for what direction it points, again I'm going to pull ideas from other games with CTF gametypes and say that the compass points not only toward the flag, but toward wherever your objective is.  It should point toward whatever is most important at the time.  Assuming the chat window sends out messages whenever a flag is taken, returned, etc so that you know what your compass is pointing toward, the priorities could go like this:
-----Your flag is safely at home: The compass points to the enemy flag.
-----You are personally carrying the enemy flag: The compass points back to your base.
-----Your flag is stolen: You need it to score, so the compass points to the location of your own flag.  This does not affect someone carrying the enemy flag because their priority is still to get back to base.

That's all I've got for now.

[Everybody0523]

Bump

[Travesty]

Someone should throw together a concept map just to offer a visual.  I don't like messing with MCedit and the other map editors, so I'll leave it to someone else.  Following the general layout in the OP, plus a little embellishment:

--A very large space completely walled in with adminium/bedrock.

--Randomly generated interior map with a good mixture of biomes to offer all types of resources (snow is optional since it sometimes looks out of place next to other biomes).

--Wall of obsidian down the exact center (kept low for viewing purposes instead of reaching the sky cap as it would in-game).

--An adminium pedestal of some sort at each end of the map with red and blue wool blocks for flags (perhaps put the flag atop a single fencepost for looks).

--Some way to tell at all times which side is which while playing (perhaps a team-colored band along the perimeter of the wall high enough to be seen anywhere above-ground).

Anyone feel like stepping up to the easy task?

[Ecksperience]

Bump xD

[1.337/88.9]

no

[TheEvilM]

I love it.
Bump to bring this up