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 Feature Main Editor: |Ebola| Saturday, November 4, 2000  
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The History of CTF | by Ebola @ CTF Observer

Threewave CTF for Quake1, this modification made it possible to play the 'Capture The Flag type of game for the very first time... Today a lot of other games besides the Quake series offer this multiplayer game-type.

Goal orientated Teamplay Zoid:
According to Dave 'Zoid' Kirsch, founder of Threewave and inventor of CTF, this game-type was born because he got bored with playing free-for-all deathmatch... something was missing: Goal Orientated Teamplay. I've always been a fan of teamplay and the roles people make when presented with a team and a game with simple rules. I figured that adding a goal for the team would help define the game more and that's when I wrote CTF.

In two days he made the first version of CTF... 2 teams trying to steal each others flag while defending their own... Zoid arranged some servers to host his new baby and within a few months this new game-type became very popular among Quake1 players all over the world. Some time later id software, creators of Quake, contracted Zoid to make CTF for Quake2... and later Quake3arena.

Defenders, midfielders and attackers... Zoid:
CTF became popular because players weren't on their own anymore... you didn't have to be the best fragger anymore, the only thing important was that the team won... the only way to accomplish this was to have better teamplay than your opponent... each team member now had the opportunity to do the task which they did best. I wrote the initial CTF in a couple days (it was really basic back then) and modified one map for it (e1m4, The Grisly Grotto). I threw it up on my public server at quake.threewave.com. Players were initially confused, but a simple explanation of the new rules and the games started to pick up.

Zoid:
CTF is a set of rules. I think the reason it works so well is that players function as part of team and can find niches for roles they are good at. In deathmatch, you are either at the top of the scoreboard or your not. In CTF, people work together as a team fulfilling roles with a goal in mind. You could be the best deathmatcher in the world, but unless you play with your team as opposed for yourself, your team won't win against a well matched team. CTF allows people to find roles in a team, being the first place on the scoreboard wasn't as important. You were contributing to your teams goal, capturing the flag.


Quake2 CTF
id software's official version of ctf, released february 98 (quake2), was programmed mainly by Zoid.
Zoid: My ThreeWave CTF for Quake1 was something completely new. ThreeWave CTF for Quake2 was a reimplementation of the same basic game play with some changes.

Runes and the Grapple
Zoid: The runes are all about control, control the runes and you can take control of the level. Good CTF teams take great care in protecting their rune bearers and placing them in strategic positions. As for the grapple, after seeing how it was being used so effectively in CTF, I felt it was too fast. A player could be gone before you had a chance to even blink and that made it too powerful. But, it became part of the game and players worked to accommodate it. Quake2 itself was a slower game overall, run speed was a tad slower, weapon switching was slower, etc. I felt the grapple had to be slowed down to fit into the Quake2 style of game.

Dakota @ captured.com: Zoid, You have been called the "father of CTF". Is this an accurate statement? Members of Quake Innovations, formerly QTeam, have stated on many occasions that they created a version of CTF before Threewave CTF. Is this true? Did Threewave and the QTeam independently create similar games?
Zoid: They were independent and play differently. I could be considered the father of CTF since I worked very hard on getting the word out and people playing it. Not a lot of people know about the effort I made in 'marketing' CTF and myself. I just didn't build it and let people come (there was some of that tho). I built it, found I had a good product and made sure everyone knew it and the man behind it. It was my vehicle into the industry I have always wanted to be a part of. And I think it was very successful of accomplishing that.

Zoid:
My greatest accomplishment is certainly ThreeWave CTF. I changed the industry by demonstrating the popularity of goal orientated teamplay.


Q3CTF:

Quake3... CTF unfriendly ?

Zoid: I think people need to realize that CTF is not a major focus for Quake3.
Quake3Arena is a game centered on hardcore deathmatch and the raw carnage that ensures.
CTF is there because it's a fun game to add to fray!

What happened with the fifth map of Q3CTF ?

Zoid: Yes there are only four maps in the box. I thought there was going to be five, but one was cut at the last minute (some sort of clipping problems from what I understand). None of the maps in the game were made by me. I have three ThreeWave CTF maps that I was hoping to put into the game but they left out for unspecified reasons.

... as you know Zoid released the 3 Threewave maps soon after the release of Quake3:Arena they are:
q3wctf1 "Bloodlust", q3wctf2 "Courtyard Conundrum" and q3wctf3 "Finnegan's Revenge".

At this moment Threewave is working on a second mappack for q3ctf... according to Casey, one of the level designers from Threewave, the pack contains 5 new maps...
The release of this mappack was initial planned on october 6th 2000, CTF's 4th Anniversary, but is delayed.

... to be continued. 		Threewave Logo Threewave