Capture the flag

For other uses, see Capture the flag (disambiguation).

Capture the Flag

Players	Large group, around 6- 10 players
Chance	Low
Skills	stealth, endurance, observation

Capture the Flag is a traditional outdoor sport generally played by children, where two teams each have a flag (or other marker) and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base," and bring it safely back to their own base. Enemy players can be "tagged" by players in their home territory; these players are then, depending on the agreed rules, out of the game, members of the opposite team, or "in jail". (One variation of the game includes a "jail" area in addition to the flag on each team's territory.)

Overview

It is most respected after a victorious win in Capture the flag to take your oppentents head and present it to your local leader (city mayor, govenor, ect). Capture the Flag requires a playing field of some sort. Whether indoor or outdoor, the field is divided into two halves, known as territories. Players form two teams, one for each territory. Each side has a "flag" which is most often a piece of fabric, but can be any object small enough to be easily carried by a person (night time games might use flashlights, glowsticks or lanterns as the flags). It is also suggested that teams wear dark colors at night time to increase the difficulty of the opponents to see them. Eye black is suggested for team members to create team unity. The object of the game is for players to make their way into the opposing team's territory, grab the flag and return with it to their own territory without being tagged. The flag is defended mainly by tagging opposing players who attempt to take it. Within their own territory players are "safe," meaning that they cannot be tagged by opposing players. Once they cross in to the opposing team's territory they are vulnerable.

Location

The flags are generally placed in a visibly obvious location (but in some variations the flag is hidden) at the rear of a team's territory. In another, more difficult version, the flag is hidden in a place where it can only be seen from one angle. It also might have some challenge involved. For example, the flag could be hidden in the leaves up in a tall tree, and the players have to see the flag, then knock it out and bring it to their base.

Jail

Different versions of Capture the Flag have different rules both for handling the flag and for what happens to tagged players. A player who is tagged may be eliminated from the game entirely, be forced to join the opposing team, or be placed temporarily in "jail." The jail is a predesignated area of the group's territory which exists for holding tagged players. It is usually located a good distance from the flag in order to minimize the possibility of simultaneous flag grabs and jail breaks.

While tagged players may be confined to jail for a limited, predetermined time, the most common form of the game involves the option for a "jailbreak." In this version, players who are tagged remain in jail indefinitely. However, players from their own team may free them from jail by means of a jailbreak. Jailbreaks are accomplished by a player running from their own territory into the enemy's jail. Such action may, depending on the rules, free all jailed players or simply those who are physically touched by the one performing the jailbreak. In general freed players are obligated to return directly to their own territory before attempting offensive action (i.e., attempting to grab the flag).

While returning to their own side, freed players usually, although not always, acquire "free walk-backs," in which they are safe from tagging until they reach their home territory. The player performing the jail break, on the other hand, is neither safe, nor restricted from performing other actions such as attempting to grab the flag or generally moving about enemy territory. Sometimes, players in jail form chains, so that if your teammate tags one person in the chain, everyone is free. Simply leaving jail without being freed is considered poor sportsmanship and is severely frowned upon, oftentimes leading to expulsion from the game.

Capturing the flag

The rules for the handling of the flag also vary from game to game and deal mostly with the disposition of the flag after a failed attempt at capturing it. In one variant after a player is tagged while carrying the flag it is returned to its original place. In another variant, the flag is left in the location where the player was tagged. This latter variant obviously makes offensive play easier, as the flag will tend, over the course of the game, to be moved closer to the dividing line between territories. In some games, it is possible for the players to throw the flag to teammates. As long as the flag stays in play without hitting the ground, it is allowed for the players to pass.

When the flag is captured by one player, he is not safe from being tagged. Sometimes, the flag holder may not be safe at all, even in his home territory, until he obtains both flags, thus ending the game. But he has the option to return to his own side or hand it off to a teammate who will then carry it to the other side. In most versions, he may not throw the flag, but only hand it off while running. The game is won when a player returns to his own territory with the enemy flag. Also, as a general rule, the flag carrier may not attempt to free any of their teammates from jail.

Variants

Alterations may include "one flag" CTF in which there is a defensive team and an offensive team, or games with three or more flags. In the case of the latter, one can only win when all flags are captured, not only one.

Software and games

In 1992, Richard Carr released an MS-DOS based game called Capture the Flag. It is a turn-based strategy game with real time network / modem play (or play-by-mail) based around the traditional outdoor game. The game required players to merely move one of their characters onto the same square as their opponent's flag, as opposed to bringing it back to friendly territory, because of difficulties implementing the artificial intelligence that the computer player would have needed to bring the enemy flag home and intercept opposing characters carrying the flag.

A common multiplayer gameplay mode (usually with team-based gameplay, as with the real-life game) called "Capture the Flag" is found in many first- and third-person shooters such as Team Fortress 2, Marathon (video game), Quake, Urban Terror, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, the Halo series, the Call of Duty series, the TimeSplitters series (renamed "Capture The Bag"), and Metroid Prime Hunters. CTF is even in some sports games such as the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series and the racing series Midnight Club. Each team has a flag and the players attempt to take the enemy's flag from their base and bring it back to their own flag to score. CTF is most commonly played in multiplayer games.

Possibly the first first-person shooter to feature CTF was Rise of the Triad, released in 1994, while the first real-time strategy to feature CTF was Command & Conquer in 1995. One of the multiplayer modes was called Capture the Triad, and conforms to the objectives stated above for CTF games in first person shooters, with the exception that the items to be captured and defended were triad symbols. Note that in First-Person Shooters, unlike the children's game, players can be harmed irrespective of whether they are in their own base.

CTF was popularized when it was first introduced as a modification to Quake by the company Threewave. CTF is also a popular mode in the Team Fortress mod for Quake, it's remake Team Fortress Classic produced by the same makers for half-life, the standalone Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life respectively. CTF mods are available for multiple first person shooters, including Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which is a free download using the game engine from the popular Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Compared to a deathmatch game, CTF scenarios often feature some sort of transportation tool that can be used to travel faster and to reach areas which the player wouldn't normally be able to reach without this extra aid. Such tools might be a grappling hook or a portable teleporter. In Battlefield 1942 CTF the many vehicles available in the game serve this role, though in ETF the vehicles move slower than the players, and are vulnerable objectives in most missions. The usual reason for including such equipment is because it allows players to outmaneuver the flag carrier on his way home, as the flag carrier is often not able to use transportation tools. In Unreal Tournament 2004, for example, only players in ground vehicles can hold and thus capture the flag, whereas using air vehicles or the Translocator (a personal teleporter) will cause the player to drop the flag. The Halo series takes this concept a step further, preventing the flag carrier from using weapons at all, unless the carrier willfully drops the flag, though the flag-carrier can still board vehicles as a passenger (Halo 2 and 3) or as the driver (1 only). This feature gives the defenders a slight edge, thus making the game sessions last a bit longer. Unreal Tournament 2004 introduces a Vehicle CTF mode, differentiated from normal CTF maps by the presence of vehicles and in Unreal Tournament III and the replacement of the Translocator with a Hoverboard.

In Gears of War 2, CTS is giving a new twist, each team's "flag" is now an actual player that is armed and able to move. Opposing players must avoid being killed by the flag player, down them, and take as a meatshield to forcibly drag back to their homebase.

In Starcraft, a flag object exists to facilitate the creation of CTF-style maps (as flags can be picked up and carried by worker units). This is demonstrated in the 8-player custom map StarCraft Fortress (included with the game, designed as an homage to Team Fortress).

In the MMORPG Silkroad Online, players can play capture the flag free every 2 hours in the game. It is the same as capture the flag except the players attack the other players on the opposing team with their obtained skills. Also, to get the flag, players must kill monsters on their side of the field until they obtain a key that one of the monsters is holding.

In the MMORPG RuneScape, paying members can play a mini-game called Castle Wars, which includes the basic principles of capture the flag. In another MMORPG, World of Warcraft, the Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks battlegrounds implement CTF-style gameplay.

There are also CTF variants for more than 2 teams (4 teams most commonly). In that case, the scoring system can vary greatly.

In Pokémon Platinum, there is a hidden underground CTF area where players are able to construct their own secret bases to house their flags. Players are also able place traps around(but not in) their bases to stop any potential thieves because you cannot attack your opponents other than retaking your flag.

In the MMORPG MapleStory, players can play Capture the Flag in the PvP arena. It has the standard rules, except the players attack other players on the opposing team. The skills had been changed in the game and to score, the flag on the player's team must not be taken.

The MMORPG World of Warcraft has a PvP battleground called Warsong Gulch, set between the Ashenvale and the North Barrens, which has Capture the Flag rules similar to the examples above. The first team to get three captures wins the game.

Computer security

In computer security, Capture the Flag (CTF) is a computer security wargame. Each team is given a machine (or small network) to defend on an isolated network. Teams are scored on both their success in defending their assigned machine and on their success in attacking other team's machines. Depending on the nature of the particular CTF game, teams may either be attempting to take an opponent's flag from their machine or teams may be attempting to plant their own flag on their opponent's machine. CTF was popularized by the hacker conference DEF CON. Currently, the DEF CON CTF competitions are run by Diutinus Defense Technologies Corp.

Contests are generally executed in a hotel ballroom or meeting room. A typical contest will have an area for each team playing, arranged around a central area reserved for the contest administrators. Projectors will display a scoreboard on the wall, which will be intermittently interrupted by witty or humorous video clips. Music is usually provided by a PA system during the contest.

CTF contests are usually designed to serve as an educational exercise to give participants experience in securing a machine, as well as conducting and reacting to the sort of attacks found in the real world. Reverse-engineering, network sniffing, protocol analysis, system administration, programming, and cryptanalysis are all skills which have been required by prior CTF contests at DEF CON.

CTF games often touch on many other aspects of information security, such as physical security, regulatory compliance, and software licensing. Successful teams generally have extensive industry experience and are capable of addressing these issues, even when raised by surprise in the middle of the contest.

An international, academic CTF was created by University of California, Santa Barbara in 2004. There have been six iCTF exercises since then, one per year. The 2009 edition occurred on December 4, 2009 and involved 56 teams—up from 39 in the previous year—from across the world, making it the largest live security competition ever performed.

Since 2011, the Positive Technologies company has started to hold international onsite contests based on the CTF principle as a part of the Positive Hack Days forum (PHDAYS). The key distinction PHDAYS CTF from analogous competitions is conditions approximating the reality as much as possible. All the vulnerabilities prepared are not fabricated, but may be found in modern information systems. Thus, the CTF participants gain an opportunity to try their wings in real situations and to develop their own solutions intended for the information resources protection. To attach an additional zest to the competition the PHD CTF organizers prepare the game infrastructure and make all the changes according to the one story line (the legend). Such conditions create the special ambience and make the Positive Hack Days CTF stand out against other similar contests.

Urban gaming

Capture the Flag is among the games that have made a recent comeback among adults as part of the urban gaming trend (which includes games like Pac-Manhattan, Fugitive and Manhunt). The game is played on city streets and players use cellphones to communicate. News about the games spreads virally through the use of blogs and mailing lists. Urban Capture the Flag has been played in cities throughout North America. One long running example occurs on the Northrop Mall at the University of Minnesota on Fridays with typical attendance ranging from 50 to several hundred

See also

• Flag-rush
• Fugitive (game)

References

Notes

External links

• Richard Carr's website
• Capture the flag at usscouts.org