[MOD] Flagdrag

Good evening,

In the process of getting my git repo back in shape, I ran across a somewhat experimental mod I wrote (and pushed to github) years ago, however I never formally released it.  Since it's of no use just sitting around in the repo, I figured I might as well just release it, although i'm not too convinced that it's actually fun to play -- I'll leave that for you to decide.

The mod's name is Flagdrag (which is a bit misleading, a better name would probably be something along the lines of Deliver the Flag, however it started as an experiment on flag-hooking, and the name stuck).

In a nutshell, it is a teamplay game involving the CTF flags, in a DDRace-like environment (although as usual it uses my own little minimalistic ddrace-mockup; it's not a DDRace mod even though it looks like one)

On a DDRace-ish map, both teams spawn at the usual spawn location; both CTF flags will also spawn close to that.
The objective for both teams is to be the first to take their flag (i.e. the flag of their respective color) to the finish line, i.e. basically the same as DDRace, just that what matters is your flag getting to the finish line. Every time a flag is delivered there, the respective team scores (+1) and the flag is respawned at the beginning.
The game ends when the score limit is reached (meaningful values vary between 1 and 10)

To get some fun into this, the flags' behaviour and constraints have been somewhat modified:

• Tees of either team can carry the flag of either color

• Flags can be passed around; colliding with the flag carrier steals the flag from them. Also, unless my memory is bad, hooking the flag carrier will also steal it, but i think there is (or should be) a way to disable that

• Flags can be thrown away deliberately (which is currently implemented as an awkward chat command, works best when bound to a key or middle mouse button or so (bind mouse3 "say /drop"). The flag will be thrown in the direction aimed at, how powerfully it is thrown depends on the velocity/momentum the thrower has. Of course, other tees will "catch" the flag when colliding with it; skillful application of this can be an effective strategy for a team to prevent their flag getting stolen.

• Flags can be "destroyed" by throwing them into kill-tiles (or walking therin while carrying).  This will respawn the flag at the starting point, and should thus preferrably be done to the opponent team flag only. As a special rule, if the flag carrier falls into kill-tiles (as opposed to just the flag), it will bounce straight upwards, for the teammates to have a (one) chance to salvage it.

• Optionally, the flags themselves (when not carried) are hookable. This can be switched off, though, because it doesn't look/feel very well with the vanilla client. For hooking purposes, the flag roughly behaves like a tee.

The second to last point already gives a hint about the nature of this mod -- it is meant to be played competitively -- it's not a peaceful side-by-side race, but war. If you have a chance to block the enemy team at a critical point in the map; if you get a chance to hold the enemy flag and take it backwards, by all means, do it. :)

With respect to maps, at the moment there's only one, more of less for demonstrational purposes only.  It's essentially the first quarter of xyz_ddrace2.  I'd love if someone would create better maps, it shouldn't be much work taking a ddrace map (though it should be one which can be solved without additinoal weapons or ddrace specials; the mod supports freeze- and unfreeze-tiles, nothing else (for now)) and transforming it into a Flagdrag map. Entities can be found at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fstd/ … tities.png

I'm running a Flagdrag server on 5.231.62.161:8305, server name "Flagdrag", for people to check it out, however it's a rather cheap (free, in fact) VPS which means it could be better performance and lag-wise.
I'd appreciate if people hosted some servers on their own, the source code can be found at http://github.com/fstd/teeworlds/tree/flagdrag, binaries (windows + linux) are at http://github.com/fstd/teeworlds/tree/flagdrag-bin. As always, compiling from source is recommended.

My main concern about this mod is that I think it will have a hard time getting meaningful games going, because it requires (for the typical ddrace maps which can't be solved alone) a minimum of 4 players to make sense. It's probably a good idea to check it out together with some other people, rather than joining and waiting.. I've not experimented with maps which can be solved without the help of teammate(s), but this could yield something interesting, too.  Time will tell (and i'd love to get some feedback, or maps).

So long,
fstd