Capture the flag

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Capture the flag (CTF) is a traditional outdoor game often played by children or sometimes adults 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 back to their own base. It is also a popular paintball game and a computer game.

One variation of the game includes a "jail" area in addition to the flag on each team's territory. If a member of one team gets tagged by a member of the second team in the second team's territory, the tagged person must sit in jail either for a pre-determined time limit, or until an untagged member runs through the jail. In some cases, particularly if the jail is far from the boundary line between territories, players may be allowed to form a "human chain" from the jail towards the boundary. This makes it easier to be "rescued", the more players are in jail. The purpose of this rule may be to reduce the possibility of games ending in a virtual stalemate: if one team has nearly all its players in jail, allowing the opposing team to focus exclusively on the remaining members, it can prevent them from effecting either the release of prisoners or the capture of the flag. With this variation, with mutual consent from both teams, "Jail Break!" may be called, and all players in jail have a chance to run to their respective sides to freedom. <ref>http://usscouts.org/games/game_cf.asp</ref>

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Software and games

In 1992, Richard Carr released a 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 the computer player would have needed to bring the enemy flag home and intercept opposing characters carrying the flag.^{[citation needed]}

A common gameplay mode called "Capture the Flag" is found in many first-person shooters such as Quake, Urban Terror, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, Halo: Combat Evolved, Call of Duty: United Offensive, Call of Duty 2, the TimeSplitters series (renamed "Capture The Bag"), and Metroid Prime Hunters. CTF is even in some sports games like the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series. 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. 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/defended were triad symbols. Note that in FPSes, 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 and Team Fortress Classic mods for Quake and Half-Life respectively.

Image:Ctf-flag-animation.gif

Flag from CTF in the online game Quake 2

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 — or only certain vehicles such as in Unreal Tournament 2004 where only players in ground vehicles can hold and thus capture the flag, whereas using air vehicles or the translocater (a personal teleporter/grappling hook) will cause the player to drop the flag. This feature gives the defenders an edge, thus making the game sessions last a bit longer.

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 battleground implements 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.

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Computer security

In computer security, capture the flag 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 Kenshoto.

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 5 iCTF exercises since then. The winner of the 2005 edition was the team from the Politecnico di Milano university in Italy. The 2007 edition occurred on December 7th, 2007 and involved 35 teams from across the world.

A list of winners for some American capture the flag games can be found here.

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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 Pacmanhattan 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.

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