Best mods, Catch16 and Battle, deserve players

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Roruman
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Best mods, Catch16 and Battle, deserve players

Post by Roruman »

You need to try out the mods Catch16 and Battle. I consider them the best, and will explain why.
If you disagree with me, don't like this mod, even after playing it, even if you don't know why, I would be glad to talk with you!

Both are awesome with many players, up to 16 right now, which may be the most appropriate, but 32 or even 64 should be tried. It would be too much to manage for CTF or DM, race mods have a lot of players because there are independent areas, but these mods truly are made for epic. It becomes truly chaotic, probably unlike what you have seen elsewhere, but you can still rise from it!

There are few servers for them, so you can add them to your favourites, and once in awhile bring people with you on them.
The servers are often empty or nearly. A required minimum numbers of players to bring the server to the visible part of server list is not reached enough, so they need a little kickstart. Battle is actually a little more played, except these 2 last days when I gathered players from other servers to play Catch16.

Catch16

Rules

- It is either played with grenade or laser. There is only one weapon for all, with infinite ammo. Even the laser explodes to make allow bounces.
- Every player is the leader of his own team at start, represented by a unique set of body and feet colours.
- A hit changes the victims' team to your own. Players do not die by hits, and have no life points. A team can spread with the "recruits" of the leader catching more victims. A leader can be caught by another team, while other players of his team remain in his team (and can bring him back). If a leader leaves the game, all of his team-mates are back to their own team as leader.
- You earn 1points for each hit, and 5points if every player is in your team. When you die in a killing entity, you don't lose points or your team colour.
- A round is finished when all players are in a same team. The game is finished when one player reaches 10 or 100 points depending on the number of players present.

Comparisons

Catch16 offers a very simple concept, with a very neat interaction.
It is actually ancestor from zCatch, but it feels like zCatch removed the best part of it.
Catch16's concept offers more complex strategies, with no one having to wait.
You display superiority by, keeping others prisoners in zCatch, using others for yourself in Catch16.
In zCatch, everyone is equal, and can be evaluated on the same criteria, but for an effective "filtering", a satisfying result, some players need to be put on hold. In CTF, respawning is cheap and has few consequence. Sometimes, it is even a tactic. DM is too simple. In Invasion, there is a consequence when you lose, you switch to Zombie side, but not everyone is equal, so not everyone can be judged on the same criterias. In Catch16, all players have the same status, but still can differentiate themselves a lot from the other.
zCatch is a deathmatch, in a tournament-like improved version that emphasize showdowns, Catch16 is a bigger scaled fight, for territory, in an improved version of war.
While in zCatch the best become the focus for their merits, being glorified as they display their skill, which their spectators can then learn, in Catch16, is a bigger scale fight for territory, where your usual zCatch solo tactics can make your fame, strategy becomes part of the game, in a satisfactory manner, compatible with fast-paced gameplay, succeeding where zCatch fails, solving the gameplay issue to reward the winner and punish the loser, in the best way ever seen, and avoiding pitfalls of slow-paced or turn-by-turn games.
It is a culmination of the good ideas from all other mods, a very good summary that doesn't need superfluous elements like flags, freezing tiles, many weapons. Its single ruling principle can be explored vastly, without the need for these various elements which become superfluous, while others are a patchwork of various single elements that can work together and need them to have an appeal.
Catch16 is the Teeworlds equivalent of the Go game.
(It is also similar to agar.io, though the later is ever-inflating and can only work if people disconnect frequently, but you can make artificial teams with others, while technically you only have yourself as a team).

What are the downsides?

If there are too few players, like 4, it isn't intersting. You don't have the necessary scale to plan strategies and you run into end situations quickly, a round lasts too little and you end up waiting more during the loading than in the actual game! So come by 8 people at least.

You can get lost with the team gameplay... It can seem to not make sense and not work, or be useless, just like creating territory in Go.
For example, isn't it unfair that someone works for a team that isn't its own when its leader is caught by another team? Shouldn't he become the leader of the team? After all, the leader does not contribute to his team. (Deku and I had a discussion about this.)
However, this is not true. If the leader doesn't contribute to his team, he faces more risk to lose it. Players can decide whether to stay in someone else's team.
You can quit it if the leader has too many points and favour a player with low rank's team, or you can betray teams, act like a mercenary and win with instagib points only, while dragging the round for long and not making the team victory necessary, which is especially good if your team is dissolved.
With a little experience, even with many players, you can understand the situation and take control of it. It is not random.
You could give a similar criticism to other mods. In OpenFNG, you work for a team, but the teams have to be balanced, or the game doesn't work well, so you switch team and lose all your score! In zCatch, everything is reset when you die, there is no intermediary between winning and losing, and a round lasts forever.

The biggest issue is that the spawn position at the beginning of a round does not change. It is not random, and everyone spawns at the same place. So the encounters at the start are always the same, which is unfair. Though, it doesn't ruin the game, since if you play on a big map like grasscatch, you don't run into someone immediately and you can chose different ways, and in a small map like ctf5, everyone is packed, so the fights are more chaotic and the outcome vary, even pro lose their team sometimes at the beginning against noobs.

If there are too many players, the colour sets can be confusing. You can end up with two teams with green head, and only different feet colours. Though it can also be considered interesting (like players who disguise themselves in Zombies in Invasion by taking a similar skin), and does not happen often. If the game evolved to manage 32 or 64 players, new team characteristics should be added, like a different skin in addition to colour.

Details

The official map is "grasscatch", a big map with various zones, including corridors, platforms, and hiding spots.
There are options to:
- change the map
- change

Servers

Currently, there are two Catch16 servers:
Hookzone.net:
- grenade
- many maps
Game-in-Evolution.:de:
- laser
- grasscatch
- hide/show names and chat

Trivia

If you are still a child, and the Kirby-like graphics of Teeworlds don't appease your parent's critics on how this game is violent, show them this mod, precisely explaining how this is only a painting game: the laser is just a spray of paint, while the grenade is actually a paint bottle! (If possible, make them addicted, to help this server grow back...)

This "paintball" concept could have inspired Splatoon?!? :o :oops: 8-)

Battle

It is an extended CTF.
There are checkpoints you can capture to spawn at.
There are new weapons, including vehicles! Helicopter, Plane, Tank, Motorbike, Turret, Battleship, Submarine. There are fancy elements like teleports, barriers with switches, water dynamics, guided shots. The heavier vehicles can be ride by 2 tees.
There are classes, and frankly you get a bit lost among these, and the best is engineer IMO.

The result can look glitchy, because of the reused weapons and armor icons to draw vehicles, but it is creative.
There are newbies often playing, so the CTF gameplay is often shadowed by the DM gameplay, they sometimes capture checkpoints, but barely target the enemy flag, they are most busy picking a vehicle and a class and trying to use it.
There are various official maps that are big, horizontal, feature HQs, various environments such as water, lava, etc.

What do you think of these mods? How to make them popular again?

Fifi is also in favor of these mods and made me discover Alien, which I have still not played, and was only dreaming about up to now, :) in his topic Let's play cool forgotten mods! (Alien, Battle, Catch16).
Last edited by Roruman on Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:26 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Play Catch16, the ancestor of zCatch, without the waiting, and better colour system! Let's hold a party on the server: a lone tee will rainbow: :oops: while all gathered will get their own color teams :mrgreen: :lol:
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Re: Best mods deserve players

Post by imp »

Main problems about Catch16 are the usage of entities and those endless killing sprees in tight tunnels.
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Re: Best mods deserve players

Post by Roruman »

You mean you can alpha entities and see hidden tees even with names disabled?
That's true, but honestly, I don't like disabling the names (which also disabled the chat).
Anyway, though I am not against camping, those bushes are superficial: you take an enemy by surprise by beeing fast, ambushing him regardless of being hidden, or moving towards him using the sounds without making sound yourself (avoid firing, hooking too much to be stealthy).

The repeated killing sprees in tunnels, where the tees on the front catch the enemy tee in front of them, who gets caught back to his team, which fires on him from behind continuously, is not endless.
There just needs to be someone who comes from behind to bit the enemy line by the tail, for example, surrounding it and reducing his ability to cover the front tees.
Maybe you can even push your enemy line out of the tunnel, to benefit from it by yourself.

It is the same for spammers. Some dislike them, but I find them weak, for three reasons:
- Spamming is like begging to be shot. You produce a waterfall of projectiles that only people running around blindly will get hit by, while it also locates you easily from the sound and the trajectory of the projectiles. Someone just has to sneak on the spammer from an angle where he doesn't shoot and render him useless, especially if he camps.
- Groups of the same team who spam a big wall of projectiles in the same direction are very vulnerable, just like the previous case. They will usually think themselves invincible, while they will attract even more enemies, so it may be worse. You just have to close on them from above for example, and spam on them, which will lead to a chaos, when they will spam on their comrades and complete your take-over.
- You can't aim while spamming. In close combat, people who fire a few shots at a calculated time will win, while spammers will always have their timing off, and pro players can even avoid the spamming, even from several players.
- In real battles, "spamming" on strategic areas is used, by both sides, and it is only an element of tactics, because strategies can win against spamming as seen above.

I have experienced everything I have said there (apart from real battles, though you can see them in media, like for example Legend of the Galactic Heroes, where ships line and fire non-stop on the other side, and different strategies don't make it a battle of attrition).
Play Catch16, the ancestor of zCatch, without the waiting, and better colour system! Let's hold a party on the server: a lone tee will rainbow: :oops: while all gathered will get their own color teams :mrgreen: :lol:
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Re: Best mods deserve players

Post by Element Finland »

I remember when catch16 was actively played... :c
some body once told me
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Re: Best mods deserve players

Post by hannibal »

I like Catch16.
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Re: Best mods deserve players

Post by Roruman »

I've thought of something. We need a new DDNet feature.
It would push to the front servers that need players. If there few players on a single game mod, its server with most players is advertised, so it doesn't apply for, let's say, empty zCatch servers, if other zCatch servers are active.
These requesting servers would be put in a special zone, above the server list for example, as to not disrupt the filtering by criteria. Another possibility is to create another them another tab, similar to the "Favorites" one. Finally, they can also be on the regular server list, found using a sorting algorithm of "Waiting" for example, next to "Player" and "Ping".
Play Catch16, the ancestor of zCatch, without the waiting, and better colour system! Let's hold a party on the server: a lone tee will rainbow: :oops: while all gathered will get their own color teams :mrgreen: :lol:
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Re: Best mods deserve players

Post by Ryozuki »

Roruman wrote: We need a new DDNet feature..

What ddrace needs is somethimg to make it easier to learn and make novice more newb-likeish
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Re: Best mods deserve players

Post by Roruman »

DDRace is a kind of mod that can be played alone.
You could make a standalone DDRace mod. The player would not stress the server or bother more experienced racers.
Even if he can not receive help from other players directly, he could have access to more tools, such as short demo you can watch about how to perform a trick just when you need it, using a dummy with a bot to help you, or QTR sequences for example.

In Catch16, everyone finds his place, and in Battle, there are plenty of elements to experience.
Play Catch16, the ancestor of zCatch, without the waiting, and better colour system! Let's hold a party on the server: a lone tee will rainbow: :oops: while all gathered will get their own color teams :mrgreen: :lol:
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Re: Best mods deserve players

Post by Forris »

You only learn the game, when you want to learn it, play harder maps that you can actually do, so your skill levels increases and play at the beginning in big groups. There are no newbish maps needed.
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Re: Best mods deserve players

Post by Fifi »

I made a topic with a detailed description of Alien, Catch16 and Battle, connected with my proposition about making an organised play events (like the Falling Down one). I hope it'll help us in reviving those mods. :3
http://forum.ddnet.tw/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2238
Btw. I was thinking about it for a while, I even had the Alien and Battle parts partially done, when I noticed your topic. ^^
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