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Capture the flag (CTF) is a traditional outdoor game often played by children where two teams each have a flag 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.
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.
Software/games
In 1995, 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.
A common gameplay mode called "Capture the Flag" is found in many first-person shooters such as Quake, Zdaemon, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, Combat Evolved, Call of Duty 2 and 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 FPS (and the first computer or video game) 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.
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.
CTF mods are available for multiple first person shooters, including 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 (aka ninja rope) 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.
There are also CTF variants for more than 2 teams (4 teams most commonly). In that case the scoring system can vary quite greatly.
The classic board game Stratego represents two armies attempting to capture the other's flag.
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.
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 has been hosted twice by University of California, Santa Barbara. The winner of the 2005 edition was the team from the Politecnico di Milano university in Italy.
A list of winners for some American capture the flag games can be found here.
As of 2006, the current DEF CON CTF administrators are the Kenshoto group.
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 New York and Toronto by the groups newmindspace and nygames.
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