Creating CTF Maps

By Trevelyan

Presumptions:

You should have a decent knowledge of UnrealED, such as playerstart actors, brushes and the like. You don't need to be an expert to make CTF maps, just that you need to be real good at making maps fun in order to make good CTF maps. Balance is the most key element! I will dive into this a bit later. For now, let's get started.

Directions:

This tutorial will cover the most important elements that must be needed to make a functioning CTF map; the actual map that I will show you is so simple it can me made in under a minute! Keep this in mind, as I'm not that bad at making maps J
First things first: Make a large room, any way you would like. To decrease confusion later on, add colored lighting on both sides (red and blue) and make a spot where you want your flag. I used this map as an example of this:

As you can see, it's a very complicated process. This room is roughly 1000X500 with 500*units in height. Now what are we missing? Flags you say??
Go to your classes on the right hand side. Select this actor:
Navigation point > FlagBase
And right-click on each flag holder to add your flagbase. Don't worry about the color of both flags, as UnrealED will display them as blue no matter what. Double-click on each flag and bring up the advanced properties:

What tells UnrealED which team is which is dependent on the team number shown above. Generally, red is 0, and blue is 1. Make your red "base" team number 0, and blue number 1. Now, if you haven't noticed, in every CTF map players will always spawn on their team's turf. Therefore, we shall learn on how to do this next:
Select Navigation point > Playerstart and add 2 playerstarts on each side or "base". Double-click on each playerstart and bring up its advanced properties. Select playerstart on its properties and highlight Team Number. You should know what to do at this point; however, do note that you do not adjust the properties for navigation point, which has a similar team number box.
Now rebuild your level, and make sure you save it as a CTF map (make the filename start with CTF-) before you test it, as the default game mode for map testing is Deathmatch, meaning it won't work unless you open the map manually once you boot up UT.

Conclusion:

This covers the basic elements of a CTF map. Make sure you don't plagiarize my map shown, or I will make it a point to sue you ;) However, when making your CTF map you may want cannons, covered in my other tutorial. You will also need to add some more difficult-to-add pathnodes in order to make the bot pathing work even remotely well. (Again, not to plug Silencer and myself, but this is also covered nearby!)
Any questions are more than welcome (please, send some!) at connors@nnex.net