Legendary Quake 2 CTF mapper hafhead stopped by AcmeCTF in 2011:  http://www.acmectf.com/forum/index.php/topic,3430.msg50457.html

“Hey-

I haven’t been into Quake for a long time… but lately I started looking into some levels that I made a LONG time ago, and seeing that they saw a heck of a lot more Q2 play then I ever did.  I’m curious about a few things, though.  If anyone is interested in satisfying an old geezer’s curiosity…

Slippery When Wet: Nobody seems to like the random quad on this level.  I originally did that to screw with quad timers to discourage quad whoring… I’m thinking that either everyone likes quad whoring, or it had some other consequence that I didn’t predict.  Which is it?

McSchminley Base: When this was originally released you couldn’t consistently crouch/grapple out through the sniping window.  A later physics update to the engine made this easier to do, but I don’t recall ever doing anything to prevent it.  Has anyone ever been able to go through the other direction?
And did anyone ever find a way of capping through the center window between flag rooms?  I was really worried on release that there might be some way of doing this- and that would obviously completely break the level.

Twin Temples Lush: I’m amazed that people play this with large groups.  It almost didn’t make it into the map pack because it is so small.  I thought it was great for a 2v2 up to maybe 4v4 match, but it seems to be crazy-popular for any size.”

-hafhead

“slippery when wet: with quad there its necessary to quad whore whether you like it or not. If you dont quad whore the enemy will and rape your face off.  So you have to.  (its not random anymore)

mcshminley: dunno

lush – anything over 4v4 is awful on lush. spam central.  Lots of people like to spam = why its popular.”

-cake

“Well, well….I haven’t seen Hafhead in ages! Other than name on maps.  Welcome to our dysfunctional corner of Q2.

Cake pretty well answered Slippery and Lush questions. I think random quad is great, but the masses want to be whores so we bowed to their wishes.

McShminley….I’ve set limits to stop the exploits through windows on maps. I think there was a way thru center at one time…lost too many brain cells since then….I’ve stopped that and now forget what I did. ”

-WORM

“Cool- thanks for the responses.

It sounds like Slippery When Wet would have been better off if the quad was harder to get to.  I can think of a couple of possible solutions for that, but it’s a bit late now.

I did my best to stop any way of getting a flag through the center of McSchminley, but I left the sniping windows open to the center because the only way I knew to get through involved having another player in the right place and crouchwalking across him into the window.  I figured that good teamwork should be rewarded.  But if it just requires tricky timing or a little script, then that’s pretty lame.”

-hafhead

“No, thank you for the great maps!

Grappling out of rail rooms was easy by using this, or a similar, bind:

//Railroom grapple
alias +rrmhk “cl_maxfps 7”
alias -rrmhk “cl_maxfps 120”
bind x “+rrmhk”

Crouch at window, aim at ceiling outside window, hit bind and fire grapple….fly away. No big deal for the most part, as it is easily used by anyone by adding an alias to their cfg. Although it does give an unfair advantage to the ones that know how to bind an alias. So it’s a gray area.

But, low fps binds are also used to make players harder to hit by appearing to “skip” across a map, like someone with an extremely poor connection. That’s the main reason for capping a players fps, as this old thread shows: http://www.wormlair.com/forum/index.php/topic,2341.msg33028.html#msg33028

Slippery is a fun map, very popular in TMG Railwarz where there is no quad but players have unlimited railgun and laser hook…a fast, furious map! Never too late to move the quad for L-Fire play if you feel the urge, we’ll sure give it a try!”

-WORM

“Hah!  You’re welcome.  It was a fun hobby while it lasted, but life and career had to come first so I dropped out of the scene.

I don’t think I could ever get things set up right to compile these levels the same way again, especially with the subtle lighting effects in Slippery… though I’m not sure people would really care about this sort of detail.  It is good to know that someone might actually try it out, but I don’t think it’s terribly likely I’d actually do this.  You’ll be the first to know if I do.”

-hafhead

“Slippery: ‘Everyone’ liked quad whoring in the competitive scene because it allowed for great fights and a chance to even up the game if you gained control of quad. Random quad would just mean either get lucky when it spawns or both teams camping middle all game waiting on a quad. It would have ruined the map for competitive play, which is what most people liked rather than pub games.

McSchminley: It was very easy to consistently crouch and grapple out of the sniping window. All you need was a key bound to cl_maxfps 33 and then shoot the grapple at the upper part of the window and release once it hooked so you flew out. Going in the other way was a weird fps trick that involved someone else and just really wasn’t worth it. Also, it was easy to cap through the center window between flags if you were alone in the base. You needed the right fps and you had to crouch at the corner nearest the flag while grappling the wall in the other base. The problem was 1) getting blown up by crouching in the same position waiting to “glitch” through or 2) if you landed in the middle for more than 2s you blew up in the middle. However, we used to use tactic 2 (blowing up in the middle) to leave the flag so time could run out and we’d win by 1 cap or something.

Twin: I hate you for making that map. It became a pub favorite and was consistently played at 12v12 and meant rockets/grenades everywhere. Just a huge spam map and could probably be lumped in with wtf maps. Just kidding about hating you for it, but really I hate you for it.”

-T!

“sounds like someone was a noob at going through the middle. I would have figured someone like you would have perfected it to 100% like me, i mean seriously its not brain surgery!”

-h0ps

“Hm… it shouldn’t be possible to get a player directly between flag rooms.  I’m pretty sure there is a clip brush there and I thought that would be proof against this type of thing.  If you can use the low-FPS trick to get through this window, then I would think that you could get through any wall in the game under a certain thickness… or clip brushes aren’t as close to walls as I thought.  I was more concerned about the flag getting tossed through somehow.  I separated the two sides by a wide enough margin that a dropped flag should fall inside that area rather than through it.  And then I put in an invisible block that moves back and forth and is supposed to crush it every couple of seconds.

I can totally picture this.  Again… I didn’t expect this for more than 4v4, and I would be miserable with 24 people here too.  Less ammo wouldn’t even help if everyone spawns and grabs a RL/GL and gets killed before emptying the 5 starting shots.  I was really targeting a map that was playable for down to 2v2.

The DM version of this level wasn’t quite as bad, but it still came down to how many people were on the map.  It was a lot of fun as a 2-player stalking game, and pretty crowded with 6.”

-hafhead