New

dot-objective

What a round is about — a control point, a bomb to plant and defuse, a payload on a path, capture the flag, an escort and a holdout clock. Six kinds, with no body, no collision shape and no node.

dot-objective decides when a round’s goal has been met. dot-match has report_objective — a number a game increments — and nothing that decides when to call it.

Requires dot-core.

An objective here is a rule about a place: no body, no collision shape, no node, which is what lets it run headless, in 2D on the XZ plane, and in a mirroring client. Requires dot-core and nothing else — everything it knows about the world arrives through six callables.

Six kinds

They are the round formats the team shooters and the co-operative shooters have settled on, reduced to the smallest set that still tells them apart. A game with none of them is a deathmatch, which dot-match alone already does.
CAPTURE A control point.
BOMB Plant it, defuse it.
PAYLOAD A cart pushed along a path.
FLAG Carry theirs to yours.
RESCUE Escort somebody out.
HOLDOUT Own it, or survive, for N.

Usage

var objectives := DotObjectiveManager.new()
objectives.presence = DotObjectivePresence.of(
    roster.keys, world.position_of, match_node.team_of, world.is_alive
)
objectives.score_fn = func(id, team, by, points, player_points):
    match_node.report_objective(by, id, tick, points)

var res := objectives.setup(map.objectives)
if not res.ok:
    push_error(res.error.message)
add_child(objectives)

# Once per physics tick, from the game's own tick loop:
objectives.advance(tick)

A client mirrors instead of deciding:

mirror.authoritative = false
mirror.setup(map.objectives)
mirror.apply_wire(wire_from_the_server)

The numbers are the point

Each is twenty years old and load-bearing:

  • More cappers capture faster, with diminishing returns. The nth player adds 1/n. Linear makes a point a headcount.
  • Two teams at once pauses the capture, and the defender gets credit only if the attackers had got at least half way — rewarding a player for standing on their own point teaches players to stand on their own point.
  • An abandoned capture decays over ninety seconds rather than snapping back, six times faster in overtime.
  • A cart moves at 0.55, 0.77 and 1.0 of full speed for one, two and three-or-more pushers. Hand-picked rather than a curve, so a second pusher is worth having and a fourth is worth sending somewhere else.
  • A hill does the work. A downhill segment rolls the cart with nobody on it, so a defender who stops pushing at the top has still lost the hill.
Play