The C&E Week Capture The Flag (CTF) event was the brainchild of the PLANS Squadron at CFNOC. Originally, the team was tasked with developing a classic CTF-style event for in order to raise awareness for CAF cyber. However, it quickly evolved into full-blown gaming experience players enjoyed from 16-18 October 2024. In late 2023, MGen Yarker requested the concept of a CFNOC CTF to be developed for cyber readiness by March 2024 as opposed to traditional outdoor unit sports events that are the bread and butter of fun activities in the CAF. As the conceptual challenges were explored, a unique opportunity for creativity presented itself to the team. A CFNOC delegation comprised of Lt(N) VG Unnithan, WO D Button and WO R Whitney pitched a bold counterproposal to the Senior Leadership of what is now Cyber Command. They suggested pivoting to a trivia-style game with a fully fledged storyline in the spirit of roleplaying adventure games from the retro-gaming era. They argued that this truly represented the geekdom that is prevalent in the C&E branch. The team additionally recommended the event be launched in the week prior to C&E week to celebrate the standup of Cyber Command. The project received the blessing of MGen Yarker who was amused by the ‘ambition’ underlying the proposal, and the execution for the CTF began in earnest. Once CIOG DIMEI was selected as the project developers, Maj S Genereux was tasked as project manager to establish and drive the glidepath. Towards the tail-end, Cap Ball inherited the reins of project management and carried the project to successful completion that smashed through all expectations.

The scripting of the story and generation of the trivia questions were spearheaded by Sgt AD Cohoon and Cpl S Painchaud, both integral to the event’s success. Sgt AD Cohoon said, “Story development and the actual programming aspect of this game were largely developed during off hours. I know that Kelly [Tobias] put in more hours on this project than he will attest to and deserves a great deal of credit for making it happen. There were at least a couple of meetings where it was Kelly, Sam [Painchaud], and I. Sam put in a tremendous amount of work on the quests, questions, and the translation piece.”

Cpl Painchaud added, “When the decision to switch to the RPG game concept was made, I was introduced into the team as the person responsible for the question bank. At this point, I had to produce questions covering all trades within the C&E branch. In the end, I personally wrote 35 out of the 131 questions, including most of the cyber challenges. With my background in software development, I took responsibility for designing the game flow and contributed to writing part of the story.”

The game development itself was primarily completed by CIOG DIMEI’s Kelly Tobias and Justin Barfoot, both of whom dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy to this project. Kelly Tobias put in significant personal hours into researching, developing, implementing, and bug hunting. His contributions to this project cannot be understated.
The event which ran 16-18 October 2024 exceeded the development team’s expectations, with incredible community engagement and support. A total of 113 people participated, 51 of whom completed the game, with an overall average playtime of over 7 hours. Despite some bugs, the success was a direct result of the development team’s hard work, dedication, and extensive
testing. One participant even remarked that it “performed better than Cyberpunk 2077 on launch by virtue of not crashing.”

The overall sentiment from the community can be summarized in these two responses:

• “The fairness of the event between the trades throughout the branch. The unique and fun twist of the CTF. The variety of questions relating to the different trades under C&E.” – Cpl Danyon Lewis
• “It is great that the questions pulled from a variety of trades. It is a good way to encourage personnel to seek out peers in different signals trades to ask for assistance. I think that kind of collaboration is something that we should encourage. We are one big C&E family and can use our expertise to help each other out.” – Sgt John Livingstone

Generally, participants appreciated the representation of all C&E trades, being reminded of the Branch’s history in an entertaining manner, and the leveraging their skills to solve technical challenges and defeating Forest Giants. The development team appreciated the community’s support and feedback throughout the event. The participants have expressed interest in a future iteration, while the development team is discussing the possibility of making this possible.

Click here to view results (pdf file download).