I'M A BIG FAT LIAR Here's the second (and probably final) gametype this map will support, a minigame called Ballchase. Originally I was just going to add regular rocket race to the map, then this thought occurred to me - why not have the rally flag points be moveable objects (balls) to give you a similar crazy style to Gluttonous Geese? So here it is - just imagine 4-8 mongooses chasing after this thing and blasting it and each other with concussion rifles. Thanks to The Psycho Duck for being my gunner here: YouTube - Ballchase preview (Halo: Reach minigame) Of course Gluttonous Geese will still be part of the map as well. Also, the video above shows the changes to the arena. Besides some aesthetics polishing, it now has a ceiling - this is necessary for Ballchase so the flag point doesn't go flying into oblivion where people can't get to it. I could perhaps make the ceiling specific to that gametype though, as it is not needed for Gluttonous Geese - balls in that game despawn if they leave the arena due to a soft kill zone.
It was pretty good when I got to try it out yesterday. I don't know how long our game was, or how long the round was set for, but I would suggest shortening the round, and maybe playing like 3 rounds of 3 minutes a piece(just a example)? The main reason I say this was because of 2 problems that I saw. 1. running out of mongeese (is that spelled right?) 2. mongoose being jacked. Both are fairly similar basically if someone had their mongoose jacked, or flipped off and couldn't get back and died they didn't have a ride after that point. I believe you noted after the game that you expected, or would want their team mates to come back and pick them up. Of course that can be hard to predict if that will happen or not in a given game. Overall I found it really fun to play, and can't wait to play on it as you continue to improve it. Also I like the improvements to the arena as your above video shows.
Agreed. Originally the game was 4 rounds of 2 minutes, then I tried 1 round of 7-8 minutes (which I think is what we tested). I believe I'll go back to multiple short rounds so if you do lose your ride, you can get it back soon enough. Unfortunately I haven't been able to come up with a better solution - you can't disable hijacking, nor can you disable people being dumb (which is really the only reason anyone would hijack in this gametype - driving around the other team's mongoose only scores points for them). What I'd really like is to be able to have it set like rally/rocket race where if you leave your own mongoose, you teleport back to it - but the gametype doesn't allow for it and rocket race won't score points the way this does, so I'm out of luck. Multiple short rounds will have to do. One possibility I may play with is taking the goal tags off the mongooses and putting it on armor abilities picked up by players as they spawn. That would free me up to supply additional vehicles - not mongooses since I'm limited to 8, but maybe something fun with multiple seats, like gauss hogs? The soft kill zones throughout the arena would still prevent people from wandering around on foot for very long and scoring cheap points. Thanks, I think it came out pretty nicely. I doubt I'll be doing much more with it - the amount of expensive gadgets and the two ceiling grids have pushed me to around 8000 in budget, which is really a lot higher than I expected to go. I haven't had any framerate issues in splitscreen tests anyway, but I don't want to chance it with any more cosmetic touch-ups.
You should probably make the rally point larger. The "Chase after a Hill" concept has been attempted before, usually with limited success due to how long it took to get to the Hill/Rally Point/etc. If you were to increase the size of the Rally Points, players could still push around the golfballs in an advantagous way, and people wouldn't find it overly frustrating to score points. As for the issue you've been having with mongooses, why not put down an arena-encompassing teleporter set to Vehicles Only that takes you into a vehicle room connected to the arena itself (think "Friday Night Goosin"). If you're running short on Mongooses, try putting down a variety of objects and setting the gametype to Vehicles: Mongoose Only. If I'm not mistaken, all vehicles on the map should become Mongeese. Edit: And seriously, increase your ****ing interlocks.
I think I'll make it twice as large to start with and just see how it goes in testing. I'm hoping, however, that it won't be as hard to get to in this particular game since the arena is huge, there are 7 diversionary golf balls that aren't the flag, and honestly it's harder than I expected to hit people and objects with those concussion rifles when you're driving around fast and low to the ground. (I managed to get a 16 player test of Gluttonous Geese yesterday and to my surprise it never got annoying - people just weren't able to hit each other enough to make it that way.) Dude - you are full of ideas I had no prior knowledge of. Thanks, you have given me lots of new possibilities to play with. -- EDIT - Well I've learned some things but I'm not sure if they are helpful exactly. The arena-wide teleporter won't help because even when set to vehicles = true and players = false, it still teleports vehicles with players on them. Obviously I can't use that. I could always set an arena-wide teleporter for PLAYERS only to reset them from the field of play (and back to the vehicle spawns) when on foot, but then I'd have no way to control where they end up, and it's necessary for them to be in their own base. The soft kill zone probably works better for that. I thought the armor abilities idea was going to solve all my problems but it has one huge flaw - if you die, your corpse lays there for a while as an active goal point. It doesn't go away and respawn the AA until the corpse despawns. Ugh. Other than that glaring problem, it would've been perfect. I can use ghosts (the cheapest non-mongoose vehicle) to create more mongooses though, so that will help probably no matter how I change the gametype going forward. -- EDIT AGAIN - I think what I'm going with (at least through the next play test, unless a much better idea comes along) is a game of 4 rounds, 2 minutes each; unlimited score; and each team has two extra mongooses (ghosts in forge) that spawn in at the 1 minute mark. That way if you get de-vehicled early, it shouldn't take long to find another ride. I don't want to do more than about 6 vehicles per team though, or spawn them all at start, because I'd really like the game to encourage using a passenger.
I had the exact same problem on a map of mine, so far the only solution I've thought of for that is to have each player spawn in their own room with a fixed weapon blocking the way on instant spawn (the weapon being the goal). I have yet to forge it out though and see if it has any flaws, such as the fixed weapon glitch causing it to not despawn.
Even so, it still wouldn't despawn when the player dies, would it? That is really what I need to happen, otherwise it's just sitting in the play area scoring points whenever a ball comes into contact with it. This would all be a lot easier if Bungie had just included a game setting to disable vehicle hijacking. Ah well.
This is the type of map that everyone is gonna play at TGIF. I haven't played anything else using the Haloball gametype (that is what this uses right?), so I can't say how uniqe it is aong other maps using the gametype, but damn this is cool. Both gametypes are cool, and different enough to stand out from eachother. I look forward to playing this again, prefferably with a lot more people.
You could have them be teleported to a small room with teleporters leading to each teams base. Make sure you label it somehow though, otherwise some players may end up in the wrong base.
Thanks man! Yep, this is based on Haloball. I'm sure we'll soon exhaust the ways to use the despawn object/score point combo, but for now it seems like it's added a lot to what Halo can offer. [br][/br]Edited by merge: I'm aiming for something idiot-proof and not that complicated. I don't think this is it, even though it's better than any version of the teleport mechanism that I had thought of. Also I found that the arena-wide teleporter is really disorienting when you come out the other side - you may be facing any random direction and may fall instead of just appearing on the ground. That kind of thing seems minor but I think it might yank people out of a game that's just supposed to be silly and fun. What I really need is just the rocket race gametype merged with the scoring/despawning stuff from Haloball. Quick, somebody call Bungie and have them whip this up for me...
Out now - here's the thread. The stadium was updated one more time before it was released. In numerous tests I've found that the rocket race gametype (Ballchase) is a little less chaotic and a little more fun, to me personally, but driving around gobbling up balls is still a blast (that's what she said). Thanks to everybody who helped test and gave me suggestions to polish up the map - there were many of you, and I shouted a lot of you out in the video credits.