Map Description

1. 

   Let me paint you all a picture. It's Sunday at noon. You are a high school student and your mom yells down the hallway asking for her beloved son's help. Being the loving son that you are, you tell her, "one sec mom, I can't pause this game." At this point, she is in your doorway. She is furious. Without hesitation, she unplugs your Xbox not knowing that the Xbox button would have been more than enough to end your killing spree. She then prompts you to go outside and mow the lawn. You reluctantly approach your backyard and start the lawnmower. Your day of Halo and teabagging n00bs has come to a screeching halt.
   
   I may not live with my parents anymore, but this is a picture that many gamers are far too familiar with. I want to end the abuse. Now, when your mom yells at you while she is preparing you dinner for the millionth time, you can tell her you are busy mowing the lawn!
   
   This is Lawnmower Mania!
   
   
   
   Lawnmower Mania is a very simple game. One prepubescent zombie will have a lawnmower.
   
   
   
   His task is to mow the lawn but he is on a tight schedule and has no regard for the wildlife in his backyard. The surrounding wildlife will have to do all it can to avoid the incoming machinery. The grass will provide excellent cover, but remember, the grass is being cut so don't get caught in the clippings or the wake of cut grass. Fortunately, this grass is some wild variety and grows back in seconds. As the lawnmower eliminates more of the natural animal population, the smell of blood attracts local snakes.
   
   
   
   These snakes are just as ravenous as the lawnmover but their senses are very dulled from the lawnmower's noise. They aren't safe from it's blades either. Survivors on the other hand have great senses when it comes to avoiding these predators and the lawnmower so if the grass is too high, rely on those other senses.
   
   Map Variant
   Gametype Variant
   
   As always, enjoy! Following this will be a short description of how the map works and what to do to report bugs.
   
   How it works:
   The biggest part of this map is the grass and how it functions into the gameplay. It may seem super crazy that as the lawnmower moves over grass, the grass actually gets "clipped". Here a list of the steps I took to create it.
   

   1. Block out a space that I considered enough room for the game to be playable (i.e. zombies and humans win 50/50 and the lawnmower moves without hitting a wall every second).
   2. Determine how much grass I will need to cover this area and lay it out.
   3. Create grass levels so that one appears cut and one appears pre cut. Ensure that these levels do not cover and cover a standing spartan, respectively.
   4. This is where the clever scripting mechanics come in. I knew I needed to despawn the top layer of grass. The easiest way to make it despawn on command was to link it to something that was destructable as the lawnmower passed over it.
   5. The pieces I would destroy to accomplish this were shield doors of the same dimensions as the grass and they were placed directly below their grass patch under the play area.
   6. Because I needed to make an area of grass out of 24x24 pieces, I was going to need more than 26 signals. To accomplish this, I used the multi channel function and had each shield destruction send two channel power on signals. This essentially gives 325 possible signals to choose from.
   7. I couldn't just leave the channels on though or the grass would only be clippable once so to turn the channels back off, grunts were used. I originally set these to just turn the channels all back to off every .1 seconds but this left chances to turn off the signal the moment the shields set them to on leaving no grass clipped. I then tried setting the grunts to On multi A through D On > spawn, On spawn > Power Off A through D, On spawn > despawn. This was duplicated for all channels. This instantaneous flipping of the channels and instantaneous despawn of the grunts made it possible to flip the channels without interference and it was more reliable as it only occurred when a shield was triggered.
   8. To destroy the linked shield door, a kill ball was welded to the lawnmower under the map. Essentially, as the lawnmower moves, so does the killball and this killball destroys shields which tells the grass to get clipped.
   9. Both pieces respawn after 5 seconds to keep the game interesting.
   10. To make sure the vehicle moved through the grass in a stable way, an invisible vehicle blockers lifts it up past the level of permanent grass since normal blocks welded to vehicles do not cut through grass. This also leaves players able to move deeper into the grass so I effectively could use fewer scripts.

   Bug Reporting:
   Here is a short description of basically what to not tell me about as I already know it's a problem or it isn't currently fixable. Please reach out to me if there are any other problems.
   

   1. There are some serious framerate issues in the grass. Yeah, it is grass. It does that. I can't help it. It isn't the trees that surround the map. It is the grass and the game is a game that needs grass. It is only truly terrible deep in the grass so jumping to see where the mower is is still helpful and possible. Imagine actually being head deep in grass. you probably wouldn't see well either.
   2. The vehicle doesn't travel smoothly 100% of the time. Funny story, blocks on normal don't travel through grass. Seems dumb but yeah so to combat this, there is an invisible vehicle blocker the lawnmower rides on. Best solution to the problem I could find but if the lawnmower tips a bit, those blocks can still clip the top layer of grass.

   Zern likes this.