Hoglaunch

This is a minigame I'm now working on called Hoglaunch. It was inspired by the very first thing that caused me to see Halo as something more than just a place to shoot other virtual dudes in the face: Randall Glass's legendary warthog jump video.

Spoiler

Warthog jump - YouTube

Looks very modest now, but at the time it was made, that video blew some minds. Eventually it led to massive, borderline incomprehensible tricking achievements like Tower to Tower:

Spoiler

Tower to Tower Unedited - YouTube
(this challenge was laid out in the days of CE and just completed in mid-2011!).

So this is Hoglaunch, to be played in Randall Glass Gulch. The basic mechanics are this: blast the hogs and yourselves forward by any means necessary. The farther things fly, the more points it's worth. A max score from a single launch would be 60 points: one warthog plus three people, each landing in the farthest scoring zone which gives you 15 per. The worst score is a lowly 1, which you'd get from launching an unmanned warthog not very far (or in the wrong direction). Here it is, below. Testing is already underway.

Hoglaunch preview (Halo: Reach minigame) - YouTube

 

I'm open to suggestions! I have been trying to think of any that would make sense, like an offense/defense setup of some kind where one team tries to score while the other team tries to stop them or derail their shots. Still mulling that one over - so far I haven't come up with anything workable.

 

That might be way too easy to pull off, though it's interesting enough to be worth testing. Two problems I can think of:

1. Part of how the game works now is that the warthogs are indestructible to allow people to be in them as they fly, and so the initial explosion required for a good launch doesn't just demolish the thing. I'm not sure how things will work out if I turn that off. Will have to experiment.

2. If there are people with lasers (or any other defensive weapon), they can't be allowed to shoot the other team, or even the warthogs before they take off. That raises an interesting logistical question of how to prevent that. I guess I could just block their line of sight up to a certain point so that they can really only see the warthogs once they have some air underneath them.

Another possibility I was thinking of was people at the other end with weapons that could be used to physically knock the warthogs back - concussion rifles perhaps (though those aren't precise at all over great distances), or maybe a gauss hog. Whatever it is, it has to be moderately difficult but not impossible to hit the flying 'hogs with, and you can't be able to interfere with the other team as they're setting up. I think this weekend I'll set up an alternate, stripped down version of the map and just start playing with these possibilities to see how they work out.

 

Thanks Ace, that gives me some things to consider. I'll update the thread when and if I make any big changes.

 

Presumably no one will be downloading this who doesn't at least see the eventual YouTube video, so I'm not terribly concerned about that part of it. It's too weird of a game to not require a little bit of instruction. But hopefully once you grasp the basics (hogs and people go far, score points) then you can figure out the fine points through simple in-game experimentation. Ideally it will be the kind of game that's actually fun to learn that way - to see how you can get the most points and perform the craziest launches.

I've now added a wrinkle that I think will make the game even more fun. Each team now has a gauss hog (immobile - only the turret is useful) sitting at the end of a walkway extending off the front of their half of the platform. From there you can shoot your own warthogs as they fly to push them farther downfield, or shoot the enemy warthogs on the other side to try to push them out of bounds (which is worth a lot less points). But you can't shoot the other team because of the middle divider. I have a good feeling about this enhancement - we'll see how it takes in testing.

Oh, also - right now the gauss hog spawns halfway into each round (1:30) rather than from the start. Not sure if that's necessary or not. My friend Gorilla suggested it.

 

I'm shooting for a happy medium. As the game is set up now, each team gets two hogs at a time, and long-distance launches are worth far more than short ones. The nearest scoring zone is worth just 1 point - even with three people in it, you'd only score 4 (vs. 60 for hitting the farthest zone). They scale up like this:

1
4
7
10
15

So yes, you can just quickly fire off as many as possible, but you're likely to score a lot more points by putting together several really good launches than a number of bad ones.

I don't want to go to the extreme though of having it be all planning and setup. Personally I would enjoy playing that, but I think a lot of people would not, and a lot of bored participants would probably just blast the hog prematurely and wreck the game. The current version is more flexible that way.

 

Thanks knarly. Check my post above - I'm adding stationary gauss hogs that can be used for both offense and defense. Had some pretty successful tests with them last night (even though GrenadeGorilla is, like, the worst shot ever). Gauss shots are very effective in making your own team's hogs fly farther, and if you broadside the other team's hogs a couple times in flight, they'll get pushed right out of bounds for a measly 1 point.