This is Hoglaunch, a minigame inspired by the legendary warthog jump video... Spoiler Warthog jump - YouTube made by Randall Glass. In homage to him, the map you play Hoglaunch on is called Cape Randall. Your mission is simple: pile fusion coils behind, around or under your team's two warthogs. Put players in the seats, light the fuse, and watch the magic happen. The farther it flies, the more points you get (but watch that it doesn't go out of bounds, either across the center line that separates the two teams, or too far to the outside either - that will give you a lowly one point!). You also score points for each player in the warthog as well as the 'hog itself, so it's best to load them up every time. You can also send one teammate to play defense. A teleporter takes him to a platform on the other team's side of the shooting range, and on that platform sits a stationary gauss hog. The turret is pretty effective for slowing the momentum of flying hogs, as long as you land a few good shots. A glass barrier prevents you from shooting too low and disrupting the other team's launch setups. Hoglaunch is played in several rounds of 3 minutes each. Highest total score wins. The scoring zones are as follows: 1, 4, 7, 10, 15 and 20 (with 1 point - the gametype minimum - for out of bounds shots). Nuts and bolts How does the game work? It's based on Haloball or skeeball. The warthogs are tagged as skee ball objects, and different team-specific scoring zones award different amounts of points when the hog hits them (which also makes the hog despawn). Players also score points through forced armor ability pickups. The AAs are also tagged as skee ball objects and work in the same manner as the warthogs. Quirks and wrinkles Be aware that warthogs that are not driven or forcibly despawned by scoring will despawn due to the skee ball tag 60 seconds after they first appear. In a larger game (8+ players) this seldom happens because the launches go so fast. In a smaller game, bear it in mind. If a hog despawns while you're setting up a launch, it will reappear five seconds later. Hopping in the driver's seat and moving the vehicle even an inch will reset the despawn timer. For anyone going to play defense, your armor ability will despawn (giving your team 1 point) when you go to use the teleporter. This was necessary to prevent you from going out to one of the far-off scoring zones that surround the defense platform and scoring easy points. If you decide to leave your post and teleport back, you won't have an armor ability and therefore won't be able to score points for yourself in launches, unless you go pick up another one. Apart from this, armor abilities do not despawn once picked up, unless you launch yourself and hit one of the scoring zones (which will also kill you). Screenshots Video Hoglaunch (Halo: Reach minigame) - YouTube Note: the map has been very slightly edited since this video was shot. The teleporters now sit on a small bridge to get them farther outside the launch area, and the rocket launchers were removed to prevent griefing. Thanks To all my fellow jerks in TCOJ, the customs lobby which helped me test the crap out of this game for a couple of months now. And especially to GrenadeGorilla8 and Overdoziz, my fellow TCOJ co-hosts, who provided much valuable feedback and help keep the lobby running week in and week out.
First! Awesome map, and a really great and unusual gametype thats a lot of fun. This will take you back to hoglaunching on silent cartographer (if you remember back that far)!! Glad you got it posted and finished, DL from me!
Very nice concept. Two queries: Is this map not susceptible to a bad team trolling you? And do you have to b in the hog to score? DL from me
It should be basically troll-proof. It's immensely hard to interfere with the team on the other side of the barrier - you can't use armor abilities even though you have one (so no jetpacking), and there's a thin hard kill zone right down the middle that prevents you from making it alive to the other team's side. The only way I know of to get to the other side is teleport out to your defensive platform, from which you really can't do squat due to the weapons you have (concussion rifle and plasma grenades only). It's far easier for your own teammates to grief if they feel like it, but what game isn't that true of? You don't have to be in the hog to score, but it's by far the best method - if you're not sitting in it, it's very hard to fly far enough to get meaningful points. You can run and jump off the front for 1 point per suicide if you want, but considering that a really good launch can score as many as 80 points, scoring one at a time is essentially worthless.
I'm mad that i never got to play a realy game on here, but just screwing around launching hogs in forge was super fun. This is one of those simple, yet incredibly fun minigames, and I really look forward to playing this at FHFs and whatnot.
Hell yes. Fantastic job nutduster, I'm lovin the game! Could you possibly edit this to show more tf the starting area though? I'm curous as to the contents of it.
Expanding on the idea of launching your warthog into a minigame is a fantastic idea and plays pretty great once you learn what to do. The Gauss hogs for defense are nice too, it adds an interesting twist to just launching your hog. Great job, love how this turned out. Oh, and the loadout cam is awesome, that never gets old.
Best loadout cam ever! Just a fun, creative, and at times competitive min-game. So much fun launching those hogs, and just as fun shooting them back. Great job, hope to play this sometime with a bigger lobby.
This looks awesome. That video has me really wanting to play this, especially since I know you've had to rebuild it so many times due to shitty circumstances. It must mean it was worth it.
Possibly my favourite mini-game, as its a lot of fun but also requires some know-how and skill to play. And as sora said, it has to potential to get quite competitive! Its very well built and as you said, its impossible (as far as I know) to break. All-in-all, you cant really ask for more. Great job ND!
Do you mean the little buildings you spawn in? There's a pretty good look at them at about 1:12 in the video. Essentially it's a very small room with two doors leading out on to the platform; the doors are covered (partly anyway) by a one-way shield to prevent warthogs from getting stuck in there. Right in both doors is a row of armor abilities, so you spawn without one and are forced to pick one up as you exit the building. I managed to cram eight spawn points in that room on each side, so your team should always spawn in there and pick up an AA (making themselves eligible to score points) as they get back into the game.
I've only managed to get one game on this, but it was incredibly fun throughout. I think my team of 3 managed to get about 900 points that game, to the surprise of dusty. If you haven't tried out hoglaunch get at least 5, preferably 7 friends and try it out, it'll be worth your time. Dusty, I couldn't help but think cape Randall might have come from the movie rocketman before I read your explation. For those not knowing what I mean the "astronaut" in the movies last name is randall. Also as others have noted. Best load out cam ever. It was cracking me up every time I saw it.
I played a 2v2 on this and one of the players (Sh1tenshi) wanted to let you know that he loves the map, he downloaded. We all had a great time, the game went a bit slower at 2v2, but ran just as well. Again, excellent work on this map.
This mini game is simply splendid. You put a lot of effort into this with all the tweaking and rebuilds and it shows. I hope you either: build another one sometime or start a trend of people building maps just for this game type. If not at least bring it back to tcoj sometime so we can play it some more. (!)
Thanks Cyborg, much appreciated. And I already have a couple ideas for a next-level Hoglaunch; you may be seeing another edition of it at some point.
I'm pretty sure ND and I spent more time working on the loadout cam than he did on the entire map! But srsly. This is an awesome minigame. Its always a good time. And like Cyborg, I could see people getting into this and making their own arenas and possibly turning it into a league like griffball! Just think, it could have its own "HogLaunch League" section in community MM!
You lie! We did spend forever on that loadout cam (which is my favorite ever BTW), but I had to basically rebuild this entire map three times. Honestly for a fairly simple concept and build, I sunk WAY too many hours into making it & perfecting it.
I played this the other day in a 8 person lobby and it was actually really fun! Very original, and very creative! However I do think the game could still be greatly improved with just a couple suggestions: Make each team's job more specific. Because I liked that you added a gauss hog on each side so that someone could "defend" by shooting the warthogs. You should open up that idea up by adding more gauss hogs (8 for full lobbies) for one team, while the other team plays "offense" by launching warthogs. Each round teams switch. NOTE: You may realize that you won't have enough warthogs. To fix this, instead of adding warthogs for the offense team, add mongooses. Then in the gametype options under "weapons and vehicles" switch vehicle set to "warthogs". Give each player their own separate section to launch their own separate warthogs. As much as I love good teamwork, it seemed like the fusion coils would often blow up when there were more than one person moving them. As a result, players would wait while only one person moved them. If you go with my first suggestion, you would only need 8 sections for full lobbies, each with their own warthog. This would leave you with enough fusion coils to supply each section with 3 fusion coils, which is more than enough firepower to launch a warthog at long distances. If you took my suggestions to heart, I predict that more warthogs will be lauched as a result, giving the defensive team plently of objects to shoot at. And again, I really hope you consider these suggestions. I'm really curious to see what kind of gameplay this would bring out, and I just don't want to be the one eventually doing so... Spoiler ... if you know what I mean ;P
Thanks Darth! I had a couple of ideas for a "next gen" version of this already, and you've given me more to chew on. I appreciate the suggestions. Interesting to hear about the fusion coils - we tested the map a bunch of times and I only remember a few premature explosions (that's what she said). But we might just have been naturally less rambunctious with the coils. They're definitely sensitive to being moved around too much.
We played this after Berb's TGIF and you my friend have won BOF 2013 already for best mini-game. This was amazing, one of the most FUN mini-games on reach, not even mentioning the originality. You've captured much of what needs to be in a good mini-game here: A good, serious score system, a risk v. reward strategy factor when deciding what players should be doing/ how long to take on each launch, and there is enough of a success rate to keep it interesting. I expect we will be playing this for a long time. The only issue was that the other team was able to get plasma grenades over the top of the windows, causing more than 1 pre-mature fusion coil explosion. I was told this was difficult to do but it should be impossible so as to keep teams focussed on their own Hogs.