Official Smashball Arena Co-creators: A BombInLasagna and The Nard Dawg Update on 10/16/2010 at 4:35am. Update on 10/18/2010 at 4:38pm. Update on 10/26/2010 at 4:15am. Details at bottom of post If you have already downloaded a Smashball arena please consider downloading this newest version. We have completely revamped the scoring system to make it more reliable and a lot faster For the fans of Smashball! Please read! I have made a silver account for smashball fans to add. The gamertag is: Smashball GTs If you are a fan of Smashball and would like to play more games please send a friend request to that gamertag. This will be a community gamertag where people can find other Smashball fans to play with. This is how it works: When you have the gamertag on your friends list, view the friends by selecting "view friends" in the profile of the gamertag. There you will see the list of all players to invite to games if you would like to play Smashball! Hopefully this gamertag will be useful! Background: Hey everyone, ever since Grifball came around I've always wanted to create a map/game type using one of the balls given to us in forge to create another "sport" like game in Halo. In Halo 3, my friend and I created a map but an in game scoring system could not be made due to forge and game type restrictions. Scoring needed to run by the honor system by teams manually keeping track of how many scores your team got. I was not satisfied with this. When I heard about the new awesome power of Forge 2.0, I thought maybe the game type could be a possibility. For a bunch of days now I've been messing around with different ways to have the game itself keep score for the players without any risk of cheating. Well I finally figured it out, by using Stockpile(yes Stockpile) I was able to do what needs to be done! I've created a fool proof automatic scoring system. The players don't have to do anything but score the golf ball in a goal to get a point! So off I went finally creating what I've always wanted to create. First there was Grifball. Now there is Smashball! Smashball is a new Halo sport heavily inspired by the insanely popular Grifball. The object of the game is pretty simple. Two teams of 4 players using golf clubs need to get the golf ball into the other team's goal. Here are the official rules: -5 rounds, each round 3 minutes -The team with the highest score after all 5 rounds wins -Once a goal is scored the round ends and a new round begins -Killing is allowed so watch out for those golf clubs!(and fast moving golf balls!) -Assassinations are enabled(but it's usually quicker/safer to use your club) -Friendly fire is off -Respawn in 3 seconds I originally wanted to use the soccer ball as the ball. But due to a bug with the soccer ball that causes everyone, except the host, to see the ball move erratically the golf ball needed to be used. So watch out, those golf balls move fast! Strategy & Tips -Learn to control your shots! Getting too close to the ball and hitting it will cause the ball to go further than maybe you wanted it to! -Mastering how to control the power of your shots will help you out! -Watch out for those fast moving golf balls. The golf balls are able to splatter you if they move fast enough. However a well timed hit with your golf club will deflect the golf ball. This is a good skill to learn in order to save shots that might have gone into your goal. -Don't be afraid to jump in front of that ball! With 3 second respawns, sacrificing yourself to block a ball from going in will help your team out greatly! Here are pictures! An overview of the inside of the arena(looking at red goal) An overview of the inside of the arena(looking at blue goal) Ground shot of red goal Ground shot of blue goal The outside of the arena. You won't be seeing this in game but I thought it looked cool! Just for fun! just for fun again! The scoring system. The ball rolls into the goal, and into the cup. Since the golf ball is "magnetized" to the tin cup it rolls into the cup and pushes the soccer ball into a gravity lift. The gravity lift pushes the soccer ball onto a neutral flag. The soccer balls in each goal are set to stock pile goals...So what the scoring system does is push the stock pile goal on top of the flag so the flag is inside of the stock pile goal. And then you get a point for having a flag inside the goal and the round ends! So check out my game! It's a ton of fun with 8 people(if you feel like playing with more you can add more spawns if you like). 1v1s are not too bad either but it's best with more people! If you like it give me a thumbs up on the download pages on bungie.net! I hope everyone enjoys! And if you have any suggestions or complaints or run into any problems just let me know! Update on 10/16/2010 at 4:35am. I also just wanted to tell people that I updated the map a bit. I'm trying to make the goal scoring process faster. As in make the time between when the ball goes into the goal and when the scoring system is activated shorter. In the old version it took sometimes 3 or 4 seconds for the scoring system to activate. This may cause some frustration when scoring a goal in the last seconds of a round. So I tried to change it a bit and it seems like it made it faster. If you run into any problems with this new system let me know! The new download link is up! Update on 10/18/2010 at 4:38pm. The game type has been updated due to a mistake pointed out by One iiNSANE Kid. Thank you very much for catching the error! The new download link is up for the game type. The map continues to be updated frequently. The next update on the map however, should(hopefully) be the last necessary update. Once we are sure there are no problems with the map we will post the final version of the map and move on to a new arena. The new arena will go for a more natural look and will be a bit bigger to allow for the possibility of more players! Update on 10/26/2010 at 4:15am. I know I said this in my last update but this really should be the truth this time. The newest version of the map has been released. We have tested this version for all the problems that occurred in our older versions and none of the problems happened on this version of our map. I think we can safely say that our 4v4 map is finally completely finished! We have been working on our bigger map so the testing for that should start soon! The new download link for the map is up. Please consider downloading this updated version because a big change has been made that makes the scoring system 100x better.
So...let me get this straight. The Golf Ball acts as a Flag Drop Point, and the flags inside of the goals themselves are captured by the ball every 5 or so seconds? Genious, absolutely genious. This seems like it could become a very populer gametype, so you might want to put it in your Sig to show people it exists, even after a wave of crappy maps forces you off the front page in about an hour. What do you say about me or a friend making the official Smashball sig? I was thinking something like the last picture, but with the backround photoshopped. -HarisSales.
Well sadly it's not that easy. The golf ball that is in play is just a golf ball. But inside each goal there is a soccer ball that is the flag drop point. When the golf ball goes into the goal, it triggers an explosion that moves the soccer ball on top of a flag. I really wish I could have just made the golf ball that is in play the flag drop point, it would have been a lot easier but sadly it wouldn't be possible. I have a video in my fileshare of how an old version of my scoring system works. It's not exactly how the scoring system is in the current version, but it is the same general set up. I had to change it to make it 100% reliable and not have any problems. Hey, if you are willing to make a sig that would be great! I'm not really good with that stuff. I liked the last picture too. I took it just because I thought that maybe that could be a nice official smashball picture. Not sure if editing my post will show my simple, 2 minute created sig lol...Darn it didn't, I'll have to wait until someone replies in order to show off the really bad sig I made lol
Hey, this is really cool! The arena has the right amount of aesthetics and everything, and the scoring system is really clever. This could legitimately catch on. I only have two suggestions: -Since lights don't render in split screen, even with all the object colors it is hard to tell the sides apart from the right distance. I would suggest putting upside down braces right above the goals, since they are the most obvious color markers I can think of. I tried it and they don't even look out of place. -Did you try it with evade in addition to / instead of sprint? It seems like it might be fun. I could see armor lock being a fun option too, although it would be less pure than sprint/evade. This is staying on my HD for my next LAN. Awesome job!
So let's see. I just searched for Soccer Field since the way you wrote it sounded like the name of a map and found this post by you in a thread: Why are you doing this? A cheap rip off? I stole someones game type? Stop spreading lies. First off, a lot of games with balls are going to show up. So anyone who makes a game that involves scoring a goal with a ball is going to be copying off of that guy's Soccer Field? Second, by the look of that guy's thread, our games are very different. The soccer ball and the golf ball play completely different because they have different in-game physics. That person's soccer field game uses energy swords, there is armor lock and a gravity hammer. Also invulnerability is on. So just stop spreading lies because I really don't like having a reputation soiled because someone sees similar types of games. I guess you also think all race games are just all cheap rip offs because usually the only thing different is the track?
Okay a cheap rip off isnt the right word. Just the comment on how your system is really clever. Maybe targeting you wasnt the best way to put it. But I have had this happen to me a few times (lately actually) were I'm compared. I like your idea, its a great system. I don't mean to ruin your reputation, in fact I even downloaded your map and a few of my friends really liked it and so did I. I just thought it seemed extremely similar on how your made your stockpile scoring system. Now that I think about it, many people will be using that method for sport games like yours and his. Anyway to be honest I was generally pissed off at the time, wasn't really thinking.
Yeah, I mean honestly stockpile seems to be the only way to do a scoring system for some sort of ball game. I've tried everything on here. Assault doesn't work because even if you set an object to the assault goal area and move that object on top of a bomb it doesn't arm the bomb. Stockpile is the only CTF game that works for this because it's the only CTF game variant that allows you to set the flag capture goal and the flag spawns to separate objects. When you do all other CTF game variants the flag stand or where ever the flag spawns is also the place where you need to capture a flag. I'm sure so many other people are going to figure this out.
Well actually there is another way, it may be worth thinking about. Its still stockpile, but you can actually have the ball set as the stockpile goal, and the actual goal the flags. So when the ball hits the flags, it scores a point. The only problem is the ball "goal" must be set to one of the teams. So if you wanted to set a more workable version of what you have, it would work. Kinda like turning what you have into an assault based gametype where each team takes turns on offence and defence. That's the most progress I have found into making a ball based game. Although some people actually have already used it for real golf games. Since each person would be a different team, you could have a ball for each person. Then have the tin cups as the flags. Once the ball hit the tin cup, it would capture the flag pole and score a point. But who knows, there might be other unique games for this method.
Yeah I thought about just setting the goal to the ball that is in play...but then I realized it has to be set to a certain team so that couldn't work.
Thanks! I actually can't wait to get more people to play it too. I also just wanted to tell people that I updated the map a bit. I'm trying to make the goal scoring process faster. As in make the time between when the ball goes into the goal and when the scoring system is activated shorter. In the old version it took sometimes 3 or 4 seconds for the scoring system to activate. This may cause some frustration when scoring a goal in the last seconds of a round. So I tried to change it a bit and it seems like it made it faster. If you run into any problems with this new system let me know!
We're currently in the planning stages of a new smashball arena! If you've played the latest version of this map, please feel free to make suggestions. The new map will most likely be a little bit bigger, more rectangular instead of square, and feature more fine-tuned aesthetics.
A few suggestions you may want to consider. Remove or deactivate the development teleporters from public release versions. Consider moving the flag stands up, while increasing the bottom measurement. That way the flag HUD marker will show at eye level behind the goal (keep the actual flag out of sight). Change them to Phased first. Have you considered moving the arming system around so it is under the floor and out of sight? The goal posts are kind of dull looking, you could make them much brighter using the edges of some Platform Y's. There are many items on the ceiling which could potentially catch the ball. I was able to bounce the ball off one of these perches with little difficulty. In a game with 8 hammers the ball could easily make it up that high and get stuck. Grab a ball in forge and place it on a surface, if it doesn't roll off the ball can also end up there in a game. I learned an important lesson in one of my early Grifball maps: In Halo if something can happen, it will happen. If something can't happen, it will happen anyway. One more thing. Decorative kill balls. In my personal opinion i see decorative kill balls as a sign that a builder is not confident in their abilities and believe they must resort to tricks and gimmicks to get attention. This game stands on it's own and does not need tricks, gimmicks, or extraneous design elements. You have created a extremely fun, exciting and simple game. Your map should reflect that fact. Count how many kill balls there are in matchmaking. Outside of the 7 on 7 playlist there is only one that i know of, and it's sole function is to kill players who spawn outside the playing field. When your next version is ready please send runNOKYARDrun a XBL message and recommend the map and variant. I need to show this game to someone.
Hey NOKYARD, thanks so much for the input. Nard Dawg and I spent the last couple of hours fixing the arena. We simplified it a bit, took away the kill ball and made sure there were absolutely no areas where the ball could get stuck. There are basically no flat edges on the map, and if there is one, it is way too small for a ball to be able to sit. As for the scoring system, we did change it up a bit too. We moved the flag up so the flag indicator would be about eye level. Since we moved the flags up we had to add a gravity lift in each scoring system so the balls that were set to the flag goals would be able to get to them. This actually made the scoring system faster which is very good. We added some walls in the goal so players can't really see anything about the scoring system, the most they can see if the tip of the tin cup grass area. We are going to play a bunch of games on it tomorrow just to make sure we don't run into any problems with the scoring system since we moved things around. When we are confident that it is "perfect" I'll send you a message. Once again, thanks for the suggestions
Wait what do you mean? Are people able to play as Elites? Is there a way to force people to be spartans because I have never seen anyone as an Elite in all the games i've played of smashball. Oh poop....I just checked it out and I can't believe I didn't think to hide the elite loadouts. Does anyone know if there is a way to force only spartans in a custom game? Oh and NOKYARD, hopefully we will have this officially done soon. Whenever we think everything is fine we find something else to fix!
If anyone figures this out please let me know. We are trying to do the same since Elites severely overpower Spartans in Grifball.
If Bungie can do it in everything in matchmaking besides Invasion we should be able to do it for custom games. Also just to let everyone know. I edited the game type and the new and fixed game type download link has been added in the first post. Thanks to One iiNSANE Kid for pointing out what was wrong!
I do not have time to play tonight until maybe really late, as in 1am EST. I am just about to leave for work. I have fixed the game type and the map should be completely done. The download links in the main post in this thread are updated with the newest versions of both. We have not run into any problems yet with the newest versions. I'll request you on xbox live and maybe you can check out the (hopefully) final version. If that version runs into any problems obviously it will hopefully be able to fixed. But any problems (if there are any) will have to be checked for by just playing and playing. You never know what can happen in a game like this so you never know what kind of trouble you can run into. Hopefully you run into no problems with this version and maybe you could pass it on to some friends of yours so maybe this game can become a bit more popular than with just the people on my friends list =p. If you are actually on late tonight I can play, if not we will have to try some other time. The Nard Dawg might be on tonight, if he is maybe you guys can play some games. If not, I'll have to hit you up another night.
Awesome I hope you like it. Hopefully you can get 8 people together because the game is the most fun with a full 4v4. I also have a request for all the people downloading and trying out the game. Can you please let me know either on here or a message on xbox if you notice anything off about the floor in the arena? I know sometimes pieces can shift but I have never noticed it and I have never gotten any complaints about bumps in the floor. Thats mainly what I am concerned about, bumps. However one person on my friends list said he "fixed the floor for me". I'm not really sure if it's just a problem with him or a problem with the map, because once again I've never seen or noticed any bumps while playing and no one has ever complained about it.