Starfall The Abhorrent Creating Starfall Starfall draws a great deal of inspiration from Darth Human's acclaimed mini-game map, Avalanche. The premise is almost identical: get to the top of the hill while avoiding the hazards, grab the vehicle at the top, drive it back down and through the teleporter at or near the bottom, then get it into your team's scoring zone. Using Avalanche's endless onslaught of golf balls as a starting point, Starfall builds upon this by adding some other hazards which add some variety and make for a more dynamic mini-game. But the map itself isn't the only danger, the other team can sabotage your efforts as well. How to Play Starfall The objective in Starfall is to retrieve one of the Rocket Hogs at the top of the hill and drive it to the score zone. Doing this can be broken down into three steps. Important Note! Starfall is built for two competing teams, Red vs Blue. The game can done solo or with two even teams of up to eight players each. Step 1 -- Get up the Hill Easier said than done of course, but it's fairly simple. Avoid the hazards, take cover behind the rocks if needed. Most of the hill, the primary hazards will be kill balls, golf balls, and plasma batteries. The end however removes most of those, but adds a carpet of fusion coils which endlessly explode. Getting by these requires careful timing, but is quite possible. There is still the occassional kill ball to avoid, but just keep your eyes open and you'll do fine. If you make it to the top, there is a health pack (if you need it) in the centre which instantly respawns; though it might not be there if power ups are not turned on. Step 2 -- Drive Rocket Hog to Teleporter There are actually two teleporters to take here, both leading to the same exit point. The first of which is located about two-thirds down the hill (goes from wall to wall, so no worries about missing it that way), and it is the one you're expected to go through at full speed. Should you miss this for any reason or not make the jump to the score zone (which will cause you to drop on the respawn/start area), the lower teleporter may be taken to try again. While in the Rocket Hog, you take no damage from the explosions (indestructible vehicles and/or the fact they're labelled Halo Balls) ... but Kill Balls can still get you. You're more likely to be run into a kill ball in front of you than be ran over from behind, so just be mindful of where they are and you'll do fine. The last thing to watch out for is the other team using their grenade launchers to disable your hog, often trying to hijack your vehicle. Step 3 -- Drive to the Score Zone The Score Zone is a brief obstacle course with rocks to go around and man cannons to avoid. Getting too close to any of the latter will send you off the map and to your death. Your team's score zone is marked by a few chevrons, as well as a light matching your team's colour. Go down the ramp with your hog to score one point. In the event you get there and lose your hog, take any of the teleporters nearby (behind the rocks, or the score zone itself) to return to the starting zone. The game lasts for ten minutes, with one minute of Sudden Death if needed. The score to win is set at 15 points (meant to be unlikely, but possible if one team dominates the match). Base Player Traits - 50% Damage Resistance - Normal Shields - 10% Shield Recharge Rate - No Health Regeneration - Immune to Headshots and Assassination - 100% Speed & Jump Height - 75% Gravity - 0% Damage Output (ranged and melee) - Armed with Golf Club & Grenade Launcher (loadouts determine your starting weapon) - Equipped with Evade AA (normal use, two dodges before it has to recharge) - Bottomless Clip - Unable to pickup weapons (not that you need to) - Waypoint and Name Visible to Everyone - No Motion Tracker - Respawn Timer is 5 seconds - Respawning Grants 3 seconds of "Mercy Invincibility", in the event of random hazards bouncing up the respawn/start area (it's rare, but can happen). Colour is forced to be White while this lasts Power Ups Power Ups are off by default on the map, but they merely have to be turned on and you're ready to go. There are three of them in total, one overshield (respawn timer set to 50) at the bottom of the hill and two custom power ups (respawn timer set to 20) a bit further up. None spawn at the start, but they will appear before too long. The overshield has an obvious use in increasing your durability greatly; with only one being there and a hefty respawn timer, people will be certainly rushing for it. As for the custom power-ups, they provide a different approach to the hill... Custom Power-Up Traits: - No Shields (you can't have both this and the overshield at the same time, one will override the other) - 300% Speed, WHEE! - Can't jump - 200% Gravity (evading into the custom power up can give you quite a bit of distance even with this) - Unable to use AA (you're fast enough without it) - Forced colour is Gold - Lasts only five seconds As it can be seen, the custom power-up allows you to make a mad dash up the hill. You're more fragile without your shields and unable to evade around the hazards, but all that speed means you can make almost all the way to the top in the few seconds it lasts. Hill Hazards They are many and varied, and as such are worthy of their own section. Kill Balls -- The most obvious hazard, these roll down the hill with great speed and take up a hefty portion of its width. Occassionally they line up into a "wall of death"; but if you can time it right, you can dodge between the small gaps which form due to their differing speeds. Golf Balls -- A direct hit from one of these will kill you, and a glancing blow will take out your shields and almost all of your health. Still, they're often easy to avoid... right up to the moment you stop paying attention to them, at which point they tend to become extremely nasty. They're devious that way. Plasma Batteries -- For the most part, these aren't a danger as explosives; they're actually prone to running you over like the golf balls, but can bounce a bit more erratically. These ebb and flow during the match, usually being absent... then spawning en masse. Things get fairly hectic with a plasma battery wave spawns. However, they can still explode if they come into contact with a kill ball. The combined hazard of this is fairly nasty. Fusion Coils -- The carpet of explosions at the top of the hill isn't too boom-happy, as the fusion coils are spread out enough to prevent an endless chain explosion. They tend to roll a bit before explodoing (watch their colour for an idea when, red = imminent boom), so timing is the key to avoiding them. You can also use your weapons to blast them away safely without exploding them (due to you having no damage output), so some creativity is encouraged here. Much like the hazards that aren't kill balls, being to close to a blast is fatal but glancing hits are survivable... well, one glancing hit. Images A fairly clean view up the hill. Four kill balls trying to run me over, but it's not too hard to find the gap to dodge through if you watch them closely. The start of going down hill A view of the score zone Outrun the fireball... ... or else. The Video! [bungievid]24084218[/bungievid] Thanks to Confused Flamingo and the rest of the Testers' Guild for testing this mini-game map, twice no less. As for everyone else, enjoy the manic fun that is Starfall.
Nice map, It seems that there was one Dislike in the Test, the Way down, did you fix that, Matter the less, Nice job Ill give it a try and Feedback.
I actually went for a bit of a comprimise concerning that detail, which I neglected to mention in the first post of this topic. I added a second sender teleporter to the score zone, the one which is about two thirds of the way down the hill. As I understood it, the main issues with way down were either being run over by kill balls and the other team disrupting the hogs with grenade launchers. With the original sender teleporter, the hogs would inevitably slow down and make for easy hijacking. The added teleporter is placed where the hog will almost always go through at speed; hijacking should (hopefully) be far more difficult to accomplish, stunning a warthog rolling down the hill at speed shouldn't stop it. Being run over by a kill ball from behind is also a fair bit less likely, I found it to happen most frequently at the bottom again (though still less common than driving into the one in front of you, which I consider to be a player error); the warthog slowed down, the driver was frequently ejected, kill ball appeared from behind. I was considering taking out the grenade launchers, but they were a fun mechanic and I decided to keep them in. Hopefully the implemented comprimise of the added sender node means sabotaging the other team and stopping them from scoring isn't too dominant a tactic, but I'd like for it to remain possible as well (just very tough to pull off). Anyhow, the intent is for the warthogs to go through the teleporter (be it right side up, upside down, arse backwards, and/or doing a barrel-roll) once the player manages to start going downhill... provided they weren't careless and drove into the back of a kill ball. For a player to intercept and hijack one going downhill, that'd be a feat of skill and luck. If it still needs to be changed, I may update the map and/or gametype to fix it. Hopefully I don't have to, and the comprimise is an adaquate solution to that problem. As such, I'll just wait and see how it all plays out for the time being.