PIPEBALL Pipe Balle

[The Asylum]

new thread

One morn I awoke
from my royal slumber
to roars and cheers
t'were they as thunder

To my window I took
and saw quite a scene;
Strange men in my court
in garb most obscene

Half them robed red,
the other half blue,
fighting and killing
to push a rock into

Two holes in my court,
one each for an end,
with fence and wall
erect to append;

There below my sill,
a squire stood about,
there i leaned forth and
then i did shout:

"Ho there, young lad!
What game is this called?"
Said he with a grin,
"My lord, 'tis Pipe Balle."

=======================

Really, how could I NOT make a Medieval flavor for my beloved Pipeball map? I COULDN'T RESIST.

alright lets just get this over with ok

The dip in the middle makes batting the ball into the other end a back and forth struggle- it's pretty heavy you see. Inflatable leather balls weren't exactly in ample supply back in 635 A.D.

And of course I squeeze the flaming arrow gimmick in there too. Also, this nice screenie shows off my tapestry textures

The backrooms behind the goals are here too, with a quick resupply of arrows and braziers.

So yeah, it's the same dimensions and (almost the same) layout as Pipeball Classic, only with melee, arrows, and bagpipes.

 

[LeSwordfish]

Sport of Kings.

 

[Ælement]

While its definately better in medieval mode, dont you think its time to move on from these pipe-ball maps soon?

 

[The Asylum]

While its definately better in medieval mode, dont you think its time to move on from these pipe-ball maps soon?

Nope. I think of it like GLaDOS/Wheatley from Portal 2. Once you've made something, you feel that itch to keep experimenting.

 

[Terwonick]

Arena version? with just one "cap" to win. Cap-able after 1min, of course

 

[The Asylum]

Even though by cap I assume you mean goal, I don't think that would work out very well.

 

[Tom Hoen]

I keep getting stuck on the ball and it's also frustrating when the ball touches starting area the game simply resets without warning.

Map is really good looking and layout is working. I'm wondering if the goal holes need something in front of them to prevent quick scout rushes.

 

[The Asylum]

The gameplay resets when the ball goes out of bounds- at least it's supposed to. Some of the teleport triggers are, despite being behind the curved walls, like to trigger anyway when the ball comes close, which activates the forcerespawn command. The ball's so heavy anyway I guess putting tele triggers outside the play area is pointless, but I felt it better to err on the side of caution- if making nonstandard maps has taught me anything so far, it's never ever assume Valve won't make an update that won't fuck up everything you thought was merely "adequate". As for getting stuck inside the ball, it's a well known problem with func_physbox.

But anyway, while I'm waiting for Valve to break Melee Fort so I can finally update it, I figure it's time to start working on Pipe Balle A2 (In between another... "indescretion" of mine.)

Like Pipeball Classic, we're operating on a first-to-three scoring system. As it is now, unlike Pipeball Classic, nothing happens on a 2-2 tie. No Black Ball, no tiebreaker gimmick, nothing; mainly due to me not having any idea what to do with it. Some current ideas tossing around in my head for a tiebreaker round:

- Have a cannon fire cannonballs into the play area- a func_tracktrain/trigger_hurt/info_particlesystem combo, that "shoots" cannonballs into random areas, killing anyone unlucky enough to be in its path. Will take some work and a lot of tweaking to get right.

- Replace the rock ball with a gigantic cartoon-styled bomb. A player touches it, they go boom along with the bomb. How to get another bomb back into play after that, however, is a tough one to wiggle my way out of.

- No gimmick ball, but like Super Pipeball (shudder), turn it into a pseudo-sudden death- really really really really long respawns. Like 30 seconds. Not a big fan of this one, personally, but hey, it's something.

- Not do a damn thing, it's got enough gimmicks as it is

Thoughts?

 

[grazr]

Nope. I think of it like GLaDOS/Wheatley from Portal 2. Once you've made something, you feel that itch to keep experimenting.

It's not really experimenting when you just swap out the theme and add a little detail so it looks pretty. Though, detail is always an improvement in my books nothing has really changed in terms of your concept.

 

[The Asylum]

I thought running it on Medieval Mode with a much heavier ball was a pretty big leap from the usual full-server spamfest that was Pipeball Classic. Granted, Pipe Balle is still pretty much a free-for-all based on what little I saw on a Polish server with 200 ping (I don't know what they were saying to me, probably "who's the asshole with 200 ping?")

And of course there was the last time I tried to make Pipeball bigger. Remember Super Pipeball? No? Good. The less said about that abortion the better.

Back on subject now, the map broke and didn't end when RED scored three goals, which is completely baffling to me, as I just copy/pasted the scoring setup from Pipeball Classic, which has worked just fine without incident. Of course I've tested the scoring system in Pipe Balle too, and it's always ended when it was supposed to. How this happened is beyond me. A2 may be stuck in dev hell for awhile longer.

 

[The Asylum]

Figured it out. Replays are a better mapping tool than I originally thought. Seems the ball would sometimes teleport INTO the brushwork of the scoring system, and get stuck.

So with those bugs fixed up, I'm pretty much just waiting on a model to be made before I roll out the next alpha.

 

[The Asylum]

Nobody wants to make me an actual model of what I wanted, so fuck it. It's A2 time!

What I had in mind for a tiebreaker round wasn't going as well as I had wanted it, so it's still a regular ol' "ball" the whole match. But that doesn't mean I haven't tweaked anything, oh no.

The ball is "served" from this cannon. Cannons weren't first seen until 1260, you say? The, um... the Engineer built it. Yeah. That's right. The Engy built it. Just go with that, okay?

So of course, what could possibly be dangerous about firing a huge boulder out of a giant cannon onto a field of people? Yeah. If you're in the boulder's way any time from when it's blasted out of the cannon to when it finally hits the other side of the field, you'll find yourself alarmingly two-dimensional.

The goals now feature this lip around them, to make scoring a little more challenging.

Download link is the same, you know what to do.

CHANGELOG

Changes from A1
- fixed issue with the ball getting stuck inside the scoring mechanism
- fixed issue with out of bounds triggers being triggerable from behind the curved walls
- the "ball" is "served" from a cannon off-field
- added a lip around the goals

 

[The Asylum]

I just had a brilliant idea.

As it is now, the 2-2 tiebreaker is nothing special. Same big heavy boulder for a ball, same cannon, same deal all around. But of course, I just goooooootta do something. Earlier on I had an idea for the tiebreaker ball to be a big ass bomb, that'd explode and instagib any player it rolled into. The problem with that idea, of course, is that the bomb-ball would have to be temporarily removed from play, and I'd imagine it'd be a little annoying to have it being re-served in short intervals.

Then it hit me.

Bombs. Bombs everywhere.

Instead of just one bomb, I launch 5 or so in there, one at a time, along with the standard ball. That way, players go boom, the active players drop faster, and no gameplay interruptions.

Great idea, right?

 

[The Asylum]

^^^ lol disregard that i suck cocks

I have an even better idea. And better than that, is that the next build may very well be out soon. Gentlemen, I present the Lava Ball

does exactly what you would think it does: sets you on fire on contact. Unfortunately the texture looks horrid on a brush-based ball, so I'm just waiting on someone to make a model with that lava texture on it. Other than that, a3 is just about ready to go.

If all goes well, I'll be moving this into Beta and building a primitive skybox

 

[The Asylum]

ah what the hell. Lets do it now, ball model be damned. It's still the alpha stages.

CHANGES FROM A2

- Added the Magma Ball to be released on a 2-2 tie.
- Lowered the prop on top of RED's goal to be a little more identical (and fair) to BLU.
- Put my signature in the spawnrooms. What can I say? I'm a vain guy sometimes.

 

[The Asylum]

Recently brought to my attention was some goals counting as a two for one, resulting in a game won when only two goals were scored. I have a good idea what's causing the problem, so that'll be fixed next release.

Speaking of which...

As you may well imagine, any sort of "rules" in Medieval-era sports were treated more like "suggestions." Suggestions which were treated in the usual manner any suggestion for fair play was treated: Riotous laughter, and maybe a knife or two under the ribs. Go look up Mob Football on Wikipedia sometime and be amazed of the state of the collective human psyche back then. What I thought of for the next release was to bring Pipeball back to it's roots- Pipeball. You know, this crappy excuse for entertainment I made a really long time ago. For those who don't remember, Pipeball played much like sports were played in Ye Olde Days- any resemblance to things like structure or pacing were mere figments of one's imagination. Of course the object was still remarkably simple- round ball, round hole, do the math.

What if Pipe Balle had no forced respawn after a goal was scored? The only reason why I implemented it in Super Pipeball (hereto referred as The Map That Must Not Be Named) was to cut down on the 100% nonstop spamfest that plagued the original Pipeball. And it worked, if only because the players were briefly relocated to their spawns again before they could resume holding down Mouse1. Pipe Balle obviously has no such problem, so why fix what can't be broken?

Another idea is doing away with another implement from The Map That Must Not Be Named, the first-to-three scoring system. Scoring limits? Those are for sissies. Real men score and score and score and score until everyone generally agrees the game is over. In this case, "everyone" I suppose would be the Announcer and her pesky arbirtary time limits. Like what I had for Spaceball., only without the Spaceball. Of course the issue of how to keep track of score display is a hefty challenge, should this ever be enacted.

 

[The Asylum]

if making nonstandard maps has taught me anything so far, it's never ever assume Valve won't make an update that won't fuck up everything you thought was merely "adequate".

i fucking called it

Apparently TF2 doesnt like it when a physbox is hit with a critical holiday punch.- so much so that it crashes

valve, y u no like pipeball

 

[grazr]

Valve hate innovation. You can tell because game modes are hard coded and they wont change their code unless they really have to.

 

[The Asylum]

i know right

its so stupid

 

[The Asylum]

Update! We're finally in Beta!

Finally added some scenery to the sides, so it's no longer a castle floating in the sky

Other than that, I've made both balls quite a bit lighter, so they're easier to knock out of the trench.

http://forums.tf2maps.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=5045