Spaceball

Spaceball A10

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T

The Asylum

The Asylum submitted a new resource:

Spaceball - Boldly play ball where no ball has been played before!

So yeah this shit again

NEW AND EXCITING! It's Spaceball A3!

Space, the final frontier. These are the battles of teams RED and BLU. Their continuing misson: to hit a ball into the other team's goal- to take a break every three minutes- to boldly play ball where no ball has been played before!

With my successful stroll down memory lane on Asylum Megamix on April Foolsday, I began to think about another long forgotten map of mine that didnt make the cut for the "Best of the Worst"- Spaceball. Way back then, I just kind of didn't know what to do with it and just let it sit there in my maps folder to rot. Well, it looks like it will serve a purpose after all.

For those who took the time to listen to the exhibits at the end of Asylum Megamix, my "free time" exhibit has already aged poorly. Two full time jobs, and a weekend gig now. That's why I've been so absent these last few years. Wake up, work, come home to nap, back out to work. 5 days a week, every week. Now it's going to be 7. Why? To cut a long story short, my life sucks. The only way I'm going to keep my house, car, health, etc, is this near suicidal 80+ hours a week. The pandemic has ruined the lives of both myself and my wife, and its going to be years before I have time for anything other than work. So, before I fade into the abyss of time and memory, a last parting gift: The latest experiment that is Spaceball. One last hurrah before the last few ounces of happiness left in my life are finally trampled out.

Well, enough of all that depressing bullshit. Need a dispenser here! Spy is Sandvich! And such.

For those not familiar with how Spaceball works, teams begin in their spawnrooms, and are given time to come up with strategies. Once the game itself begins, the players compete to hit a ball into the other team's goal, after being served from this vertical shaft in the middle. Did I mention this is melee only now? Okay, well, there it is. After 3 minutes of play, the players are spawned back into their spawnroom for an intermission. After which, another period begins. The team to score either the most amount of goals after 3 periods, or whichever team scores 10 goals, wins.



I'll try and find some time to get this playtested, but I don't like my chances. I'll see you guys again when I see you again.
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T

The Asylum

haha yeah, so maybe i didnt pack the materials correctly

whoopsie

I thought about just issuing an updated version of a3, but then I thought, "hold on... this map actually kinda sucks." And it definitely does- that's what happens when you get bored at night and start making maps instead of sleeping. So of course here's a heavily updated and expanded WIP that I'm making because I'm bored at night and making maps instead of sleeping.

spaceballa4_0000.png

As you can see, I've BALEETED just about everything and starting over almost entirely from scratch. Just to give you a little sense of scale, the distance from goal to goal is roughly the same length as Pipeball Ultra- factor in the little zig zag path to make things more challenging and the journey is a little bit longer.

spaceballa4_0001.png

And we have not one, but THREE "balls" to play with, one of which will be used at random. Once a goal is scored, will you get the normal-looking space rock, the oblong cylindrical asteroid, or the very misshapen silicone potato?

As for how respawning is going to look, eeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh, I dunno. Maybe I'll figure it out on the next sleepless night.
 
T

The Asylum

The Asylum updated Spaceball with a new update entry:

A4A!

CHANGES FROM A3:

  • Everything's properly packed this time, I swear! No more spinning pink purgatory!
  • Made the space background spin a bit faster and on two axis
  • Fixed the "seams" issue with the skybox
  • Made the ball heavier
  • Disabled turbophysics. Now the ball is heavier AND deadlier!
  • Made the ball bouncier
  • Made the ball "spheroid." It'll now have unpredictable bounces
  • Lowered gravity for players on the playing field to 70%
  • Completely rebuilt the scoring and...
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T

The Asylum

Fuuuuuuuuck yeah it's new Spaceball!

A huge SNAFU basically deleted all my entity brushes and I had to build pretty much most of the map from scratch. But, in the process, I made things slightly more efficient than they were beforehand.

Just one space potato, though, and not the promised three. The cylindrical "ball" was just too light for the low gravity and would flip out way too much, and the "wacky" one just would not move, at all. Source doesn't like my "creative" vphys shapes, apparently.
 
T

The Asylum

note to self:

people like maps that DONT give them motion sickness. duly noted.

So apparently designing a completely new mid and plunking that into a map not designed for it is a bad idea too. Looks like we're going back to respawns after a goal.
 
T

The Asylum

The Asylum updated Spaceball with a new update entry:

A5!

CHANGES FROM A5
  • Slowed down the spin of the background
  • Forced respawn after every goal
  • Ball is re-served in the middle after every goal
  • Expanded playing field spawnrooms
  • Added sounds for serving, scoring, and BGM. Fuck it, it's already a Facing worlds ripoff, may as well go full hog.
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And added more scoreboards and a visual rep of which period the map is on. Also a catch up mechanic- The map starts at 8 respawn wave time for both teams. Once a team scores 5 goals, their respawn is increased to 10. On 8 goals, it's bumped up to 12. And on 9 goals, it's 16. Let's see how that goes down.

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T

The Asylum

The Asylum updated Spaceball with a new update entry:

A7!

CHANGES FROM A6:
  • Slowed the skybox again again again again. Now it moves at a truly glacial pace
  • Slowed down the scroll of the lights in the warp hallways. People don't like maps that give them motion sickness or trigger mild epileptic episodes? Who knew?
  • Changed text from game_text to game_text_tf to make it more noticeable
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T

The Asylum

Sooooooooooooooooo, intermission

Yeah, I dont know guys. It's like, some people hate the nonstop intensity of Pipeball Ultra, some people hate the little break they get in Spaceball. Now, I know it's impossible to please everyone, but it's important to at least find a decent enough balance. As it is now, intermission lasts 30 seconds. Which, according to most people who have sat through it, is the equivalent of time immemorial. So, here's the new idea: point_viewcontrol abuse!

Like a preteen shut in who's just discovered the newest hot slang amongst his peers, I've begun experimenting with the uses and shameless misuses of point_viewcontrol. Assuming I can figure out why all the custom sounds I have in Spaceball just suddenly stopped working, my idea is to have a moving point_viewcontrol illustrate a real-time flythough of the map. Not at high speed like the skybox used to rotate at. No no no, I'm not interested in making players vomit. Or triggering epilepsy (I'm fixing that too, trust me!). It's a leisurely crawl , maybe 10 or so seconds, from one end of the field (or space station, or.... uh, whatever the hell it is we're playing on) to the other. Maybe throw some rotations in there too. Slow ones.

uhh, maybe have some cranberry juice in the fridge. just in case.
 
asylum

asylum

L1: Registered
Mar 3, 2024
47
14
asylum updated Spaceball with a new update entry:

A9!

CHANGES FROM A8:
  • Reworked spawntimes. We start at 3, then as a team scores goals their times get longer.
  • Reworked how the skybox spins. Now it's less nauseating, and faster, at the same time!
  • Reworked the lighting in the warp hallway. Now with less epilepsy!
  • Reworked the timing on Intermission. Now it's only 15 seconds
  • Reworked the sound file formats. From broken MP3s to perfectly functional WAVs
  • Added some legal stuff that apparently I really should have had in...
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asylum

asylum

L1: Registered
Mar 3, 2024
47
14
sooooooooooooo, maybe having to play this map for 10 minutes a round is a weeeeeee bit much

Sure, Pass Time is a complete and total botch, but at least the torment ends quickly when one team steamrolls the other. Not with Spaceball, though. Well, not yet, anyway. Think of this: adding a TKO rule. You know how, in boxing, when one fighter gets knocked down three times in a round, they lose? Yeah, that. I'm thinking of implementing that. Not like Pipeball Ultra though, where goals have to be scored consecutively. Nope. You let three goals in at any time during a single period, you LOSE, GOOD DAY SIR. Yes I know, I should have learned my lesson about making things more complex than they need to be with Pipeball Ultra, but I think it's already simple enough to understand.

.....of course that's what I've been saying about Pipeball in general and people will STILL ask "wait what do how play game"

eeeeeuuuuuuuuaaaggghhhhh. It never ends.
 
asylum

asylum

L1: Registered
Mar 3, 2024
47
14
I made a mess of the first run at a10, trying to implement a TKO rule. Then I said to myself, "if my overall goal here is to make Spaceball shorter, why not just make it shorter?" That's the genesis behind shortening periods to just 2 minutes, down from 3. Maybe playing this silly map for just 6 minutes will make it more digestible than having to play it for almost 10. Like I said, if there is a lesson to be learned from Pipeball Ultra, it's this: don't take a super simple premise and needlessly bog it down with more rules, especially if it's a game mode people haven't seen before. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best. We'll see how this goes before I do anything drastic.
 
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