Dodgeball: Ballistic Battleground

Dodgeball: Ballistic Battleground is a fast paced arcade style ball dodge game. This involves going up against competitors to gain the longest time on the hill without getting assassinated, shot with needlers till you are fired into a kill ball, or of course, the most likely way to die: an endless wave of golf balls being hurled at high speeds through a fine tuned feeding system that provides non-stop entertainment in small bite size chunks.

Development:

See the post Dodgeball: Ballistic Mayhem for the full in depth development prior to this map.

Dodgeball: Ballistic Mayhem

Design of the new version of the map:

Despite the success of the previous version of the map, I still felt that I could achieve more. I came back to Dodgeball after finishing the main construction of the VIRUS STRAIN 57, with a lot more experience and ideas. Keeping the previous map as a template to work from, I re-designed the mechanism and map to fine tune it even more, getting rid of problems with the mechanism. One major point that I took into consideration when coming back to the map was that I had over $800 left for budget, along with plenty of shield doors. Here were some of the major problems I had encountered with the previous map:
· On one of the teleport exits within the killballs didn’t kill the players and fired them back onto the map.
· Map wasn’t long enough: players didn’t like being unable to see when the balls were coming due to the length of the map and it was too confined for the number of players.
· Players were regularly killed when respawning, either by the balls or being assassinated by other players already spawned.
· Blind spots within the mechanism allowed players to cheat within SOLODODGE.
· The placement of shield doors could be more efficient to bounce them further (See side shields on photo).
· Equipment seemed a little obsolete since the sword was very ineffective and the powerup only sped up the player slightly.
· Ramp was badly built at the back.

The main challenge was the construction of the extra length onto the map. This was due to the factor of whether the Mancannons could cover the extra distance on the map, but also if the mechanism at the top of the map could also manage to cover the extra distance without stopping. For this, I went back to a mechanism used previously in one of my earlier designs; using shield doors to transport the balls down the map. This time though, I placed them horizontally which meant that the balls were able to bounce down the map. I then moved the gravity lifts to the back of the system to add to propulsion. Along with this, the shields which were previously sideways on the ramp were changed. To prevent the players being fired out alive out of the receiving teleports,
I then worked on the spawning aspect of the production of the map, making the players spawn several meters in the air, out of reach of attackers and dodgeballs. Also for the humans’ safety, I decided to make the players invisible, so that they focused more on the balls rather than each other, along with concealing the position of them spawning. By doing this, the players now had a choice: either be stealthy and focus on the dodgeballs, or plough into your competitors with full on combat.

Previously in another version of the map, I had placed custom powerups in the arena which the player could pick up to collect certain traits. The previous trait was just a speed up, but as I realised that moving objects show up as yellow blips on the motion tracker, I decided to include another trait. The traits I changed it to were higher speed and motion tracker, allowing the player to see where the balls are coming from and at a faster pace than usual to counteract, at the price of not having invisibility.

A variety of different tactics arose during testing, and these are some of them that were picked up:

Coward: Uses the invisibility to their advantage and hides in corners and other stealthy areas of the arena.
Pros: Avoid most of the combat, meaning cowards can gain high points and avoid the players for a decent amount of time. Standing still makes the players completely invisible, allowing cowards to remain unseen.
Cons: Safer areas to hide are predictably obvious, so they are the first place that others look. There is still no guarantee that if nobody sees you that you are safe; the non stop salvos of dodgeballs thundering around the track ensure that.

Assassin: Grab the sword and melt into the background, moving to avoid dodgeballs hitting you. Wait till their backs are turned and strike.
Pros: Able to kill and disappear within seconds, along with move around the in between players with ease. Instantly kills if can get behind players, along with having extra reach on the melee.
Cons: Whilst stalking victims, the Assassin may be distracted by killing players rather than dodging balls.
Mistiming an attack can prove fatal, along with the fact that there is only one sword on the map to use, meaning players are usually quite focused on finding the assassin for their sword.

Dodger: Uses the Powerups at the back of the arena to move at higher speeds around the arena. The Powerup also allows the players to see the position of dodgeballs before they are fired.
Pros: Allows players to predict movement of balls in which they can easily move out of the way with a higher than average speed. Also, all players are revealed on the motion tracker.
Cons: Players become visible, meaning they are very vulnerable to being assassinated. Also, as a result of the higher speed, Dodgers are more likely to be killed if hit by a ball.

Blasters: Uses their primary weapon, the Needler to shoot others. The Needler doesn’t do any damage, but if enough needles are fired, the player being hit by the needles explodes. This doesn’t kill, but sends the player flying in the opposite direction from which the needles came from, sending players uncontrollably flying into the path of dodgeballs and flung into kill balls.
Pros: Allows the player to lift other players off the ground, making them more vulnerable to be knocked further if hit by a ball. Also is a key weapon to sniffing out cowards. Needles also reveal other invisible players by leaving pink needles in the players armour.
Cons: When firing the blaster becomes visible leaving them very vulnerable to assassination, their weapon does no damage whatsoever and if the enemy player is too close to the blaster when the needle explosion occurs they are killed in the blast.

Here is the finished product.

Dodgeball: Ballistic Battleground side view (Side removed for display purposes)

Screenshots

The gameplay itself is incredibly frantic, with some ridiculous rag doll effects happening as players are sent flying as they are pelted with high speed projectiles.

Catch! (As seen in Halo 2)

Congassassination!

Awkward landing: “Can you guys get this thing out of me!”

Panto: “What do you mean it’s behind me?”

Push!

Spartwheel: One Spartan makes some very evasive manoeuvres to avoid being taken out.

Takedown: One player is sent flying by one Golfball too many.

Spartan Splatter

Atlas

Trouser Twist: One Spartan who suffered one too many hits gets a nasty injury.

And now on more of a sensible note; a couple of gameplay screenshots showing gameplay rather than ragdolls in ridiculous splatter poses. Keep in mind these have also been collected from the same two 3 minute games.

Triumph: a player raises their plasma sword in victory at the end of the match.

Apollo: A Spartan is sent hurtling out of the killball with his sword ready to deploy back onto the map.

Ball Blasted: Getting too close to the front of the arena for too long is never a good suggestion.

Purple Shockwave.

Never saw it coming: The Assassin strikes.

Strike: all players knocked out by one salvo.

Last man standing: one Spartan remains while his rivals fall.

And these are just the tip of the iceberg with screenshots: my only limit was this thread maximum screenshots.

Modes available to play with:
KingDodge:
KingDodge is a group game of King of the hill from 2 up to 8 people, in which you have a 3 minute match in which you have infinite lives, and fight against each other to score the most points by the end of the game. The scoring involves:
Off the Hill (Aka Dead) 0 Points
On the Hill (Contesting) 1 Points
On the Hill (In control) 2 Points
Killing your opponents in any way whatsoever results in no additional scoring, and suicides do not reduce score. The key to this mode is surviving for as long as possible, and if possible, killing off all opponents to gain those juicy score boosts.

SoloDodge:
SoloDodge is a variant of KingDodge, in which if a player is alone in a party, they can try to score as much points with 3 lives with in unlimited time. Once achieved, the player places their screenshot of the final score/Just final score/Film of it if you want on the rankings to see who can survive the longest successfully against the Dodgeballs. Depending on your skill, length on time lasts from a couple of minutes to who knows?

Feedback: This map has been tested multiple times in itself, and here is the feedback of its final test:

Feedback

Download the Map:
Now that I have finished writing about it, I think its time you saw for yourself the map and modes so download the map and modes here and enjoy the map!

Here are the links to the map and its two modes.

DODGEBALL: BALLISTIC BATTLEGROUND: Download Here

KINGDODGE: Download Here

SOLODODGE: Download Here

Remember, your feedback would be greatly appreciated, as all of this goes towards my portfolio, but more importantly, I can improve it to make my map more fun for you all.

All that’s really left for me to you all is:

Thanks and have Fun;

Twilight GN0ME.

Thanks To:
Testers Guild
Bungie
Xbox Live Community
Forge Hub