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.