ATTENTION: Experiencing Lag? Try CloneCourt LITE

Review Hub Rating

CLONEBALL

Summary of Gameplay
Two teams face each other head to head in a lavish arena. Suddenly, the number of players double, and new doppelgangers march toward the other side of the map with dreams of reaching the glowing blue doorways. CloneBall is just as hectic as anyone with experiences of mass holograms would expect it to be. Games of eight players appear to have a full BTB lobby in them, and bigger teams create the feeling of a riot with the mobs of clashing holograms. The confusing, hectic feeling of the game remains constant throughout, as players on each side attempt to line up with a doorway on the opposite side or chase a hologram while swinging a Spiker maliciously. Often times more coordinated teams will compose a designated defense and offense, attempting to use a team strategy during the massive onslaught of projected SPARTAN-IIIs. The elements of this game are unique, creating a fun environment at first. Unfortunately, CloneBall does have the tenancy to become repetitive quickly, which does destroy an element of replay value.
Balance/Durability/Aesthetic Enjoyment
The concept behind CloneBall is simple; players must use the court and chaos to their advantage and attempt to sneak a copy of themselves through the doors located behind the other team. Other players may take to the defensive side of things and attempt to pick off opposing holograms before they get too close to the doorways. The stadium built for CloneBall, both the regular and LITE versions-are both aesthetically pleasing and make for a fun first few games, simply to admire the aesthetics. The court is symmetric, with equal room for both teams and a sort of ‘net’ in the middle to prevent players from reaching the other side of the map. Also to prevent player abuse, teleporters are set up near the goals on either side to prevent defenders from meddling too much with them. On occasion, a defender will get caught in one of these on accident while defending, and this can get disorienting and slightly frustrating at times for such a defender. This is not an often occurrence and these teleporters are necessary to keep the game intact, though the lack of a visual cue and hectic environment can cause players to occasionally walk in to them on accident chasing a hologram, and those unaware of the teleporters can get caught disoriented, which is usually not entertaining. Aside from that small flaw, the map is perfectly balanced and easily enjoyable to all players, though playing in moderation is recommended as playing consistently can become rather repetitive, as is the case with most if not all mini-games.
3/5
Gametype Enjoyment
As a mini-game, CloneCourt is all but obligated to have a gametype to be released alongside it as the primary gametype, for CloneCourt its counterpart is the name of the mini-game, CloneBall. This gametype was obviously designed for the maximum usage of the hologram, as it should. The gametype does not allow players to jump; allowing the small one-way shield divider in the middle of the map to stop any player that tries to join his or her hologram on the other side. Players are given infinite hologram to decrease the waiting period between holograms to increase the hectic nature of the map. Note that infinite hologram does not allow players to spam more than one hologram; if this is tried the previous one will disappear automatically. Players who are not aware of this may be frustrated at first, but most if not all will learn easily, and those who don’t should not be playing Halo. Aside from these two features, the gametype features infinite but not bottomless Spiker ammunition to rip apart holograms and makes players invulnerable so they may not be killed at any point during the game. The lack of bottomless clip can catch players trying to destroy multiple holograms, an occurrence that happens often especially in bigger games. This can become something of a nuisance to defenders who find their target hologram on the verge of flickering out of existence when the Spiker runs out of ammunition. These are the real changes made to the CloneBall gametype, and most prove to be very effective in trying to make the most enjoyable game possible. As mentioned before however, the game is often so straightforward and without much change, causing the game to become boring after the initial wave of hype from the massive swarm of holograms wears off.
2/5
Weapon/Vehicle Balance
The only weapon even present in CloneBall is the weapon players spawn with: the Spiker. This weapon does significant damage to the holograms which comprise a player’s only target, but unless players are highly accurate holograms have to be tracked almost across the entire court; defenders can usually only handle one hologram at a time, maybe tackling two if they make liberal use of the melee. This does allow for a decent amount of points to be scored, but more often than not it seems the damage that needs to be done to the holograms is a bit too much with the Spiker, often accounting for the fast games especially as team sizes get bigger. A better weapon more suited for hologram destruction might help keep game times up especially in bigger lobbies, as the current weapon setup makes scoring easy for the attackers and makes melee the best option in most cases for a defender.
4/5
Design Balance
As mentioned above, the more offensive-focused players usually have an advantage over the other team’s defenders due to the weapons given and possibly the small court. Aside from this issue, not much else has the capacity to negatively affect the balance of the map. The sides of the court are the right size to allow players space to move around and attempt to sneak in a hologram around the sides, if not a tad small because of the attacker’s success as mentioned above. The size does allow for a hectic environment while still giving holograms a chance, as a play space that is too big would most likely lead to very few points being scored. Thus, the map’s balance is not really the major issue, though the court could probably be a block longer without serious repercussions.
4/5
Map/Gametype Breaks
The vast amount of teleporters, shield doors and contingency kill zones make CloneBall inescapable. Even if players had the ability to jump or are somehow pushed over the shield door, a teleporter and kill zone would make short work of the offending player. As mentioned before, teleporters cover all of the goals preventing players from clogging their own goal or trying to meddle with the scoring system.
5/5
Spawning
As dying on CloneBall is almost something of a skill, the spawning is never a problem. In the event that a player manages to find themselves dead on the court, they will be put right back in where the teams start the game; near the backside of their side of the court. Teams spawn points prevent players from spawning on the opposing side of the field, so exploitation of this is not possible. Also, as players cannot within reason kill each other, dying off the spawn should never be a problem.
5/5
Lag
Up to thirty-two SPARTAN-IIIs can appear to be wandering around the court at one given time, one may expect bad things to happen to the frame-rate, especially in such an elaborate arena. While this may hold true in bigger games and almost certainly holds true in split-screen, games with up to six a side should not be a problem. For those parties above that number, the author has also provided a ‘Lite’ version of the map meant to reduce frame-rate problems. While the arena can still cause problems for those playing four player split-screen in a big lobby, not much else can put a dent in frame-rate on CloneCourt.
4/5
Theme
As a map styled after a sort of sports arena, CloneCourt succeeds in doing so. The standard map also has a light and glass pieces near the tops to help add to this arena or court feel. The aesthetics are rather smooth and well done, creating a relatively simple aesthetic that follows suit with most other sporting arenas. Though a player walking into the map may not pay attention to this theme as they are more focused on simply the other team and their own goals; no element of verticality really inspires players to look up to see this aesthetic. Because of this, it almost seems that the great aesthetic theme went to waste.
4/5
Key Aesthetics
The one feature of CloneCourt that really draws the most attention would probably by the floating light, though it suffers from the same problem as above. The flooring and walls done on CloneCourt are reasonably unique, though similar uses of these pieces have been seen before.
3/5
Neatness
The CloneCourt arena would be almost flawless in this category if not for the occasional instances of z-fighting. The arena is very well done, using an simple but effective flooring pattern and sloped walls to create a neat looking space. The usage of detail on the wall is enough to prevent them from looking too bland but not too much that they look cluttered. This intricate balance is preserved in all of the aesthetics throughout the map, creating a very aesthetically pleasing play-space.
4/5
Originality
The concept behind using holograms to score points is almost completely unused until CloneBall, making it a very unique idea. Because of this, CloneBall is a very unique mini-game, and can only be compared within reason to few other HaloBall games, none of which provide the same feel as CloneBall. The map and gametype stand as one of the few truly unique minigames created with the HaloBall gametype.
5/5
FINAL SCORES
Rating Multipliers
Enjoyment: 5.0x3.0 = 15 out of 30
Balance: 8.0x2.0 = 16 out of 20
Durability: 14.0x2.0 = 28 out of 30
Aesthetics: 16.0x1.0 = 16 out of 20
TOTAL SCORE = 75/100
FINAL SCORE

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2,500+ Downloads, 100+ likes

Posted on Waypoint Blog

The beginnings of CloneBall
People always have though of the Hologram as useless, piece of shit armor ability. I always use the Hologram, and have wanted people to realize how usefull it can be, thus I wanted to create a game showing how cool it is. I messed around with the Hologram for awhile, and finally I figured out that Holograms could actually make mines blow up. I was like fuck yes, and CloneBall was born.

The Game
CloneBall is best played with atleast eight people, and can be crazy and awesome with more than ten. So anyways the object of the game is to score more points than the opposing team by sending your Hologram into one of the four goals. You must also defend your four goals by destroying the clones the oter team has sent across with your spiker. Games are five minutes long with 25 points to win.

Video of CloneBall

‪CloneBall - Halo Reach‬&rlm; - YouTube

Video by Reach Customz
Reach Customz: Episode 3 | Cloneball - YouTube

Video by THFE (thanks Darth)
"Cloneball" - Halo Reach Forge Maps (THFE) - (Ep.39) - YouTube

Pictures of CloneCourt

Special Thanks
CAPNxCANT
DAI TOU ZAI
Confused Flamingo
SunBakedHero
McdanishTuesday
Hayden H
Dratical
Others that helped with TG testing I forgot

Well thanks for viewing my map thread. Hopefully you play CloneBall and enjoy with your friends. This game took some serious amounts of tweaking and testing, so please comment on it. Thanks, and the link below will send you to the CloneBall fileset.

http://www.bungie.net/stats/reach/filesets.aspx?set=40348&pxd=OdIyrEltomx66uUGzuHWCA%3d%3d