Pipeball Ultra

*Pipeball Ultra* (pipeball\_ultra) is an in development Team Fortress 2 map by The Asylum of the Devitory. The objective of the map is to score more points than the other team by knocking a ball into the opponent's goal pipes. It was first announced in 2015 on the TF2Maps.net forums.

## Gameplay

The match begins with a five minute time limit, and both teams must fight the other team to push a ball into the other team's goal pipe, after it is served vertically upwards from a pipe in the middle of the rink. Capturing the other team's Control Points can unlock aides in scoring- capturing one point can unlock cannons that send the ball flying into the other end of the rink. Capturing the other point will dramatically widen the other team's goal pipe. Scoring a goal in the main rink is worth one point.

Upon scoring, the main timer is paused, both teams respawn in a bonus room with a single goal pipe, where the team that scored now has one minute to try and score again, while the team that was scored on must defend their goal. If the attackers score again, they are awarded two additional points. After the 60 seconds expire, or another goal is scored, the teams respawn in the main rink, and the main timer resumes. The Control Points are reset, and gameplay continues.

## Winning the match

There are four ways to win the match: Time Up, Knockout, Points, or Sudden Death.

### Time Up

The most common win method, Time Up, occurs when the main timer expires, and whichever team has accrued the most points wins the match.

### Knockout

The second most common method, Knockout, occurs when a team scored twice consecutively in the other team's bonus room. That is to say, if they score once on the main rink, once in the bonus room, again on the main rink and once again in the bonus room, all without interruption, that team wins by Knockout.

### Points

The most uncommon win method, Points, occurs when a team reaches 10 total points, winning the game.

### Sudden Death

If time expires and the score is tied, a Sudden Death round begins. The teams respawn in a special rink with no goal pipes, and four special kill-on-contact Black Balls are released. Respawn is disabled, so the only way to win this final round is to wipe out the other team.

## History

Since the completion of the original Pipeball map in 2008, Asylum had wanted to make a sequel, expanding on the Pipeball formula into a bigger and more complex map.

### Super Pipeball (2009)

In 2009 this would take the form of Super Pipeball, an experiment that would ultimately end in failure and was soon after retired.

### Pipeball X (2009-2014)

After the death of Super Pipeball, Asylum went through various ideas for an expanded Pipeball that never saw an alpha release, most going by the provisional name of *pipeball\_x*. Asylum would briefly toy with the idea of transforming Pipeball into its own gametype with the prefix *pb\_* (e g.: *pb\_2fort*), though none of these endeavors ever developed past the layout design phase. Eventually, Asylum's attention would divert to Melee Fort, and the various Pipeball X maps would be put to rest.

### Pipeball Ultra (2015-)

With the decision to retire the Melee Fort maps in 2015, Asylum developed a renewed interest in Pipeball, as he would describe it:

> Perhaps the funmap scene isn't completely dead. Perhaps it's time to finally right one of my most egregious wrongs. [...] Making Pipeball bigger, however, has always been a nagging itch in the back of my mind.
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> Now with Melee Fort and other funmaps fallen to the wayside, the beast rattles its cage again.
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> For better or worse, it's time I let it loose.
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Pipeball Ultra was announced on the TF2Maps.net forums in 2015, with updates and progress periodically added to the thread.

### Development Hell

When Asylum broke his leg in late 2017, he was unable to work on Pipeball Ultra. Shortly after recovering in 2018, he began working multiple jobs, and most of his projects were put on hold to work on Pokemon, Asylum of the Devitory Style, X!!. With an increase in his schedule to 90 work hours per week, virtually no work was put into Pipeball Ultra for years afterwards.

On 1 April 2022, Asylum Megamix was debuted on TF2Maps.Net's annual April Foolsday event, which contained a modified section of RED's Bonus Room defense, which after seven years was the first open playtest of Pipeball Ultra.

## Release

After another public test of the bonus rooms, Pipeball Ultra was finally at a stable completion level. On 19 May 2022 Asylum released an A0 build exclusively for TF2Maps.Net, along with the announcement that the public A1 build would finally be released on Canada Day (1 July) 2022 to both TF2Maps.Net and Gamebanana.

## Trivia

* Originally, the bonus rooms had three pillars located in front of the goals to increase the attacking team's handicap, as well as a 30 second time limit. The pillars were removed and the time limit increased to one minute in the A0 build after negative feedback.
* The Sudden Death stage is Asylum's way of honoring frequent requests to make an Arena mode Pipeball
* Ideas for perks that did not make it into the finalized concept include shortening respawn times, team-colored balls that would instant-kill players on the opposite team, a fan or vaccuum that would draw the ball into the goal pipes, and "calling in an air strike."
* The longest possible match time is 28:55, including the setup time. This is achieved by both teams scoring 9 goals each on the main rink, scoring no bonus goals, and allowing both the main timer and the Sudden Death timer to run out.