Difference between revisions of "Battle Race"

Revision as of 12:49, 2 October 2013

	W:A replay: An example of a Battle Race game with KRD and M0rph1umDuck; taken from Worm Olympics
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A Battle Race is played on an indestructible map fashioned into an assault course, with a start point and a finish point. Players race their sole worm from start to finish, with the first player to reach the finish point winning the game.

Details

With no transport tools available, players must carefully navigate the course only by walking and jumping. Some Battle Race maps contain elements that can be very difficult to pass, requiring exact positioning and precise jumps. They can even require such movement to be pixel-perfect for successful passage. Elements within a Battle Race map are often designed so that missing a jump will result in a fall, setting a player back to an earlier position in the course and requiring the player to re-attempt the element from the beginning. A map's difficulty lies not only in the precision required but also in how severe these setbacks can be.

Weapons are also provided in the Battle Race scheme, though they cannot be used to injure opponents, as worms are invincible. Instead, weapons are used to gain retreat time at the end of a turn or hinder an opponent's progress, by knocking him down from a climb or propelling him along a tunnel. Mines can also be placed to delay an opponent. In some cases, a player will use an explosive to blast his own worm forward if the terrain is suitable. From time to time, weapon crates are spawned on the map, which usually contain explosives like mine or grenade, or baseball bat.

Also, Battle Race is known to be a rather slow game, especially if there are more than 2 players participating. In fact, it is - among some others - one of the longest games played.

Rules

Defaults

The commonly used rules in Battle Race are:

• Do not plop your opponent's worm. Failing this rule results in the attacker's default loss.
• Skipwalking is not allowed.

Variations

• Do not use weapons to blast your own worm around, like in Boom Race, causing sometimes a good advantage skipping part of the map.
• Original battle race rules and maps were designed around the idea that water deaths, or plopping the opponents worm were perfectly acceptable and in fact encouraged.

Strategies

It is a common strategy to use fire punch or dragon ball to hit back the opponent, as it will cost the player some time - this ranging from a couple of seconds to even several turns, depending on the landscape - to get back the worm to its original location. A setback of this strategy is that it ends the attacking player's turn, so it is mostly used at the end of the turn, if possible, or if it sets back the opponent considerably.

Another common trick is to use the first shot of a shotgun to hit the opponent, and only use the second shot at the end of the turn, giving the player the retreat time as well. Although the shotgun doesn't hit as big as the two mentioned earlier, it is just as useful, as it can be shot from a distance, a feat the other two doesn't share - or at least, not to the same extent.

Mines are usually used to block the path of the opponent, but it is only useful where the latter can't jump over it and walk far enough before the explosion, thus dodging the effect of it. It is mostly used in narrow tunnels, where even if the worm walks back to a safe distance after activating it, still delays the opponent by 5-6 seconds. To counter this, mines can be hit or shot away from the path, or sometimes its blast can be used to move the worm forward.

	W:A replay: An example of mine walking
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There is also a trick called "mine walking" where one drops a Mine from a height and then walks off the cliff after it, landing on the bouncing mine, ultimately not losing the turn because of falling. Although doing so still ends the player's turn, it is still better than falling down since some retreat time will be left after having landed. Furthermore, it is imperative that a wall is present in front of the worm attempting the trick, off which the mine can bounce, thus being slowed down so that the worm can land on it mid-air. This trick requires practice, good timing, and a bit of luck.

Variations

No Weapons ("Walk Race")

The name Battle Race probably came because of the weapons that can be used to delay the opponents. However, some games (mainly with those played in tourneys) use schemes with no weapons or special maps with parallel courses (enabling players to play without disturbing each other), becoming this way a simple "jump race" or "walk race", because it's impossible to delay the opponents.

Low Gravity Switch

The players are equipped with infinite low gravity, which can be turned on and off anytime and as many times as the player wants. This variant was introduced here during the Winter Worm Olympics 2008, with some maps resembling jetpack race maps.

History

The origins of Battle Race trace back to the Worms 2 days, with rudimentary tunnel maps designed for Worms to navigate through. What is now known as the modern Battle Race was pioneered by GARG0YLE, who created the first BR maps for W:A with indestructible terrain and weapon sets, with the purpose of racing through obstacles while hindering the opponent with the weapons at the players' disposal. The only rules for the scheme were to start on the designated start area and not to use right mouse click, or pre-patch skipwalking, to speed up the worm. Killing all the opposing worms or arriving at the finish first resulted in a victory.

Wormers that had a hand in creating and honing the scheme, as well as designing maps, include NZkiwi, Foxylady, RaptorStrike, and Silentworm. The early maps were broad tunnels created in the in-game editor, but the use of MSpaint soon allowed for the creation of complex obstacles. One of the figureheads responsible for the patching of W:A, Deadcode, was also a battle race fan and designed a pixel-perfect template that tested the very limits of the jumping mechanics in W:A, further advancing map creation for the scheme. Today, many of the maps feature these pixel-perfect jumps that require precise positioning and knowledge of the in-game mechanics. Focus on this has made the scheme less battle-centric and more centered on complex jumps.

In 2010, the Battle Race scheme was officially adopted in a major league for the first time by The Ultimate Site as part of its free league. Before that, two BR-specific leagues existed: GARG0YLE's Battle Zone was created by Silentworm in 2001 as a Battle Race league but was short-lived; BRL, or Battle Race League, was created by Bloopy in 2004 and enjoyed the most league play the scheme had ever seen across both W:A and WWP.

External links

• Battle Race on Nanacide