Difference between revisions of "Boom Race"

Revision as of 11:49, 19 March 2022

	W:A replay: An example match of Boom Race, with M3ntal and Balee
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How to win: shoot yourself

Boom Race is a racing-style scheme where players must navigate their sole worm through a specially-designed, indestructible map to reach a finish line from a designated starting point. Worms are anchored, so players can only make progress by blasting their own worm around using the provided weapons. The player to reach the finish line first, or hold the leading position when the round timer runs out, wins the game. Boom Race is commonly thought of as a variation of the Battle Race scheme, which differs only in that worms can move and a smaller set of weapons is provided.

Details

Players begin by each placing their single worm on the designated starting location.

With the worms anchored in position, players must use the provided weapons to carefully navigate the course by blasting their own worm. Worm health is infinite, so the use of weapons does not cause injury. However, some maps contain gaps along the bottom leading to the water, where drowning is possible. Players must take great care to navigate these hazards. Mines are sometimes also present on the map to provide an additional obstacle, but skilled players can use them to their advantage to blast their worms even further along the course.

Players can also target their opponents to set them back, though this is sometimes forbidden. Causing an opponent to drown is strictly forbidden.

The weapons provided usually include the Bazooka, Grenade, Shotgun, Homing Pigeon, Dynamite, Mine, Sheep, Holy Hand Grenade, Petrol Bomb, and Mad Cow. Prod is also provided and can be used only to nudge an opposing worm, perhaps back down a cliff. Sometimes, other weapons are included such as the Homing Missile and Magic Bullet.

Low gravity is also available, to allow players to traverse greater distances.

A game's duration depends on the difficulty and length of the map and the skill of the players. Games can sometimes last hours. Often, the game is played to the round timer, with the player in the leading position winning the game at the moment of Sudden Death.

The scheme is supported by HostingBuddy.

Rules

• Place at the start - Players must place their worms on the spot labelled Start, S, or similar.
• No drownings - Players must not drown an opponent's worm. Violating this rule forfeits the game.
• Optional: No attacking - Players must not attack opponents' worms at all, unless for the purpose of moving their own worm.

Violations of the "No attacking" rule are sometimes quite hard to determine. For example, if one player uses a bazooka to blast themselves forward, but fails, and an opponent's worm is knocked down a wall in the explosion, the attack could be declared a violation even though it wasn't intentional. Thus, this rule is usually disregarded. Some maps (example) provide parallel courses which enables players to compete without interacting with each other.

It's generally recommended that players, when joining a Boom Race game lobby on WormNET, use the term "STF" (standing for Start To Finish) to indicate to the host that they understand the concept of the scheme and will follow the rules.

Variations

Unanchored Boom Race

This variation invented by Lex (source) appeared in late 2002 at about the same time the original was popularized, and was also simply called Boom Race at first. Worms can walk around and do grenade jumps and so on, allowing the maps to be much more intricate. This also inspired the idea of playing Battle Race maps that require unlimited grenades.

Grenade Race

See Grenade Race section in Battle Race page.

This variation is a mixture of Battle Race with Unanchored Boom Race, but only with grenades.

Multi Shot Boom Race

Worms Armageddon

This variation uses the "loss of control doesn't end turn", "shot doesn't end turn" and "anti worm sink" features of RubberWorm. Players can use weapons multiple times per turn, which increases the pace of the game. The game also becomes more chaotic, since there is less time to think about a shot, if the player intends to fire a weapon three or four times per turn.

Worms World Party

In WWP, Boom Race was played using the Wormpot "Using a weapon doesn't end your turn mode", which has only 10 seconds of turn time and no "loss of control doesn't end turn" feature that is usually applied when playing WA with RubberWorm. This way, weapons like Blowtorch (as a way to "walk" with anchor mode to adjust the worm's position) and probably grenades (due to the possibility of exploding all at the same moment, concentrating their explosions or even predicting where the worm would fall, causing a chain reaction of explosions to push the worm) were very important, since they could be used without loosing the turn, differently than weapons such as shotgun or bazooka that would make the worm loose the turn immediately with the explosion impact (those weapons were used only on the last seconds).

History

WO icon

Boom Race was invented by the wormer MrMr (source) in late 2000 based on the date of his maps (source). It was played on maps drawn in the in-game editor at first, until Bloopy created his first map for it in October 2002. The earliest color Boom Race map appeared on Worms Map Database in April 2004.

The scheme has featured consistently in competitions, featuring in the Worm Olympics every year from 2006 to 2016, and in cups hosted on The Ultimate Site between 2010 and 2018.

External links

• Boom Race on Nanacide