Pipeball Ultra

Pipeball Ultra (pipeball_ultra) is an upcoming 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 both points 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 30 seconds 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 30 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.

There are two ways to win the match: by having more points when the main timer expires, or if one team wins two bonus rounds consecutively.

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 a special kill-on-contact Black Ball is 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. Now with Melee Fort and other funmaps fallen to the wayside, the beast rattles its cage again. For better or worse, it's time I let it loose. 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.