Wipeout Maps

The courses and arenas for mg-wipeout: obstacle courses over open water, and the arenas a final death is fought in. Eleven courses, each a minute to two for a good run, five of them in front of a full house, and five arenas.

Every course and arena is a JSON document, not a scene. A server reads the documents in its course directory and sends the one it is playing to every client as the round begins, so players need no course files at all and a new course is one file dropped into a directory.

Using it

dot-bootstrap clones this repository next to mg-wipeout and links it into the game as courses/, so ./game.sh in mg-wipeout plays these courses with nothing else to do. On a server they are delivered as a pack of their own (wipeout_maps), which mg-wipeout's ./game.sh online and ./game.sh server build for you.

The courses

Course	What it is
wo_first_splash (First Splash)	The premiere, in front of a full house: a little of everything round the bay and up the hill, gently, and then not so gently
wo_spin_cycle (Spin Cycle)	Turntables, arms that turn on top of them, spinning pads, and a course that turns with them
wo_big_balls (Big Balls)	Seven sets of balls round the bay and up the hill, bigger and further apart, wrecking balls between them, and the stands
wo_punch_alley (Punch Alley)	Narrow walkways and rams that strike across them, and slime falls to wait out
wo_trapdoor_run (Trapdoor Run)	Floors that drop out from under you, rides across the gaps, pads that throw you on, and two forks: the long jumps or the pads straight across, or the long way round on the rides
wo_log_roll (Log Roll)	Rolling logs and tipping planks over open water. Keep moving or go backwards
wo_the_sweeper (The Sweeper)	Low arms to jump and high arms to duck, from both sides, round every corner, faster every time, with a crowd
wo_uphill_belt (Uphill Belt)	Up the hill in two switchbacks of belts, bouncers, falls and hammers, then round a spiral to a finish on the summit
wo_hammer_gauntlet (Hammer Gauntlet)	Narrow beams under swinging hammers, wrecking balls and rams, up to a high beam and down again, with a crowd
wo_grand_tour (Grand Tour)	The long one and the season's big night: round the bay and up the hill, a bit of everything, two forks to gamble on
wo_lily_pond (Lily Pond)	A winding path round the pond: spinning pads, tipping planks, waterfalls, and a fork between the ferry and the pads

Arena	What it is
wo_arena_ring (The Ring)	A round floor with a slow arm in the middle
wo_arena_islands (Four Islands)	Four islands and four narrow bridges
wo_arena_tiers (The Steps)	A three-step pyramid; the top is worth having
wo_arena_pit (The Pit)	A square round a hole, with two rides across it
wo_arena_turntable (Merry-Go-Round)	The whole floor turns

How they are made

tools/build.py writes every document in courses/ from a short description of each course as a run of sections (a gap, a sweeper, a set of balls, a mover crossing), each of which places its pieces, its checkpoint and the route a stand-in follows together. Moving one gap moves everything after it. Sections that bend the course (turn, curve, kink, u_turn), change its height (climb, and the belts, bouncers and steps that already did) and split it (fork, detour) carry everything after them round with them, so a course is a winding show rather than a corridor.

python3 tools/build.py            # rewrite courses/*.json
python3 tools/build.py --check    # exit 1 if a file differs from what the builder writes

The JSON is still what the game reads and is committed; CI runs --check, so a hand edit to a document the builder does not know about is caught instead of being lost on the next build. Hand-written documents that the builder does not produce are fine too: anything in courses/ with a .json extension is loaded.

Every course is played to the finish by a stand-in in mg-wipeout's examples/headless_courses.tscn, with every hazard live. A course it cannot finish inside its own clock is a course with no window somewhere, and the suite says where it got to. mg-wipeout's tools/race_times.tscn races a field of eight at every difficulty and is what each course's length is set by.

The builder refuses a checkpoint inside any hazard's reach (a restart into a sweeper's arc), a course that runs into or over itself, and a hazard that reaches another part of the course; event() dresses a course for a big night from its route: stands down both sides in turn, light towers, flags at the start and screens at both ends.

The format

Every length is metres, every angle degrees, every time seconds. A course may run any way; yaw 0 faces −Z, and every piece, checkpoint and the finish take a yaw. A position is the centre of what it places, except where a field says otherwise. Colours are [r, g, b] in 0–1.

{
  "format": 1,
  "kind": "course",
  "id": "wo_my_course",
  "name": "My Course",
  "author": "you",
  "blurb": "One line the server shows at the top of the round.",
  "theme": {"sky": [0.4, 0.66, 0.92], "horizon": [0.8, 0.88, 0.95], "water": [0.12, 0.45, 0.62]},
  "water_height": -6,
  "course_seconds": 240,
  "start": {"at": [0, 0, 0], "size": [10, 8], "yaw": 0},
  "pieces": [ ... ],
  "checkpoints": [{"at": [0, 0, -30], "size": [6, 4, 2.4]}],
  "finish": {"at": [0, 0, -80], "size": [10, 4, 2], "lounge": [0, 0, -84]},
  "route": [ ... ]
}

• start.at is the top of the start pad; the game builds the pad, its side walls and the gate the countdown holds closed across its −Z edge.
• checkpoints and finish are volumes whose at is their bottom centre: a runner is through when they stand inside one. Falling in puts a runner back at the last checkpoint they crossed. lounge is where finishers wait.
• water_height is where falling in starts. course_seconds is optional and is capped by the server's wo_course_seconds.
• Ids are lowercase a-z, 0-9 and _. A document a server cannot read is refused with the reason, and every other course still plays: wo_courses on the server lists refusals.

Pieces

Every piece has a kind, and may have yaw and a role (deck, pillar, cannon, arena, hazard, safe), which decides its texture.

Still

kind	fields
box	at, size	ground
ramp	at, size, pitch	a box tilted about its X axis; positive raises its −Z end
ball	at, radius	stand only near the top (about 35°)
cylinder	at, radius, height	upright

Carriers: solid, and whoever stands on one moves with it

kind	fields
mover	from, to, size, period, phase	slides between two centres, eased at both ends
turntable	at, radius, speed, thickness, phase	turns at speed degrees a second
roller	at, length, radius, speed	a log along its X axis, rolling at speed degrees a second
seesaw	at, size, amplitude, period, phase	tips about its X axis
conveyor	at, size, speed, pitch	a belt moving whoever is on it along its −Z at speed m/s (negative runs back toward the start); pitch lays it on a slope
tiles	at, cols, rows, tile, gap, thickness, period, down, seed	a grid; each tile drops out for down of every period, each at its own point in the cycle
bouncer	at, size, power	throws whoever lands on it up at power m/s

Hazards: not solid; whatever they touch is thrown

kind	fields
spinner	at (the base of its post), arm_length, speed, arms, arm_height, arm_thickness, hub_radius, hub_height, phase	arms round a solid post; jump a low one, duck a high one
pendulum	pivot, length, radius, swing, period, phase	a ball on a rod, swinging swing degrees either side along its X axis (yaw 0 swings across a course)
pusher	at, size, reach, period, duty, phase	a ram that strikes reach metres along its −Z, holds for duty of its period, and goes home
fall	at (on the deck), size (width, height, thickness), period, duty, phase, push, tint	a curtain of water (or slime, by tint) pouring for duty of its period after 0.7 s of drips; it throws whoever is under it push m/s off along its own +X. Needs mg-wipeout with fall (2026-10-12 on)

phase is a fraction of a period (0–1) for anything with a period, and degrees for anything that turns. Everything that moves is a function of time and nothing else, which is what lets every machine agree about where it is without being told.

The route

The points a stand-in runs through, in order. Each is {"at": [x, y, z]} with any of:

• jump: jump here (once on the ground); a jump point that is a top to land on is braked toward in the air;
• wait: wait here until the way to the next point is clear of every hazard for the time it takes to run it;
• board: this is something to land on: wait until it will be there, then run and jump at the edge;
• ride: this point is ON something that moves: standing on any carrier reaches it;
• bounce: this point is on a bouncer: passing over it in the air reaches it;
• onward: a jump point the stand-in may land past; the jump from it aims at the next point;
• walk, reach (metres, default 1.2);
• branch and risky: a fork (format 2). The points of each way through carry its number (1, 2…); points without one are the way everybody goes. A fork's points are laid out after the point it starts at, one branch's then the next's, and a stand-in takes the branch marked risky (the faster, harder way) by its wo_bot_risk and skips the other's points. A course with a fork says "format": 2, which an mg-wipeout from before 2026-10-12 refuses (and plays the rest).

Dressing

Optional, and only ever drawn: a course with none plays the same. Each entry is {"kind", "at", "size", "yaw", "seed", "text", "tint"}; a kind the client does not know is skipped.

kind
stands	a grandstand full of people; at is the middle of its front edge at the first row's height, size is length, height, depth, and it faces its own −Z; text along the back
banner	a board on two poles with text on both faces
lights	a light tower, size.y tall, its lamps facing −Z
screen	a big screen facing −Z; it shows text, and in a race the leaders
flags	a row of flags on poles along size.x

Arenas

{
  "format": 1, "kind": "arena", "id": "wo_arena_mine", "name": "Mine", "author": "you",
  "kill_height": -8,
  "pieces": [ ... ],
  "spawns": [{"at": [-9, 0, -9], "size": [4, 4]}, ... ],
  "drops": [{"at": [0, 0, 0], "size": [12, 12]}],
  "gallery": {"at": [0, 6, 20], "size": [14, 5]}
}

spawns are the areas a side can be put down in (at least two; give it four or more so the draw of who goes where varies), drops where props and weapons land, and gallery a walled box where everybody who did not finish watches from. An arena can use any piece a course can.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.