Do you know what grinds my hammer? Papa Cap X! I hate that guy, he is always leaving games to deal with his kids or smoke a cigarette. Just kidding ( Papa). Ok for serious this time.

Do you know what really grinds my hammer? People insisting that the SML09 map is better than the Grif Cave. I believe that the real reason people don’t like the Grif Cave is because they are going to have to relearn some strategies. People are so used to their foundry court that they really don’t have to practice any more, but a new map means that people might just have to work on strategies and wall hops again.

Lets tackle a fan favorite complaint against the Grif Cave, no truck. The only reason the truck was added to the grifball court was to fill the space of the crane. In the WL 07 map the truck was there to fill the crane and due to Burnie being a terrible forger (see WL 07 wall and mid court teleporter) the truck would occasionally come loose from the crane and interrupt gameplay. In lieu of a truck for the SL 08 map, the crane was just blocked off. It was Nokyard himself who made it possible for there to be a truck again on the court. In play testing the SML 08 map, Jack and Nokyard fired 100 rockets (an actual fact not an exaggeration) at the truck and it didn’t fall. With Sandbox being a template map, there was no crane or other interruption within the court that needed addressing. And if you are really honest with yourself, you can think of at least one time when the truck got in the way of one of your launches and left your team in a vulnerable position.

Another reason the Grif Cave is better than the SML 09 court is the clean walls. Again I ask you to think, there has to be at least one time that you got caught on the “garage door” wall and lost the ball because of it. Three of the four walls on the Grif Cave are completely flush, and the one that isn’t is the actual wall of the crypt that you bounce off the edges instead of getting stuck. Another argument people like to make against the Grif Cave is the ceiling height. I am not going to try to paraphrase so I am going to let Nokyard himself explain this one.

the ceiling was not placed at some arbitrary height, there was much testing and tweaking

the ceiling on Foundry is formed from a soft barrier (sometimes referred to as a bouncy barrier) – these work by applying a set rate of decay on your intended trajectory – the harder you hit them the greater the rate of decay, preventing it from feeling like you are hitting a solid wall (which applies an immediate rate of decay on your trajectory)

when your intended launch trajectory takes you slightly higher than the barrier you retain some of the forward and upward momentum because the rate of decay is slight, making it feel like you are stuck to the ceiling for a few seconds – you still move forward and keep much of the original trajectory – the ceiling height was set to most resemble this effect while not allowing the monster launches and unlimited ceiling would produce

if the Grif Cave ceiling was lowered to the same height as the Foundry ceiling it would not reproduce the same effect as the soft barrier and would cause extremely unpredictable launches; it could cancel the forward momentum and drop the ball carrier too soon, or keep the forward momentum and allow them to bounce down to the goal before the opposing team had time to react ~NOKYARD

Everyone’s favorite argument to make seems to be with the wall hop ledge. With the current forge tools, it would be almost impossible to replicate the exact wall hop ledge of foundry. You can consistently wall hop on the ledge Nokyard built on the Grif Cave, it just requires a different timing. This again comes down to people being lazy and not wanting to practice new strategies and just getting away with scrimmaging before their game being the only practice. Still a little bit more legitimate argument is that you can walk the length of the wall hop ledge in the Grif Cave. I was the first person to inform and show Nokyard that you can walk on his wall hop ledge all the way back on the grifball palace. I was also the first person to perform a successful “Jesus Walk” both in a custom game (the night the Grif Cave was released) and in matchmaking (see Pup and Friends August). Nokyard and I have extensively tested how difficult it would be to stay on the ledge and under what scenarios a person would fall off. ANY hammer swing on the half of the court that the runner or any person is standing on the wall will immediately knock them off. I doubt it would be possible to walk more than two or three steps without being knocked off by a hammer wave.