Uniball - The Third Dimension

Things weren't always like this...

Uniball has not always been called uniball, and it has changed quite a bit since its birth in the middle of 1998. Its first name was XPong and it was based around the classic game called "Pong". It was originally coded by Josh Langley (aka c:\), who later became involved in Popcap.com. At that time a permanant stable server was no where to be seen; mostly it was hosted by Pharcyde on a cable modem connection! It was pot luck a lot of the time whether the server would be up. The gameplay was slightly different too as you were in control of a paddle and had to actually fly into the ball to bat it in a direction. The goals were circular rotating platforms which you just had to knock the ball into. The paddles were pretty tricky to control at first, but once you got the hang of it, it looked very impressive, especially to newbies!

Towards the end of 1998, new 3D style graphics were implemented which gave the game a more slick look. A background nebula was also added. The game later substituted paddles for ships which moved in the same way as the paddles, but actually caught the ball when they touched it. Thrusters were scraped at about this point, but would later return.

In 1999 a permanant server was set up for the chat client and the game server and hosted under the guise of BadAssGames(BAG). At this point 3 people were involved with the game; Josh aka C:\ (Game coding), Nick aka Quazy (Chat program) and Imago (Hosting). The game also included a frontend to aid with entering it, instead of having to enter information at the command line. This made the game that little bit easier, and more enjoyable.

Later the control method was changed so that the direction arrow you pressed actually moved you in that direction, but this was changed back shortly after as nobody liked it. The game also received another slight graphics redesign, and goalies were added to make some maps a bit trickier.

Next update included a ball location HUD and a score database to keep track of everyones overal rating within the game over time. Many hold fond memories of this period (myself included!) as the community was tightly woven. Players could even host their own sites on the BAG servers at this time! Thrusters were also reintroduced which speeded up the game a bit.

Towards the end of 1999 Uniball was forced to change servers, moving to StarShadow.com. UB received resolution and macro support in the next update, making the game more customisable. Odoacer setup the first ladder for uniball, and it was pretty popular for a while. It has since been replaced by rileys more advanced ladder system which is on uniball-central. This was also around the time that I began work on UB3D, when i envisaged a 3D looking version of uniball with full 360 degree camera angle support.

After this, ownership of the code to the original uniball changed hands, as C:\ no longer had the time/inspiration to work on it. NickW now handles the coding for the 2D version of the game, as well as the chat client and servers for both. He has put a lot of effort into improving it so far, including the long awaited support for spectators! The hosting has also again moved and is now on the roocon.com servers thanks to Northofnowhere.

As you can see, quite a lot has happened in its time, but expect lots of things to happen in the future too, so if you havn't tried it already, get to it now!

The information above may not be 100% accurate, but the best has been done to ensure it is as accurate as possible with known information.