Plasma tennis in the ceiling room
Posted September 22nd 2024 (material originally in Exploring the entry chamber from 2017, then separated out)
Associated movies
In my article on exploring the entry chamber I described how you can get above the dome and into the 'ceiling room'. But the room isn't just an interesting place to nose around in. Plasma grenades bounce very well on the glass floor and invisible walls, and this makes for some excellent sport with a rocket launcher. 'Plasma tennis' I call it - which you can see demonstrated in BCM228 and BCM229.
The basic idea is to rocket a plasma grenade around the place, potentially keeping it fizzing away until you've run out of rockets. There are multiple specific activities or challenges to enjoy, but for starters see if you can successfully use all ten rockets, i.e. causing ten boosts. For extra challenge, see if you can do it without moving. The difficulty will vary according to the spot you choose.
Bear in mind, if the grenade ever gets too close to being settled, it'll go off a few seconds later, regardless of whether you send it airborne again. So you always need to apply the next boost in good time, and not get caught reloading. Also, the metallic inner flooring pretty much kills the bounce (and grenades can even pass through it close to the pillar), so you want to avoid it. If the grenade is ever heading for that area, be ready to boost it pronto, to try and save the situation.
In regard to activities and challenges beyond just getting through all ten rockets, the most obvious is what I call 'long fuse', the goal of which is to maximize the fuse delay (measured from the main 'click' of grenade release, to the time it finally explodes, and rounded to the nearest second). In BCM228 I managed a 100-second fuse, but I expect to beat that sometime. Five more activities are shown in BCM229, and I'm still not done yet!
Handy checkpoint
For maximum convenience in doing plasma tennis, get a delayed checkpoint in the room, armed with a fully loaded launcher. It may take multiple tries of course, but once you've created such a save, it'll save you having to get through the ceiling each time you want to do a play. Definitely a good investment of time if you want to get serious with your sport. See my advice on specialized checkpoints for a tip on the checkpoint delaying.
Frag tennis too
Actually you can also do frag tennis, but it's considerably harder for two reasons. The main one is, frags don't bounce off the glass floor as well as plasmas, so there's a smaller window of opportunity for boosting. But also, a frag is harder to spot in the air. Feel free to give it a try though!