How to Play
Getting into a match
Walk up to the court's referee desk and target it, or press E beside it if your server does not run ox_target. The desk opens the main menu:
| Section | |
|---|---|
| Play match | Join a match opens the lobby; Play against AI starts a full scored bout. The 1v1 / 2v2 / 3v3 picker is a second step behind that row, defaulted to the court's own size |
| Training | The six coached drills, see Training |
| Leaderboard | The server's top players, the top teams, and where you stand |
| Profile | Your record, your training stars and your team |
| Team settings | Create a team, invite people, paint a banner, call your team to this court |
Pick a side, ready up, and the match starts when everybody is ready. Empty seats fill with AI unless the server turned that off.
You are moved onto your position when the countdown starts. Nobody has to find their own spot on the sand, and nobody is ever moved during a rally. Players in a vehicle are skipped.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| E | Hit / serve. Hold to charge |
| F | Spike, inside its timed window |
| H | Block, in the blocking drill |
| Z | Call mine, I am taking it |
| X | Call yours, a team-mate takes it |
| Shift | Sprint, which spends stamina |
| Space | Jump |
| Mouse | Aim. Where the camera looks is where the ball goes |
Every one of these is a real FiveM key mapping, so players can rebind them in Settings → Key Bindings → FiveM.
Where the ball is picks your shot
You do not choose your shot from a menu. Where the ball is relative to your body decides first, and that ladder wins because it is about what you can physically reach:
| The ball is, from you | You play |
|---|---|
| on you (inside 0.9 m) | whatever your position on the court asks for, below |
| 0.9 to 1.5 m | Step, the travelling forearm pass |
| 1.5 to 2.1 m | Dig, the one-arm roll |
| past 2.1 m | out of reach. You do not get to it |
Once the ball is on you, where you are standing decides what the situation asks for. Those bands are a share of your own half of the court rather than fixed metres, so they scale with the court you built: the attack zone is the first 22% of your half and the setter's zone runs to 42%, which on the shipped 2v2 court is about 1.9 m and 3.7 m from the net.
| You are | You play |
|---|---|
| In the attack zone at the net, with the ball high enough to attack | Spike |
| In the attack zone, with the ball too low to attack | Step |
| In the setter's zone | Set, or an overhead pass on a short hold |
| From there to the baseline | Bump |
Six actions ship in total, spike, set, overhead, step, bump and dig, and each one has its own launch speed, its own arc and its own mocap clip. Whether a ball near the net is an attack at all is a question about its height, asked before the band is.
The spike key
The spike is a separate commitment, made early. It is on F rather than on the hit key precisely so that it is a decision and not a flavour of an ordinary hit: pressing it starts the approach and the wind-up now, and the ball is struck about a second later when it comes into reach.
It only works inside its window, and the on-screen prompt and the key read the same thing, so if the prompt is up the key will fire. Press it outside the window and nothing happens, rather than a dead swing.
The power meter
Holding E charges the hit from 0.90× to 1.20×. It does not change which shot you play, only how hard you hit it, so the shot named on the prompt changes when you move, not when you hold.
The one exception is the setter's zone, where a short hold gives an overhead pass and a longer one gives a set.
Calling the ball
Z calls mine and X calls yours. They work in a rally and nowhere else. On a court where two players can both reach the same ball, saying so is faster than both of them guessing, which is the whole reason a real team shouts it.
Passing to a team-mate
With teammateAimAssist on (the default), looking at a team-mate locks the pass onto them: the server solves an arc that actually arrives over that player, and the prompt names them. Turn it off and every hit is a plain directional shot.
Touches
Three per side by default, and the same player may never touch it twice in a row. That rule is what turns a rally into receive, set, attack instead of one player juggling it alone. On a 2v2 it gives A to B to A, which is how beach doubles actually works. Servers can allow unlimited touches for arcade rules, see Rules, stamina & AI.
When the match ends
The final score, both rosters and a rematch vote. If everyone accepts, the next match starts immediately; otherwise the court returns to its lobby.