So if I understand this correctly, a Respawn Zone says "Hey, these are the highest priority spawn points. Spawn here whenever possible," a Weak Zone says "If you can't spawn in a respawn zone, this is still a better option than spawning somewhere else," and an Anti Zone says "Don't spawn here unless you have no other options." What's the advantage of using zones (Especially Anti Zones) instead of just leaving the spawn points alone? Or, more specifically, what is the area of the default area the spawning system considers?
Also It didn't mention but if the actual initial/respawn points that are set to a team say "Red Team" it will 100% only spawn Red team, But as he says its better to have neutral spawn points and spawn zones and only leave team assigned spawn points in mini games when you NEED someone specific to spawn somewhere. Just to make it clearer the other team CAN still spawn inside there. But very unlikely. (Anyone CAN spawn on any neutral spawn point in ANY spawn area(s) even if there's more chance of winning the lottery but just so you know it is possible.)
To help explain a bit further, I've drawn a quick image: All respawn points are neutral and all scenario's given are taken from a Red players point of view on respawning. If a scoring system was applied to the influencers they may look something like this... Friendly Respawn area: +3 Friendly Weak Respawn Area: +1 Friendly Anti-Respawn Area: -1 Team Mate: +1 Enemy: -1 Team Mate death: -3 Neutral Respawn Area: +1 Neutral Weak Respawn Area: 0 Neutral Anti-Respawn Area: 0 Enemy Respawn area: -3 Enemy Weak Respawn Area: -1 Enemy Anti-Respawn Area: 0 Spawn 1: Spawn 1 currently resides in Red Teams standard Respawn area. Using the scoring system, all spawns in that given area will receive a weight of +3. Spawn 2: As Spawn 2 is also in the standard Red Respawn Area, it also gains a weight of + 3. It is also sat inside a Weak Red Respawn Area, so it also has an extra weight of +1 bringing the total weight to +4. Spawn 3: This respawn point does not have any direct influencers, but at the current time, there is a teammate in the nearby vicinity. This is a temporary influencer and affects the respawn points weight by giving it a total weight of +1 until the team mate moves on. Spawn 4: Spawn 4 is located inside blue teams Respawn area. This automatically gives the weight of the respawn point a -3 balance. It is also inside a Neutral Weak Respawn area that doesnt directly influence the respawn point in this scoring system (although it may contribute slightly in actual weighting numbers). This spawn has a balance of -3. Spawn 5: Spawn 5 is sitting in a Neutral Respawn Area. As both teams can use this, and the spawn system in Reach will always spawn enemies nearby to help combat scenarios occur, this will have a given weight of +1. Spawn 6: This spawn point is sat inside an enemy respawn area and receives a -3 weight. Spawn 7: Is a completely neutral respawn point with no direct influencers or temporary influences. This weight is 0. Test Yourself Scenario 1: In current standings, if a Red Team player were to respawn. Which spawn point would they spawn on? Answer: Spoiler Spawn 2 - Reasons are above! Scenario 2: If the Active Red player moved into Red Respawn Area, where would the Red Team Player respawn? Answer: Spoiler Spawn 2 - The Active Red Player influences all Respawn points inside the Respawn area. Spawn points 1 and 2, both gain a + 1 bonus for this. This brings the balance of Spawn 1 to +4 and Spawn 2 to +5. Scenario 3: A Red Player has just been killed inside the overlap of the Weak Red Respawn Area and red respawn area, The Active Red Player Moves Inside the Neutral Respawn Area. Where will the Red Team Member Respawn? Answer: Spoiler Spawn 5 - The dead player affects the Red Weak Respawn area and the Red Respawn area by bringing in a weight of -3 to all spawn points effected. This brings their balances to; Spawn 1: 0 and Spawn 2: +1. Spawn 3 has lost it's temporary Influencer as the player has moved into the Neutral Respawn area, this influences Spawn 5 to have a balance of +2 Scenario 4: A Red Team Player has died inside the Weak Red Respawn Area, and the Active Red Member has died inside the Neutral Respawn Area. A further Red Team Member has advanced into the Blue Teams Respawn Area. Where will the Red Player Respawn? Answer: Spoiler Spawn 1 - The Player dying inside the Weak Respawn area brings the weight of Spawn 2 down to +1. Spawn 3 loses it's temporary influencer as the player dies inside the Neutral Respawn area, this causes Spawn 5 to hit a negative weight of -2. The last active Red Team member who advances into the Blue Team Respawn Area causes both weights of Spawns 4 and 6 to rise to -2. This Leaves Spawn 1 and 7 unaffected and remain at their weights of +3 and 0.
Lol... I couldn't... But that was just something quick to help the confused people a little bit more with a pretty picture to go alongside it
IMO Relying on zones to make calculations in game makes the game slower, more unpredictable, and more confusing to the players. No matter what you will get random spawns and sometimes they are horrible, ie. Pinnacle, The respawn zones on that map ruin it, the reason being is that when the REDs stay in their zone(big tower) the BLUEs will almost always spawn in their zone(initial spawn) making for epic spawn rape. I use colored spawn clumps (usually 4 or 5 clumps a team) that are well spaced and think about their influences to each other, so a team can spawn away from enemies. I learned this from MLG and the way they set up their spawns.
The reason why Pinnacle has such **** spawns is because a) its a **** map, and b) the spawn zones are not fine tuned for competitive play at all. Case point, Bungie set it up to play a certain way, ie; in favor of casual nubs.
Thanks for pointing this out, Schnitzel. I'll need to keep this in mind as I'm adding spawns to my current map.
Thats just a good example of how NOT to use the respawn zones. The zones are there to fine tune the respawning system and to make maps balanced. Not using zones will make the game terribly unfair because the entire match will be random as the spawns won't be calculated at all... Not to mention you'll have Red Team spawning at Blue team's flag etc..
Placing a "blanket" spawn zone, or a "strong" zone to canvas half the map for each team rectifies this issue. Just wrote up something new to augment the OP....
nuff said... The term "strong" is misleading. The respawn zone is not strong. It carries no weight. It simply defines the boundaries of the zone for the team. If set to neutral, it allows for FFA and all teams to accumulate weights with weak and anti zones. Weak and anti zones are where the weights come from. And the equivalent weight of the weak zone on a spawn point is stronger than a comrade near a spawn point.
Holy **** Stevo. I mean, thanks the image helps a lot. But then you wrote a book after at. lol So, call me lazy. haha, Well, this helped me a lot. Thanks!
I typically use the weak zones to say hey spawn here. basically the area offers alot of cover is a good spot to spawn. i leave the ones that are a little more open alone. i use the anti zones for when your base is completely overriden to allow players to spawn safely on the enemies side of the map.
Actually, it is not lazy practice to use neutral spawn points and cover them with team color zones for dual purpose. It is actually best practice. In the world of software engineering, we call this principle reusable code. [br][/br]Edited by merge: In the more general sense, this is actually the most correct use of zones. [br][/br]Edited by merge: I know you intend these numbers as examples only. Just thought I would give you all some data from my testing and from reviewing film clips of game play. 1 Comrade < Weak Zone < 2 Comrades All conditions are controlled with zero negative influences or have been shown not to have any negative influences for more than 50 meters in all directions (quite a distance, really). The spawn engine will consistently spawn you in a weak zone spawn point even if a comrade is standing directly next to a spawn point else where. The spawn engine will spawn you outside a weak zone if two comrades are standing next to a spawn point outside the weak zone. From this sampling we do not know how much pull a weak zone exerts precisely, but it appears to be between one and two comrades. According to bungie, the respawn zones are massively weighted so that no matter how many negative influences are present you will still spawn inside them. Again, I know you intend these numbers as examples only, but +3 is misleading. For the same reason, your value for neutral respawn area is also wrong. And according to bungie, enemy team zones have NO affect on you using their spawn points.
^ possibly, but not entirely accurate. The spawn system is a calculation that occurs constantly with temporary influences and permanent influences. I've had times where players spawn outside weak respawn areas on a lone spawn point to which he's died, and then two team mates have since spawned on the same point and died. I personally think the values fluctuate depending on how used the area has become, like when spawn trapping you want enemies to spawn in one or two certain areas. I think bungie tried to combat this by adding in potential weights that can shift spawning out of spawn traps making players spawn inside areas where enemies are.
Ya, that is why I said I performed my tests in a controlled environment. In game play I see a lot of things happen that I have to give a second look at in the theater. I was not trying to say it would happen this way in a game play, but that from the testing we can conclude the weighting from a weak zone. JonnyOThan's article says that it is "about" the pull of a comrade without going into much detail. If they have some type of changing weight for a zone, they didn't say so. I will ask though.
There isn't much point in asking how the spawn system works and their specific values because Bungie won't release that type of information as other game developers will steal the information. It is actually a good functioning spawn system in comparison to other top selling games like Call of Duty and would probably sell to other developers for millions... However, my example was based off fictional numbers, and I know Bungie claimed there aren't any "negative" numbers, but some of the spawn areas do produce negative values in comparison to other spawn areas. For the explaination, I wanted to keep the maths simple and explainable. The values are probably more or less like these: Neutral Spawn Area: 100 Allied Team Spawn Area: 150 Enemy Team Spawn Area: 90 Allied Weak Spawn Area: 75 Enemy Weak Spawn Area: 45 Neutral Weak Spawn Area: 50 Allied Anti Spawn Area: 75 Enemy Anti Spawn Area: 45 Neutral Anti Spawn Area: 50 Spawn Point Proximity: 20 Allied Player: 50 Enemy Player: 40 Allied Death: 100 Enemy Death: 10 Neutral Player: 45 Neutral Death: 45 None of these numbers are shown as negatives and these are all coming from one players perspective. If you are a neutral player, in a 1v1 scenario: If an enemy player enters that neutral respawn area, your neutral respawn zone would supposedly Increase in spawn weight, taking the full value to 145. If no other players are on the map, you would ALWAYS spawn next to your enemy where you died last where the spawn weight would be at it's highest 100+45+45 (190) no where else on the map would contribute a higher respawn weight, therefore the spawn system wouldn't work at all (If the game is an FFA game). This indicates that there HAS to be negative values taken into consideration for anything to work in Halo: Reach's spawn system. Unless, the values again are incorrect. They once again could be as follows: Neutral Spawn Area: 150 Allied Team Spawn Area: 150 Enemy Team Spawn Area: 50 Allied Weak Spawn Area: 75 Enemy Weak Spawn Area: 25 Neutral Weak Spawn Area: 75 Allied Anti Spawn Area: 25 Enemy Anti Spawn Area: 75 Neutral Anti Spawn Area: 25 Spawn Point Proximity: 20 Allied Player: 40 Enemy Player: 40 Allied Death: 80 Enemy Death: 20 Neutral Player: 40 Neutral Death: 40 Once again, with changed numbers... the possibilities can increase/decrease. With the same scenario as before, a player (40) enters your respawn area (150) and kills you (40) now makes 230. However, if at the other side of your neutral respawn area, you have a neutral weak respawn area sat inside it, it will automatically clock up the 230 from all previous activity and put you inside the weak respawn area (75) as well. Totalling 305. However, how would this always make a fair, un-trappable spawn system? Surely, all team members would need to infiltrate the enemy teams respawn area (150 + 4x Enemy player, 310), plus the scattered weak respawn area (75) with a respawn point cluster of 2(40), all of the enemy team will constantly respawn in their half of the map with a total weight (before counting alive team mates/dead team mates temporary weights) of 425. Comparing that to the enemy teams spawn area + weak respawn area values of 75 and the neutral spawn area across the middle fetching in only 150, the spawn trapped team are well and truly trapped and will not be able to escape. From the attacking sides perspective... They receive the weights of 150 + 75 (spawn area + weak spawn area) for their actual spawn side and 75 + 120 for the enemies respawn area. Now considering each has values for team mates dying or being alive, and none are negative values. This again, promotes more spawn killing. If an enemy dies, they have a greater chance of spawning on their team mates IN the enemies half of the map rendering the other half of the map useless. Point is, after all that waffling ^, you can't put a simple numerical value on these as it's an extremely complex system. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't have negative numbers in the system and was a series of complex multiplcations/codes like "For TeamPresent > 0 then, TeamMate = PlayersInProximity, Weight = weight + (50*TeamMate), END IF" this would eventually give reason to have positive values. Without any understanding of even the base values, we can't describe the system in it's natural form... So, we use negatives to help explain the system........... phew... mini edit: this is all speculation of course, there's no proof of any of these statements or values.
I don't want to keep hammering this to death. I don't think any of the numbers in your last post were anywhere correct. The respawn zones are more like 10,000 or more. And zones don't affect you unless they match your team, or are neutral in FFA games. And if all weights are positive, then having an enemy near by increases your odds of spawning there, not decrease your odds. But I just saw your fine print. Instead of numbers, look at zones like this: weak = I prefer to spawn here weak+weak = I really prefer to spawn here anti = I prefer NOT to spawn here, but I will if the other points are in danger weak+anti = I need to drop this spawn point back down to normal in a weak zone of preferred points Respawn Zone = I must spawn in the region this zone defines. Once I began to look at zones like this, it became very easy to design with and my map began to spawn players the way I wanted it to all along. It really is this simple! In my opinion, people over complicate their designs with trying to figure out numbers for the zones.