MrGreen, I agree with Reflex Ion... I've found way too many holes inside his article. Granted, he was the first to compile an article about the spawn systems and the majority was correct. Like Jex, I too planned to release an article when I was more confident about the spawn system. However, Jonny beat us all to it by rushing through and not actually finding out the inner workings. He stated the bare minimum for knowledge we(as in most experienced forgers) didn't already know, and showcased most of the stuff we did know. Obviously the article gained credibility because it helped a lot of the rookie map makers understand how to implement spawns. However, they still get it wrong a lot because they don't understand the spawn system completely or what the actual effects of the spawn areas have. They just see it as "I mark a territory out, players respawn inside that territory". There's no further calculation involved to the common newbie of forging, which is why at the tester's guild there are so many broken maps that come through. If you take a map, and implement a spawn system for every point of Jonny's article and then test it with 4v4... you'll find that most of the points in his article aren't correct when put into the games environment. There's also a lot of aspects he didn't talk about...
MrGreen, I find it ludicrous how you beleive everything that JonnyOthan says... for one, I have never even heard of him and certainly never got any "information" about forge from him. I'm just for the sake of this argument going to compare the respawn system to religion, both of which are just things that you can't take someone else's word on as an absolute, you just need to find the truth out for yourself. Period. Until Bungie officially releases info about the spawn system and how it works in its entirety, you just need to find a way that works for you, and then find out how and why it works... only then should you try and post a spawn theory about it, even minimal logic can produce a working spawn system, it just takes time and testing, not some "information" from some so-called forge guru or whatever.
Well, okay then... Forget my tests that prove Stevo's claims are wrong and also my finding the problem with Stevo's map... JonnyOThan is a bungie employee. He setup the Forge World forum on b.net to answer questions from forgers and to provide helpful information. Prior to that you can see a pinned thread on the Reach forum at b.net. That was what lead to Forge World forum. He has been answering question since Reach came out, really. So I don't get people who say Bungie has not made any official announcements or statements. Jonny has been saying a lot and will answer your questions if you have them. You should see what he has said about how the spawn system works. In particularly, I have heard many people claim that zones communicate to each other what is happening within them and react to what and who is within them. These are just pure fantasies, fueled only by empirical evidence. When Jonny said that it wasn't true, it all became clear to me, and it has worked EXACTLY like he said. I really just shake my head when people go off about Jonny being wrong. Like, is anyone perfect? Yet, his information forms a model that works extremely well for our use. It isn't perfect. He makes mistakes. And when I find he made a mistake, I bring it up to him for comment. I recently told him that line of sight can overcome a strong zone. At first, he could not reproduce it, so I pointed him to my map and film clip. He later came back and confirmed that what I claimed could be true. I am pressing for more information. But if you look at his post, you will note he says that he looked at the defaults and came to the conclusion that nothing could overcome the strong zone. He then looked at Forge World canvas and said that there were no overrides (meaning the defaults applied - you would know that if you were in software development). The point is that he has access to the information we do not. This is why I won't listen to anyone's theories. They cannot be scientifically founded, because they do not have THE information as their foundation. Proving Stevo's claim that strong zones were only 2-3x stronger than a weak was too easy a challenge. I knew he was wrong. I knew he was doing something wrong or something else was happening to make it appear that way to him. People will read it and think, "well, that is nice to know." When all along it is wrong. I honestly thought Stevo would have appreciated my proving his claims were wrong and try to shed light on the subject. I have no trouble with Stevo, you , or anyone else just stacking weak zones and anti zones till your heart is content. You can adopt any spawn system you like to have. I am down with that. The problem with JonnyOThan's articles is that they are bare bones information. I have authored two articles thus far on my blog, one on zones and another on points. My attempt was at first to reply to a thread, but it has grown into something bigger. I am now focusing on writing articles that cover the same information that Jonny's articles cover, but with greater depths and insight.
Taking from the other thread: As I made my spawn system, I used an actual map. As you've rightly pointed out, there are other influences in the system we cannot see. For example, when players look in the direction of the spawn points, it receives a "negative" weight, or more accurately, gives all other respawn points in the map a slightly more positive weight. Second, something I've only barely touched up on in the subject is player influence. I do not know the distance influence that players have, but there are a series of fixed rings surrounding a player. The inner most ring has a negative influence for enemy players, and a positive influence for allied players. The outer rings have a positive influence for all players, and as far as I'm aware it grows more and more as the rings go out. However, it's not possible to prove any of this because there are still other factors that would affect this. Like player deaths, active players, weapon influences, team respawn influences, anti influences. All in all, it can't be added up without knowing values. Until Bungie release those values all we can do is speculate and conduct our own tests. However, even "controlled" tests like everyone is doing, isn't accurate because they don't have objects blocking sight lines, you also can't delay a person spawning so there's also no effects of death/life in the equation. The only thing controllable is potential weapon influence (which also can't be proven) and respawn areas. My method was designed for MY map. I stated that in my article and it works perfectly as I want it to. Spawn trapping is achievable, but it comes with knowledge of the map (like The Pit.) Players never respawn on the enemy side, players also never respawn next to enemies. they occasionally spawn in line of sight and it's usually 15.0 units or more away from an enemy (this was measured on Reflect by using respawn areas as a measurement tool in forge). Now as many times as you find faults with my set up in a different blank canvas map by stacking respawn areas, there are multiple different influences you are picking up which my map isnt and vice versa. If you play Reflect, you can try your hardest to spawn in the enemy base, and it won't happen. I'll then even let you download one of the first versions of Reflect (using JonnyOThans spawn method) and I'll let you see how broken it is and the fact that 95% of games at least 1 person spawns in the wrong base. You can even ask any of the repetitive testers of my map, as that was the main issue for me and before the game I always said: "Let me know if you get any bad spawns or respawn in the enemy base". 1 minute into the game "I just respawn at blue base" or "I just respawn next to a guy" or "BAD SPAWN!". Since i've implemented my own system, the testing for the players has just become repetitive because there's nothing new for them to say. The map's spawn system works fine and not once has anyone respawned in the wrong location which is why I showed people how to implement the same system. Whether the values are incorrect or not doesn't matter because what I'm telling them works. At the moment, you're like preaching a religion nobody cares about. Everyone believes their own thing and if they have "proof" that their religion is correct, they're not going to be convinced by technicalities that it's wrong especially when those technicalities were the reasons they went in search of a new religion in the first place.......
That first sentence was quoted only so you could re-read it and think about what you just said The second, however, is what I take issue with and the only reason for my previous post. I was not in any way bashing Johnny. He obviously knows a good deal of what he is talking about, and he really does have access to information we do not. But later on when you stated that he missed a huge thing like LoS influence, something because blatantly obvious to me. The spawn system for reach is quite simply far too complex, taking too many variables to be completely written down and understood by the vast majority of people. Basically, this means that at a basic level it is fine to accept what he says religiously. But once you start to learn how things work, you need to take it to the next level and work around the little holes that his system has. Just don't quote every one of his THEORIES as fact, because they are nothing more than THEORIES based on empirical evidence.
indeed we have been.. but obviously, with different settings, spawn systems render different results. At the moment, we need to start doing universal tests, where everyone sets the same things up on a canvas map and tests with a fixed amount of players that aren't moving. Only then can we really start killing of theories and learning how the system works properly... piece by piece.
Believing an authoritative source is not religion, it is standard practice, best practice, practical practice, and the only practice in any technical industry. Anything else is the wrong approach. I have been patiently trying to teach you all this, but it doesn't seem to get across very effectively. fair enough. Then the proper thing to do is tell Jonny and give him a concrete test case that he can reproduce (like I did). That is how it is done in the technical industry. Also, if you look at what he did that lead him to make that mistake, you can see he still is scratching his head how LOS can overpower a strong zone. It isn't that he didn't do his homework, but that his homework wasn't extensive enough. Correct, but with one additional step, you tell Jonny and ask him to confirm your findings. What you will then do is have his confirmation that you are correct, or additional insight as to what is happening. Either way you learn. But without either, you are just imagining what you think is happening. Which is fine so long as you explicitly make clear that it is your suspicion, and NEVER present it as fact. What Stevo did, and what I was attempting to correct, was his "claiming" as certain that strong zones are not so strong as Jonny claims. It was clear to me Stevo was wrong and could be refuted by a straight forward and obviously conclusive test. Yet, the last I looked, his post still makes that claim as a certainty. That can only mislead people. I do not understand why Stevo doesn't mind misleading people. I told him he should remove the post so that he doesn't mislead people, he refused. I proved he was wrong. He still refuses. Oh well... See, I don't get this. You were heading in the right direction, then you suddenly turn around and go back. Nothing Jonny says is a theory. By DEFINITION what he says (speaking for bungie) is THE source. He may be wrong. But nothing he says can be called theory. Call him on specific mistakes he makes, but it still isn't theory. By asserting his statements are theory, you are saying that he is guessing based upon empirical evidence. He specifically said he looked at the default values and he saw no overrides on Forge World. That is NOT theory. That is standard practice. That is EXACTLY what I would have done. And I am a software engineer.
I applaud you. You are doing exactly what (I would like to believe) I would have done. And I see that we were not talking on quite the same level, which explains why I was appalled at the statement that empirical evidence and results couldn't be used in this situation. I was taking my strongest areas of knowledge - music, enlightenment philosophy, and engineering - and trying to apply the systems that work with that to the situation. Looking at amoebas through a telescope, if you will. End of my tangents, cheers. Steve, I'd like to get some testing done on that and already have done some of my own. Some time we should get together and test this ***** out
Indeed, I've been testing some things on my own from actual gameplay perspectives as I've demonstrated. From a gameplay perspective, which is the final product of any map, the spawn systems I have created, and the theories I have produced have all been correct. however, as MrGreen is stating, some of my theroies are incorrect, because he's testing them set by set. MrGreen: However, if you take down a house brick by brick... is it fair to call the last standing brick a house? Rhetorical question, it obviously isn't... it's just a brick. Taking my spawn system down, piece by piece, and proving each individual piece of system to function differently to how I set it up, isn't testing or creating a spawn system. I'm really not trying to argue with you on this, I've compiled this thread for everyone's input. Because you are liasing with JonnyOThan and you believe him to be correct, that doesn't mean you have any right above anyone elses opinions or theories. Unless you test these systems in gameplay environments, the testing results are worthless because you're not considering all the factors that occur during gameplay... you're simply fabricating your results which is very easy to do when testing spawn systems.
Stevo, it doesn't help anyone to say that strong zones are only 3x stronger than weak, because they are not. Someone will design their map with that claim thinking it is true across the board. It isn't true at all. For your map, it may appear that what you observe is that a strong zone is 3x stronger than a weak. For me, that only says you are observing something else, because the strength will not change. For the other guy, when he doesn't see your claim holds up, or more specifically, when his expectations are not met, he will be scratching his head wondering what he did wrong, only to eventually come to realize your claim was wrong all along. There is a huge difference between the truth and what you observe. Again, you can never claim anything based upon observations. You can, however take your observations to the source and ask if they are correct. In this case, we already heard from the source. If your claim were correct, it would always be correct. My one test proved it wasn't correct. That is all I did. One test will do it for any claim. That is why tests can only be used to refute a claim, but can never by themselves prove a claim. Why? Because another test might just refute the claim. Take the security problem in software engineering. It is the classic problem. Security can never be proved, because you never know if someone else has figured out a way to break it. You might think the bank down the street is safe, but you cannot ever prove it. So let's go back to the claim that a strong is only 3x stronger than a weak. If you can observe this, let me know and I will join you in forge/customs and we will pick it apart so that I can show you something else was creating the behavior you are observing. If at the end of the day I come to the conclusion that we could actually create a conclusive test that appears to prove that strong zones are no more than 3x stronger, then it is time to take those results to bungie for analysis and confirmation. Really, this post here is a lesson on problem solving, nothing more. I hope this helps...
I've never said they are definately 3x stronger.. I implied using my old strategy that they coincide with the old respawn system. That being the Halo 3 system which was practically a flawless system... why would Bungie completely dismantle a fully functional system and change all it's values when all they needed to do was add to it? In Halo 3, a Respawn zone, was approximately 3x the weight of a player. In Reach a player = the same weight as a weak respawn zone.. or so it's been implied before me. I came to that conclusion because it's bad for business to attempt to fix things that aren't broken. My second point to believing this is that everytime 3 or more players entered an enemy Respawn areas, all enemies spawn in allied respawn areas. So whatever your values you assume they are... as much evidence as you've collected... it's all useless in testing conditions that are FIXED. My tests come from actual gameplay. It does all the calculating needed because it STRESSES every calculation and forces the WORST upon the systems. If a system collapses, the system fails. If it doesn't, it's much easier to work out. A) I couldn't care less for a 100% actual value to any part of the spawn system. Bungie will NEVER release their values to anyone so trying to hit the nail on the head isn't going to accomplish anything because theres no proof you're correct. B) I implied it's 3x stronger because in gameplay situations IT IS. If it wasn't, a Respawn Area dedicated to Blue team wouldn't collapse and cause the spawn system to spawn Blue team in Red Teams Respawn area if 3 red players walked into it. C)Have you ever heard of multiples? Why complicate the matter saying Respawn Areas weigh 100000? I've found under the spawn system in stressed situations its 3x stronger and CAN be overthrown very VERY easily. You can't deny that. I've already proved JonnyOThan wrong on that front. I used values to easily describe WHY that happened... You keep saying about an authorative figure giving misleading information; it's not misleading at all, it's using my methods of understanding. I understand the spawn system, I've implemented a spawn system that WILL always spawn you away from enemies and it WILL always spawn you in your half of the map, regardless of any influence that gets thrown into the system... it'll just spit it straight back out and send you packing back to your side of the map away from harm. Even then, I've STILL managed to set it up so that spawn trapping is possible. In the end of the day, you can discredit my values, you can discredit my information and you can discredit the way I inform people of how the system works from my perspective... However, you can't discredit a fully functional spawn system that NO ONE else has managed to replicate yet... and if they have, they've yet to release any information on how they did achieve this. Even more so, my method can be easily adjusted and have beginners easily apply it to their maps. The other day, I had a hard time explaining to someone to use simplified units. Respawn Areas = 3, Weaks/Players/Antis = 1. They had a hard time calculating those simple numbers... How about you throw 10000, 3333, 2698, 412 and a shed load of other random numbers in their direction and expect them to fully understand how to build at least a functioning spawn system. [br][/br]Edited by merge: Infact, to stop ALL of this mindless arguing... Under gameplay scenarios.. the following apply: (The greater side signifies the position a player will respawn at) RZ > 3EP +RZ RZW + RZ > RZ RZW + RZ = RZ + EP RZW > RZW + EPLoS RZ + 3EP < 2EP + EPLoS + RZ RZA = e(RZ +1)(RZW+1) Where RZW = Respawn Zone Weak, RZ = Respawn Zone, EP = Enemy Player, EPLoS = Enemy Player Line of Sight, e = External (everything outside the boundary), RZA = Respawn Zone Anti. If you want to try prove all that wrong... go ahead. These have all worked to the dot with my spawn systems. But they are only half equations because we don't know about player weight radius, nor weapon influences, nor objective influences... but none of these matter because they are only minor and very very very rarely effect any respawn system in terms of functionality... [br][/br]Edited by merge: Last of all... you should stop shooting down my claims that are actually working in regards to functional respawn systems. Infact, you should be working with me to determine the last factors in the systems. It's extremely likely my values are wrong... but it's completely irrelevant as stated before because my values are just whittled down multiples that leave things like weapon influences at 0.02 or something ridiculous like that. For simplicity purposes, I set the major factors easy values for people to at least learn the fundamentals of respawning players.