Do kill zones cause oddballs to reset anymore? Seems like they don't. I made a semi-open map inside a soft safe zone, with hard kills a certain distance past the outsides of the safe zone. We were testing oddball the other night and I notice that a couple times when players threw the oddball outside the map, it took a full timer (20 seconds or whatever it is) to reset. So I went into forge, verified where my hard kills are located, and then went into a custom game to test it. Sure enough, I can throw the oddball in such a way that it passes entirely through one hard kill and lands inside a different one, and neither will cause it to reset. It only did a fast reset if it hit one of Ravine's built-in kill zones. I understand they might want to discourage non-stop throwing of oddballs off maps; and if I remember right, in Reach entering a soft kill inside the map would reset objectives even if you were holding them, which was a negative thing that might have been worth fixing. But I'm not sure either of these is what's going on. I'm concerned that it's basically just a bug, with no workaround short of changing the oddball reset timer to be really fast. Anybody?
IDK what it is but its the same for me... no matter what i place only a built in kill-zone affects it
The only thing I can really suggest is making the hard kills soft and maxing out it's upward height or covering up the open portions of the map with downward facing gravity volumes.
OK - my scientific curiosity got the better of me and I had to go test some things out. And basically, this is really, really stupid. 1. Hard safe zones seem to overrule everything. If you throw the ball outside a hard safe (and it's not going into another hard safe) I believe it resets every time. 2. Soft safe zones are where things get complicated. However, if you have a large soft safe with hard or soft kills inside of it, things work almost the way you'd expect: both types of kill zones cause the ball to reset. The only thing that doesn't work is that the ball going out of the soft safe does NOT cause it to reset. 3. Where things get REALLY weird is soft safe zones with hard kills outside. If you are inside a soft safe and throw the ball into a hard kill which is entirely outside the safe, it DOES NOT reset... unless it enters the hard kill and exits it again. Then it resets. (Derp?) If it comes to rest inside the hard kill without leaving again, it won't reset until the regular timer runs out. However, soft kills outside a soft safe still reset the ball like normal. (Derp???) ALSO, this odd hard kill behavior will even override the map's natural kill zones, which at first I thought were all-powerful; if you make an enormous hard kill that goes as far downward as possible, outside a soft safe, you can even make the ball sit on the bottom of the ocean for the full duration of the normal timer. -- So my recommendation: don't use soft safe zones on your maps if you want to support oddball (unless the map is completely enclosed). They cause weird, weird problems. Use a hard safe (if any safe at all) mixed with hard and soft kills as needed.
I thought they did. I would throw the oddball over the cliff on ravine and it would reset well before it hit the water... but I could be wrong. or maybe it changed with the TU?? update: now your confusing test results have got me wondering... did you witness a bug in their code? I mean, is their code so complicated now that it no longer knows what to do either?
I'm pretty sure it was like this before and after the TU, based on the random chance that I happened to notice there was a problem (but not understand the nature of it) a few days ago. I wasn't able to do a controlled test or even review my theater footage until today, where I was able to break down the problem with my map by duplicating the basic setup (a soft safe surrounded by hard kills) on a small scale. Seems to be! I spent a good couple hours this afternoon re-zoning all my recent maps just to avoid this problem. Not fun. On the plus side, I tested oddball on a couple of them and the reset is working now that I am using a hard safe + soft kills, rather than the other way around.
They do serve one purpose, which is conserving kill zones. Of course most maps don't need the max number of kill zones, but it happens on occasion; one map I'm working on now uses two safe zones and all but one or two of the available kill zones. If I didn't have the safe zones, I wouldn't have enough kills to effectively block off the map. The bigger (or more oddly-shaped) your map is, and the more you use natural geometry and a semi-open design, the more kill zones will get consumed. Especially on the forge maps we have now, where natural geo is harder to use since there are fewer big, open areas available.
I'm not home near my XBOX right now to test this theory, but if you placed a kill zone in a circle, then a soft kill zone inside of it, then a safe zone inside of that, would it do the same thing as having multiple kill zones where you want them? Like layers of an onion, large outer ring is kill zone, next ring is soft and inner ring is safe. Does that make sense, or would it even work like I am imagining it?
Really? Are you sure? If what you are saying is true, then why are they preferred by the CC when submitting maps? What do they know that you might not know? (answer at 11...) Edited by merge: It would be like you just had the outer most Kill Boundary. Both flavors of Kill Boundary supersedes either flavor of Safe Boundary. Period. The Kill Boundary supersedes the Soft Kill Boundary for immediate kill (versus 10 second timeout) and for announcement that you fell to your death (versus return to battle field).
@ GodofForge: Safe Zones keep your players within your map, how is that not applicable? I've only forged a couple room based maps so those were very easy to safe zone, but I did notice that the Oddball does not reset instantly when exiting the hard safe zone or entering a hard kill. It did, but not immediately upon contact. Weird...
If the amount of kill zones allowed aren't sufficient enough to keep people from breaking your map you need to start reconsidering your design.
Not too interested in recommendations on my map's design when you've never laid eyes on it. Suffice to say, it's big, multi-level, and ambitious from a gameflow and complexity standpoint; if I had to "rethink" this design I'd basically end up making a different map. The bottom line is that one safe zone does the work of up to six kill zones. For larger, outdoors maps this can be a necessary shortcut; and for any map this can be a desirable shortcut based simply on expedience. Safe zones also have the added benefit of providing guaranteed imbreakability. If you have a single safe zone, you know with certainty that anything outside of it is unplayable space. Kill zones lend themselves to unintentional gaps and therefore breakability. And mixing zones also lets you have soft kill cushioning followed by a hard kill death barrier; this can be difficult to achieve on an open-air map with kill zones only. As far as I'm concerned, telling people they have to use kill zones instead of safe is like telling them to never use coliseum walls, only blocks. Some maps can't be made with just blocks, and some maps can't be enclosed with just kill zones (or at least not easily).
Hmmmm I don't remember this being a problem when I tested oddball on my maps. Every time I tried it out the ball reset soon after going into any kill zone. That's why I didn't use a blanket kill zone at the same level as my gravity ceiling, I went in and did a local kill zone at each individual piece, so the oddball could be thrown over out-of-bounds walls and land back in the playing field. It always seemed to work fine for me. I never use hard safe or kill zones, just a single soft safe and many soft kills. On a related note I remember Mickraider was showing me his griffball spin-off one day and he was bothered because he had inclined endzones for the ball to roll and a kill zone to keep players off it, but it reset the ball, so he was wanting to redo it. I assume grifball and oddball would be the same.
The main problem is with hard kills outside of your soft safe. If you have soft kills either inside OR outside the soft safe, it works just fine. I don't know why hard kills in particular cause the problem or why being outside the soft safe works differently compared to inside, but the behavior was consistent in my tests. The other, slightly lesser problem is that the ball going outside the soft safe doesn't reset it, though you'd think that it would.
That sounds like your solution, just use soft safes and kills only. What do you need hards for? (ya perv.)
Any time I have an open map with space around and possibly under it, my preference is to have an outer cushion of soft kill, followed at some distance by a hard kill. That way players outside the map are first warned to get back in; if they keep going, they get killed. This isn't so much needed for floating platform maps, but if you have natural geometry outside the map it can be a good approach. The easiest way to do that is either 1. a soft safe around the whole map, and some hard kills outside of that; or 2. a hard safe around the whole map with some extra cushion, and soft kills inside of it. I was in the habit of doing the first one, but obviously I'm switching to the second, due to this glitch. You can also simply use kill zones and not safe, but on at least one of my maps that's not possible. Also, apparently this map contest coming up requires a safe zone for the map to even be eligible.
Isn't that the exact function performed by soft zones by themselves, though? My general policy is a single soft safe zone, square, that precisely touches the extremities of the intended playspace in all 6 directions. Then the excess is cut out with soft kills. I am completely happy to let the 10 second timer space extend to the entirety of Impact. With the cool-down time it gives you when you reenter the playspace, I think this system is more than adequate, and no oddball breakage. Basically, I personally have no use for hard zones at all regardless of how far from land the map is built, except in some very specific circumstances. I do agree that it is good policy to not make kill zones do all the work - that a safe zone is generally called for.