Forging CTF Zones. Seeking Assistance.

You coulda just asked me, dawg.

There are a few approaches but I generally try to keep it as simple as possible. All my Halo 4 maps so far have used one of these two methods:

EDIT - METHOD 0.5 - NOT SIMPLE BUT APPARENTLY BETTER? Do what Mr. Green says.

METHOD 1 - DIRT SIMPLE APPROACH. Updated due to info from Mr. Green. Create two huge respawn zones for each team, in the same place, encompassing all spawn points where you want them to be able to spawn. In other words, it will cover about half the map or so; should be more than just the immediate flag area, at least. Tag these zones as just "CTF," which means they are active for the CTF gametype whether the flag is home or away. You're done. ...No really, you're done. You can fancy up this approach slightly by adding anti- or weak anti- zones over spawn points you don't want to be used very often. You may also have to use multiple respawn zones for each team if your map shape is weird and the division between the sides isn't clear, but this won't affect spawn weighting; it's basically just to tell the gametype where that team can possibly spawn. But basically this method is simply creating a respawn zone for each team that applies to the entire CTF game. The reason to use two per team/area? Weighting of these is less than in Reach, so if you want to ensure spawning within this zone, they need to be stacked. And you still need to make sure you have enough spawn points and separate clusters within the zone to allow safe spawning, in case enemies are trying (or accidentally trying) to spawn trap.

METHOD 2 - SLIGHTLY LESS SIMPLE BUT STILL MORE SIMPLE THAN MOST PEOPLE REALIZE. First you create your big respawn zone for each team as described above, but you tag it as flag home. These respawn points are only used when the flag is at home. Then you have to (have to!) create flag away zones, so that when your flag is away, you'll respawn in specific team areas still and not over by the enemy flag or something. Flag away zones will usually be sub-sections of the flag home zone, but excluding one or two specific areas or paths you don't want people appearing in, so the flag carrier has a fair chance. When I do flag home and away zones, my away zones usually encompass ALL of the flag home zone except for the immediate area around the flag. You can also pick 2-3 specific spawn clusters for respawning - often they'll be kind of far away from the enemy base and main neutral chokepoints, so that dying while the other team runs your flag is a serious penalty. Just make sure you don't have a single, small away zone (also known as: the problem that broke Zealot for the objective playlist). SUMMARY VERSION: If you want flag home and away spawning, you need zones of both types for each team, and no zones tagged as just "CTF." Again, apparently you need to stack the zones if you want to FORCE players to always spawn there, and you should have lots of spawn points/clusters so there will always be some safe area for players to pop up; otherwise negative weighting may push you to spawn outside the zone.

Common problems people have:
- Flag home zones but no flag away zones. In this config, if the flag is away you can respawn anywhere because no respawn zones are active for your team. If you have one you need the other.
- Zones tagged "CTF" with home and away zones. You CAN do this if you're smart about it, but if there's a generic CTF zone you need to remember that it applies to both flag home and away. So if there's a giant zone encompassing half the map for each team, tagged just CTF, people are going to be spawning all over the place and your flag away zones probably mean nothing. I do use this sometimes though to apply ANTI- zones; I'll have respawn zones tagged flag home and others tagged flag away, but I'll layer on one or two weak anti- zones tagged just CTF so those spawn points are low priority.
- Zones tagged correctly but with no team affiliation. Probably doesn't need more explanation. A neutral zone will be used for players on both teams; in setting up CTF with static spawns, I only ever use neutral zones for anti-spawning.

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And regarding layering of multiple soft zones tagged this, that and the other... I don't believe in it. Never have. It's people trying to debug a complicated system they probably don't understand enough to be doing that. If you have plenty of spawn points, placed intelligently (that's a whole separate subject requiring a post twice as long as this one), and your respawn zones for both teams cover a lot of those spawn points, Halo spawn logic will usually work well enough. If you look at the default maps in forge you'll notice that 343 and Bungie almost never use these complicated spawn zone configs; they usually just have a few respawn zones covering large swaths of the map. It's simple and effective. I am only ever likely to add one or two anti- zones (often with no team specificity) to create areas that are emergency outlet spawns only, and not used as often as the default spawns, which are usually nearer to the bases/objectives.

 

I use two respawn zones and two anti-respawn zones per team placed on top of each flag set at a 13.0 radius (that's about the preferred range of a dmr). I use nothing but neutral respawn points. I also use two flag away zone spawns per team that are in neutral positions on the map. You also only need 1-2 initial spawn points per team as they heavily influence their team mates to initial spawn at the closest respawn points.

Edit: my flag away zones are usually set at a 8.0 radius

 

Hulk - I don't think you even need the anti- zones (I assume you're setting them for the enemy team so they don't spawn near the other team's flag?). Halo strongly prefers spawning in your own team's respawn zone, if one exists and is active; it will only spawn you outside of it if there's almost no other choice (meaning, available spawns are all physically blocked, in an enemy's line of sight, or surrounded by the corpses of your teammates). If you have plenty of spawn points in your own team's respawn zone, that should be sufficient to make you always spawn within that zone. I always set it up that way and don't think I've ever had a problem with it.

 

i'm glad he did NOT just ask you privately, as some more explanation is certainly helpful for everyone else.

question: can teams spawn in the white neutral respawn points? That's what seemed to keep happening to me on a map I tried to implement CTF on... I removed the team spawn zone(not game specific) and away zone (ctf specific) because of this problem.

 

I've had quite a few games go otherwise where the enemy spawned within a few feet of the flag even with a team zone there (in my earlier maps - strongside & baptism by fire). The team zone doesn't discourage enemy spawning there at all and anti-spawns get rid of this.

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Edited by merge:

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All I use is neutral respawns so yes.

 

What nutduster described is more in line with Reach than Halo 4. The zone weights are much different and the new schedule of weights presents problems that even 343i has yet to figure out.

I recommend to anyone wanting to learn how to forge an effective and solid CTF map to read through three articles I wrote.

Spawning: Discovering the Weights goes into how I concluded the various influencers in Halo 4. At the end of the article in the summary section I give a list and a graph of the influencers I studied. This is the backbone for the other two articles. All you really need is the summary section. The details in the article are for those who want to verify my test results (peer review).

Spawning: CTF And Spawn Traps discuss the consequences of the new schedule of weights and the considerations that forgers need to keep in mind when forging maps (e.g., map sizes, team sizes, zone sizes, etc.). The article essentially describes why 343i's attempt to prevent spawning near an enemy has broken CTF game play at a fundamental level and enabled Spawn Traps (compared to Reach where Spawn Traps would collapse under their own weight).

Spawning: Using Zones talks about using Respawn Zones in CTF and how to make a solid CTF experience.

@Hulk, these articles together will show why there isn't enough space to make an effective collection of zones for flag at home and flag away configuration on any decent size map on the forge canvases.

You cannot use Halo 4 default maps as any model to follow, as they are fundamentally broken. And you cannot use the Reach default maps as any model to follow since the schedule of influencers is significantly different in Halo 4.

Also, Nutduster, the Anti Zones are in the default Halo 4 maps for a reason. Their weight is -2, while the Respawn Zones have a weight of +14. It is my belief that they are place holders with specific roles. This would allow their weights to be adjusted as necessary and their role maintained. Their role is in fact to prevent a player from spawning in the zone, but the weight is not nearly enough to accomplish this. If they change the weight to say -100, then it would be an excellent mechanism (and already in place). It really does have a legit purpose, it just doesn't have the necessary weight behind it to be successful.

 

I'll have to double-check, but I think what I did was set those white respawn points as "FFA_Spawn" which I thought would only allow spawning in non-team types?

I set separate Blue and Red ones for use in any team-based mode...

 

Agreed. I was kidding with him. I'm a kidder!

 

What I mean is, if YOUR team has an active team respawn zone elsewhere, it will encourage you to spawn there strongly enough that usually you won't spawn anywhere else. Anti zones over other spawn points are generally not necessary as long as there are plentiful spawn points and segregated spawn areas within your team's respawn zone, so that you can spawn safely. If your respawn zone is small and has just a handful of spawn points, the influencers Mr. Green is alluding to can become problematic and then you can spawn in the enemy's territory - and then I'm guessing anti- zones may not even be enough to fix it. Basically I believe anti- zones are a Band-aid on a problem that could be better resolved by just enlarging your team respawn zones and making sure there are plenty of safe places to spawn within them. To give a clearer picture though, my respawn zones usually cover half of the map or slightly more, and there will most often be something like 6-8 fairly separate and protected spawn clusters within that zone. In a 4v4 or 5v5 test, you will basically never have enough negative spawn influencers on all those clusters to make you spawn outside the zone. That's why having just one zone per team works well for my maps, and why in week after week of testing, we've never broken it - it's theoretically breakable, but in practice just highly unlikely to happen.

I was aware that the weighting had changed, but didn't realize the full extent. However, I would still maintain that most Halo 4 maps will show Reach-like behavior if you follow some basic principles of spawning: large respawn zones for each team that cover many spawn clusters and many individual respawn points, with some physical segregation between them. With that design, it should take a very concerted effort or the randomest act of God to force you to spawn in enemy territory; there will almost always be a few free respawn points somewhere that are in your respawn zone, with no enemies near them or staring at them. HOWEVER, it sounds like if you want something more consistent with Reach behavior, you probably need to do what I just said and also stack an extra set of respawn zones on top of them for heavier weighting. Either way, anti-zones don't sound like they have the kind of weight that they'll really matter much which is consistent with Reach. They're more like gentle dissuaders of spawning than prohibitive preventers.

I kind of hope they don't change that, because I'm pretty sure I've used them on a map or two knowing that they have a very low influence right now...

 

Yeah but when most of the enemy team is on top of your flag or your flag is stolen those team spawn zones are in effect no longer so that's why spawning at the complete opposite end of the map (at their flag) happens. That's why heavy anti zones are needed.

When you tag a team spawn zone with CTF, that zone is disabled when your flag is touched up until your flag is returned.

 

The Proximity Enemy Influencer is what you are seeing, and the CTF label is always enabled - it is simply overwhelmed by the Proximity Enemy Influencer.

I go into detail in my articles about this very point.

the problem with nutduster's explanation of respawn zones is that he is describing how they behave in Reach. In Halo 4 they are like a Weak Respawn Zone in Reach - they only influence, but provide ZERO guarantee of spawning in the zone. This is confirmed by CertainAffinity to be by design.

 

if a neutral respawn point is set to FFA_Spawn shouldn't it prevent either team from spawning there in any objective/team type?

 

That should only happen with the flag at home tag, not the plain CTF tag. I forget exactly what the flag at home tag is called now - it may be CTF RESPAWN or something; the generic gametype tag is simply CTF. Point is, there are two separate ones. If you use the flag at home tag, then your description is correct and you ALSO need flag away zones, for which there's a separate tag. Either way, I don't recommend using anti- zones to try to discourage spawning in the enemy base, because their weighting isn't high enough to mean much unless you pile up a few of them. You can still do it if it makes you feel better or seems to be working for your map, but the best approach is making sure you tag your zones right in the first place, or have a combination of both home and away zones.

 

Not at all...

This has unintended consequences, and I strongly recommend against this as a general rule without thinking through the consequences.

 

It only prevents team game spawning on those points. Whether they are near the enemy flag or not is another issue. If you want the red team not to spawn near the blue flag, then set the respawn points surrounding the blue flag to blue team.

 

Been testing CTF in actual game scenarios on various 4v4 maps for weeks without a single bad spawn. Granted, we're not aggressive spawn-trappers. But the point is that we have yet to accidentally create an in-game scenario that breaks one of my maps. And based on the quantity of spawn areas I've set up, I don't think it's actually possible to break them, unless the enemies were to spread out in just the right way, all within my respawn zone, while staring at one additional spot and firing a rocket at another. If you've got a 25x25 zone covering half of a map with 6-8 spawn clusters and a few emergency spawn points, it's going to be tough to break it accidentally; it's tough to even break in on purpose.

What are the unintended consequences? Essentially Reach respawn zones worked as a massive positive weight, did they not? I seem to remember that was how they were described (as being basically a +1000 zone) but that was the "from the horse's mouth" description, not the empirical test result.

 

Yet, by analyzing your map I can show you how to break the spawning... Then you can "test" what I show you and see how fragile it really is.

If your zone is 25x25, the area is 625SU. The area of 4 enemy proximities is 4*pi*9.5*9.5SU = 1100SU. In other words, your zone is just over half the size of the enemy proximity of four players.

Again, I would have to look at the map to tell you how to make it fail (and if there is significant verticality in its design then it may actually work with those dimensions, but at the expense of a spawn trap).

That is true, but in Halo 4, they are less weight than the enemy proximity. This was by design to prevent spawning near an enemy.