I'm working on my first ever MLG-esque map, and I've taken look at a few of the mlg circuit maps and noticed one thing: Amp and Ons use one respawn zone cover the whole map, and limited points. Guardian doesn't use a respawn zone, but seems to have a few more grouped points. I haven't looked at any further, but I'm betting the patern holds similar (this is slayer btw). So I am wondering, what is the appropriate way to do MLG spawns?
err I wouldnt follow Amp or Ons. You should do Your respawn areas for any points in the map that have a large line of sight or are very enclosed or too open. Ive gotten fairly good at spawns so you could try invitin me if you have the chance. I'd be happy to help with no credit needed lol.
Well thanks, but honestly I've never had a problem with my previous spawns lol. Mainly I make 2v2 enclosed maps, and basically I have my dedicated geometry cover, and sectioned areas which become my zones. I was just kinda curious if and why MLG spawns were different.
There is actually two respawn areas on ons and amp. One for each team when flag is away. All of the other gametypes don't use them. EDIT: and.. the reason why they dont use many respawn areas is because they make spawning predictable. But you still want the spawns to be good.
Nope not flag, I know that lol. I just meant the one respawn area covering the whole map in both amp and ons for slayer.
As far as I can see, it serves no purpose? Wouldn't i just neg wait every spawn on the map, thus you'd be back to what you have without it?
When it comes to spawns you need to watch for just a few things. 1: You aren't constantly spawning players ridiculous distances from the action. A map that in my opinion violates this is Pit KOTH, but an extreme example would be if Narrows played Oddball or KOTH, you'd find a team getting wiped out only to find themselves 30 seconds from a hill or the ball. 2: Spawns cannot be predicted for extended periods of time. This is why Amplified and Onslaught Slayer don't use respawn zones. If you can keep a team spawning in one spot more than once in a row you've created a spawn trap which makes for poor gameplay. A recently killed team should always have at least a couple possible places for the game to pick. 3: Spawns are not invulnerable. Original Pit attic spawns violate this completely. No further explanation necessary. 4: There is room for an entire team to spawn. If a team gets exterminated, you don't want them spawning in separate spots from each other. 5: You aren't spawning people TOO close to the enemy. Amplified falls victim to this. Far too often a player will spawn into a beatdown, but this is an only somewhat avoidable side effect of Foundry's size.
There's a theory going on over at the MLGpro forums which speculates that respawn areas contain the death influence of an individual spawn point, which is kind of a big deal if it holds true. Essentially, if you have two spawn points next to each other that are separated by a respawn area, the normal influential radius of it is effectively killed by the partitioning respawn area (I hope that makes sense) and shouldn't be happening. As Jay already said, the MLG community uses less spawn points to make spawning more predictable, but I believe they're also attempting to make the most out of the spawn points' influence as much as they can.