UPDATE: I found that this original characterization of the bug is inadequate. The problem appears to be that Stock Pile activates EVERY Strong Zone on the map. See below... ---------- Last night I was working on my newest map and discovered a new bug in Stock Pile. Others may have seen this. And some may have come to realize what is causing the problem. But for me it was a new discovery. I setup my map with two team respawn zones, one blue and one red, to each cover half the map. Then I placed a SLAYER neutral respawn zone over all the map to enforce dynamic spawning for slayer. When I went to test stock pile, I had people spawning everywhere. After eliminating pieces to see if I could get the problem to go away, I discovered that the neutral respawn zone was being put into play by the game engine for both SLAYER and STOCK PILE. The game type Stock Pile appears to match objects with the game type property SLAYER as well as STOCKPILE. This has all the appearance of a bug. I need to do more testing tonight to see if other objects (not just respawn zones) also get put onto the map for STOCK PILE if they are set for SLAYER games. I doubt that JonnyOThan would frequent ForgeWorld any longer to confirm this, so I won't be able to get any official information about it any time soon.
Does it go both ways? That is, do STOCKPILE-labeled gametype-specific objects show up in Slayer? ...And was the SLAYER-labeled Respawn Zone set to be gametype-specific? Because if not, then this isn't a bug and the Zone would show up in any gametype.
Yes, the neutral Strong Zone was game type specific. It was not present (its' influence) on other team objective games. I plan to do more testing of other objects later tonight to see if it is only the Respawn Zones that are affected, or if any object has this behavior. I also was thinking of doing a comprehensive test of all game types and see which blocks show up and which are absent. I will let you know what I find... I am now thinking this sort of issue may be a problem that people have seen and they just say, "stock pile has problems". This makes two issues with Stock Pile...
Ill have to look into this. Ive never put Stockpile onto any of my maps before, but was going to for my latest map, so this is a good heads up as it has a neutral Slayer spawn zone. The way to circumvent this may be to change the gametype for the spawn zone to FFA_ONLY instead of Slayer. Dont know if that will work, but trying is better than broken spawns.
It might work. Each FFA_ONLY label is actually different (i.e. Slayer FFA_ONLY is different from KOTH FFA_ONLY), so that would keep it Slayer-only while also excluding it from team games (which, of course, would keep it out of any functional Stockpile match).
Well, I tried a test and showed that blocks respect their labels. That lead me to think the problem was with Respawn Zones only. Then I thought that perhaps it wasn't SLAYER that was matching against STOCKPILE, but that every respawn zone on the map enables for STOCKPILE. I know, that seemed like a stretch. But I setup a test to see if I could demonstrate if this were true or not. And while I have not exhaustively tested every combination, my tests so far conclude that STOCKPILE game type enables EVERY Strong Respawn Zone on the map, regardless of FFA/TEAM, or game specific labels. I had one respawn point within 15 units of the red drop zone center (within the induced Strong Zone from the drop zone). It was used like the others. I had one respawn point out in the open - it was never used. It was not in a Strong Zone, so I expected it not to be used. I had six other respawn points, each in their own Strong Zone. Each Strong Zone had a unique label: ASSAULT, CTF, INFECTION, FFA_ONLY, SLAYER, and JUGGERNAUT. They each were used many times. Then I changed each of the six Strong Zones from neutral to red. Again, they each were used during Stock Pile game type as the blue player sniped the red player. I am satisfied that every Strong Zone on the map is enabled during Stock Pile. That is how I am going to characterize this bug. This means that if a map has just two team Strong Zones splitting a map (red and blue), then Stock Pile should work. Any other combination of Strong Zones could have very severe impact on Stock Pile games. This really explains what I have seen over the last few months with every Stock Pile game I have put together. And I think the problems are far worse than even Bungie realized. [br][/br]Edited by merge: This is not true. FFA_ONLY is universal, as is TEAM_ONLY. That is why they exist. Also, I proved it tonight. I just ran a test that showed a single block with FFA_ONLY and a single block with TEAM_ONLY, and one and only one of them would appear when appropriate for any game type. Some times neither, but it is not because they are unique to any game type, but that the game type doesn't recognize either of them. INFECTION, RACE, RALLY, INVASION, and INVASION SLAYER, and perhaps a few of the new game types, do not recognize either FFA_ONLY or TEAM_ONLY. Such labeled blocks will never appear for any of those game types. [br][/br]Edited by merge: FFA game types generally do not need Strong Zones. Strong Zones are used to define boundaries for a team to respawn within. -------------- I would love for someone to confirm my findings with independent tests...
You should post this over at 343, if they are indeed releasing a title update and this proves to be true, it can be fixed!
This should be fixable without a TU, as it seems to just be an issue with Stockpile's gametype script. But yeah, 343 needs to know.
I thought as much. Checked out the forum before I posted that, and I couldnt find it, so thought Id ask. If he has a link Ill happily bump it.
Is opti-match where you present bugs to Bungie? I always went to JonnyOThan with specifics to get him to confirm or explain. He has done that for me in the past, though he is not hanging around FW these days...
I don't know if reports are acted on, but I've seen no issues arise from submitting them there. Technically, it's the discussion forum for Matchmaking playlists, map variants, and game variants... So if there's a bug in a Matchmaking game variant -- even if that bug is only encountered when the variant is used in Customs -- I don't see why you wouldn't be able to report it there. :\
Bungie hands over Halo in 3 days. I doubt they would do something about it before then if it's even possible without the title update 343 has planned.
Just bumped the thread. Dont know if it will receive any attention, but Im going to keep bumping it periodically. If it doesnt get looked at by anyone then we could PM an admin or something, I suppose. Dont know if that would work either, but its worth a shot.
I did PM an admin, bs angel, but got no reply yet. I was asking if there would be a forum in the future to report bugs of this sort to get feedback (confirmation or explanation).
Well, thats poo then. Just gotta be persistent, I suppose. Im still yet to test this out, though. I had a play around on Forge for about an hour today, but forgot to try this. I did come across something that I thought was another glitch, this time on Assault, but realised that I hadnt made my map-spanning neutral spawn game specific. Silly Xun...