I've got a map and I'm trying to use spawn points but they aren't behaving as I want them to. I read furious D's explanations of spawns and was pretty confident they would work as intended, but what actually happens seems totally illogical. Heres the scenario (although everywhere else on the map seems to cause the same problems): It's 1v1 slayer, the spawn points are placed like this: (btw this is a very simplified illustration) The blue dots are spawn points The blue circles are spawn areas (all on spawn order 0 aka random yes?) The red dot is where I am stood What i expected to happen: I expected the second player to randomly respawn at A B C D and E (the furthest point from me in each area). If not these then at least inside the areas at a reasonable distance from me. What happens: The second player spawns at C F and G. Every maybe ten respawns the player will go somewhere else, but otherwise its always these. I don't understand it. Points F and G are about the distance of the length of a double box, and are not the furthest point from me in any area sp why is the game spawning my second player there? I'm on a borrowed 360 while mines getting fixed, and I'll have to give it back tomorrow, so it seems I won't be able to get it released for a while which sucks. Can anyone help me out? <3
Is everything set to neutral? Edit: I believe that since you have the spawn areas on 0 that is what is messing everythin up. Try putting to spawn areas directly across from each other and placing both of their priorities to one.
Yes all the spawn points and spawn areas are set to neutral. The spawn areas are all for the slayer gametypes, and I'm playing regular slayer FFA. Also, there are very few fusion coils and there aren't any vehicles (these can effect where you spawn i think?)
I don't think that these will affect spawning. Also whenever I have placed spawns people tend to spawn at the first respawn points that I lay down. Try deleting all of them and placing them down in a random order in the spawn locations that you have now.
My first question is: how did you get elliptical spawn points, or is the image just distorted? Secondly, having multiple respawn areas overlapping multiplies the chances of players spawning in those areas. Thirdly I would reccomend setting your spawn points in a random order, such as "0735491268" and go from left to right, ordering the spawn areas as such. As a fourth and final point, respawn areas that are as small as the ones over a and d would be better served in making your map more accessible for multiple gametypes. As a sidenote: setting them all to zero always causes malfunctions like this when I am making maps.
I tried setting every area to 1 and its still the same. TurboGerbil I don't really want to give everything random numbers. If I want spawn areas for every gametype that'd take a long time and I shouldn't have to do it, the system should work as i want it properly and simply. i don't think I should have to go to tedious lengths to solve bungies problems (although we do for interlocking and the budget). However, deleting and replacing F and G seems to have changed something. With the replaced F and G, the second player now spawns at C, the point below G and the highest point. This is pretty ludicrous, why would when I placed the point effect anything? I will try replacing them all later, i have to go to college now. Also, this still doesn't really solve my problem even if it does work. I wanted the player to spawn as i predicted in the first post, spawn areas seem pretty useless atm. =( EDIT: I saved a second version of the map with the spawn areas deleted and exactly the same thing happens. Hmmm... By making every spawn area the same order number am I just effectively making one large spawn area? They don't act as individual spawn areas but as a single whole. I think I'm just being a bit slow here... I'll test it later.
Your not being slow, Mallet. This very issue has caused several new veins to pop up in my head whenever I think about it and I still don't feel that I know all I need to. First of all, I'm glad you looked at Furious' post on the matter; the one that Kon Artist wrote is total bunk. His name is very apt, as it turns out. I've got a couple of questions for you regarding your test. Was this test done in a Custom Game or in Forge? My findings have been that Forge relies heavily on the invisible 'emergency spawns' that Bungie put in place. Secondly, did you stay in one place when you killed the other player or did you run around a bit? I can't stress how interested I am to hear your further test results. My current theory is that the priority numbers don't seem to matter, because the game will always spawn you where it thinks you'll be the safest. I think adding respawn areas helps in determining this, but apparently not by much. Did you ever read the Bungie post when H3 was coming out where they mentioned that the ability to keep other players from becoming Monitors didn't work out the way they planned but added it in the game anyway? I'm beginning to think this whole respawn area may be falling into that category. It seems to work great for forced respawn placement, but FFA situations really seem to screw things up. I think it was Gorebound that thought of the idea of trying to get a Bungie employee to give us more insight to the respawn area thing. I still think it's a good idea. BTW - Is this map on Foundry? The layout kinda looks like Construct, but if it's on Foundry then it looks very intriguing. Staring at the picture makes it look like the face of some ancient Mayan god.
Ok I am now decided that the system is ludicrous and useless.. Lol. TurboGerbil: I forgot to say, the elliptical circle represents a spawn area which is actually round, but my diagram is pretty badly drawn and not to scale, i made it like that so it covers the spawn points is does ingame. squidhands: Yes the map is on foundry, intriguing indeed =P I have tried this in custom and forge both with and without spawn areas, all giving the same results. I've also stood in the same place and moved around a little, which also give the same results. In my last post i thought I had realised that by giving the spawn areas the same spawn order, they were acting as a single spawn area. However, I've since tried it with each area having a different spawn order value and the results are still the same. -- Whats interesting though, is as I mentioned earlier, since I deleted and replaced F and G, I've only had the player spawn there a couple of times and instead the player will regularly spawn at the points near to them. I'm thinking that maybe spawns don't work quite like everything else, and that maybe I placed some of the points during different forge sessions, and so they behave differently to the others?? When a player spawns the game has to consider several things before choosing the best place right? This is pretty complicated i imagine, so maybe the system remembers how it will prioritise these points differently to normal objects. I'm thinking maybe once you have placed spawn objects, saved and ended the session the spawns are remembered, and in a new session when they are changed or edited, the game doesn't reconsider all the points so old points retain old information, and so could be considered more important than they should be? Something like that? It's totally illogical and I'm guessing a lot, but I really don't see much alternative with my scenario. We definitely need to get a bungie emplyees input on how these things work. Arrgh.
If you havnt already tried this, try not using a priority of '0', only use 1 + It would spoil the unpredictibility, but thats kinda what your arguing about.
I have suggestive evidence that the order in which you place objects on a map influences their priority when dealing with forcing object spawns... perhaps this applies to player respawns too, in which case you could be onto something.
Disregard this, I suck cocks. ************************** Ok I tested some more, and I think I may be getting closer to proving what i said above. Ok that is the layout of the map I made to test some stuff. I did the testing on FFA slayer (custom game), the spawn areas are set on the slayer gametype. Prepare yourself for a wall of text. -- Test One I am stood at number 1, not moving, using a sniper to spawn kill. Anyone could tell you that C and D are the safest places for the second player to spawn, but I expected the system to think that F was. I was wrong though, the second player spawned at either C or D every time. Amazing. This is either because the game recognised that the open boxes provided the safest place or because spawn order 10 made the game think I wanted this area to be the most favourable to respawn in (the first place to check for safety). -- Test Two I tried standing in other places. At point 2, player two still spawned at either C or D every time, but only if I wasn't looking at it. When I looked at point C he would spawn at point D and vice versa. Good. At point 3, player two would spawn at point C every time. Bad. -- Test Three Now, I deleted the open boxes and returned to point 1. Player two respawned at C and D every time like before. So it has to be because of the spawn order 10 then yes? Well it seems not. I then deleted and replaced spawn points C and D. This time the player respawned at point G. Which isn't even in any spawn area! -- I believe that the player continued to respawn at point C and D after I deleted the boxes because the system still believed they were safe. As I suspected in a previous post above, the old spawn points retained old information ablout their suitability for respawning. Furthermore, I learned that objects and where i'm lookinhg do influence a spawn, and surprisingly that a player will spawn outside of a spawn area if it is the only safe area (the fence wall providing the safety in this instance). In fact I think spawn areas do absolutely nothing in FFA games, only in team games to spawn points used only by one team, and since you can easily set the spawn points themselves to a team they are almost useless. If you wanted attacker and defenders to spawn in different places depending on the gametype they would work. -- Paraphrased Conclusion Once the system has worked out when a particular spawn point should be used, it will store this information until the spawn point is changed, regardless of what happens to the environment around it. If a spawn point is in an open box, the system will think it is safe. If you then load the map in a new session and delete the box, the spawn point will continue to believe it is as safe as it was inside the box. And spawn areas are next to useless. -- Some of this may be wrong, I wasn't studying every detail as i did the tests (plus switching between lobbys and things may have made me get something wrong). I'm pretty sick of spawns now I've typed all this Lol. Did i make anyones eyebrow lift?
Well, this definitely made me raise an eyebrow. I think your results should be added to Furious' Guide to Respawn Areas/ongoing discussion about respawn areas. It certainly seems that one could test and make assumptions all day and still not be sure how these damn things work if at all. Thanks for reporting the results; it certainly seems through enough to warrant some proper answers. I think I may start writing up a note to the folks over at Bungie and see if we can get something out of them.
Wow, nice work theMallet. It boggles the mind to think that the game retains information about spawns even if the environment changes. I thought that the whole point of the spawning system was that it calculated the information in real time, to provide the best respawn. I'm still skeptical about that. You've got some compelling evidence to support that conclusion, but it's too stupid for me to accept right now. If it's true, the Bungie programmers just lost a lot of my respect. All I know is that respawning is far more random than Bungie led us to believe. I'm going to try to do some tests of my own. I want to do some double checking about the "retained information" theory and the "order of placement" theory.
I posted a thread at bnet asking for some clarification. I'm not holding my breath, but I thought "why the hell not?"
SON OF A *****! Bungie just had a thread where you can ask questions for the next Weekly Update. So I typed up 3 questions about respawn areas, went to hit submit, and it had been locked while I was typing, so it didn't get submitted. ARG!
Dang that sucks. Strangely enough, I too am very skeptical about what I said myself. I also thought it was all done in real time since the other players location is.
In reference to the pic at the top of this thread, the spawn areas are intersecting a lot. You should set them up so they are not intersecting. The first thing the spawn system will do is try to find the safest spawn area, it doesn't know what to pic because each spawn area is also part of another one. Based on the findings of your experiment, you should delete all spawns, then start over your spawning, without making the spawn areas intersect. They are useful because you can put one over areas to make it so that players won't spawn there, since they're is an enemy that can kill them. Pick a spawn, and put an area on it, now make every bit of the map that could kill someone at that spawn in the area. Then pick another spawn far away and do the same thing. The spawning may pick a spawn for you in a spot far away from an enemy but at angle that the enemy can still kill you when you don't have areas placed.
So, no respawn areas within respawn areas What about assigning them to teams, do they all become neutral in a FFA setting?
If you set them to a team, they don't do anything in FFA, like with spawn and start points. They must be neutral to affect FFA. They can't intersect much so that it's possible to spawn outside area "A." In the model in the first post, if I picked a typical respawn area, "A" and found it unsafe, I would also be finding other spawn areas unsafe. This means I'm mostly going to spawn around the edges of the map, but I can't really do that, because one spawn area goes over the whole map, and is always unsafe. So where do I spawn? In one of the first spawn points to be created. Then when he deleted these, I then spawned in the new "newest" spawn points.