Long time listener, first time caller >_> I guess this may be a bit of a bad time to discuss this. With 343 about to take the reigns, I'm not sure if there's been any word on continued avenues for community maps. But has the thought of gearing invasion maps for matchmaking crossed anybody's mind? I know there are some nice, creative invasion maps people around here have made. I admittedly haven't done a ton of detective work on my part, but from what I was able to gather from the bungie.net forums, there are several potential contributing reasons why Reach's 3 measly invasion maps haven't been augmented with community maps. The biggest issue seems to be poor framerate. Likely because Invasion supports 4 local players - So I'm not even sure how surmountable this is. Of course that wouldn't stop a Community Invasion playlist restricted to 2 local players, which would make framerate considerations the same as any other map... Well, or perhaps more, because of all of Invasion's phase variables etc? But in addition to this, I saw mention of several other hindrances - such as many community invasion maps being geared toward 4v4 or 8v8 and not Invasion's 6v6. Anyway, tl;dr - Would there perhaps be people interested in a drive to create and compile a hearty number of Invasion maps that try to fit matchmaking standards? And for people far more forge technical or just more informed than myself - do you even think such is possible?
Making a map support four-player split-screen is next to impossible. However, if 343 were to implement community maps, they would probably lower the local max to 2 (as Bungie did with Team Slayer). It would certainly be possible to create a two-player-split-screen-compatible Invasion map, I think. The key would be to avoid minor aesthetic touches, among other things. Restricting aesthetic objects to a phase (INV_WEAPON so that they're not present before they're needed, and INV_GATES so that they're gone when you're done with them) could possibly help prevent frame rate and disco. The largest obstacle isn't necessarily frame rate... Discoing is a problem that is much more likely to arise when playing on split-screen, and it is also much harder to fix. A minimal object count is key for split-screen support.
Yeah, that's part of my own curiosity - Do background processes going on in invasion relevant to the different phases or whatever contribute to disco/frame rate issues? Or is it just because invasion maps may tend to have a higher object count? i.e. Do you think a split-screen compatible Invasion map could operate with the same number of objects as community BTB maps in matchmaking, or might it need to skew even lower?
Good questions there. Cobb, now you have more work to do. MWAHAHAHA, you lazy basterd. ;P I would say that 'invisible' objects shouldn't affect disco count or framerate, but who can say how the Reach engine codes the invisible objects. It may well be that they affect discoing. And yes, Invasion tends to have higher framerate issues due to the higher object count.
I don't believe it is a good generalization to claim that invasion maps have more blocks than other maps. And I suspect that the "zones" for invasion really don't impact frame rate as one might think. From my experience, it is just another map and would suffer the same if it was played any other game type.
Well, the game's functions can affect frame rate, but it's extremely rare. (For example, you can lag the physics engine and produce major frame and network lag using Grids, terrain, and Normal physics...) I highly doubt that the ordinary processes of a gametype would cause frame rate lag, even in cases like Invasion. However, the glowing boundaries used to mark objective areas (i.e. Territories, Safe Havens, bomb plant areas) can cause frame rate lag. In terms of discoing, each gametype can have roughly the same amount of objects. However, run-time-only objects -- players, their carried weapons, flags, bombs, etc. -- also contribute to discoing, and these things are only visible when you actually play a game. So Multi Flag CTF, for example, would be just slightly more prone to disco than Slayer because there are four more objects (the flags, and their gametype-specific stands).
Alright, thanks. So theoretically it sounds perfectly capable - matchmaking's running forged BTB maps with Multi-Flag and Assault. Each specific phase of invasion likely wouldn't have any more objective objects running than either of these modes, and Invasion's only dealing with 12 people versus BTB's 16. I guess it's all a matter of putting together a good Invasion map while keeping object count low.