BMDM spawn-logic

Black Mesa Archive Suggestion Box
#1

Original HLDM spawn-logic was pretty much random… I also get the sensation it consisted of a queue. Telefragging was rare but would occur to a player sitting still on a spawn.

I have not looked into how HL2DM’s spawn-logic works (which is likely the current plan).
But BMDM should:* fix telefragging (by skipping some number of spawns which intersect players)

  • fix spawn-mining (by skipping some spawns which intersect a laser)
  • avoid overconcentration (by neglecting spawns in sight or proximity of another player).

We all know the bane of spawning with our back to a shotgun.

Will BMDM contain model-based teamplay, as HLDM had?
If so (which it really should), it should also:* cluster teams (by spawning close to living teammates, and away from enemies).

The lack of this was the real flaw with HLDM’s team-deathmatch. The spawning was peppered throughout the level. As frequent as death is, dying would completely remove you from them. More often than not, friends were just special targets you couldn’t kill (almost never able to work together).

Call of Duty (2003) provided a much more elegant form of TDM by spawning players in the vicinity of a teammate. Teammates were able to work together, and occupy areas of the map, killing enemies together. (When being overrun, a harbinger would escape the makeshift kessel, and new spawns with him would bring the victimized team to a safe location. Much like yin & yang.)

If BMDM could provide the classic and straightforward team-deathmatch mode with this form of spawn-clustering, it would provide a solid alternative to the beautiful DM chaos we could find most anywhere. The idea of three or more coherent teams, killing oneanother, is juice-invoking.

#2

Left 4 Dead infected-style spawning would be great, where players could run around and choose where they would like to respawn, so long as they aren’t within certain distance, can’t be seen by, or see other players. Being able to jump farther/higher or flat-out noclip would also be great.

#3

I foresee lots of abuse if that were the method of spawning. :o

#4

I tried to address all forms of abuse I could think of. :frowning:

#5

Except people who know the maps spawning by all the best guns/keeping in sight of the best guns while alive to prevent people spawning near them? Spawning in out of reach places, or places outside the normal map geometry? Following someone around and picking a perfect time to spawn right behind them (round a corner or whatever to be out of sight/distance) and kill them while they’re vulnerable? To be honest, it would be appalling.

#6

…Running around while invisible is not the Half-Life way, and only causes a delay of game.

My original post still stands. A vast number of algorithms could be taken in order to satisfy the team-proximity spawning suggestion, the most obvious of which is to start trying whatever spawns are closest to the average of all teammembers’ coordinates - - the biocentre as it may be referred.

[COLOR=‘Gray’]By the way, interesting fact: The average coordinate of all humans on Earth is somewhere in Afghanistan. It is exactly opposite of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), making that the furthest place from human life.

#7

A good spawn would be random as long as no other players are within the area, it’s simple and works as it’s been in use for years.

#8

cant you guys just create a script that stops the player from spawning in a area that has a player nearby?

#9

Ok, so what would happen if every spawn point has a tripmine on/intersecting it?
What would happen if all but one spawn point had them? That would guarantee that that’s the one players come out of wouldn’t it?
What if they’re not intersecting the spawn point(s), just surrounding them?

There’s still the problem of remote satchels(and an obvious player spawn sounds) or unguided RPG’s.

As far as I care, multiplayer isn’t “the half-life way” & I honestly couldn’t give two shits if invisibility were “the half-life way” so long as the changes make the game more enjoyable.

I really can’t think of anything except another proximity restriction, or having weapon spawn points give out random weapons & not being able to see items while dead, but then there’s still the problem of knowing where the spawn points are. In before more about random weapon spawns not being “the half-life way”

Out of reach places should have a player-clip to stop that, but if no-clipping were used, then filling the outside of normal map geometry with trigger_hurt could work, even if a bit tedious to map.

Maybe not being able to see/hear players while dead could work, but then there’s still the problem of explosives & crossbow darts hitting you moments after spawning. Making player-ghosts visible would at least alert players that someone’s following them, but it could be visibly confusing & annoying.

#10

It just occurred to me this is not like the rest of your post which wisely refutes ghost-spawns. You bring up a valid point. I would like to draw attention to the fact HLDM’s most useful weapons are usually exposed. For example, the RPG in the middle of Crossfire. And the crossbow on top of Bounce. Thus, players rarely spawn out in the open near these weapons. Spawns are best kept concealed in corners, where a line-of-sight excludes almost every other spawnpoint… every DM player and map-maker would agree.

But more importantly, I present to you the alternative: A player camps the Gluon gun… when a poor Glock-wielding bastard spawns in the same room!!! Our respawning friend probably would have preferred the chance to pick up a Tau, Crossbow, or some Snarks before confronting him.

I’d go with the snarks.

Yes, but issues arise when players spawn inside of players, in front of players (with their back turned), and in front of tripmines. It can lead to infuriating gameplay, which could have been avoided as there is usually a number of other perfectly good spawns.

Not to mention the chaos randomness presents in the presence of allies on teams.

I agree, that’s a good starting approach - - and they most certainly can. The decision where-to-spawn is extremely lightweight, and is run very rarely, compared to what the rest of the game calculates.

Good questioning, Dias.
According to my wording (“skipping some spawns which intersect a laser”), some spawns doesn’t necessarily mean all. The easiest way would be to skip up to 5 spawns. If the first five attempts are mined, just spawn them anyway.

(It doesn’t need to be 5. it could be any reasonable number. It could be one skip allowed for every tripmine in the level, not to exceed the server’s maxplayers.)

Tough cheese. :smiley: It’s up to the player to not trigger tripmines after they’ve spawned. Sometimes a brilliant trap is a brilliant trap. But players should never spawn in the way of a static explosive.

(I trust the MP spawn-points will not be floating in the air, but will be on the ground… so we don’t need to check if the player will fall onto a laser.)

Satchels, RPGs, grenades… they’re all activated in real-time by another player, which is forgivable. Even if a camper watches a satchelled spawn, nobody should spawn there thanks to the avoid overconcentration suggestion. As for satchelling spawns blindly, that’s pretty much dumb luck.

HLDM is covered by the Half-Life Way due to its age and proximity to HLSP. It is a traditional form of HEV combat. The Half-Life Way excludes random weapon spawns and the ability to traverse a map unimpeded/invisible. It includes quick respawning. [COLOR=‘Gray’]
(Trust me, I wrote the book on Xen. Or was it a book on Zen…)[COLOR=‘DimGray’] Lame pun, i know[/size]

So congrats, you called it on the randomized weapons.

#11

yeah, DM should really get some changes,
if not the player spawning away from ohter players (because the server can be very full and the map very tiny)
we could at least give them some spawn protection :frowning:

#12

Another thing that would help the l4d spawn idea sound a bit less exploitable would be that it could have a very short time limit that would force the player to spawn. It could give players the chance to avoid near by traps, but not enough time to transverse too much of the map. (Also, spawning should use the teleporting effect. That would be sweet.)

But the thing with remote satchels is they don’t need to be near their satchels to set them off. If player spawning makes an audible sound, or is visible on the score board, then the player would know when to detonate their satchels.

You overlooked this one small fact: I don’t care about your opinion. You can’t argue with me that something as breakable, unoriginal & un-iconic as this shouldn’t be changed simply for not being retro enough when such a small change could make the game significantly more fun & accessible to new players.

#13

Hmmmm… you know, that’s not a bad idea. It could ease the process by which players emerge from thin air. If the player makes an audible spawning sound, a visual effect should accompany it.

That still requires the player to plant satchels, get away, monitor the location for sounds (or the scoreboard for a change in skull-and-crossbones) and have an enemy spawn in that area…without the satcheleer dying or being distracted. The chances are surprisingly slim. In so many hours in HLDM, I don’t think I’ve ever been victim of that.

Adding a step between dying and spawning is a complication which makes the game slower and less accessible to new players. BMDM isn’t trying to use the same playerbase L4D has, it’s aimed toward Half-Life players. They expect to spawn simply, and spawn immediately.

I don’t see why you oppose immediate spawning, and instead want to adapt and tweak an exotic spawn-system to work in DM.

Just not gonna happen, ask Ram if you want.
This isn’t the daydreaming thread… so be real or be gone.

#14

Adding one little step outweighs the irritating factor of spawn camping, then the trade-off was worth it.

I was merely trying to suggest ways that the spawn system could be improved & hoped more ideas on how to improve it would follow in suit. With each post I tried to come up with ways to either improve on the system as it currently is, or upon previous suggestions. All of your focus seems to be is that you are right & that I am wrong. All I ever wanted from this thread was to see how spawn-camping could be stopped & maybe give players a little more control over what happens to them, rather than relying on the luck of the draw.

And this isn’t the “be an arrogant prick” thread. But it might as well be, seeing as how you’re the one that made it.

#15

I guess I see your point now - - I felt my original suggestion was a specific way to alleviate spawn-camping, and that suggesting alternative methods was a distraction from it. There might be some personal bias in my argument against the L4D style, because I prefer games that respawn you with any keystroke or click, and it annoys me needing to respawn with anything more specific than trying to move.

I see that one like another tradeoff: the “Killcam” in the Call of Duty series. It can be wonderful, and it alleviates the nuisance of being killed without knowing how. Though as nice as the feature may be, it just wouldn’t fit comfortably into Half-Life.

Heck, I’d like it in every game I play because of how convenient it is, but it would change the feel of this game too much for our responsible developers to consider it. Plus, it’d take too much work. When you get into walking around in after-life mode, with a possible ghost-model, I see that approach as unattractive because of the extra work involved there. And our devs would still refuse it, on the same grounds of not fitting into the older DM style.

#16

I could see TF2’s death cam being used (although there’s really not that much difference between it & COD’s) either way, I don’t really see much of a reason to refuse it, because it doesn’t really affect the actual game-play, it’s basically just an aesthetic feature. As for fitting into Half-Life, HL2: DM has 3rd-person camera for death & going from that to TF2’s Deathcam isn’t much of a stretch of the imagination. But i’d probably only end up preferring that if I found first-person ragdolling too nauseating. :stuck_out_tongue:

#17

it really be awsome that when you get killed you see the camera aproach the player that killed you:3

#18

Actually, that does sound like a pretty nifty thing to do with the few seconds after death… would make an interesting suggestion in a more focused thread.

As for here, right now I’m wondering what the official stance on BM-team-DM will be, and how the team-location-spawning method would work for it.

#19

I would suggest the ability to click to cycle through respawn locations within a time-limit, but there is bound to be a complaint by someone on this forum over that idea.

One issue I can think of is spawning at your favourite place constantly, that can be fixed by removing each spawn location everytime the player dies until there is none left then they all reappear.

#20

I’d have to say nay to that, players shouldn’t have any control over where they materialize… it’d just slow down gameplay. The only goal should be to make it so wherever they DO materialize, they won’t be prone to immediate death.

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