BMDM: Spawnsystem

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

Hey.
Yesterday I tested my BMDM crossfire remake and I noticed that you have a different system for player respawns in BMDM.
I’m not sure but to me it seems totally random.
At the first glance totally random spawns seem a good choice for a deathmatch game but from my experience I would say that good knowledge about the spawn-system (if it isn’t completely random) can seperate masterful players from good players. Knowing the spawn-chain on a map can give you a significant advantage over your opponent (for example in a 1 vs 1 game on crossfire).

In Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 the respawn-system for players worked like this:
In each map you have a fix sequence of playerspawns (it’s the same order like when you decompile the map and click “entity report” in hammer). When you kill your opponent, he will most likely spawn on the next spawn in the row (unless the spawn is blocked by a different player, then you will respawn on one of the next 5 following spawns). In HL1 competetive community this is common knowledge and good players who investigate a map’s playerrespawns and practise a lot vs bots (spawnkill an easy difficulty bot as fast as possible to learn the playerspawn-rotation) and in duels vs real opponents, get a great advantage compared to casual players.

Ofc you also have different options to design a player respawn-system.
I know in QuakeLive your enemy always respawns on the furthest spawn away from you. This can also be abused for your own advantage: For example you can move to the left side of the map right after you killed your enemy. When he respawns, you know that he will be somewhere in the right half of the map. This way you can make your enemy respawn in weak areas to not give him any option to get nice items.

In Reflex (a new CPMA-style arena-shooter) they have almost random spawns. I say almost because in the end you can respawn anywhere, but it’s more likely to respawn further away from your opponent.
Not sure how exactly this is coded but it seems a to be a nice way for player respawns.

So my questions are:

  1. How do player respawns work in black mesa: deathmatch?
  2. Will we be able to disable deathcam in future? (In my opinion this is a bad feature and should not be in the game) Deaths could look like in HL1 or HL2DM if deathcam is off…
  3. Will we be able to enable fast respawning (no respawn delay) in future?
  4. Can you add a server option for “random respawns on/off”? If you turn random respawns off, respawns should work like in HL1 and HL2DM (like I discribed above)…
#2

interesting topic. i have to say that the spawnsystem in half life is enjoyable. in the end it mostly only effects 1on1 games, cause u cant hold track of the spawns in teammatches or free for all anyway. though i have never tried to learn any spawnchains its still nice to have a row of kills on crossfire just by having it anchored somewhere in the back of your mind. i dont know any exact spawnchain though.
I know that it works about like this: “high chance to spawn on the next spawn” - if not - then: “high chance to spawn on the following spawn” // and so on.

anyway, talking about the deathcam. it is in fact the thing that makes black mesa deathmatch the most unejoyable for me. when you are playing a deathmatch you generally dont have much of a goal, except KILL KILL KILL // SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT. so its a lot about action. the deathcam however, takes you out of the gameflow each time.

#3

It’s not only about the gameflow… The deathcam also tells you your enemies health, armor, weapon and position… It’s a lot of free information which should not be given away for free… In Half-Life 1 you can sometimes camp really effectively with the crossbow, because you don’t have tracer effects on zoomed crossbow shots ( it allows you to hide in the background and pick off kills while staying undiscovered). So if you kill an enemy with crossbow from a good position and hide right after you done your frag, the enemy might not know where he got killed from… The deathcam however, gives him all the information he needs…

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.