Random Spawn Points

[dullestbulb]

After my first map attempt called for to much redesign, I have decided to start a new map. Being an original xbox owner (no xbox360) i racked up many hours on xbox live playing halo 2, usually the map Lockout. To me this map is a pure work of art, with the many different platforms and routes, not to mention the balance, I felt i had to port it over to tf2. The layout recreation was not bad and only took a few days of work, not including textures and the other details of course (still trying to apply a tf2 touch). As of right now I am working on the basics of the game play within the map. Everything is working somewhat smoothly. The game style is a type of keep away with a single flag, allowing movement throughout the entire map, and needing no modification to the lockout layout its self. EXCEPT the way players spawn. One of the biggest differences between the halos and tf2 is the way players spawn, in that halo spawns players in random spots. Is there anyway to make it so that when a player needs to re-spawn they can be re-spawned at any random available re-spawn point? With the layout and the game type of the map as it is right now there would be no easy way of incorporating spawn rooms without disrupting the flow of game play. I attempted using the team_spawn entities placed throughout the map with both teams enabled however every single player in the game would spawn to a single spot, eventually leading to spawn camping.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[World Of Frisbee Crisis]

I'd think you could just put func_respawnrooms in the spots you want them to spawn, and not set the teams of them to any specific team, just to Any.

Then you'd just put the player spawn entities in those func_respawnrooms and set them to Any, like you did with the respawns.

 

[trainRiderJ]

func_respawnroom is only used when you have an actual room to spawn in, in order to let players change their class in spawn and not have to sit through a respawn timer.

All you should need to do is scatter a bunch of info_player_spawn entities around the map, with the team set to "any".

Given that this is team fortress after all, you may want to consider ditching the random spawn points and create some traditional spawn rooms, because who wants to spawn in the middle of wherever some team decides they want to sit with the intel.

 

[l3eeron]

I strongly suggest you keep the spawn rooms with func_respawns and utilize the visualizer as well. Spawn camping would turn your map into not fun.

Maybe your solution, albeit a big task... would be to make a whole bunch a mini spawn rooms people can spawn in randomly. There are logic entities to randomly pick a respawn rooms to activate.

Even porting a TFC map to TF2 is a huge challenge. There are always things that need to be modified to fit the TF2 gameplay. Dont be afraid to stray from the original map to enhance the intended TF2 game mode.

 

[trainRiderJ]

"Mini" spawn rooms scattered around the map sounds good too. I would suggest making the doors one-way or not even bother with resupply cabinets, so players can't reenter their own spawn areas for unlimited health and ammo across the map. You can copy-paste the entire room and all entities within, then find and replace "1" with "2" if you've named everything appropriately.

 

[dullestbulb]

I think i may go with the mini spawn rooms spread throughout the map idea, just to keep it as close to the original lockout as possible. Surprisingly this map, minus the spawn points, ported over very nicely. I have tested it on a server a few times and the balance was pretty well with the scouts usually being the intel carriers and the other classes being headhunters or defenders of the carrier. I even got the most dreaded aspect of the getting the gravity-lift working within an hour. I'll begin to work on the spawn points later this weekend and will probably be asking more questions later. Anyways thanks for your ideas.

 

[trainRiderJ]

If you go forward with that idea, I would suggest making a set for each team, otherwise the beginning of the map will pretty much be retarded with everyone killing each other on start. Also, you don't want people of opposite teams spawning on top of each other.

An alternative would be some sort of logic ruleset that only allows a given spawn point to spawn players once every 10-15 seconds or so. I have no idea if this is possible though.