Guide to Respawn Areas

[Furious D 18]

[anchor=top]

Respawn Areas
Everything you ever wanted to know about respawn areas.

Some of this stuff is more theory than fact. Read theMallet's thread for more theories.


Quick Links

• [iurl=#one]What are respawn areas?[/iurl]
• [iurl=#two]Why should I use respawn areas?[/iurl]
• [iurl=#three]How should I place respawn areas?[/iurl]
• [iurl=#four]What are all those settings for?[/iurl]
• [iurl=#five]What is the “spawn order” feature?[/iurl]
• [iurl=#six][u]Final Comments and special features.

[anchor=one]
What are respawn areas?

Respawn Areas are special invisible objects placed into a map to influence which Respawn Point will be used when a player needs to respawn. Respawn Areas alter the traits of Respawn Points. You still need the Respawn Points to tell the game exactly where a player will respawn and which direction they will face. Respawn Areas should contain several Respawn Points.

Respawn Areas can be used to apply special traits to all of the Respawn Points inside them. That will be discussed later in this article.

Respawn Areas are gametype-dependant, like goal objects. That means that each gametype has its own Respawn Areas. That way, you can make sure that each gametype functions exactly the way you want it to.

[iurl=#top]Back to Top[/iurl]

[anchor=two]
Why should I use respawn areas?

According to Bungie, “When Halo 3 tries to spawn (or respawn) a player, it takes a lot of things into account, like where teammates or enemies are standing, if there are dangerous things nearby, and so on. We call these influences.” It then spawns the player as far away from dangerous influences as possible. The farthest point is usually a Respawn Point in a corner somewhere. That means that respawning can get incredibly predictable, especially in small maps or head-to-head matches.

When respawing gets predictable, spawn camping becomes an issue. Also, if a player consistently respawns in the same spot, that player will get bored and frustrated with your map. A variety of spawning locations will make you map more balanced and more fun for players. Respawn Areas help you create respawn location variability.

[iurl=#top]Back to Top[/iurl]

[anchor=three]
How should I place respawn areas?

How you place Respawn Areas depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your map. First let’s examine how to place Respawn Areas for a symmetrical map designed for two opposing teams.

How many times have you been playing Multi-Flag CTF on someone’s map and you respawned inside their base? That was probably because they had not placed any respawn areas. If enemies were in your base, the game would want to spawn you as far away from the dangerous influences as possible, and that would be at the enemy base.

To make sure players always respawn on their own turf, set up Respawn Areas and change the team traits. Red Team will always be Defenders on symmetrical game types, and Blue Team will always be Attackers on symmetrical game types. On asymmetrical game types, Red starts as Defenders but then functions under the Attackers traits on the second round.

The game will still want to respawn players far away from danger, but it will only spawn them inside their own Repsawn Area. The only way a player will respawn outside of the Respawn Area is if every Respawn Point within the area is blocked by another player or object. That’s why it’s important to have many Respawn Points within each Respawn Area.



Now let’s examine how to place Respawn Areas for a free-for-all (FFA) arena map. In FFA games, you want to enable all players to respawn at any point on the map. All Respawn Areas should be set to Neutral.

As always, Halo 3 will want to spawn players as far from danger as possible. That usually means that players will respawn in corners of the map. To make sure that more Respawn Points get used, you need to restrict which Points are available. You can do that with Respawn Areas.



With a Respawn Area, the game will still spawn players far from danger, but it is given fewer Respawn Points to choose from. You’ll respawn closer to your enemy than you normally would, but your location won’t be as predictable. By using multiple Respawn Areas in order, players will respawn closer to enemies, but the respawn locations will be far less predictable. Respawn Area order will be discussed later.



We’ve all experienced “bad spawns.” That’s when you respawn very near to an enemy. This happens when there are too few Respawn Points inside a Respawn Area. The game wants to spawn you far from danger, but it has a very limited number of Points to choose from, so it does the best it can. To minimize the frequency of bad spawns, include as many Respawn Points as possible and make the Respawn Area cover many different areas of the map.

For example, if you have a small room you want players to spawn in, make sure the Respawn Area covers a few Respawn Points outside of the room too. If you don’t, and there is an enemy inside the room, a player will respawn in there anyway and experience a bad spawn. By extending the Respawn Area outside of the room, players will probably spawn in there but will also spawn outside if it is occupied by an enemy.

The best way to set up Respawn Areas for a FFA map is to place them so they cover “slivers” of the map. That way you can force players to respawn at certain Respawn Points, but the Respawn Area covers a large enough portion of the map that the game can still spawn players away from danger.



[iurl=#top]Back to Top[/iurl]

[anchor=four]
What are all those settings for?

If you highlight a Respawn Area in Edit mode and press X, you’ll see a window open, displaying several useful options.
Team: Use this to make sure Attackers and Defenders respawn on their respective sides.
Shape: Respawn Areas can be set as Cylinders or Boxes. You can edit the Width and Depth of the Box shape to create any kind of rectangle you want. Or you can edit the Radius of the Cylinder shape.
Top and Bottom: Use this to set the height of the Respawn Area. A great way to make sure a player won’t respawn next to an enemy is to have the Respawn Area contain Respawn Points on several different floors of a building.
Spawn Order: Use this to set the order in which the Respawn Area becomes active. This is discussed later.
Symmetry: Use this to set different Respawn Areas for symmetrical games or asymmetrical games.

[iurl=#top]Back to Top[/iurl]

[anchor=five]
What is the “spawn order” feature?

Some of this information was deduced from my own experiences with respawn areas, and some of it comes from Bungie. But I've recently discovered that there is much we still don't know about respawn areas. This information is our best guess right now, and it isn't totally accurate. This is how it should work, but it doesn't always work right.

When a player is first killed, the game selects the Respawn Area with the lowest number (default 0) and determines the best place to spawn the player within that Area. The next time that player dies, the game selects the next highest Respawn Area and determines the best place to spawn the player within that Area. It continues to cycle through the Respawn Areas until it reaches the highest number and then starts the cycle over again.

By placing Respawn Areas in a specific order and in specific locations, you can have incredible control of how the game progresses. And by placing Respawn Areas in a specific order so that they zigzag across the map randomly, you can make it incredibly difficult to predict player respawn locations. To predict the respawn location, a player would need to memorize the Respawn Point locations, the areas that the different Respawn Areas cover, the order they are set to, and how many times a player has died so far. Good luck!

EDIT: I recently ran some detailed tests to try and get some more information about how this worked in the whole "spawn order" thing was a monumental failure. I'm pretty sure that they way I described it is the way it is supposed to work, but it simply doesn't work that way. I think there is a lot more randomness than Bungie implied. I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on this.

[iurl=#top]Back to Top[/iurl]

[anchor=six]
Final Comments

There are two last things I wanted to mention. First is the special features of Capture The Flag gametype. You may have noticed that there are special “Flag Home” and “Flag Away” Respawn Areas for CTF. The game will select a different Respawn Area depending on whether or not your team’s flag is on its stand. Use these Respawn Areas so that Attackers don’t have Defenders respawning all around them once they get the flag off the stand. Also, it gives the Defenders one last chance to stop the flag carrier if they can respawn closer to the Attacker base once their flag is on the move.

The other special feature I wanted to mention is in the Territories gametype. According to Bungie, “the territories themselves have a built in respawn zone which belongs to the team that currently controls the territory. It is invisible, and about 10 meters in radius. So if there are respawn points nearby, you can in fact spawn at a territory you control, even if your team’s respawn zone is on the other side of the map.”

I hope this helps you understand Respawn Areas a little better. The variability of respawns is such an important part of a great map, but it is often overlooked because it is practically invisible. Respawns can make or break a map, and they are often the difference between good maps and great maps. Hopefully people implement the information in this article. I look forward to the positive influence this information has on the quality of future maps.

Read Bungie’s horribly incomplete description of Respawn Areas here, halfway down the page.

[Orangeremi]

[color=orange]Wow, amazing. You actually came up with all this? This is great information, and the visual always helps. I am very glad you made this. I didn't know half of this, being the investigative one I am. I appreciate this post, and everything it has to say. Unfortunately, it won't get nearly as much credit as it deserves. I want more!

[Bllasae]

Pretty cool tutorial, thanks :).

[Furious D 18]

Thanks guys. I wonder how many people will actually read that whole thing.

By the way, if anyone who is skilled with Photoshop wants to make a better tombstone for Spawn Camping, I'd love to replace my crappy MS Paint version.

[squidhands]

Nicely written, Furious. I had no idea you'd have this out so fast.

As you know, I have somewhat of an issue with the priority feature of the respawn areas. Looking back through the Reverse Engineering Research Team findings on this subject seemed to prove my theory that the priority levels don't seem to really matter in the majority of the gametypes; the game puts you in the respawn area that it deems is the safest for you to respawn, regardless of its priority. And to me, that's the same as leaving all of the respawn areas set to their default 0 settings. I understand the need for priority in CTF settings or when setting up a gametype where you want to create an area to force players to respawn (as in Attackers for Infection), but it seems that in most of the other gametype settings, it just doesn't seem necessary to me.

I am completely and utterly sold on the respawn areas. As you so eloquently put it, it's what separates good maps from great maps. I know this post will finally give people some excellent advice on how to deal with this problem. Maybe it should take the place of another post that talks nonsense about algorithms and pastries. I've got to get this priority thing figured out; I'm slowly becoming obsessed with it. It has been festering in my brain like a bad tooth and I can't seem to stop touching it with my tongue. ow...ow...

P.S. I read the whole thing. Twice.

EDIT: I had to put this up after I did an image search for 'spawn camping'.

[xXmooregamesXx]

This is great! There is no way you won't be a guilder. With posts like these? We can't afford not to have a guilder like you. :)

[Nemihara]

Thanks for making an article on this a week after I slaved away testing respawn zoning myself. ;(
Great article. It clears up the respawn zones a lot.
Furious D, I can make you a nice tombstone thingy. Photoshop CS3 FTW.

[Furious D 18]

Originally Posted by squidhands

I've got to get this priority thing figured out; I'm slowly becoming obsessed with it.

Important: It is the order that the zones are used, not their priority. The system cycles through them sequentially. It does not favor one over the other. I was confused about this as well.

If you want one area to be used more often, make multiple areas with the same dimensions and give them different numbers. Like if I wanted people to spawn in lots of different areas but in the front of the base more frequently, I could set it up like this:

Respawn Order
1 - Front of Base
2 - Catwalk
3 - Front of Base
4 - Front of Base
5 - Back of Base
6 - Front of Base
7 - Outside Base

In that example, there would be 4 respawn areas with the same dimensions and they would be numbered 1,3, 4, and 6.

[gorebound]

Absolutely marvelous post D. Unfortunately I've only read about 3 / 4 of it but I really have to go to bed now ;P. I'll read the rest of it tomorrow. God Bless Furious!

[Draw the Line]

Its about time someone created a useful article like this. This should certainly be posted in the "Forging 101" section. Very useful. The community could certainly use spawning help, as many overlook that final process.