Best Practices For Map Design Workflow

When designing a map, it is best to follow a workflow that allows you to have the

least issues when it comes to non-tangibles, such as objectives and spawning.

WHEN LEARNING:

Place all of your objectives FIRST, somewhere out of the way (where you don't plan on your map being, such as the Coliseum, unless of course you decide to use that area, which I myself have). Then place some spawn points with them, don't worry too much about areas unless the game type requires them (I am, of course, talking about Hill Markers tagged as respawn areas and not Respawn Zones themselves). Now that you have the nuts and bolts of the map placed, test it to make sure you've done things correctly; does the grid/shield disappear after the second Invasion stage? Does the Blue Team spawn in the correct place(s) when their flag is away? home? If the answers are agreeable, begin to design the actual framework of your map and follow the rest of the proposed workflow, ending with moving the already placed objectives and spawns to the correct areas instead of doing their initial placements, or, if you feel that your mind works on a wavelength to far from mine, the one you have essentially asked for help by reading this, go ahead and shoot in the dark. Of course, if you are more comfortable with your own order of operations, please adhere to it, I'm just taking the opportunity to be an ass.

Can Haz Game Type Specific? [Updated 9/30/10]

Because this thread seems to, for some reason be the most popular out of all of them, and because I receive zero feed back, I'm going to assume that this is due to people misunderstanding that this is where the information on making maps compatible is located. You are looking for the Visual Aides and Chart of Tags located in links to the left in the Site Navigation Bar.


Now, onto the nitty gritty. How to make items, like the tank, a man cannon, or a wall, etc spawn only in the game types you want someone to be able to use them. Say you want to block a certain path in Assault, or make it so that the "lucky" spawn only happens in FFA, this is how you would do it.

Making it so that Items only spawn in certain game types:

1) When entering Forge, make sure to select the game type you want to

restrict the item to, otherwise the tags you need will not show up.

2) Place, or select, the item you would like to make specific to that game type,

enter the edit mode (x), select Advanced.

3) Set game type specific to True and set the Tag to a game type specific

permutation (selection/variant, for those of you who didn"t get stuck reading

the dictionary in detention). Examples: "koth_hill" in King of the Hill for a Hill

Marker corresponding to the Hill itself or the "invasion" Tag in Invasion (the

latter of which changes nothing about the object except that it specifies that

it is only supposed to spawn in Invasion game types; these exist for all game types).

The tags for "team_only" and "ffa_only" are best accessed via Slayer editing, but will still effect game types like Oddball and Headhunter (examples of other game types that use both).

This will also effect your Forge experience.


If an object is set to the "infection" tag AND game type specific is true, it will not appear if you are editing in the Invasion game type, but will still be there. It will still appear in Basic Editing, which makes for a really great way to refine maps after testing them because you can test multiple game types, make a list, and then go back and fix it.

Spawning [1/12/2011]

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Keep in Mind:

1) You MUST have spawn points placed for spawn areas to work.

2) If you do not place initial spawns, your players will spawn in points predetermined by Bungie's design (usually where initial spawn points are in the original map variant), and the same goes for respawn points.

3) Respawn Zones = Basically irrelevant in Invasion.


4) Spawn Ordering does not effect Spawn Points or Spawn Zones (however, it plays a major role in the Spawn Areas used in Invasion).

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Respawn Zones: divide maps into areas that, utilizing data from

current activity on the map, assist players in spawning away from danger, can be set to only influence a certain team or be neutral and effect all.

Normal (Respawn Zone): Most powerful Influencer; with one of these placed on the map, players will spawn within it no matter the level of danger in the area. Best used to divide maps into team territories (not directly relating to Territories Game Type), or sides, while then placing Weak and Anti Zones within, set to neutral, to further influence spawning.

Weak Respawn Zone: Has an additive effect upon chance of spawning a player in a location when stacked on a Normal Zone and is half the power of a Normal Zone. When using the stacked grid method (example in visual aide below), they are best left neutral.

Anti Respawn Zone: If set to a team, it will make it so that that specific team

will not be able to spawn in that area. (useful for making it so that teams

can"t switch bases in the middle of a game, as would happen many times

during games of Slayer on Valhalla and Sandtrap in Halo 3). Has an subtractive effect upon chance of spawning a player in a location when stacked on a Normal Zone and is equal and opposite to the Weak Zone in this respect. When using the stacked grid method (example in visual aide below), they are best left neutral.

Basically, I would say to define each team's side of the map with large Respawn Zones set to their team and then use Anti Respawn Zones to define areas where you would not like players to spawn as often and then use Weak Zones to give priority to areas such as bases, or out of the way paths, keeping the latter two types Neutral, like below. Placing priority on safer areas will make players apwn there more often, but will allow them to spawn elsewhere if those areas become too dangerous.

STACKING:

The stacking effect of Spawn Zones will only occur if a Regular (Strong) Respawn Zone has been placed and if it is part of the stacked pieces, unless you are simply overlapping an Anti with a Weak, in which case the area of the overlap will have them cancelled out by each other.

If you place a Weak on/in a Strong, it will become stronger, another Weak will make it stronger yet, the same goes for an Anti, but in the opposite direction. Weak's and Anti's would still cancel each other out in this situation. I would advise against going further than two layers of Weak's and Anti's on your Strong Zone.

Quoted from O'Than:

Overlapping Zones
Using only Weak and Anti zones together can never have an effect greater than one single Weak or Anti zone. They DO cancel each other out though.

Weak + Anti = 0
Weak + Weak = Weak
Anti + Anti = Anti

UNLESS...
there is already a strong zone in the same area. Then they combine as you would expect:

Strong + Weak > Strong
Strong + Weak + Weak > Strong + Weak
Strong + Anti < Strong
Strong + Anti + Anti < Strong + Anti

And finally, two strong zones don't ever combine. 

I might have highlighted something, but you would have noticed for yourself. (will never)

OTHER NOTES:

Players also have and AoE where they themselves influence spawn behavior,  a comparison of strengths (no scale of power is available yet), is below, quoted from my post in O'Than's Forge World Group. It can be seen here.

Teammate*<Weak/Anti Respawn Zone
Weak/Anti Respawn Zone<Enemy* **
Enemy* **<Dead Teammate/Self
Dead Teammate/Self<<<<Respawn Zone

*Stacks per instance
**Varies Per Weapon and L.o.S.

Projectiles, such as rockets, also have a negative influence, surrounding and preceding them.

A player's spawn influence doesn't affect the zones they are in directly, but is as if they have a zone of influence themselves, that travels with them, is adjusted per their L.o.S. and Weapon as well as per their living status, and will apply its effect as stacked upon other existing zones of influence, including those of other players.

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OTHER SPAWN ITEMS:

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Kill and Safe Zones: 


As explained by Bungie, if you place a Safe Zone, any time a player is outside of it, they will die, or begin their timer, and if a Kill Zone is placed inside a Safe Zone, it will take precedence. Best practice is to use Soft Safe Zones (with a countdown) to define the playable areas, Soft Kill Zones to denote areas where you would rather players not go/camp, such as roof tops, and Hard Kill Zones so that players die when they fall off the map (think The Cage). Using Hard Safe Zones tends to lead to too many problems and many Jetpackers dying seemingly randomly for poking their head out of your proposed "ceiling". You also want to take into consideration that using a Hard Safe Zone coupled with Soft Zones is essentially the same as using Hard Safe Zones alone; as soon as you leave, you will die, no countdown, which is yet another argument to avoid Hard Safe Zones unless you have a very specific application.

REMEMBER TO OVERLAP SAFE ZONES.

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Initial Loadout Camera: 


Shows a view of the map during the choosing of

initial spawn loadouts and occasionally spawning in general. Place one per team 

AND one Neutral so that a good view of the teams bases, respectively, and the

map. (Make sure to have one of these placed so that the attacking and defending teams in Invasion can see their objectives and begin to formulate paths to them while waiting to spawn).

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IMPORTANT:

Use Respawn Zones to design the bare-bones spawning grid (it is good to overlap spawn points into multiple Zones), game type specific spawning areas are better defined via Hill Markers; tags for those can be found in the Tagging Chart located in the Sidebar to the left and in the Invasion Guide below that.

Take note that some of the tags are not for spawning persons or even for use with Hill Markers, even though they may work, such as flag capture points and such; it is much better to spawn Bombs, Cores, Oddballs, and place Skull and Flag Capture points and Bomb Plant points on the Flag Capture Point object (disc with UNSC logo) and only spawning FLAGS on Flag Stands (And even then only in Stockpile). Also, for Skull and Flag Capture and Bomb Plant points, make sure to set an area so that the players will be able to score.