well, i was playin dod today and people were complaining about none of the official maps having spawn protection, so i started thinking of ways you could simply stop players from getting in, but still getting out. Then i thought of making a giant displacement facing outwards to the spawn, and applying a invisible texture to it. i tried it, and it worked. players can go out of the spawn, but cant get back in. the only problem was that you could climb up the entire thing because of the triangles :-P but if you just make the triangles real small you cant do that. anyway, just thought i would throw that out there.

Originally posted by PanFrie
well, i was playin dod today and people were complaining about none of the official maps having spawn protection, so i started thinking of ways you could simply stop players from getting in, but still getting out. Then i thought of making a giant displacement facing outwards to the spawn, and applying a invisible texture to it. i tried it, and it worked. players can go out of the spawn, but cant get back in. the only problem was that you could climb up the entire thing because of the triangles :-P but if you just make the triangles real small you cant do that. anyway, just thought i would throw that out there. Whoa... now THAT is a cool idea!

I knew you could go through the "bottom" of a displacement, but it never occured to me that you could use it as spawn protection.

To the problem of players "climbing up", you could just make a flat wall, create a displacement on one side, but not displace it at all. It's still a displacement either way. That way you keep the "wall" effect as well as the spawn protection.

NICE idea!!! :)

haha nice, wonder why no ones thought of this sooner! Good work buddy!

What would be an invisible tex you would use? NODRAW gives an error doesn't it?

yea, you would need an invisible texture.

I mean, if I searched for one in the filter, what would I put in there?

I'm eager to try this idea out, Panfrie :D

Originally posted by Ol' Noodle Head
I mean, if I searched for one in the filter, what would I put in there?

I'm eager to try this idea out, Panfrie :D

Try "invisible", the official maps use them on the back of their 5 sided displacements, not sure why, but it's there.

Originally posted by Ol' Noodle Head
I mean, if I searched for one in the filter, what would I put in there?

I'm eager to try this idea out, Panfrie :D

oh yea.. uhhh, i dunno, i tried to get one but it turned out to be a wire brush :-P

I'ts a cool way. Half of what mapping is about involves finding new ways to achieve conventional methods.

Have you considered putting a normal brush in and tieing it to a trigger_push?

They have support for filters, so you could put a big brush in with a high "push/speed" value and setup the filter to keep out the other team. That means the team can walk back into their spawn but the enemy can't.

thats the easy way of doing it :-P

Trigger pushes are OK but can be defeated. Too much of a push and the guys leaving the spawn are shot like a cannon and the net trafic is pretty high (that and it looks silly), too little and you can push through them from the other side. Having an invisible displacement brush is OK but it also means the spawn guy could sit back in the spawn and shoot out but nobody on the outside could shoot him back. There has to be a better way. Mugsy is looking at a way to have a one-way only brush that would allow a person to pass one-way but not allow weapons effects to pass through either way.

My sense is this problem is one reason why we don't have mortars in the game...too easy to spam the spawn zones.

If the push brush is big enough, then by the time the player has pushed through the opposing team will have come round the corner and shot him down!

There has to be a value thats just perfect for it, that won't shoot players accross the map but also will put enough force on so that it just takes ages for the player to get accross. If they do, there will be a nice trigger_hurt waiting on the other side :)

well the problem with the trigger_hurt is that the dev team doesn't want to have that invisible kill thingy going on. this way would stop people from going in but not comming out. and as for the mortar thing, couldn't they just make a special brush that if the mortar hit it the it would go off? then just cover the spawn with it?

Originally posted by FuzzDad
Having an invisible displacement brush is OK but it also means the spawn guy could sit back in the spawn and shoot out but nobody on the outside could shoot him back. There has to be a better way. Mugsy is looking at a way to have a one-way only brush that would allow a person to pass one-way but not allow weapons effects to pass through either way.How about have the exact thing except have the PLAYERCLIP texture applied to it instead? Clips the player going back into spawn, but lets everything else through.

Originally posted by FuzzDad
Mugsy is looking at a way to have a one-way only brush that would allow a person to pass one-way but not allow weapons effects to pass through either way.

cool ... dod:s needs this sort of thing.

Originally posted by StreamlineData
How about have the exact thing except have the PLAYERCLIP texture applied to it instead? Clips the player going back into spawn, but lets everything else through.

Not sure...I've built test maps with just about everything under the sun and my method of kill zones that are clearly marked and require a pre-meditated action (like jump into them) still appeals to me. All the others have "issues" that require a second or third method of warning. A player has to be thick not to get it after the first death-by-FD deal. It works, there's no spawn camping, and I love the sight of a crossbones kill as some doofus tries to follow a player back into spawn after the round ends. Even noobs get it after the first spawn death ("Ohhhh...I guess I'm not supposed to go there").

Originally posted by FuzzDad
Not sure...I've built test maps with just about everything under the sun and my method of kill zones that are clearly marked and require a pre-meditated action (like jump into them) still appeals to me. All the others have "issues" that require a second or third method of warning. A player has to be thick not to get it after the first death-by-FD deal. It works, there's no spawn camping, and I love the sight of a crossbones kill as some doofus tries to follow a player back into spawn after the round ends. Even noobs get it after the first spawn death ("Ohhhh...I guess I'm not supposed to go there"). Yeah.. I'd have to agree. Just putting up some kind of barricade then sticking a really large trigger_hurt is ALOT more effective. Which is why I also use (and prefer) that method.

It's still a really interesting idea though.

Originally posted by FuzzDad
A player has to be thick not to get it after the first death-by-FD deal. It works, there's no spawn camping, and I love the sight of a crossbones kill as some doofus tries to follow a player back into spawn after the round ends. Even noobs get it after the first spawn death ("Ohhhh...I guess I'm not supposed to go there").

Amen to that!

However what Mugsy is working on sounds like the perfect solution :dog:

I'd love to see the game_text's working! We can at least warn players then!

In my honest opinion, spawn protection is an overhyped issue. If the maps allow an enemy to actually see the players spawn then the mapper should make it sure that there aren't too many spawn exits which would give the enemy that much leniency in sneaking in. A team should hold off an enemy that close to their spawn, let alone inside... and if they can't, then the map has other balancing issues. Dod is such a control based game and the spawning team definitely has the "control".

For smaller games like 5v5 I'd understand how it could become a problem though.

Perhaps its just me, but i reckon it'd be nice if, during bonus rounds, the team that won the round could go freely into the enemies spawn...

If that were implemented, I'm pretty sure that we'd see more of people rushing out of their spawns quick-smart to defend their last flag, rather than spendin that last precious minute deciding on a spot to hide in their spawn while their team loses the round...

Originally posted by Lerning

If that were implemented, I'm pretty sure that we'd see more of people rushing out of their spawns quick-smart to defend their last flag, rather than spendin that last precious minute deciding on a spot to hide in their spawn while their team loses the round...

That happens? Thats terrible.:eek:

Heh, yeah it does, and it's frustrating to no end...
It pretty much only happens with the greener players.. but.. Who's the type of player the game was catered to when it was reworked?? I won't say anymore... (not a gripe or a dig.. a tactic is a tactic, i get it... I'm just sayin...)

I got sick of the losing team all going into spec when the bonusround kicked in, so added an eventscript to turn specs off at the start of the bonusround and turn them back on when the next round starts.

The downside to that Colster is probably that no one can enter your server when the spec mode is disabled. I do realize it's only a matter of seconds though, but I wonder what kinda message a player would get in such a config. Full server?

Spec mode has nothing to do with slots available.
You've never played a server that's disabled spec mode altogether?

Spec mode off doesnt stop ppl joining, we have two maps (crossfire and runoff) that have airstrikes/nukes in them, ppl often used to go into spec to dodge that so we now run a config to turn specs off for that map, it has never caused a problem for ppl joining.

2 things that i can think of is making the spawn exits less accessible ... meaning increase the high or drop or somethign

or why not just impliment something like 1.3 has ... with magic guns shooting you

Ive not looked into this yet myself, but is it not possible to copy how the force field things in HL2 worked (where combine could walk thru either way but not Gordon or rebels, also these could be fired through). Also the force field would need changin so its entirely transparent.

Just a thought, maybe the entity isnt in DOD:S, I havent checked.

Originally posted by MrT
Ive not looked into this yet myself, but is it not possible to copy how the force field things in HL2 worked (where combine could walk thru either way but not Gordon or rebels, also these could be fired through). Also the force field would need changin so its entirely transparent.

Just a thought, maybe the entity isnt in DOD:S, I havent checked. The combine are just models, scripts and ents. You can make a brush that could let models through, if you wanted. The rebels are also just models.. and it's also just scripts and ents to tell them where to go. They could probably go thru the forcefield if they wanted, but that isn't part of the storyline.