Spawnkill Prevention

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FiringSquad
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Spawnkill Prevention

Post by FiringSquad »

It would be nice not to get killed immediately upon spawning.
Perhaps for a short time period after spawning, the tank should be able to move, but not shoot or pick up a flag and that during this period you cannot be shot.
This would give you enough time to manouver and avoid incoming shots.
I'd say 2 seconds would be enough.
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macsforme
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Post by macsforme »

Maybe a plugin that give all the enemy tanks a bouncy flag right after a capture? :-)
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TD-Linux
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Post by TD-Linux »

You'll probably all kill me for this, but I think spawnkilling is good sometimes. It's a reward for CTF'ing :)
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Post by Macrosoft »

what about the random spawnkilling?...example: two tanks shooting at each other. you happen to spawn right in the path of enemy fire...so you die the moment you spawn...having no chance to react...its pretty unfair.

hmm... instead of temporary invincibility when you spawn...make the tank invincible to all bullets that were fired before you spawned...but any bullets that are fired after you spawn can kill you.
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Post by Hannibal »

Macrosoft wrote:what about the random spawnkilling?...example: two tanks shooting at each other. you happen to spawn right in the path of enemy fire...so you die the moment you spawn...having no chance to react...its pretty unfair.
Sure, it sucks, but it sucks equally for everyone. And, there is something you can do about it..wait a few more seconds/respawn earlier.
Games don't make people violent, lag does.
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Post by macsforme »

TD-Linux wrote:You'll probably all kill me for this, but I think spawnkilling is good sometimes. It's a reward for CTF'ing :)
Hehe, yeah it can be fun, and is a nice incentive to work together with your team. :-) In general, I'm in favor of allowing almost all kinds of playing (including camping) that are within the normal limits of the client. This WOULD NOT include things like the screenshot cheat, or code modifications obviously. Makes it easier for newbies to learn, and allows the more experienced players to delve deeper and come up with new, cool strategies. :-)
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Post by Triumph of the Soul »

When you think about it, safe spawn areas are a better choice than invincible spawning because once you stop being invincible you will just be shot. You would only prolong your imminent death.

Being invincible after spawning would be pointless because the problem really being addressed here is camping. Dieing is only a miserable side effect of camping. By making your tank invincible, you are only treating the symptoms of the problem and not the problem itself. If camping is such a huge problem, you really only have three options to choose from:

- Do not play at the map where you get camped.
- Have the map maker make a safe-spawn area that is free of spawn campers.
- Face the campers and think of creative ways to combat them.
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Post by Hannibal »

Safe-spawn areas wouldnt work on a map such as the Passion, where I think most people see the stray-bullet-kills-newly-spawned-tank phenomenon. You'd just get enemies sitting outside the safe area, or a person who doesnt leave the safe area, and nothings been solved.
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Post by L4m3r »

Spawnkills basically come down to two problems:

Spawn camping, as mentioned, which can be prevented rather effectively with good map design. Generally it's a good idea to have large spawn zones, cover, etc. Huge tracts of open space opens the field to laser camping, small spawn zones contribute to SW/SR/general camping, etc etc.

Accidental spawnkills could be remedied by improving the spawn algorithm. Hopefully 2.2 will ship with an improved algorithm that makes use of the planned server state improvements for 2.1.
Optimism is just a milder alternative to denial.
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Post by asciimonster »

I have suggested this before:
http://my.bzflag.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=9391&highlight=

I'm not shure what happend to the suggestion, but I stil think it needs to be implemented ESTASAP (Even sooner than ASAP).
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Post by joevano »

asciimonster wrote:I have suggested this before:
http://my.bzflag.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=9391&highlight=

I'm not shure what happend to the suggestion, but I stil think it needs to be implemented ESTASAP (Even sooner than ASAP).
Patches welcome...

The developers work on what they are interested in. Suggestions here are just that. If you want to see it implemented, head out to IRC to talk about how YOU want to do it, discuss options and the like, code it up, and submit a patch. That is the only sure way (assuming you patch is accepted by the developers) to get something into the code.

That being said... I think it is an unnecessary feature. There are ways to protect against spawn killing, as stated above. I would blame the map maker. Spawn killing was a huge problem when Lasermania first became popular, a few creative map tweaks later the problem was gone.
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Post by FiringSquad »

asciimonster wrote:I have suggested this before:
http://my.bzflag.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=9391&highlight=
Great minds think alike. :)

Of course, I was only concerned with accidental spawn-kills.
Hepcat, for example, has become very popular again and it's a real problem there. Especially because when you are killed by a teammate as you spawn, that teammate is killed too. That's just sooo unfair.

I imagine a spawn algorithm to solve this would be quite difficult to implement.
I'd even settle for the radar showing you exactly where you will re-spawn. Then I can at least choose exactly when to re-spawn to avoid bullets.
Of course, this wouldn't be fair for enemies you spawn behind, though this could be avoided if tanks are not shown on the radar before spawning..

I still think the second of invincibility with an inability to shoot or pick up a flag is the best solurion for this.
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Post by asciimonster »

donny_baker wrote:If you want to see it implemented, head out to IRC to talk about how YOU want to do it, discuss options and the like, code it up, and submit a patch.
I'm sorry, but my C++ skills just aren't good enough. I know it's all in the open source idea that anybody can contribute, but the real world is just not like that. I'm just stuck with posting ideas. If you don't like them, that's fine.

Ok, I'll try to look into the IRC, but I'm not sure if they want to explain it from Chapter 1, "the function main()" on up. Now, where did I leave my "programming for dummies"? :|

:idea-alt: You could just make a plugin that spawns somebody with a PZ flag and in the zoned state, and dezone and drop flag after 1 sec. :slick:
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Post by asciimonster »

I've been reading up on how to make a plugin, and it looked simple enough so I might just be able to pull it off... only to figure out that the API just doesn't allow for it. :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

Ok. This would just have to wait until version 2.2 comes out. Sorry all. :(
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Post by Enigma »

asciimonster wrote:I've been reading up on how to make a plugin, and it looked simple enough so I might just be able to pull it off... only to figure out that the API just doesn't allow for it. :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

Ok. This would just have to wait until version 2.2 comes out. Sorry all. :(

You can change a player's shot type to the phantom shot type. Maybe you could change The winning team's shot types to PZ for some time, and then change the shot type back when the time is up. The only catch is that the players who have had their shot type changed won't see the different shot type, while everyone else will.

I've been considering making this a feature of one of the plugins that I recently wrote, and I probably would have already done so if I did not have to study for exams. I'm planning on rewriting the plugin, as some of the algorithms are not very efficient. I made the mistake of posting the first working version.
Last edited by Enigma on Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Enigma »

asciimonster wrote: Ok, I'll try to look into the IRC, but I'm not sure if they want to explain it from Chapter 1, "the function main()" on up. Now, where did I leave my "programming for dummies"? :|
You're in luck! You don't need to know about the main() function to write a plugin. :wink:
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Post by boog »

Any update on this mod yet? I would really like to try this out once it is finished!

TIA
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Post by joevano »

boog wrote:Any update on this mod yet? I would really like to try this out once it is finished!

TIA
Have you written it? Cause if you haven't, no one else has either. ;)
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