A mix of theories on the issues with AE spawn points

[ZamuelNow]

A mix of theories on the issues with AE spawn points
AKA
Why President Marchand's Office probably hates you

 

A rather understated but quietly major happened in the Issue 27 Page 7 patch.  After years of things getting broken on Live, spawn points on a map got fixed in Mission Architect.  Sure, it's just one map and a newer one but it got me thinking of what underlying problems might be causing these headaches, especially for outdoor maps.  These are just theories but they're stemming from generic programming knowledge and my experience stumbling through AE's Test Mode.

 

-Front, Middle, Back designations might not be turned on: In programming, the most basic states are Off (using 0) or On (using 1).  There are more complex things--essentially seeing what's in a container--but at the end of the day it's a light switch.  It's wholly possible that half the system is looking at the designation, the other half is telling it nothing's there, and the game defaulting to Any so things don't break.  So, maybe the game rolled the dice and the villain seating chart put the grand archvillain of the story near the front door instead of the top floor of President Marchand's Office.

 

-Spawns might be in contradictory coordinates to the designated name: Despite the names of "Front, Middle, and Back", an individual spawn point can be given any coordinate.  Considering the programming truth that computers are dumb, the game doesn't know when a spawn point makes no sense to what it's supposed to be.  Test Mode shows that objectives are numbered and presumably enemy placements are too. Objective 0 might be at [3.14.1] while Objective 1 might be at [0,0,0]. So, the game might have given out seating charts to the villains and the archvillain got a seat labelled "Back" but the seat was at the front door instead of the top floor of President Marchand's Office.

 

-Some spawn points simply don't exist despite reasoning that they should: Essentially "maybe someone decided that President Marchand's Office didn't need a receptionist", though this affects other maps a bit more.  Sometimes a dedicated spawn was never created.  It might make sense for a captive to be in the pawn shop or collectible near a jungle pyramid but the game doesn't know where it would make sense to put things--it just knows where they are.  This is compounded by the fact that AE maps are copies of the maps in the rest of the game but not with the same spawns and objective placement.

 

The actual problem might be something else altogether but the question now comes to, how do we help the devs with this?  Despite my complaints, I understand that a hundred or so maps was a lot for the Live devs and the Homecoming devs are volunteers.  Something that will help is being as specific as possible when pointing out map weirdness.  Using the /loc command for exact coordinates helps with pointing out weird spawn placement or literal bugs like glowies you can't access.  I think a general suggestion to any devs that might view this is that outdoor maps should have Front spawns closest to the entrance, Middle spawns for most of the map, and Back should be the opposite side as the entrance or it should be at a centralized cinematic spot.  Things like maps with outdoor/indoor transitions probably skew this.  Still, it's a start.

 

Oh, and thanks to @Cobalt Arachne for noticing and addressing the glowie problem on the Smelting Cauldron map.

Edited February 23 by ZamuelNow
typo

[cranebump]

Small moves, bruthas & sistahs of the SFMA. Small moves.:-)

[ZamuelNow]

Something else that got fixed that I ignored in the patch notes until running an arc is pathing in some maps got cleaned up.  It's an issue with some outdoor maps but it less affects the example (Henchmen know what the carpet is in President Marchand's Office).

[ZamuelNow]

I think there's two halves of the system in AE and they don't always talk to each other.  I saw this first when testing the Smelting Cauldron on Beta.  The editor claimed a massive number of collectibles could be put in the mission but only about 15 front and 15 back actually showed up.  When making minor changes to an arc on the Nerva map, I took the time to look at what the editor claimed.  It claimed there was a front and a back, which doesn't truly exist on most outdoor maps as we know.  But the preview mini map in the editor showed the icon in green...which is the color for things coded "front".

 

Those who have been here for a bit, what outdoor maps have come out in the Homecoming era that are "correct" instead of having the standard outdoor map problems?

[Ankylosaur]

They added a couple of Cimereroan maps awhile ago that have front/middle/back and the COT floating island does too. That’s all off the top of my head, unless you count the winter map, which has an interior so works with it.

[Ankylosaur]

Some of the funky unique maps have one thing in common - a custom final room. For whatever reason, I presume because they were originally used for some sort of scripted scene, these "backs" are not usable, making these interesting maps/locations less useful. Seems like this could be fixed though.

 

• Marchand's office - as you noted and well known. The Map details does say that there is no "back" but if you look on the mini map, on level 3 (not his office) there is a blue "back" dot in the middle of a wall sounded by corridors on Floor 3 of 4.
• Snake Cave - Sthenos' Lair 
• Freaklympics - you can add glowies to the back though

 

A couple of other funky ones

• Faultline - High Rise - the first floor is outside. Within range of outside is the Faultline Arachnos tunnel, which is not accessible by the player from this location. This means that if you put something to spawn in the front, it might spawn in the tunnel. You can get there by using test mode, putting a few objectives to "front" and jumping to the next objective. You can actually take the tunnel all the way out to a complete and empty faultline map if I am remembering correctly - there is no blue border preventing you.
• Nerva Primeva - I think because it is one of the only maps that is outdoors without a war wall (except for Croatoa and the abyss), and in water, I have used this little one a few times. Because it is small it has a clear mini-map that shows there should be one rescue point and four collection points. Even in game where it is used, such as in Maria Jenkins to represent Praetoria, it might use those spawn points, but for some reason we don't get them in AE. The map details has no rescues or collections spawn points. Wish this could be fixed.
• Praetoria outdoors - These seem to claim that there are an equal number of front and back locations, and lets you set them without a "too many" error. So, for example, it might say there are 10 front and 10 back, and let you place 10 IDF bosses in the front and 10 ghouls in the back. But then when you go to play it - no ghouls appear because in fact, there are only 10 spawn points total.

Edited March 4 by Ankylosaur

[ZamuelNow]

On 3/4/2024 at 7:16 AM, Ankylosaur said:

• Nerva Primeva - I think because it is one of the only maps that is outdoors without a war wall (except for Croatoa and the abyss), and in water, I have used this little one a few times. Because it is small it has a clear mini-map that shows there should be one rescue point and four collection points. Even in game where it is used, such as in Maria Jenkins to represent Praetoria, it might use those spawn points, but for some reason we don't get them in AE. The map details has no rescues or collections spawn points. Wish this could be fixed.

 

There's a Mercy dock with water but I forget the exact name.  It's fairly small but I think it worked fine last I checked.  Granted, it's not much bigger than the Tiny offices.

 

On 3/4/2024 at 7:16 AM, Ankylosaur said:

• Praetoria outdoors - These seem to claim that there are an equal number of front and back locations, and lets you set them without a "too many" error. So, for example, it might say there are 10 front and 10 back, and let you place 10 IDF bosses in the front and 10 ghouls in the back. But then when you go to play it - no ghouls appear because in fact, there are only 10 spawn points total.

 

This what I noticed when testing the Smelting Cauldron on beta.  I wonder what is letting us set too many.

 

Honestly makes me wonder if there's spots where the original devs meant to set things to 1, 2, or 3 and they accidentally fat fingered 11.

[Darmian]

One of my issues with the Marchand's Office map isn't even the top room, it's that there's an entire OUTSIDE that is unusable.  So I'd propose a second version of this map be put into the AE, where the mission exit/entrance is outside, and then you enter the building.

 

And can we have SOME of the Croatoa maps that don't have mushroom circles as entrances/exits please?

Edited March 6 by Darmian

[Ankylosaur]

Oh and the Steel Canyon SERAPH map - that one is so close to great as a map, and so rife with problems. 

1. There is a Front location in the back of the interior. Because the front is an exterior in Steel Canyon a few destructible police vehicles would work great until one is in the back of the lab.
2. Despite the map looking like there are several middle locations, there is only one.
3. Escort markers seem to go wonky. 

And yet I still have used it a few times...