3D Distances

I made a visualization of how the map would behave if distances were computed in 3D. You can test:

- Aerowalk 3D
- Bloodrun 3D
- Furiousheights 3D
- Lostworld 3D
- Toxicity 3D

Use the mouse wheel to change your Z coordinate. The Z range goes from the lowest to the highest spawn.

thanks! keep up the good work!!

Good job as always :)

p.s. Y U NO 100%???

I dunno but I'm gonna plus this fucker to oblivion.

I may have found something.
Distance along each axis is computed separately, then the highest absolute value is picked.
pseudocode:

tmp_x = abs(point.x - spawn.x);
tmp_y = abs(point.y - spawn.y);
tmp_z = abs(point.z - spawn.z);
if(tmp_y > tmp_x)tmp_x = tmp_y;
if(tmp_z > tmp_x)tmp_x = tmp_z;
distance = tmp_x;

I've tested modified bloodrun javascript code on localhost, it seems to be correct (SG spawn is not rejected when standing on RL).

There is a drawing bug however - sometimes only 3 spawns will be marked as rejected. This is because now both rail spawns will sometimes have exact same distance (they have same X). To fix it, sort pairs: (Spawn number; Distance) and mark 4 nearest ones as rejected (instead of marking spawns below/above certain distance threshold).

This leads to another problem - if two spawns have the same distance and only one of them must be picked - which one? Most likely it depends on the order they were put in an array before sorting. In case of bloodrun, I've made test with bot on localhost, and concluded - if spawns 6 and 7 are swapped in the array in your code, then above algorithm is correct.

Very clever observation. This really seems to go in the right direction. Makes sense code wise as it uses more ifs and less arithmetic. Very nice! [+]

This is how it looks:

- Aerowalk Fake Dist
- Bloodrun Fake Dist
- Furiousheights Fake Dist
- Lostworld Fake Dist
- Toxicity Fake Dist

Edit: I updated them. See below.

The version you've just posted suffers from bug I've mentioned - (on Bloodrun) when hovering cursor in corridor with mega, sometimes both rail spawns are marked as allowed. Same problem on any other map where some spawn points are aligned on any axis.

This is how I would change it:
http://nopaste.snit.ch/115964

-swapped spawns with indexes 6 and 7
-changed sorting code
-changed rejected/allowed spawn drawing code

Other maps with axis aligned spawns - must be manually tested.

I went on, and funny enough ended up with a very similar solution. It is still not perfect though, as I think the index priority generates unwanted situations like the one below.
I think a sort that looks at the major axis, and in case of tie the minor one, should do a better job.

Ok I fixed it by having the said sorting. I think it is correct now. I updated the main post so that this version gets exposed to most of the people.

Actually situation shown in this screenshot seems to be correct - I've just tested it ingame, and standing where the cursor is will always allow "upper" rail spawn (the one which is closer), but never the lower one.
Standing symmetrically on the other side of mega (right below SG spawn) will still allow only that upper rail spawn - so the game does, in fact, sort it by "index" (reversed order of entity definitions found inside .bsp, in my opinion).

Ok, I updated them.

I think you are right. Twister and I just made a test map. You can see the layout here:



Assume you stand on the cross. You have 3 spawns clearly closer (below), 3 spaws clearly far away (on top), and then you have 2 spawns.

The one on the left is slightly closer in a 2D sense. The one on the right is closer according to your "L1-like metric".

You can download the map here.

In the tests I run, the enemy would always spawn on the one on the left, meaning it considers it farther away, and therefore uses your logic!

This seems really accurate now! I mentioned in another post that I could spawn him at SG at the bottom right but that was in warmup so I'll have to test again after I've finished work.

Meme you're the man!

Fucking nice man!

PROPS MAN, FOR FINDING THIS OUT :-0

Now this is awesome ! Nice work !!!

error feedback: it still deems this impossible, although it is not.

Warmup spawns are different than in game ones. Make sure the duel is running.

Edit: actually I was reporting this after reading it elsewhere. twister and I just tested and it looks they behave the same. My bad.

oh, i did not know that
going to keep tesing then, but i'm pretty confident it can happen during a match too

/e: after 10m of trying it seems i was wrong and it can't. weird, i would have sworn.

Ok, i gave it a try too. Because i was almost sure that I've either seen this spawn on some stream or I had it in one of my games. Was just about to give up, but in the last seconds the bot spawned there. http://www.mediafire.com/?71np7clq6w6xdgd

Ok I managed to get it as well. It's very puzzling as that spawn is uber close in all metrics.

its the 'fuck you'-code implemented by id, everytime you win a game changing fight and survive with 10 hp, the enemy is forced to spawn near you

Twister and I continued the tests.

Apparently, for some reasons, the system swaps two spawns, as marked here:

http://i.imgur.com/KllJV.jpg

An interesting point is that the spawn in the center (the one that should not happen) is the last in the entity list. Currently the assumption is that the sorting takes the max of the axis distances, and utilizes the index as tie breaker (higher index preferred).

One option is that for some reason, that spawn gets priority even if it should not.

No i think spawns are different in practise mode while the warmup in a server is the same as in game I think.

Added Campgrounds.

Icing on the cake for this would be spawn preview, bit more work, but for every spawn point, have a little icon that you can click and if you do, it shows an in game snap shot for that spawn.

This way it is now is fine if you know maps inside out etc, but it would be nice be able to confirm and you''ll get a direct reference to the in game view then.

You could also extend on this and implement SHADOWBOX, it has modal window/flash, embedeed youtube support etc, so you could build on it further and show in game examples you wanted, or any other media but still keep it functional at first glance.

uhm, are there different spawns in effect for duel and tdm? cause i happen to still check the rg ammo spawn near ra in tdm, do you happen to know if that's just my memory from q3 or does that one actually work in tdm (but not duel)?

TDM has completely different rules (you closest to the opponent team, or something similar)

i meant spawn points, not the system itself, but the answer is probably the same :)

Oh I see. I would have to mess around with a TDM map to find out. There is 'spawnflag 4' one can find on certain spawns, which I have no idea what it does. Asking on #quakelive is likely the best.

Never fails to impress

Added Hektik. Can anyone test if it makes any sense?

i can confirm that hektik does not make sense. not sure about the spawns though

I love the fact that you guys have to discuss and test to find a solution. Instead they aka sync could just give us the code or the algorithm and it would not be such a mess :p

but still props for the effort.

The bright side is that it's an enjoyable process. I learned a lot doing this.

I bet so!

Hm.
http://i.imgur.com/JKaYr.jpg
http://youtu.be/ifcykNOqlwk

#23

in order to make the new method work you had to add height infos for the whole maps, right? i think it would be cool then to also alter the size of the current position dot (over the mouse pointer) according to the height like you did for the spawns.

I've recently found out how important sound can be in quake For example CZM was talking about how on dm13 jumppad area if you don't take the last shard the enemy can't hear you. I also figured out that on aerowalk you should focus on where the enemy is coming from, not just listening for the spawn (this way you know if you should spam rockets at rocket or pull lg out at rail). I see Evil take advantage of sound very well - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geDXga_JTSY&t=4m38s/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhNGHe4zbUc&t=59m37s . If anyone knows any more positions that can only be taken advantage of with sound please post them below.

Why?

The game is so outplayed it would be retarded to share any little snippets of info if you think it would help you gain an edge.

Anyone could do that by simply going around the map with a buddy and listing that stuff, its not really any great secret.

not really. You would have to play tons and tons to figure out these tricks. It's not as simple as testing it out with a buddy.

WTF did i just look @

I think these are down, any chance of getting them back online?

http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=2219012

The links here should work!

Thanks.

#JellySpawns