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Teapot

FPS Guru

PostedApril 15, 2015 --Halo CE Spawn System (incomplete) - Halo General Discussion - Beyond (teambeyond.net)
Halo CE Spawn System (incomplete) - Halo General Discussion - Beyond (archive.org)

Hey there! This is something I spent a long time on right around the time MCC released. I had hoped to finish this and pass this along to help anyone interested in learning the depth of the spawn system. However, due to the massive amount of issues that MCC is plagued with, I lost interest in playing and lost motivation to finish this post. Unfortunately, the same happened to my "Adopt a noob" thread. It was difficult helping people when I can't even play the game months after release. Regardless, here's the incomplete and probably permanently unfinished post.

I'd like to thank @@Mintograde, @@chaosTheory, and @insidious, as 99% of the work was already done by them, and maybe others I am missing.

Halo CE Spawn System

If you already know the spawn system, please go towww.HaloSpawns.comand proceed to test all your tricks/knowledge out. It’s very cool to see the specific percent for each spawn point depending on where you are. Arguably the best site ever made. Much respect and love to @@Mintogradewho put this together!

This work is heavily cited from others, specifically ChaosTheory, Insidious, and Missingno. Anything additional is just emphasis I provided in an attempt to make it easier for players who are very new to Halo CE. For the record, Halo CE is played under 1v1 settings, 2v2 settings, 3v3/4v4 settings, or Free for All settings. The depth of the spawn system is really only exploited/manipulated through playing under 2v2 settings, which is objectively the deepest game mode from a meta standpoint. This entire portion of the post will be dedicated to understanding the 2v2 spawn system. By understanding the spawn system for 2v2s, you’ll understand how it works in general for other gamemodes, and why this depth doesn’t apply to any other setting In halo CE.

There is a lot to this system, and I will hope to cover a couple of topics such as how the spawn system works, how it’s influenced, how you can influence it, and the different types of spawn manipulation methods/examples that have been found. While I cover that, note that besides “regular spawns”, there are “Random Spawns”, “Forced Spawns”, and even a phenomenon called “Random Randoms” for lack of a better term. I’ll even include some unproven theories towards the end that deserve to be mentioned. For now, lets start by breaking down how the spawn system works.

Overall,The simplicity and predictability of Halo: CE's spawn system makes it a powerful tool for skilled players. Players can place a teammate safely out of harm's way, or they can turn the tide of a losing battle with an aggressive spawn. - @@Mintograde

Concept:

“The system is pure logic, based entirely on a distance measurement, and then a percentage depending on certain criteria and variables. When a player dies, his next spawn will be in the point closest to his living partner. If there are no spawn points within a specific distance (the game cannot find a spawn close enough), it gives him a random spawn. Using the oddball, we were able to find the exact distance. That magical number is 17.5 meters.” – @@chaosTheory

In other words, the spawn system for 2v2’s is pure proximity based. You will always spawn your partner at a spawn point that is within the 17.5 meters, unless you are greater than 17.5 meters from a spawn, or sit and block the only single spawn location within that 17.5 meter range. It’s not a simple concept to grasp through text, and it will definitely be easier to visualize.

“We did still have a question - whether or not this distance was static, the same in every map.. Level geometry (walls, ramps, barriers) made it difficult to determine distances, vertically and horizontally. But through testing, we proved that it was not only static, and consistent in each map, but it also goes in every single direction. There are two methods to visualizing this. You can imagine every spawn point on the map as having its own zone, a bubble around it that when penetrated by MC, his partner can spawn there. Or, you can imagine a giant bubble around the living MC, and if that bubble touches any spawn points, his partner can or will spawn there.

For the sake of explanation, I believe it's better to think of each spawn as having a perfect sphere around it. And things start getting tricky when those bubbles overlap. insidious scaled the bubble to the proper size, and as you can see, it is HUGE.

The game doesnt see it as bubbles and zones, it's simply measuring distance. At approximately 1 second before the player spawns (the count starts at Rejoin in 4 so, for normal 5sec spawn games its somewhere between "Rejoin in 1" and "Rejoin in 0"), Halo begins a search for spawn points within 17.5 meters of the living player. It finds all that meet the criteria, assigns each a percentage based on proximity, and picks its favorite. Then determines a second choice (usually the next highest percent), which is to be used if choice #1 is blocked. Usually, this second choice is another close spawn, because zones overlap everywhere, but can and will be a random if the first choice is the only spawn in the map within the magic distance. If you are dead center between two points, it's pretty much a dice roll. However, if you are even 1 or 2m closer to one than another, the chances increase rather drastically.” - @@chaosTheory

As you can see, the game does indeed determine a lot of factors for spawns despite having less weighted options like line of sight, or grenades that effect spawns. (Neither effect the percentage in Halo CE)

Before I try to expand on this anymore, let me provide some of the pictures that are in the thread on the MLG/Gamebattles forums.

This picture showcases the spawn zone in the shape of a perfect sphere. This 17.5 meter distance travels in every possible direction thus giving it the sphere shape. To break it down, each spawn point on every single map is consistent, in shape and size. Each spawn point has it’s own zone/sphere, even if two points are right next to each other. When that is the case, the two spawn spheres will overlap, and the spawns will then become a percentage factor and will favor the spawn you are closer to. Just note that even if the game favors a spawn for a 70/30 percentage (fake numbers for the sake of this example) you may find yourself spawning at the “30%” spawn more frequently than you’d expect, and if you died 10 times in the same location you wouldn’t always get an even split of 7 spawns at one location and 3 at the other.

A good friend of mine, @@BFir3explains it a bit better.

“Also, you need to understand that the game is still only assigning each of the spawn points within range of the living teammate apercentage. While these percentages are usually drastically different (and thus lead to almost certain spawn locations), there is always the possibility that the partner will spawn at a point that has been assigned a 2% (or other low percentage). Furthermore, if the living player is almost equally close to two or more points, the percentage of spawning in the same spot over and over again diminishes - although it's still quite high provided the living teammate is about 1-2m difference from the two points.”

He goes on to say this “Basically, the only way you can be sure that your partner will continue to spawn in the same place over and over again is if there is onlyonespawn point located within the "17.5m sphere" of yourself at the time Halo calculates the percentages for the pointsANDif there is no enemy within closer than 12m to that spawn point.”

Which @@chaosTheorypoints out is close but not true. This statement is correct except it is not a guarantee of 100%, but more so a 99% chance due to the “random random” phenomenon which I explain later.

FORCED SPAWNS: The act of blocking a spawn point within a spawn zone in order to force a teammate to spawn at the better spawn point in the same spawn zone.

There are plenty of forced spawns in the games, and I’ll touch base on a common one located on Hang Em High. Walshy just recently did a video on this, and it’s great because coincidentally he showcases both a “random random” spawn, and a “forced spawn”.

This photo provides a better example of how big these spawn zone/spheres really are. These are merely 3 of the many spawn points on Hang Em High, however the spawn sphere I want you to focus on is the one on the top left of hand side.

It’s easier to understand through @@Mintograde’s photo of the location:

This sphere only contains two spawn points. The first spawn is in the very corner underneath the catwalks that lead to shotty tunnels. The other spawn location is above shotgun tunnels by the pillar near blue pistol. If you are on the bottom of the map, an extremely high percent of the time your teammate will spawn in that bottom corner. That is a horrible location to be stuck in, and creates a perpetual advantage for the other team. However, you can break this routine. Standing in the corner on the specific spawn point while your teammate is dead blocks the only bottom floor spawn that’s within the sphere. This leaves the only remaining spawn point open, which is the top spawn. This is extremely consistent. The only variable that can take place is the occasional “Random random” spawn. I wanted to save it for later, but figured I’d mention it specifically due to Walshy’s video linked here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XIHMtrzdjo

Random Randoms: - A random spawn, in a random location, for random reasons. Very rare and impossible to forcibly replicate except with luck.

Now the intended point of this video is to showcase the forced spawn I just described on Hang Em High. However I include it under random randoms because it also provides a very good example of how “random randoms” can occur, well, randomly. The how is still undecided, and there are a couple of theories regarding random randoms. This area is less important, as you really have no control over these. I still feel it’s important to list all the variables within the spawn system.

Pay attention around the 50 second mark of the video. He starts to move over to the location of that spawn zone I mention. He kills Ace, and spawns him in the bottom corner like he’s supposed to. This will happen a high majority of the time, say 90% as an example.

Once he goes to kill him again, he turns to the camera to state that Ace will spawn there EVERY time. You’ll see he doesn’t spawn there, and instead gets a “random random” spawn for “unknown” reasons. These “random randoms” don’t happen often, or have a specific algorithm in place that allows us to figure out when and why they happen. I state the that the reasons are “unknown” because there is no way for us to replicate or control these random randoms to any real extent.

@Insidious, one of the most knowledgeable Halo CE guys out there states “I maintain the opinion that it is a static value (something like 5%) which simply yields a vast variety of results. this is the case with anything related to probability or percentages... there is no need for complicated code in order to see complex results. i'm getting reports from chase of interesting results as well, all of which point toward my simplified percentage theory”

What does this mean? It means that you always have a small percent chance that a random can occur. The percentage is unknown, and may be lower than 5%, but I can’t base that off any solid evidence other than personal use of Halospawns.com @@chaosTheoryat time time stated he believed there was more to the system than that, or that the system worked in a completely different way.

User @@Mintogradehas dug even deeper to find out more about the percentages and weight of “random random” spawns.

“I did a lot of testing of random randoms, and I firmly believe the chance of a random random increases as you get farther from a spawn.If you’re within range of multiple spawn points, the random random percent goes down drastically.” - @@Mintograde

We’re about to get real technical here, so bare with me. I am not the one who figured this out and it’s honestly a bit complicated to me still. As if I couldn’t tag @@Mintogradeenough, this is what he figured out…

“The curve I used on HaloSpawn.com is based on testing multiple distances from a single spawn point.

This data is from over hundreds of deaths, shown here.

Tick Mark Random Count Pistol Count

2.5 49 0

2.75 137 113

3 82 168

3.5 58 192

4 37 213

5 30 220

If you’re within range of multiple spawn points, the random random percent goes down drastically. This was a lot harder to model mathematically, which is why the random random percent seems higher on Halospawns than you see here:

This photo showcases the same test for random randoms but done in a location where multiple spawn points were. While it may be confusing to look at, just notice that the “other” spawns would be the “random randoms”, and those happen at a less frequent rate than compared to the data for the single spawn point data.

Random Spawns – A method of spawning your partner in a completely random location on the map by standing a distance greater than 17.5 meters away from a spawn point.

That’s what most of you were here for right? This will have to be a work in progress..

There are two different ways you can give a random spawn. I guess three really, but the “random random” doesn’t count since you can’t control them like the other two.

The first method is to be more than 17.5 meters away from any spawn point. An example of that would be a pretty big portion of bottom middle on Hang Em High. Unless you’re by any of the ramps, too close to camo or shottys the whole area has no spawn points. It’s also not an ideal spot to be to random your teammate. I personally try to stand under snipe against the wall for cover.

[begin second post]

Halo CE's Concept:

Halo CE is played at a few different levels, but they mainly revolve around 1v1's, 2v2's, and 4v4's. Different strategies obviously come into play, but spawn system works differently in 2v2's. That's why the main competitive drive around Halo CE is 2v2 based.From an overall standpoint, the game is centered around controlling power weapons, power ups, and standing inadvantageouspositions that allow you to easily control the next wave of weapons or power-ups, while maintaining control over your opponents spawns. This sounds easy in theory, but if you started later in the series, you'll find a lot of what you've learned doesn't apply in Halo CE. A good example of this would be how ineffective it is to bait and switch players and force close ranged teamshots like in Halo 3. Playing with that mentality will unintentionally get you beat in a snowball like fashion.

To explain more, Halo CE is an incredibly deep and balanced game. The sandbox is balanced in a way where everything matters except the needler, and the utility weapon is your pistol. Your pistol is the ultimate hold out weapon, and can be used properly against really any weapon or in any scenario in the game. While on paper it sounds over-powered, the ability to 3 shot someone perfectly is a rather rare occasion, ESPECIALLY on Halo PC on the MCC. While this weapon is incredibly advantageous in a number of scenarios, the other weapons all have other niche roles in which they excel beyond the pistol.

Halo CE Basics:

I'll be explaining things thoroughly within the thread, but this part will be brief, and for more glitches/tips.

The concept of competitive play is rather simple and can be summarized as "Obtain the power ups/power weapons, while denying your opponent the same." I will be expanding on this more beyond the "basics" tab, because it's not as simple as pushing as a team to get an item like Overshield on the Pit in H3. I use that as an example because your team will usually push together to set up for a weapon, while in Halo CE, one of the best strategies to stay separate. You'll want to spread out in order to watch different areas, and obtain different weapons/power-ups that usually spawn on set intervals throughout the game. OS and Camo usually spawn every minute, with rockets every two minutes. This means that every other minute, all 3 items are up which causes the issue in a 2v2 of which "two" your team should go for (in theory, meaning there are ways to obtain items without physically walking to them)

Weapons-Overall, every weapon operates on the same basic principle that you have to lead your shots based on the direction your opponent is strafing, combined with the level of distance he is away from you ALONG with the latency you encounter. You know most weapons to operate in a manner called "Hit-Scan" which is how other rifles work in other Halos. We are dealing with "Projectile Based" weapons. The easiest way to visualize a projectile is to picture the rocket launcher. That literally launches a projectile, and if you intended to cross-map rocket a player or vehicle, you have to determine the time it would take to land where you want it to go, then lead the shot even further based on where you anticipate the player to be in the amount of time it would take for that rocket to reach him. That concept applies for ALL weapons in this game, and you'll have to lead depending on the connection, distance, and type of weapon you use, meaning you have to lead more with a pistol than a sniper because the bullet travel time of the pistol takes longer to reach a target.

I suggest watching this video by @@Hard Way. It is the perfect weapon guide for Halo CE to help explain the situations a bit better. If you'd rather be bored by what I wrote, which doesn't sound as nice as Hard Way's voice, scroll down.

• Pistol- Utility weapon and the weapon you need to learn to use in order to be an effective player. Holding the trigger creates a ridiculous spread that makes it ineffective. This means individual trigger pulls is best to reduce your spread, and make your bullets as accurate as possible. The weapon takes 2 body shots and 1 headshot to kill, which equals a perfect kill time of .6 seconds. It is not common for players to get TSK's (Three Shot Kills) repeatedly like it would be to get 4 shot kills in other games, so while the perfect kill time is quick, the average kill time is long. This weapon is INCREDIBLY dangerous in the hands of a skillful player. Again, each weapon requires you to lead your bullets.
• Sniper- A highly important weapon that is considered a power-weapon. It's importance is somewhat negated by how powerful the Pistol is, however when you watch the top players in action you'll see them drop the pistol for the sniper. I'll explain in detail in a more advanced section. Unlike other Halos, the sniper usually drops every 30 seconds. 2 body shots or 1 headshot kills a player, and offers a slightly quicker kill time than the pistol. It excels at far ranges but like much in the sandbox, allows a skilled player to excel with the weapon beyond it's intended range.
• Rockets- Because this is Halo PC on MCC, I'm going to go ahead and say that the Rockets are THE best thing in the game. By that, I mean most useful/powerful. On OG Xbox, I would classify the most powerful item as Active Camo, however they made it worse. So back to Rockets... Incredibly powerful direct damage and splash damage, long intervals between shots and a long reload time. Rockets spawn every 2 minutes on the competitive maps, and is important that you set up to either obtain them, or stop the enemy from obtaining them. Although Camo isn't as useful as before, you'll find yourself aiming for the combination of the Rockets and Camo.
• Plasma Rifle- One of my favorite weapons in any game ever! This awesome weapon shoots out plasma projectiles that do lots of damage to shields. In fact, they do the same level of damage to shields that pistol shots would do, but add a slow turn and stun effect to the player that is incredibly useful. It excels at a close/close to medium range, and is a great weapon to combat an enemy with using the element of surprise. It isn't as good of a response tool as it is to create a play. Headshots double the damage done to health as well. Some scenarios would be coming up behind a full OS guy, which requires 8 plasma shots to drain a FULL OS. The stun prevents him from moving, the slow-turn makes it hard to fire at you. While not the perfect play, I use it to suicide rocket guy often, meaning that get close to him while he's stunned that way if he tries to rocket me, he'll rocket himself too.
• Shotgun- Incredibly useful on host, pretty annoying off host. Still, it's an extremely useful weapon. It's got some crazy spread, and some long range. If close enough and the entire spread hits, you should be able to Insta-kill a player with half and OS left. The range on it is pretty big but due to the spread, rather ineffective. Some players have experienced some incredibly long shot-gun clean ups in the past. You'll find shotguns will be pretty common when players have Camo and a sniper/rockets.
• Plasma Pistol- Less powerful than your Halo 2 counterpart, and offers less auto-aim based tracking. The concept is the same where you have individual trigger pulls that does decent damage to shields, and less to health. These pistol shots also stun/slow if I'm not mistaken like the Plasma Rifle, but I'm not sure if it's at the same rate. Charging the pistol creates powerful shot that takes out shields completely. While there is some tracking on it, it's hardly an effective tool if you plan to use it like Halo 2's Noob Combo (Charge shot, switch to BR and headshot)
• Needler- Completely useless in Multiplayer. I guess this is decent for Hunters on Campaign... don't bother picking it up unless you feel like humiliating someone, in which case this weapon fills that niche role perfectly.

Power Ups -Arguably the driving force behind a lot of decision making in the game. There are only two, and they are very important in terms of dominating your opponents. They play an important role in creating that snowball type domination effect in which the players with the advantage can easily build up more of an advantage. Power-up control is one of the highest priorities in the game, and something new players struggle with against experienced. You'll learn better and new ways to obtain them, however I always stress the importance of denying your opponents these luxuries. Even if you can't obtain something safely, make sure they can't either. This means spamming grenades to prevent players from picking up an OS, or knocking down Camo from a higher up level. You want them, but if you can't get them do anything you can to make sure nobody can get them. These generally respawn at the same rate for each map, with some exceptions. I'll post a picture of the timers to make things easier, because although both camo and OS tend to spawn every minute, certain maps like Chill Out and HeH are different.

1. Overshield- Usually called "OS" for short, this power-up grants you 2 additional shields on top of your own, giving you the ability to withstand 3x as much damage. This item is usually up every 60 seconds on most maps, except for the top power-up on Hang Em High. It's a very powerful item and allows you to play with a little more versatility in your decisions. The extra shields allow you to make plays you might not consider doing, such as peaking down low on Prisoner. I use this as an example because if you just picked up OS on Prisoner, that means Camo spawned at that same second. If your team doesn't have it, then their team does. If you don't have OS it wouldn't be smart to give up a top position of the map to peak and look for camo guy. Depending on the interval of the weapon times, camo guy also can have rockets. There are plenty of situational circumstances that come into play, and thats why Halo CE is such a great game.
2. Active Camouflage- Or "camo" for short. In fact, never call it Active Camouflage unless you are writing a guide. This item isWASan INCREDIBLY POWERFUL item. It is still a very powerful item but the version of camo on MCC is from the PC port, where they had changed Camo in some rather unusual ways. Unfortunately, that's the camo we're stuck with, and it looks like your armor is made out of mirrors. This makes you rather visible against certain backdrops. For those who haven't experienced camo on the original disc and xbox, it was THE BEST. As powerful as rockets were, camo was a better tool to work with, but I find now that rockets will have a better impact in matches. Regardless of this, the best combo depending on the situation would still be to have camo, and hold rockets and a weapon with no scope. (plasma/assault rifle, shotty) The reason for this is that Active Camo's effect varies depending on the gun you hold, or the gun you switch to. It takes less time to fade in and out of camo with weapons that have no scope on them, and significantly longer with weapons that do. Even still, Rockets take longer to go full camo than the pistol. It's with these nuances in mind that players willingly drop the best overeall weapon in the game (pistol) for a Rocket/Camo/Rifle combo. The usefulness of the Camo combined with the power of the rockets are deadly, but the fact that you can switch to an automatic weapon and go back to camo instantly after firing a rocket provides you with a huge advantage, and more room to excel. Part of this reason is that Camo in this game actually REDUCES the level of auto-aim your opponent has, and although I haven't checked personally, I've read that it also effects bullet magnetism as well. So going into full camo will give you an extra advantage, thus why players drop their pistol for a sniper/rocket (power weapon) and keep the rifle/shotty (for quick camo)

I'm going to include @@Hard Way's second video that goes over some tricks and tips, but goes over melee's, and the differences in damage as well as distance. These are excellent videos that you must watch if you're jumping into Halo CE.

Halo CE: Advanced

Glitches / Tips / Tricks

1. Quick Camo-I went deeper into camo than I intended, but there's plenty more information about it. Quick Camo the name of the glitch in which you become invisible instantly. If you have an assault rifle or pistol, which is the generic starting weapon set for MLG (Classic Slayer Pro) you can pick up camo with either weapon out. If you have a pistol out, fire one bullet than switch weapons and you'll be instantly camo'd. If your assault rifle is out, simply fire one bullet and let the camo activate. From there you can switch out to your pistol and fire, and once you're done firing, switch back to the AR for camo again.
2. Backpack Reload- One of the more useful glitches that you'll find yourself using. I'll be posting videos to help visualize this, but this glitch allows you to fully reload your secondary, while using your primary weapon, and vice-versa. In order to do this, you must press "Reload, Reload, Switch Weapon" similar to how you would BXR or BXB in Halo 2. The standard default controls to do this glitch is "X,X,Y". This allows you to shoot all of your pistol rounds, switch to your assault rifle and clean up the kill. Once you switch back to your pistol, it will have full ammo again and can be fired without having to reload. The game completes the reload function and you can even still see some of the animation despite that weapon being in your "backpack" and your other weapon is out.
3. Double Melee- An important glitch for up close situations. I highly suggest watching the video posted above, as it showcases all the weapons, their damage distance and their output. The way this glitch works is that you are meleeing someone twice in the time it would take one to land, and in order to do this you have to cancel out the recovery animation after the first melee. Throwing a grenade will cancel/reset this animation, and allow you to melee again. So the button presses would equate to "Melee, Grenade, Melee" all in succession. The standard default controls for this would be BLB.

I plan on including more glitches, but those 3 main ones are important. These last two videos brush a lot of topics in which I hope to provide a lot more insight on later. They're extremely old, and if anyone had searched how to improve Halo roughly 10 years ago, you would see these great videos.

[begin third post]

Grenade Tricks

Often in this game it is better have the weapon/power-up come to you than it is for you to go to it. The physics in this game allows you to throw a grenade near a weapon and launch it completely across the map. There are multiple ways to do this from multiple areas and spawns on the map.

user @a Chunkhad compiled a great playlist of grenade tricks to help!