Effective Spawn Placement

Spawn placement is one of the most important tasks for a map maker. Some map makers consider spawn placement to be what either makes or breaks a map. In order to effectively place spawns you need to first know the purpose of each type of spawn. There are three different types of spawn points: starting point, spawn point, and area spawn.

One of the most important spawn type is the starting point. Effective starting points determine the original success of a map. Where ever you place a starting point determines where players will spawn when the game starts. So technically you can place starting points in different places from the regular spawns. A good suggestion is to place at least 16 starting spawns on each map. Also be sure to press "x" on each spawn and determine if they should be neutral, attackers, defenders, etc. The second type of spawn point is the default spawn point. This is the area where players respawn when they die. You can also choose which players respawn at the spawn points by pressing "x" and determining which team should respawn there. You can also place normal spawn points in an enclosed area with the starting points outside so when players die they go to a "jail." The final type of spawn point is the area spawn. Area spawns are used to set spawn priority, which determines where it is most important for players to spawn. When editing an area spawn you get set the priority value to a numerical value which sets the priority of where players on each team spawn. Also there are special area spawns in the options for objective games such as CTF that determine where players spawn when an event occurs such as the flag being stolen.

The next important detail to cover when considering spawns is it's attribute, which determines which players will respawn at that point. The options for the respawn type include neutral, attackers, defenders, team 3, team 4, etc. At a neutral spawn any player can respawn which means that these spawns would normally be located towards the center of a map. You also have the option to set the spawn point to attackers or defenders. In an objective based game the attackers would be the team going for the objective while the defenders are the team who must defend it. Also in a slayer game red is normally set up as the defenders while blue is setup as the attackers. If you wish for the game to have additional teams be sure to include spawns that are also set to team 3, team 4, team 5, etc.

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