Hey all you forgers out there! This post is intended as a heads up to those of you working on maps without ceilings that will be compatible with oddball. Whoa, pretty specific I know, but stick with me here as the following information could save you a lot of trouble.
First let us discuss safe zones and how they interact with the oddball. While inside both regular and soft safe zones the oddball will act as you might expect it to. It bounces, arcs, and beats people down with a vengeance. When the ball is unfortunate enough to leave the safe zone however discrepancies between the regular and soft safe zones arise:
- If the ball exits a regular safe zone it will NOT reset immediately.- If the ball exits a soft safe zone it WILL reset- If the ball enters either a regular or soft kill zone within either safe zone, it WILL reset
Now comes the important part. Say you want to have a ceiling imposed on players by a soft kill zone or the end of a soft safe zone. By this I mean you want a playing space to be accessible by players, but not possible to stay in. Seems simple enough, but given what we’ve just learned the oddball will reset upon entering either of these spaces! While that may not seem like a terrible consequence, it allows players the same utility tossing the ball off of the map does by simply throwing it straight up in the air. Not exactly competitive or sporting.
So how do you keep the oddball from resetting without instant killing players who exceed the safe zone? The solution isn’t ideal, but it works. In each of the forge spaces there is a scripted soft kill zone which does not interact with the oddball. By building using this scripted boundary you can avoid all the troubles caused by soft safe zones. It may be a royal pain in the backside as the scripted kill zone affects the editor as well but, again, it works.
When on a grid, the height of the grid at which a standing spartan will first encounter the scripted kill zones are:
Impact - Z = 45.4
Ravine - Z = 27.2
I hope with was helpful, and happy forging!
As a final note, if a 343 employee happens to see this, the problem could be fixed by making it such that the oddball does not reset when exiting a soft safe zone!