(Skip to The Point if you don’t like to read)
A friend of mine told me how much he missed playing Predator on Halo 3. It had been an impossible gametype to recreate since then. In Halo: Reach, even Good Camo made you visible when normal walking. The gametype simply didn’t work with the Predator crawling everywhere. In Halo 4 this was remedied. And with that remedy, almost every single option for Flood/Infection was removed from the game making community gametypes like Fatboy and Predator impossible.
Now I don’t know how much those two gametypes circulated and it doesn’t matter. I’m sure most of you have some sort of infection based game you made with your friends that you can no longer imitate. Well, I sought to undo this problem for my friend and did. If something like this has been posted, then ignore my wall of text and move on.
The point.
To imitate old specialized Infection gametypes requires a custom map and gametype. Believe it or not, our gametype is… Slayer! Yes, that old silly gametype no one plays anymore (right?). For this example, I will be using Predator. The premise of this game is one person is a Predator (yes, from the movie) and the rest are marines trying to fight their way to the end of the time limit. (Spoiler: you never win).
First, make yourself a map. You don’t have to decorate it right away. The only thing you must on the map is the following:
Step 1: Create a Kill ball. I highly recommend moving it out of sight where no one will ever find it. Until it kills them.
Step 2: Create an INIITAL spawn point. Make absolutely sure there are no other initial spawn points on the map anywhere EVER.
Set this initial spawn to Attacker team (blue) and Fixed or Phased physics. Put it in the killball. Yes, in.
Set a RESPAWN point and set it to Attacker. Put this where ever you want your actual Zombie/Infector/Boogieman/Charlie Manson to spawn.
Step 3: Pretty much the exact opposite of two. Set some INITIAL spawn points set to DEFENDER (red) team where you want your actual defenders to spawn.
Place DEFENDER respawn zones inside of the kill ball (or balls if you run short on space… in the ball.)
There. That is it for the map. Save and quit, then set your gametype.
Step 1: Select infinity slayer. Disable loadouts (disable game loadouts, set loadout types to Game Loadouts and then set all Game Loadouts to hidden. If you want to give your defenders choices, you’ll need to spawn items for them to pick up. Otherwise, these loadouts will overwrite the traits we will set for the Attacker.) Disable ordinance. Unless you really don’t want to.
Step 2: This is the important part. I’m sorry to tell you that no matter what, scoring for your game will be completely whack and make no sense. You’ll just have to keep track in your head. The reason is because scoring becomes a technical function. It’s our workaround.
Go into the gametype settings and set Death Points to 20. I know, weird. When the game starts, your Attacker will immediately die and be put in the lead. This will let us use Leader Traits to give them special settings. Set Kill Points to 50 and disable betraying. Set Suicide Points to -50. These settings will prevent another player from getting ahead of the Attacker at any time in the game. They die by the Attacker’s hand and the Attacker gains 50 when they gain 20, or they commit suicide and net -10.
Set your lives to 2. This will imitate Infection. The attacker will lose one life immediately, and on respawn the Defender(s) will lose their second life and be forced into spectator mode.
Step 3: Set your Base Traits for your Defenders. These traits will only affect Defenders unless you leave any Leader Traits at “Unchanged.”
Step 4: Set your Leader Traits for your Attacker. You can set weapons, armor abilities, jump height, health, damage, etc. In fact, you can change every single trait, which is something you cannot do to Zombies.
Conclusion
Defender (Uninfected) traits will be based on Base Player Traits. Attacker traits are set by Leader Traits. The respawn system allows you to force the Attacker into Lead and inherit the traits. They will spawn with the weapons you choose because Leadership is set before spawn. Your scoring will make no sense, but it doesn’t matter a whole lot. I think it’s pretty simple to tell who wins and you’ll likely be playing with friends who will get it, or not even care.
It should be fairly obvious, but you will need to have one person set to Blue team and everyone else who is not the Attacker set to Red and you must set it to ONE round only. Otherwise teams will switch and everyone on Red will become Blue and you likely didn’t design the spawns for that.
