Table of Contents
Item Spawners
GoldenEye: Source has a variety of different spawner entities, each meeting a different gameplay requirement. All spawner entities follow the same general rules, but each one is responsible for a different entity type. In general, each spawner will:
- Spawn its designated entity type if the game rules allow that entity to spawn, and it has been more than a short while since it has last been collected from that spawn.
- Respawn the item it has most recently spawned if that item has not been picked up, but has somehow gotten more than a small distance away from the spawner.
- Respawn the item it has most recently spawned if that item has not been picked up, but has somehow been deleted.
- Support being disabled/enabled through the appropriate entity inputs. Enabling will instantly spawn the item and disabling will instantly despawn it.
Outside of these features, some spawners have additional fields or properties to better serve their gameplay purpose.
Deathmatch Spawners
These spawners are part of the core GoldenEye: Source gameplay, and are used in any deathmatch based mode such as View to a Kill or Man with the Golden Gun.
ge_weaponspawner
This is the spawner responsible for placing weapons into the map. Each weaponset has 8 slots that it uses to control which weapons are in play, and each spawner is locked to a given weaponset slot. The unique fields are as follows:
- skin : The skin used when displaying this weapon spawner in hammer.
- Weapon Slot : The weapon slot used by this weapon spawner when determining which weapon to spawn.
- Allow Tokens : Tells the token spawning system that it is free to spawn weapon-based tokens at this spawner.
For the moment, it is important to make sure skin and Weapon Slot match! Weapon Slot is the only field with any real effect, but mismatched values can make it easy to overlook a spawn that should be one value but is actually another. They will most likely be merged into one field in the future, the current system is a holdover from an older version of the game where it may not have been possible to merge them.
If the slot is currently used by an ammo-based weapon such as grenades, the weapon spawn will simply spawn nothing and let the player acquire the weapon from the appropriate crates.
Allow Tokens is mostly used for gamemodes such as Man with the Golden Gun, where a special weapon spawns somewhere in the map. When a token spawns at a weapon spawner, it will replace the original weapon at that spawner until it is picked up. Once this happens, the spawner will start spawning the original weapon again. One notable behavior of this system if any spawners are marked with the “Allow Tokens” parameter, weapon tokens can ONLY spawn at these weapon spawners. If none are marked with this field, it will instead use the level 7 and 8 spawners for weapon tokens.
It is recommended to have at least one spawner for each weaponset slot in your map, regardless of size. Larger maps should increase the amount as needed.
ge_ammospawner
The ammo counterpart to the weapon spawner. It spawns the appropriate ammo for the weapon slot it is assigned to. Its unique fields are as follows:
- Weapon Slot : The weapon slot used by this spawner when determining which ammo to spawn.
Make sure you match your ammo spawns with your weapon spawns! Each weapon spawns should have at least 1 and generally 2 ammo spawns of the same slot near it.
Ammo spawns will be used as a makeshift standard token spawn if none can be found, but otherwise do not spawn tokens.
item_armorvest
The armor is a central gameplay element in most modes, and should be given the most care when determining where to place it. Some gamemodes, such as Arsenal, will disable the armor spawns but in general armor is what maps are designed around. That being said the spawner itself is rather simple, Its unique fields are as follows:
- Check Radius : How far the armor looks for players when determining if it should spawn.
The default value for Check Radius is typically acceptable, but under some circumstances it makes sense to change it. If two players are within the check radius, the armor spawn progress gets decreased based on how close each player is to the center. This is to discourage aggressively standing on top of an armor spawn while fighting another player in order to have a chance at picking it up mid-fight. If one player is directly on top of an armor vest, and another player is within 50% of its check radius, the armor spawn progress is practically stopped. Otherwise it can still be slowed down considerably. This is a powerful tool to prevent unfair combat tactics, but care should be taken to ensure that it's not exploitable by players positioning themselves within the radius but outside of the reach of someone who wants to pick up the armor. Try not to allow high ledges outside of the reach of the armor to be within its check radius.
Check Radius is supplemented with PVS checks, meaning that if you turn on mat_wireframe and can't see a given room from the armor spawner, spawn progress will not be blocked by players in that room.
Token Spawners
These spawners are primarily featured in token based gamemodes, such as Living Daylights.
ge_tokenspawner
The generic token spawner, and its team variants, are used for spawning gameplay tokens into the map. These are typically flags, though other models can be used depending on the gamemode. For tokens that don't spawn under a specific team's ownership, ge_tokenspawner is used. For team-owned tokens, such as the flags in Capture the Flag, ge_tokenspawner_janus and ge_tokenspawner_MI6 are used.
It is recommended to have at least 8 generic token spawners in a map, regardless of size. Larger maps can increase this amount as needed.
There in most cases should only be one ge_tokenspawner_janus and one ge_tokenspawner_MI6 in a map, regardless of size.
ge_capturearea_spawn
This spawner is responsible for creating token capture areas in a map, as needed. Capture areas are where a token is brought to score with it, exemplified in the case of CTF where you must bring the enemy token to your capture area to earn points for your team.
It is recommended to have at least 4 generic capture area spawns in a map, regardless of size. Larger maps can increase this amount as needed.
There in most cases should only be one ge_capturearea_spawn_janus and one ge_capturearea_spawn_MI6 in a map, regardless of size.