How do respawning markers actually work?

[Uluk]

Yesterday I was fiddling with my own respawning/rearming script when I encountered something which I didn't quite expect....

I had a MP mission (created for testing purposes) in which had a man from all the 4 sides (west, east, resistance and civilian) as combatants. Every side had 3 markers (respawn_west_1, respawn_2, respawn_west_3, etc.) they randomly respawned in. I also had those default respawning markers (respawn_west, respawn_east, respawn_guerrila & respawn_civilian) OFP is supposed to require buried in some remote corner of the island. Respawning type was set to "BASE".

So, my script was written under the assumption that those men will respawn in those default respawning zones. After they had respawned the script would setPos them randomly in one of those new respawning areas. That certainly didn't happen! Instead, the units always seemed to respawn in the marker I named "respawn_side_1", where side is of course the side of the unit. Regardless, my script did it's job and randomly setPossed them from there and I could remove those default respawning markers.

After that discovery I decided to play around with the markers and see what happens. I deleted the trigger which launched my script and confirmed what I had seen earlier. The west guy still respawned in the "respawn_west_1" marker. Next, I removed that marker and the guy started to respawn in the "respawn_west_2" marker. After that I deleted all the west side markers and tried again. This time the guy started to respawn in the "respawn_civilian_1" marker!

Time for some 'radical' action! I removed all the markers I had on the map and saw what happened. Yup, they did respawn but this time it was always in the same place where they had died. Well, I pretty much expected that they would do that. The next thing I did was to add a single marker named "respawn" on the map and confirm what I already knew. Everybody was using that marker as a respawn.

Any comments? I'm sure that by now someone has encountered similar behaviour and can confirm this. Or is this some kind of undocumented feature I have found on my own and have missed while stumbling through OFPEC's archives? What about the logic behind it? It seems to me that OFP favours "respawn_side_x" type of markers over "respawn_side". In fact I believe OFP might favour any marker over the default one as long as it's name is longer than the default one (I haven't tested this). And if you want all your units to respawn in single one area a marker named "respawn" seems to be enough.

Oh, and a big thank you for this great site. It really has been a great help while learning how to script.  

(btw: while testing I was running the FDFmod (OFP:Resistance), but I'm pretty sure that has got nothing to do with the behaviour i described).

[Edit: corrected some typos]

[RujiK]

Um, so the question is, is what I did real?
If this is the case then you said so yourself.
Or am I missing something?

[Uluk]

So my questions are:

a) Has anyone encountered similar behaviour?
b) If not, can anyone please confirm this?
c) If the respawn markers do behave like that, and this is 'common knowledge', why it is not mentioned in any tutorials etc.?

For example, I think that a single respawn for all sides has it's uses in mission making. Also, the knowledge that a unit will respawn in other respawns if the unit's own side doesn't have any should be mentioned somewhere.

[Speeder]

I've had some of the same "problems" earlier. So that's a confirm

[Chris Death]

hmm - not sure anymore, as i hopped over from mp mission
making to addon making about 1 year ago, but weren't
the markers to be called:

respawn_west1
respawn_west2

instead of:

respawn_west_1
respawn_west_2

 

~S~ CD

[General Barron]

Hmmm.... interesting. I've never really known how respawn markers work myself, aside from having read that you are supposed to have them named a certain thing like has been posted. Always nice to see new things being figured out (or trying to figure them out) though .

[Uluk]

@Chris Death: I guess OFP does not care whether it's "respawn_west1" or "respawn_west_1".

Anyhow, i hope this might help somebody somewhere to figure out some odd behaviour they have had with their MP missions (namely with multiple respawns). Respawning in OFP is a bit confusing.