HoonyMode is a form of tournament introduced in November 2003 which is loosely based on the rules of tennis. During the warm-up, each player chooses a spawn-point or they are randomly generated if none are chosen. One player typically has a "stronger" spawn and the other a "weaker" one. When the game begins the player with the stronger spawn is considered to have the "serve" and each player death is treated as a point. After each point is scored players and the arena are reset and a new point is played; players switch spawn-points, so the player who had the "weak" spawn for the previous point now has the "strong" one, effecting a change of serve. All in-game behaviour (i.e. weapons, physics, etc.) remains the same as in the standard deathmatch.

I notice a lot of discussion about spawns lately. The spawn system sucks! Something has to be done about it. Seriously, I’ve been saying this for years now. Maybe in the future we’ll have a chance to test some new ideas (hint). The problem imo is that hard-fought games are getting stuffed up by random spawn events.

If you watch for it you will see that a considerable number of points in every game are almost purely random. Couple that with the fact that they tend to come in groups of 2 or 3 (or more) and you have this situation where one player can be suddenly down 3-4 points as a result of really only ‘losing’ one exchange. If that happens a couple of times in a row the player can fall behind by 10 or more points. Sure you can ‘come back’ if you can turn the tables on your opponent and get some spawn frags off them but it’s a roll of the dice whether they will spawn in front of you 3 times etc. I’m also convinced that once some players fall far behind they lose the will to fight back - leading to even greater blowouts.

So we have the spectacle of serious games being interrupted continually by these totally random spawn events. One minute both players are playing a smart game trying to win their next point by strategy, tactics etc. The next minute it’s a simple shooting gallery and the scores quickly become lop-sided.

Try watching a few games and count how many points are really just spawn rapes or their close relatives. Ask yourself what the scores would have been without all those random points being awarded. Try ‘editing out’ all the silly spawn points and what do you have left? Basically those situations where both players are relatively equal in their situation and they must each compose their next point through brains and ability. THAT’s where the quality game resides, imo.