Number of item spawns too low (in 0f48ccd485)?

Game Talk The Garage
#1

I’ve raided 5 houses so far and found not a single broom, which should be a common household product in real life and available in every house.

What is the explanation for such a low number of items in houses? Each has 10-20 clothes in pristine condition. Why are they in pristine condition? And why such a low amount of clothes?

Things that are missing:

  • dozens of ceramic plates and cups
  • a few computers (with so many EVs on the road we must be in 2030 already).
  • ceiling lights (option to plug in an external power supply to power all the appliances?)
  • nearly every house should have a stove, oven, dishwasher, laundry machine, refrigerator
  • some form of water heater in a bathroom that has a bathtub or shower, or a water heater elsewhere in the house
  • more non-perisheable food (pasta? Where is my pasta?!)
  • more disposable batteries (I have 5 disposables so far and half of them were from vehicles). Each home should have like 10-20 in various remotes, alarms, clocks, drawers, etc (even some in a rubbish bin?)
  • Loads of paper.

Onto garages. Not far from my starting shelter I found a gas pump with an attached garage - with 2 motorbikes inside. It appears to be some kind of a workshop.

However, in this workshop, apart from jacks, welding googles, welding tank and a electric polisher, I found no items one would usually expect in a workshop:

  • Wrenches. Lots and lots of wrenches (100+). Same with pliers
  • arc welders + batteries + a serious battery charger
  • acetylene torches + gas
  • Lifting tools.

There was also no toilet. There should have been a toilet and a shower, so mechanics can wash themselves.

All in all, I can understand if things that are valuable for immediate survival get taken by people fleeing, like food. But not other bulky heavy things (brooms) and not if these people exist as zombies around, anyway (meaning the items should be on or near them).

I’m also perplexed as to why so many vehicles have faulty engines.

#2

One thing to mind is that everyone didn’t just disappear suddenly, they either left or died. Those who left took useful tools with them, which is why acetylene torches and welders may not be in every workshop.

Wrenches I’ve found to be somewhat common, but could still be a little more common in garages and the like as you’ve said.

I’ve found more laptops than I care to pick up just by killing zombies, personally. Personal devices such as that are among items that people would take with them, which is why you often find them on zombies.

Disposable batteries seem to be going out of vogue, just about every household has multiple non-disposable batteries in the kitchen anyways.

Pasta is fairly common in kitchens.

There’s a water heater in just about every basement, and on many rooves.

Laundry machines are often in the basement, but can be on the main floor.

Vehicles that actually work were probably driven away.

Brooms and mops are actually fairly rare for some reason.

#3

Ah, I hadn’t killed too many zombies yet, since I lack skills and instruments for direct confrontations. Also, two of my 3 vehicles are EVs that are too fragile to use for giving zombies a ride into the second afterlife. 7 or so zombie corpses and a few houses so far yielded a few cellphones and smartphones, but no laptops.

The only wrench I’ve found was found in a garage of a house. I’ve raided one garage and an abandoned warehouse and found no wrenches there.

#4

About batteries: IRL devices are headed towards proprietary (often non-removable) cells or proprietary battery packs. Devices that run on standard cells are either designed to run on disposable alkaleaks and may or may not run on NiMH or one must go out of the way to order them from specialised stores. Rechargeable batteries are also not on sale in normal stores and I had to “sign” a disclaimer about dangers of loose li-ion cells on my last such order.

C:DDA presents a bright future with interchangeable parts :slight_smile:

I have prepared a more detailed post about batteries, but have to wait 21h for the posting limit for new users to expire.

#5

Those are actually quite common. But there’s some randomness in it. Maybe you just got “unlucky”?

The year the game plays in is actually this year +1.
As for the computers (other than the occasional terminal) and…

These are just not implemented yet. For a long time we didn’t have crosswalks and lamp posts on the streets. There’s also no power poles as of now… Please keep in mind: This game is in the alpha stage.
Also, it’s open source. If you want to add something, please consider contributing it yourself to speed up the process: Have a look on how to do it…

As for why some of the other stuff is rare/missing; they were probably stolen/used/damaged/destroyed in the riots.
If you want to know more about it, take a look at the backstory (warning, spoilers!).

I agree that a lot of stuff should be more common, but I understand that from a game perspective, it’s probably too “easy” if you find lots of goods.
However, I myself like to play with Item spawn scaling factor set to 10.00 (you find that setting in the options, under Current World, World Defaults or on world generation).

#6

Yes, they are common, but not in dozens per house.

The year the game plays in is actually this year +1.

Ah, then the amount of EVs is way too high.

Also, it’s open source. If you want to add something, please consider contributing it yourself to speed up the process: Have a look on how to do it…

Yes, I am aware (as the thread title indicates I am playing on a fairly recent git snapshot). I am currently attempting to hunt down a fairly annoying “item_location lost its target item during a save/load cycle” bug, that happens every day and corrupts save files - I have to restore from several snapshots back.

However, I refuse to use GitHub. It is a non-FOSS platform and using it for development of free software is, in my eyes, morally wrong. They also exclude people from US-sanctioned countries from contributing and are a de-facto monopoly.

A few days ago I have sent two bug reports to the mail address published for that purpose on the website and will also send patches there once I have any. I assume the lack of response is due to Kevin being very busy.

I will refrain from reading any spoilers until I have sufficiently progressed in-game.

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#7

Strange thing is, people (and early looters) took everything useful from every single room from every single house… except all the kitchens where there’s always a motherload of food, tools, batteries and duct tape :rofl:

1 Like
#8

imma be honest, i’m kinda glad that there isnt massive ammounts of junk in the game cluttering every single house.

for one it’d massively bloat file size, and for two, could you imagine like… finding the home of a hoarder? having to sort through all the random stuff that they have piled to the celing to find the very few (if any) things that are actually worthwhile?

#9

I mean… that’s probably a very realistic possibility…

#10

yeah but in cataclysm terms, i’d hit shift V, go ‘oh hell no theres too many items in here’, mabye type in a few searches for something useful and grab those, then move on.

#11

That probably wouldn’t help - a hoarder house would be filled with rubble that would block the V command.

Wouldn’t be able to see the zombie cats down there either (are there such things?)

#12

see but thats where the clarvoyance kicks in~
… unless you need to physically move the rubble with a shovel just to get the items underneath XD

#13

I dunno, I haven’t had any issue finding useful things in buildings. I often find two to three acetylene torches per mechanic garage, plenty of useful clothes in every house bedroom, etc. I find all the things I expect to find in a house, except maybe a mop and broom. Even very valuable skill books are fairly common in houses.

What buildings are missing things you are expecting?

#14

Simple explanation: Single households :smile: …

Eh, who knows… I mean, there are (still) bionics in the game, which we also don’t have (at least not these types)…
Also, the spawn rate can be a bit random…

Well, the title just states the version number which can be found on the main title screen and other places, it doesn’t say anything about git, so it’s a bit hard to guess if you know or not…

I mean, you probably downloaded it from there since all the download links point to GitHub :wink: … But yes, I understand. I myself am no fan of GitHub…

That’s actually how I would probably loot such a house in real live too. Have a quick look around, grab the few useful things I can see and then leave.

#15

its too bad in videogames i have an overwhelming urge to -be- the hoarder who’s house you’re searching through.

#16

I’m a total hoarder, I take all the items and I even deconstructed half the furniture in the first house :slight_smile:

Crafting seems to consider items in 5-6 tiles radius and warehouse shelves store 3000L of stuff, which means I can truly store a lot.

#17

Well, I am guilty of it as well… You can imagine how my base looks when I play with an 10x item spawn rate… And I want to preserve as much of it as I can (even though I will probably never use any of it).
I get really pissed (as in; me, not my character) when a Zombie breaks anything, even if it was just a glass window :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: …