Recent experimentals have Dynamic spawn issues? 192*

Game Talk The Garage
1

So…not sure if this is the right area…first time posting here~ so in that sense…hi everyone xP
However…i’ve noticed that in the past 10 or so experimental builds…the dynamic spawn mode seems to be bugged in a few ways (or changed drastically.)

The build i use normally is 87eb615.
in this build, dynamic spawn has a 1 hour peace timer before it starts spawning monsters, and even in the middle of town, at a 0.0 to 0.4 spawn rate…theres very few monsters around, as expected, A few child, some normal zombies…occasional fat or smoker…and very very rarely anything else unless i decide to make a lot of noise.

However. Latest versions (not sure on exactly when it started. probably somewhere in the range of 1920+, but its on the latest too (1929, 85e037e (to a slightly lesser degree))
Theres no spawn wait timer. (this is highly noticeable if you take the “spawn in house” option… as your likely to find something the second you step out.(And sometimes, you’ll get the nice surprise of having a zombie spawn in the same room with you.))
And even at a spawn scale of 0.1, monsters in even small citys range in and around the 20 to 40 range, up to around 60 if you keep it around 0.8 to 1.0.

It also seems that it selects any monsters at all now. Zombie brute spawning at your door the second you step out? sure. 2 mi-go’s down the street in the first hour. yup!
oh and skeleton dogs everywhere.

Going in to town of any kind, or god-forbid spawning in one, is literally nothing short of suicide. even on 0.1 spawn rates. if i wanted a super hard game, i’d have set that rate to 50. not 0.1. :v
Im using the pre-built and ziped versions on the experimental downloads rather than the github. so…its not a compile derp or anything. and its a fresh install. a few options like resolutions changed, no mods.

Is anyone else noticing this…or am i somehow alone in it. :v
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0av1zwmgl8q4vmu/Screenshot%202014-08-13%2001.02.52.png <-apparently 0.3 spawn rate? something like, 40 turns after i started a new world. (not seen: The mi-go further away.)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2evyo5i45rmkn9o/Screenshot%202014-08-12%2013.40.21.png <-0.1 spawn rate. again, around 40 turns or so on a fresh world.
Also the roaming/horde zombie spawns is off. so…its not that either.
Getting away from a city is literaly a pick of luck as to if the game decides to throw a mi-go, skeleton dog, or other faster-than-you monster in the mix early on…and then good luck ever surviving a raid back in to one o,o

I know im not good at the game…but…if thats the new “easyest we go” difficulty…thats an even bigger difficulty curve than ever o,o especualy since it adds in ANY monster. brutes, mi-go’s, skele-dogs… whatever o,o

Edit: I’ve also noticed that…the second you get away from the city…the spawn rate seems to drop off significantly again. so long as your away from the citys, it seems to keep the same spawn rates as before (not sure about labs or other special areas…just i know that citys are now doom, and the forests and fields have a similar-to-before spawn rate as they always have had.)

2

Dynamic spawn wasn’t removed yet?

Well, anyway dynamic spawn isn’t going to be in the game for much longer.

3

oh…didn’t know that :< That sucks… always preferred dyna spawn to static…kinda lets the game go on much much longer :x
Always found static rather stupid really… i mean…cuts game length down insanely…once you clear a town out, thats it clear forever… :expressionless:
Kinda mutes the whole idea and point of bunkering in and making a fortress in any way… xD

4

[quote=“Dwaggy, post:3, topic:7093”]oh…didn’t know that :< That sucks… always preferred dyna spawn to static…kinda lets the game go on much much longer :x
Always found static rather stupid really… i mean…cuts game length down insanely…once you clear a town out, thats it clear forever… :expressionless:
Kinda mutes the whole idea and point of bunkering in and making a fortress in any way… xD[/quote]
This is exactly what hordes are supposed to cure eventually. The idea is that there will be static spawn (which removes all of the weirdness of dynamic spawn) but with hordes that will continue to provide threats even after you’ve cleared an area out.

5

never really encountered any weirdness until the past 10 or so experimentals. but fair enough. :v Still…will be a shame to see Dynamic mode go. the hordes from what i’ve heard are quite the extremes in terms of how many it spawns…though never tryed it myself yet. though their a new feature right? so…i guess some balancing is needed yet on them.

6

Even very good caracter will eventually need some painkiller and/or some item to heal a few, with at last a small area to hide/fight only 1v1.
they spawn so much that nobody could stay inside a horde without dying after a while because when you fight/move they will spawn around you (even with very low noise).

7

Basically what happened is that we changed map tracking: every damn critter on the map is assigned to, and tracked in, an overmap group.

This means that if you injure a moose and you both flee, it’ll still be injured when you track it down later. If your combat knife gets stuck in one member of a horde and you flee, if you ever find that zed again, it’ll have your knife.

This was one of, if not the, major prerequisite(s) for static hordes–just set up groups that move from map square to map square.

Unfortunately, if you load up a Dynamic Spawn world, it tries to do this for all 3,000+ points of zed in the pool. Plus every woodland critter, every giant worm, every swamp group, etc. As I learned, this rakes a truly enormous amount of memory and effectively breaks Dynamic: over a gig of RAM used in worldbuilding with no sign of progress.

I was one of the major objectors to Static Spawn when it first came out. Helps to have 90 min of gear-up before the Cataclysm starts going. But it’s been well over a year since DDA began, and we’re no longer “Left 4 Dead, The Roguelike”. So I’m gonna miss Dynamic–but not too much.

8

On dynamic spawns, has there been a goal set in mind?

Specifically on “depleting” hordes. I imagine there’s two cases, that either the horde continues to spawn from a moving marker, or a new marker is added.

In some ways I’d definitely prefer the latter, have a few large-range low-density raccoon or other such populations dominating a sector, but I can see where perpetual groups would be more fun.

In some ways I definitely like some enemies respawning, especially critters, but I don’t know if there’d be a comfortable balance with infinite zombie respawns. It’d probably encourage me to just keep farming for shocker zombies or something, while aggrevating me to hell that zombies never stop. Going further, it’s not like towns are particularly interesting after you’ve looted the first two or three, so more zombies isn’t really a problem.

I don’t know, I definitely like the kind of “staged” gameplay, where first it’s usually horribly trying to survive, exploring a little, gearing up, then working on a car, exploring, delving further, expertise/bionics/etc. I worry that sort of gameplay will fall out in favor of a more “perpetual danger from stupid things that aren’t worth anything”.

9

Hordes should eventually be replaced with an actual static horde system, which mongroup tracking used to be a main blocker for. At that point hordes will act just like normal zombies, with you being able to completely kill a horde.

As for critters the eventual idea is to check once a month or so and roll for new mongroup production/zombification based on what is currently there. So, for example, if you kill all the rabbits in an area then no more will spawn, but if some groups of rabbits still exist near an area then they will repopulate it, with more groups meaning more offspring groups. It’s certainly possible they might also have a chance of being wiped out, if there are a large number of predator groups nearby. Similarly larger animal groups will have a chance of becoming zombified as the game goes on.