XML editing for Zombie Spawns (HELP!)

[kidmo31]

Ok I was trying to modify zombie spawns in open world as I feel your a little too safe at night. I wanted to keep daytime relatively safe my problem is I originally set things to test behavior:

<spawn maxcount="6" respawndelay=".2" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />
<spawn maxcount="10" respawndelay=".1" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" />

And it gave me a bonkers amount of zombies all the time which was expected behavior as I increased counts and decreased respawn time, (Really Fun but brutal hard)

So to make daytime survivable but still have some zombies I changed only the respawn time for days but kept vanilla max count like this but kept the bonkers setting for night:

<spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay=".2" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />
<spawn maxcount="10" respawndelay=".1" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" />

This made daytime live able but it completely neutered night time spawns also. Does anyone have any insight to what I am doing wrong?

 

[convergent]

Hmm a couple of thoughts...

Spawning is per chunk, so if you wander during the day you will enter new chunks and trigger the spawn events for nearby chunks.

If you post up in a base at night the chunk may not respawn unless you kill the lone z from the day.

Or maybe I am all wrong  

 

[PrimalCarnage]

Ok I was trying to modify zombie spawns in open world as I feel your a little too safe at night. I wanted to keep daytime relatively safe my problem is I originally set things to test behavior:

<spawn maxcount="6" respawndelay=".2" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />
<spawn maxcount="10" respawndelay=".1" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" />

And it gave me a bonkers amount of zombies all the time which was expected behavior as I increased counts and decreased respawn time, (Really Fun but brutal hard)

So to make daytime survivable but still have some zombies I changed only the respawn time for days but kept vanilla max count like this but kept the bonkers setting for night:

<spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay=".2" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />
<spawn maxcount="10" respawndelay=".1" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" />

This made daytime live able but it completely neutered night time spawns also. Does anyone have any insight to what I am doing wrong?

I can't help but think that since your first line of code effects entitygroup="ZombiesAll" that it overwrites the entitygroup="ZombiesNight" as well.  Second line of code should remedy that by changing ZombiesNight a second time but I'm thinking that it is not applying the second line of code.  Before you changed <spawn maxcount="6" over to <spawn maxcount="1", did you notice a difference between how many zombies were spawning during the day versus at night?

One would think that a 66% increase between daytime spawns and night time spawns would be pretty noticeable.  If you can't see a difference in the number of zombies spawning during the day and night from your first block of code, then you wouldn't see a difference between day and night in the second block of code where you lowered daytime spawns and left night time at 10.

Just my thoughts on it, but it seems to me like your second line of code is not being applied in either case.  Though I could not tell you how to fix it if that truly is the case.

 

[mr.devolver]

The spawn system you're working with is pretty tricky and less than ideal. If you're trying to decrease the overall amount of zombies during the day, it doesn't make much sense to have only 1 enemy to spawn with decreased delay between spawns anyway. Instead of that, try to increase the maxcount, but significantly increase spawndelay as well. As a result, you should get higher amount of zombies in one spawn, but overall they will take longer to respawn which will result in much lower amount of spawned zombies during day overall = much easier gameplay during the day, if that's what you're looking for.

I can't help but think that since your first line of code effects entitygroup="ZombiesAll" that it overwrites the entitygroup="ZombiesNight" as well.

The line of code does not overwrite anything, it's just there to adjust the settings. ZombiesAll and ZombiesNight are just two separate entity groups that are defined there so that the game can pull random zombies from them at the time it decides which zombies to spawn.

 

[AuroraGiggleFairy]

I believe it is the "respawndelay" that is throwing you off. So night time is how long in your game? In default settings, it is only 6 hours I think? With your setting, 10 zombies may spawn 2-3 times at night, As .1 delay is 2.4 in game hours. Or something weird along these lines. ALSO, the "10" zombies will not necessarily know where you are or come right at you?

Hope this helps?

 

[xxx73]

Im taking the chance to ask some side questions to the spawning topic.
 

Does night and day settings work? Im asking because I still seeing zeds and animals I have set to day spawning in the night.
Next follow up question is then, how long time does it take for zeds and animals to despawn after I leave a a chunk/area? Maybe this is the reason im seeing day spawning at night?

 

[kidmo31]

Hmm a couple of thoughts...

Spawning is per chunk, so if you wander during the day you will enter new chunks and trigger the spawn events for nearby chunks.

If you post up in a base at night the chunk may not respawn unless you kill the lone z from the day.

Or maybe I am all wrong  

While yes its per chunk its actually mainly a timer and a limit system. So if you clear a chunk it will not respawn till the timer is up.  The vanilla timers actually say about 2.9 days for daytime and 3.3 days for night spawns. By putting the timer to .01 it makes respawns every 10 in game minutes approximately  instead of 3 game days.

I can't help but think that since your first line of code effects entitygroup="ZombiesAll" that it overwrites the entitygroup="ZombiesNight" as well.  Second line of code should remedy that by changing ZombiesNight a second time but I'm thinking that it is not applying the second line of code.  Before you changed <spawn maxcount="6" over to <spawn maxcount="1", did you notice a difference between how many zombies were spawning during the day versus at night?

One would think that a 66% increase between daytime spawns and night time spawns would be pretty noticeable.  If you can't see a difference in the number of zombies spawning during the day and night from your first block of code, then you wouldn't see a difference between day and night in the second block of code where you lowered daytime spawns and left night time at 10.

Just my thoughts on it, but it seems to me like your second line of code is not being applied in either case.  Though I could not tell you how to fix it if that truly is the case.

Those lines refer to the group pools the spawns pull from those are unchanged from the normal XML

To everyone else the spawns for day are actually working for daytime. They stay low but steady I just wanted a manageable amount but constant. Not a clear and nothing for 2 days. At night changing the max count to 64 actually gave me the desired result. Its actually worse than Blood Moon Hordes.  

 

[kidmo31]

Im taking the chance to ask some side questions to the spawning topic.
 

Does night and day settings work? Im asking because I still seeing zeds and animals I have set to day spawning in the night.
Next follow up question is then, how long time does it take for zeds and animals to despawn after I leave a a chunk/area? Maybe this is the reason im seeing day spawning at night?

Yes I can confirm day and night work. I put all feral spawns at night and that is all I get minus the wandering hordes. Wandering hordes follow their own spawn pools so you would need to edit those too. BUT remember those are gamestage based and will go off at random.

I believe it is the "respawndelay" that is throwing you off. So night time is how long in your game? In default settings, it is only 6 hours I think? With your setting, 10 zombies may spawn 2-3 times at night, As .1 delay is 2.4 in game hours. Or something weird along these lines. ALSO, the "10" zombies will not necessarily know where you are or come right at you?

Hope this helps?

Actually night 1 zombies as far as the eye can see and I mean alot. Not killing any as feral on night one will call the whole horde. Then some nights absolutly nothing with the same settings

 

[kidmo31]

The spawn system you're working with is pretty tricky and less than ideal. If you're trying to decrease the overall amount of zombies during the day, it doesn't make much sense to have only 1 enemy to spawn with decreased delay between spawns anyway. Instead of that, try to increase the maxcount, but significantly increase spawndelay as well. As a result, you should get higher amount of zombies in one spawn, but overall they will take longer to respawn which will result in much lower amount of spawned zombies during day overall = much easier gameplay during the day, if that's what you're looking for.

What I was intending was more than vanilla during the day and a insane amount at night. By cranking both i was getting crazy amounts in both. When I knocked down daytime some nights were no zombies at all and other nights were the max allowed. It was very inconsistent. Cranking max count to 64 tho did make things steady again at night.