PC Am I Being Short Changed Zombies?

[Pernicious]

My friends and I are currently on Gamestage 330ish, and we're not getting to finish off the waves. It's not a problem surviving the wave. It's that we can't kill them fast enough - Simply because there aren't that many to kill. In the heat of the moment, and the low medium-long range visibility of blood moon, it's hard to know exactly how many Zombies are being spawned. However, after the fact, I looked at both the game state and the logs:

GamePref.BloodMoonEnemyCount = 64

GamePref.MaxSpawnedZombies = 256

Those were pulled by typing "GG" into the CLI, so I know that's the live game state, and not a misconfigured serverconfig.xml file. We have three players, so in theory, that should mean that up to 192 Zombies should be able to spawn.

Looking at the logs:

2022-04-30T22:01:36 169045.217 INF BloodMoonParty: SpawnZombie grp 0 feralHordeStageGS312 (count 29, numToSpawn 444, maxAlive 101), cnt 14, zombieWightRadiated, loot 0.03, at player 186, day/time 70 22:10

At 10 minutes (Yellow) into horde night, only 29 Zombies have spawned (Red), even though I should get 101 at any one time (Green), and this is not limited by either the BloodMoonEnemyCount (192 - 3 players), or the MaxSpawnedZombies (256)

Since they aren't spawning fast enough, by the end of the first wave (23:59, in yellow again):

2022-04-30T22:06:46 169354.690 INF BloodMoonParty: SpawnZombie grp 0 feralHordeStageGS312 (count 330, numToSpawn 444, maxAlive 101), cnt 16, zombieFemaleFatFeral, loot 0.75, at player 183, day/time 70 23:59
2022-04-30T22:06:46 169354.724 INF Time: 2814.97m FPS: 37.19 Heap: 3693.4MB Max: 3892.0MB Chunks: 789 CGO: 54 Ply: 3 Zom: 14 Ent: 44 (193) Items: 10 CO: 11 RSS: 5225.4MB

We've only spawned 330.

It's not a server performance issue. The FPS check just before the end of the first wave:

2022-04-30T22:06:16 169324.549 INF Time: 2814.47m FPS: 36.74 Heap: 3763.5MB Max: 3892.0MB Chunks: 789 CGO: 56 Ply: 3 Zom: 18 Ent: 47 (223) Items: 10 CO: 10 RSS: 5224.7MB

and after that wave are fairly reasonable numbers: (This is a 96 core server)

2022-04-30T22:06:46 169354.724 INF Time: 2814.97m FPS: 37.19 Heap: 3693.4MB Max: 3892.0MB Chunks: 789 CGO: 54 Ply: 3 Zom: 14 Ent: 44 (193) Items: 10 CO: 11 RSS: 5225.4MB

(And now I'm looking at that log, I'm wondering if it's saying I only have 18 and 14 Zombies alive at those performance updates - Red).

Am I being short changed Zombies? If I am, I want them all refunded in one shot! (Preferably while I have my Frag Rockets loaded, actually, make that my entire tool belt filled with Frag Rockets - reload takes too long).

Hoping someone could shed some light on this log analysis. Thanks!

 

[Snowydeath]

Following as I'm curious to what the answer or theories may be

 

[SylenThunder]

Prior to a20, setting max alive higher than 90 would break things. The bloodmoon spawner was also hard capped at 64 zeds.  I have not tested it thoroughly in a20, but it seems that these numbers are still valid based on current experiences managing four servers.

Also note that your 96-core server just means you have CPU bandwidth to run a lot of servers. Primary task for the server will only use 1-2 cores. It will send small worker jobs to other cores, but you're not going to see it use more than probably a third of what you have even then. What really matters is the core clock speed and memory bandwidth.

 

[Roland]

The option setting of 8 zombies per player or 20 zombies per player etc. has always been subject to the hard cap of 64 zombies. That is partially why 8 players is the default max number of players for MP-- because 8 zombies per player is the default setting and 8x8 is 64. If you set the number per player higher or have more than 8 players on the server then the game simply divides up available zombies per player as evenly as possible until the 64 zombie limit is reached. AFAIK, that limit cannot be changed and have any effect in the game and I don't believe anything about that has changed for Alpha 20.

Since there are three of you, you should be able to change the setting to around 20 zombies per player and get a faster spawn rate than if it is at the default of 8 zombies per player. You didn't mention whether you had changed that or not but if you kept it at the default, could that be why they aren't spawning fast enough for you?

 

[Boidster]

At GS330, the maximum size of a wave is 444 Zs, so getting 300 of them isn't too bad. What is your day length set to? On 60-minute days, you're killing 100 zombies per player every 5 minutes (2-hour wave). A zombie every 3 seconds. Not too shabby? On 120-minute days, maybe it's more shabby.  Are you actually running out of zombies to kill during the wave, so the spawn rate is limiting your kill rate?

Since there are three of you, you should be able to change the setting to around 20 zombies per player and get a faster spawn rate than if it is at the default of 8 zombies per player.

I think that's this:

GamePref.BloodMoonEnemyCount = 64

The per-player limit for blood moon spawning.

The Wiki page is pretty up to date. I'm in an intimate relationship with the person who last updated it.

 

[Pernicious]

Thanks everyone. It's good to know it's not just in my head, and that there are hidden limits I'm hitting.

You're right, 330 kills in 60 minute days isn't too bad. We are getting more than 3/4 of the intended spawn. There are significant periods where we are swapping to sniper rifles to pick them off as they approach, rather than M60/Autoshottie on a "target rich environment". This mostly happens after we use an AOE weapon to clear out zombies piling on top of each other. So it's not 100% limited by spawn, but I'd say there are periods where I'd say we'd keep killing a lot faster if they spawned faster.

I don't know if this is the case for 7d2d, but I know some programmers use a default value if a number is set out of range. E.g., you would think most sensible programmers would say:

Range = 1 - 100, Default 10, if number > 100, set to 100, if number < 1, set to 1.

Instead they say:

Range = 1 - 100, Default 10, if number > 100 or number < 1, number = default.

So I'll try reducing my Bloodmoon Enemy counts and Max Spawned according to what @SylenThunder suggested are near max, and see if I get more or less zombies.

Thanks again!