PC New Auger Heat and its Problems

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Druuna

New member
Ok, mining with the Auger generates now crazy much heat, the screamers coming every minute or two.

Not that I don't like that, it's a nice change in the otherwise boring work of a miner, but it has problems which can lead to really bad lag spikes. That happens if your digging tunnels become labyrintic enough so that the screamers have problems to reach you ... but they can hear you!

So they spawn and scream and spawn and scream ... and suddenly 50 or 100 zeds in and on the area around you creating bad lag spikes so that fleeing can end up in death fast.

Solutions would be to decrease heat generation or decrease screaming frequency of the screamers.

A better solution would be to let the screamers only scream if they see you, not if they only can hear your Auger. If they see me I have to deal with them and they don't scream 100 zeds together.

What do you think about it?

 
I think something as loud as an auger should draw lots of attention, probably more than it does now.
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No matter how loud it is. Even through 5m earth you wouldn't hear it anymore let alone through 35m. Accordingly, the fact that a zombie can hear through 35m earth and rock is ridiculous.

 
I can not understand her problem. I have worked with drills for many hours. Screamer did not bother me. They seem to be doing something different than me.

Tip: In debug mode, turn on the heatmap display and check it.

Speculation: Do you turn the drill on and off often? That would increase the heatmap fast. That's the way it was at Alpha 16.

(Unfortunately, I can only speak very little English. I have used translation program German – English.)

 
What do you think about it?
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I also think a screamer should scream when she sees you and not when she hears you.

It's probably clear that at the moment the developers can't distinguish between noises that are generated in the open, in a building or deep under the earth. Currently only the distance is taken into account when asking if a zombie can hear you or not.

But since we can't change the current situation, it's better to focus on a defense. For example, I have placed an autoturret over the entrance of the mine and designed the entrance so that zombies can use it easily and don't have to dig through it. Furthermore there are spikes at the end of the entrance over which the zombies have to run if they want to come to me.

Some recommend investing points in the skill "From the shadows". So that the zombies don't hear you so far. But I'm not sure if this works.

 
I can not understand her problem. I have worked with drills for many hours. Screamer did not bother me. They seem to be doing something different than me.
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It depends on how deep you are. I had a iron mine about 15m under the ground where the screamer showed up constantly. And I have a iron mine about 35-40m under the ground and they don't seem to hear me anymore so deep down.

Tip: In debug mode, turn on the heatmap display and check it.

Speculation: Do you turn the drill on and off often? That would increase the heatmap fast. That's the way it was at Alpha 16.
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In Alpha 17 it is different. Every hit of the auger generates heat now. Not only if you press the mouse button.

 
I just tried it. Even open pit operated with display for the heatmap (button F8). There is no problem with drill and heatmap.

Try it out for yourself. But not near your base, but in a lonely place.

My conclusion: There is no need for change.

(Unfortunately, I can only speak very little English. I have used translation program German – English.)

 
It depends on how deep you are. I had a iron mine about 15m under the ground where the screamer showed up constantly. And I have a iron mine about 35-40m under the ground and they don't seem to hear me anymore so deep down.
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I noticed that too, but in deep mines you're only safe because of all the rock they have to dig through. In most cases you're done with mining before they reach you. But that don't work in the desert where's no rock. Half an hour and they are down at bedrock.

I have also no problem with defeating them as long as not 50 zeds come through at the same time.

If all goes wrong I flee but that crazy lag from all the zeds makes fleeing not easy.

 
I made a note to look at it but for due to sound/code changes the A17 heat values went down rather than up.

Still in the process of correcting that because it was almost impossible for gunfire to generate enough heat for a scout to ever show up.

 
So... An auger very easily spawns scouts, whether firearms (guns are also very loud, perhaps in some cases even louder) barely?

 
So... An auger very easily spawns scouts, whether firearms (guns are also very loud, perhaps in some cases even louder) barely?
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But both don't seem to affect the heatmap at the moment. I switched on the display of the heat in debug mode and worked with the auger as well as with the AK. The heat map remained at 0. A few campfires, on the other hand, immediately drove the heat up.

But nevertheless players report that they have problems with screamers. I have to admit that the mine where I had the most problems with screamers is only about 100m away from my base. So it could still be in the radius where the screamer spawns.

 
Who uses very many torches in his mine, will also get a problem. That would also be a possibility what it could be.

I like it the way it is now. The heatmap is powered up by stations (campfire, forge, concrete mixer, ...) and also by construction.

The Auger has no influence on the heatmap.

(Unfortunately, I can only speak very little English. I have used translation program German – English.)

 
Seems like here are different positions what happens and what not, so I describe the details:

I play on two servers, one with "Warrior", and one with "Insane" setting. I mine a lot since 16.4 and had around 5 wipes since A17.

Since A17.2 on both servers screamers spawn every minute or two when I start mining. All my mines are far away from anything and I don't use torches or any other equipment. That's maybe true that the heatmap doesn't show anything in single player mode, I can't test that because I'm not the server admin. It would also not help to watch the heat map because it's fact that the screamers spawning like mad, on two servers, in ~10 lonely mines all over the map.

I don't know if it's a server only problem, if it's dependent from the difficulty settings, or whatever,can only say: It happens.

 
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I had a pixel path finding algorithm once. I used it to calculate a few million pixel changes and group findings every second. Turns out it is a horrible idea to run path finding algorithms on the main Unity thread because it lags the main unity thread a lot.

The solution is to either have parallelism implemented in the form of ienumerators . A better idea is to implement threads. Threading eventually solved all of my problems and I could have 60+ fps on the main thread and about 3~6 fps on the secondary thread. I could increase the path finding fps even more if I made some improvements but it had already a huge boost on my project and even more when I eventually compiled the app.

I'm sure the devs could have an insane performance boost if they switched to any form parallelism instead of relying on updates on the main unity thread. They should really give it a try.

 
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I don't know if it's a server only problem, if it's dependent from the difficulty settings, or whatever,can only say: It happens.
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The difficulty settings are not. I did my test on Insane.

Throughout the Alpha 17 I've been working a lot with Auger Mining and never had a problem with Screamers.

Speculation: On the multiplayer server, the admin has made appropriate changes.

You can also test it yourself by starting your own game.

 
Just performed a test ingame. Spawned myself an auger with additional mods and a supply of gas. Killed all Zs from the console to be sure noone would interrupt me nor influence my checks. My target was one of the big stone formations on the surface.

So i used over 800 gas destroying stone blocks and got information in the console about failed scout spawning (there was some building falling down and errors in the console, which i presume was the case). Either way, there was an attempt for spawning and i was ONLY using an auger. I still need to check whether a screamer spawned due to destroying a lot of blocks or simply using the auger (similar to destroying many trees in A16).

EDIT: I performed a few more checks using the auger to dig air in front of me. It turns out at around 500 gas used there is a check for spawning a scout. A couple attempts (even one underground) didn't spawn a screamer (even on a different save) resulting with an error of "horde spawn off edge of valid space, aborting spawn" and a result of "Scout spawning failed". Was able to generate a scout through 10 active forges + active workbench + active Chem Station.

 
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Who uses very many torches in his mine, will also get a problem. That would also be a possibility what it could be.
I like it the way it is now. The heatmap is powered up by stations (campfire, forge, concrete mixer, ...) and also by construction.

The Auger has no influence on the heatmap.

(Unfortunately, I can only speak very little English. I have used translation program German – English.)
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The heatmap or the auger's influence on it is rather irrelevant. Augers attract zeds - that is well established. I have noticed that digging near bedrock seems to alleviate this though - as it should.

 
Not entirely related, but the auger is garbage. It's fuel consumption is way too high. I tried it for a few minutes, went through 1,800 fuel, and went back to my pick axe.

 
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