No zombies around?

[Jugginator]

It feels like there's a big misconception then, because I'll often come across info or people saying that the scream is what triggers the spawns.

Even the wiki says "Effects  Summons zombie hordes with her screams"

https://7daystodie.fandom.com/wiki/Screamer

For all intents and purposes, that is technically what spawns the horde in; but in actuality, no it's the scout function that gets called when a scout "sees" a player. This is why F6/sleeper-spawned screamers don't summon zombies -- they aren't scouts at this point. For everyday gamers whom aren't modding the game or rather intend on modding the scouts (I guess you could say game lore), that's clear enough.

Just tested this to be sure it still works before saying so here: if you change the screamer to another zombie and the zombie sees you, it will also summon scout hordes. Just they don't scream when they see you, only the screamers do

 

[Pichii]

Zombies seemingly stopping to respawn, maybe related to screamers not spawning in hordes?

Both these issues are something that me and my friends playing on my dedicated server har noticed over several alphas now, especially 20 and 21 now with the new downtown cityblocks.

Initially there's zombies sprawling around the city, but after a while they're just gone and can walk around hundreds of meters of downtown without a zombie in sight.

The zombie cap in the dedicatedconfig.xml I have increased to over 5000 now just to see if anything happens. but nope.
 

Also noticed that more often then not, nothing happens when a screamer screams. No errors nor spawns appear.

Has anyone else came across this behavior?

Yep. When a server goes into standby status after not being played for quite a few hours, the server will initialize and zombies will not populate for 4-6hr in-game.
Just keep playing. The server will catch up and remember after some time.
**Screamers DO NOT always scream when you hear the scream and this is intentional behavior now. I think the scream just adds a big ol heat surge to the heat map thus, they can scream more than once without triggering a horde.

 

[Jugginator]

**Screamers DO NOT always scream when you hear the scream and this is intentional behavior now. I think the scream just adds a big ol heat surge to the heat map thus, they can scream more than once without triggering a horde.

Minor correction: screamer "screams" have screamers in the spawn group at a low chance. It doesn't add heat.

 

[-Holo-]

Ah you're fine Holo no rush . Whenever you have a chance that's fine, give me a ping or DM when you do.

-Finally- I've had some spare time to sit down a little while to get a pair of logs.  Whats the best way to upload them? Clear out serverIP and upload to pastebin or something?

 

[Jugginator]

-Finally- I've had some spare time to sit down a little while to get a pair of logs.  Whats the best way to upload them? Clear out serverIP and upload to pastebin or something?

Yeah anyway you want is fine. You can dm the logs to me if you want

 

[Canaa]

I don't have any help to offer, but I can confirm that I used to have the same thing happen playing single-player in A20.  I haven't noticed it happening in A21 so much, but I also upgraded my computer drastically around the same time so idk. When it happened, I'd have to quit out and restart the game to get zeds spawning again.

 

[Jugginator]

I don't have any help to offer, but I can confirm that I used to have the same thing happen playing single-player in A20.  I haven't noticed it happening in A21 so much, but I also upgraded my computer drastically around the same time so idk. When it happened, I'd have to quit out and restart the game to get zeds spawning again.

Thanks for that info, very useful. It's good to have confirmation that something like this is happening in single-player as well as on a server, since debugging it in single player generally is faster