PC Seeking Definition of "Volumes"

A

Azlynn

Refugee
Specifically trying to understand what the game considers a "volume" in relation to the below setting:

<property name="BedrollDeadZoneSize" value="45"/> <!-- Size of bedroll deadzone, no zombies will spawn inside this area, and any cleared sleeper volumes that touch a bedroll deadzone will not spawn after they've been cleared. -->

I've been attempting to figure this out so i can set the setting appropriately for the server me & some friends are playing on but I've been unable to determine what it considers a volume. A specific case of what we're trying to do is a few players are trying to have a communal base in one of the Dishong Tower buildings but are unclear as to where to place their bed rolls so that the entire building will be non-spawnable once it has been fully cleared, which is a serious undertaking in itself. We've been unable to figure out if the entire building is one big volume, if each floor and/or room are individual volumes and if so, does the range limit of the bedroll dead-zone apply to the Z axis as well?

If anyone has any insight or knowledge of how the game engine defines this it would be greatly appreciated as our server is setup in a factioned PVP setup, so living in the larger buildings would be ideal for having sufficient room to work with each other while also blending in with your surroundings to not expose yourself to the other factions.

 
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A volume is essentially just an invisible 3d cube that determines a game state, usually activating a trigger if you touch or look at it. Judging by my experience with A16 I would say that volumes tend to be placed on a room-by-room basis. I wouldn't be surprised if some bigger rooms have multiple volumes, or small houses with many small rooms are all one volume. The volumes might be a bit larger than the rooms to allow the engine to spawn sleepers before players have line of sight to the spawns (to prevent players from watching a zombie appear out of thin air). There's probably also some type of raytracing system that spawns a volume of sleepers as soon as you have line of sight to and are within a certain distance of it. Unfortunately I doubt you'll get much better information unless a developer explains the exact way the engine works.

I thought bedrolls have a deadzone that extends infinitely vertically but maybe that's not the case if you are having problems. If the bedroll deadzone extends infinitely vertically then you should just need one bedroll in the center of the building (or perhaps 4 beds, one in each corner, if the building is too large), otherwise you may need a bedroll every few floors, or a set of 4 every few floors depending on the size of the tower and the size of the deadzone. Keep in mind that each player only has one active bedroll so one player placing multiple bedrolls will not block spawning for each roll. There could also theoretically be a special check for the tower specifically to prevent people from neutralizing it with a bedroll in a MP setting. Honestly only a dev could say for sure unless you were able to do extensive testing on this specific scenario.

 
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Prefabs have sleeper volumes assigned to them, via the prefabs xml file. Pretty much as described above... Think of an invisible cube shell, that when you walk in, activates the sleepers in that volume. Quite a few a16 volumes are simply the perimeter and height of the prefab, but larger prefabs have multiple volumes, some overlapping.

 
you have to consider that the bedroll works only when the owner is online

if anyone that isn't the owner spawn in the tower or near it the sleeper spawn too, so next time you go online you can find your base trashed and full of zombie

 
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