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Craig_VG

[TvT/FFA/CO-40] Dynamic Zombie Sandbox

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Samatra I have never had that neither ummmm its very odd.

Do you play on dedi server or on your listen server?.

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I enjoy mission so much, however it periodically crashes everyone's games (both A2 and A2Free), I am not sure what's the cause but it renders it unplayable. Another problem is that when you host a listen server with mission it starts going buggy - sometimes you get damage when there is nobody around and damage continues until you die (zombie attack scars damage) as well as players respawning into same position or spawning in a city with zero cars and zero zombies around (even after checking the whole town)
Another problem is that mission freezes at "Loading Mission Components" randomly. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and it annoys alot since there is no way to exit server from this loading screen. ArmA 2.

SaMatra, i think you experienced these on the DayZ server - not on the DZS server?

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I haven't experienced any hangs or crashes... Might be a modified version or a poor server? Not a lot of people setup servers correctly... I remember spending at least a solid week of working on servers to set them up properly. You need those settings to be set correctly. Especially for demanding missions like DZS or Degen. Bigger missions also require different settings than smaller missions as well.

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i am having the same problem. i get to the part where it says "loading mission components" but it is frozen. i used to be able to play this mission but i cant anymore.

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Peeps that have issues with hanging is this on some ones server or are you creating your own dedi or other wise?.

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genesis, are you referring to hosting a dedicated server?

i thought of this idea of putting the new zombie spawning into the old v.90 so its playable for arma free and vanilla arma. what do you guys think?

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I think he means setting up the server config.

EG

Max/min message to send and all that stuff TBH I should look into my settings one day LOL.

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Its bugged with both ArmA 2 and ArmA 2 free as well as hosting listen server or dedicated server. ArmA 2 AO version doesn't seem to have these problems, but i didn't play it much.

SaMatra, i think you experienced these on the DayZ server - not on the DZS server?

It was related to DZS, not DayZ.

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This is a really good mission, and popular too. I just hosted a game for myself to try it really, and I had about 15 people come and go...who all knew what they were doing, and set up a base and stuff!

Unfortunately, I encountered a strange problem that rendered the game unplayable. I'm not sure if it was just me (host), or if the other players got it too, but the frame rate dropped suddenly to about 1fps. It didn't seem to be connection related or graphics related...it even slowed down the menus. As soon as I ended the mission, everything went back to normal...I'm playing on standard Arma 2.

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yep its a really good mission and its going to get better.

I do believe its being worked on as and when OP can but as we all know life gets in the way LOL.

Any ways cant wait and thanks

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hosted this yesterday. only had 1 guy on it. settings were 20 zombies spawn everywhere and almost no vehicles.

we were doing find escape chopper mission and it was hella fun! especially when we had NV off. it was almost pitch dark when it was 3am.

getting to an objective 4km away was never this hard hehe. the moment we ran out of ammo made us panic like crazy!

the player didnt lose connection and crash, fortunately. so i can guess that its because of the spawning scripts? when you have more players, more stuff spawns at the same time right?

the only bad part was we keep respawning at the same spot everytime we die. it slowly gets pretty boring and repetitive as we just have to keep going to the same route.

great mission for a group of friends and cooperative people. until the crashing and bugs start :(

and has anyone seen zombies SWIMMING on the ground? it was hilarious for a while seeing a head bob up and down on the road but they're more or less invisible when in the grass. if i remember right, someone said they suddenly took damage from a zombie when they saw nothing. maybe you were a victim of a swimming zombie? haha

EDIT: i'm hosting a game right now with 10 people. 20 zombies spawn everywhere, tiny amount of cars. only 3 people crash. the rest are happily organizing themselves to regroup. cool game hehe (:

Edited by odoyodo

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Hey there, Bobtom.

Quick message drop to thank you for developing this mission. My friends and I find ourselves constantly enjoying it, and look forward to future updates.

This is definitely one of my favorite missions, and one of the few I'd be willing to support the development of financially through donations.

Though, if I had one thing to pick about and stress it would be ACRE support and optimization!

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Hey guys.

I stopped updating dev heaven because I wasn't actually working on anything. RL has been interfering lately, and that needs to take precedence. And to top it all off my ISP decided my section of Wisconsin didn't deserve this thing called the internet for about a week.

However I'm back now.

I want the 1.0 version of this mission to be as bug free as possible. If you have any bugs to report please put them in my issues on dev heaven and I'll do my best to get rid of them.

After 1.0 I want to start adding features again!

Dev heaven:

https://dev-heaven.net/projects/dynamic-zombie-sandbox

PS.

Nice to see your back Dominic! I'm fine with you using my dynamic vehicle spawning of course.

PPS. for others

Dominic is awesome

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bobtom I have put a few reports on the bug tracker for you I am so sorry to put so much on there seeing as you have just got back but I LOVEEEEEE this mission it rocks and I want it to all so be the best zombie mission out there.

Thanks

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Dear peeps on BIS forums,

Okay, so we have a lot of lag. I'm guessing this is a combination of large amount of zombies and a crap ton of objects spawned all across the map.I think that most of the lag could be alleviated by either turning off the logistics and/or making the zombies spawn in towns only. I really do wish we could have a lot of zombies and a lot of objects, but I really don't think that is possible, the performance of many servers is already taxed to the limit or beyond.

Would you guys like me to make a parameter, making the option to bring back the .90 spawning system? In .90 the zombies spawned for a while with a sorta/kinda large amount and eventually fizzled out. In .95 they spawn forever, but a refresher script kills all the zombies off every ten minutes to let the server get rid of any stragglers that do not get despawned.

Other than that I have made some changes and they are being tested now, as seen on dev heaven. Tonic, as he stated before gave me some script snippets for time and marker sync, that has all been added.

More on the way. I want 1.0 to be as stable as possible.

To all the people who play A2 and A2F, that version isn't the flagship version and it tends to get attention second, mainly because of all the scripting commands that are not available in A2 that I do have access to in OA/CO. But I have not abandoned it, don't worry.

Thanks everyone for all the bug reports, and I'll keep plugging away.

Happy zombie slaying,

Craig

:D

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For me its kind of a tough call. I didnt see much zombies on the .90 zombie system but doesnt lag too much. On the .95 i see zombirs everywhere. Fun but servers can't handle the stress and lag tend to make things unplayable. Playability is an important factor. If you can use a balance of two ways that would be great. If less zombies with strong zombies are laid out right (i find an eerie atmosphere in that). A lot zombies give the (oh shit moment). I'd say probably go with .90 system for more playability but with stronger zombies unless you can compromise the two system together. It seems like a lot of people did have issues with .95

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I never had issues with zombies.

I did how ever set it to the lowest 10 zombies and made it so agrro radius is 100 and min spawn distance maxed out.

I run a dedi server and play from a diff machine and most players I had connected was 3 so not many this may be why i never had major issues.

Really looking forward to next release any way

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I haven't mentioned this but... I think (this is from fooling around) you should spawn zombies in a group the way Celery does it. I spawned the group thing you did in the beginning a few times without the other zombies and the lag wasn't bad. It was actually playable with a few people. Maybe instead of spawning zombies one by one, just spawn a group. The one by one thing seems to be killing in.

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I haven't mentioned this but... I think (this is from fooling around) you should spawn zombies in a group the way Celery does it. I spawned the group thing you did in the beginning a few times without the other zombies and the lag wasn't bad. It was actually playable with a few people. Maybe instead of spawning zombies one by one, just spawn a group. The one by one thing seems to be killing in.
^this . Probably would be the best way to solve thing. The way celery does his zombies, I haven't had issues with it. Seems like that would be the best solution.

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I haven't mentioned this but... I think (this is from fooling around) you should spawn zombies in a group the way Celery does it. I spawned the group thing you did in the beginning a few times without the other zombies and the lag wasn't bad. It was actually playable with a few people. Maybe instead of spawning zombies one by one, just spawn a group. The one by one thing seems to be killing in.

The group thing I did in the beginning? What are you referring to?

Celery didn't spawn his in groups, I'm using his code to spawn. Taken directly from his missions. The reason why we have issues is that we are spread out much more than Celery's, which was limited to a small area of Cernarus with less people, vehicles, etc.

The horde spawning I put into .95, which spawns a horde somewhere in the map that chases people down seems to be a large burden. Dominic found out that if you take it out you get about 10 FPS more. I tested this also and confirmed. Both of our tests were on listen servers.

I'm going to do some more testing on the subject, specifically on dedicated.

Edit:

Yeah, groups sounds good though. I'll have to rework Celery's generator script a little, but it's worth a shot.

Edited by bobtom

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The group thing I did in the beginning? What are you referring to?

Celery didn't spawn his in groups, I'm using his code to spawn. Taken directly from his missions. The reason why we have issues is that we are spread out much more than Celery's, which was limited to a small area of Cernarus with less people, vehicles, etc.

The horde spawning I put into .95, which spawns a horde somewhere in the map that chases people down seems to be a large burden. Dominic found out that if you take it out you get about 10 FPS more. I tested this also and confirmed. Both of our tests were on listen servers.

I'm going to do some more testing on the subject, specifically on dedicated.

Edit:

Yeah, groups sounds good though. I'll have to rework Celery's generator script a little, but it's worth a shot.

I speak of hordeSpawner.sqf

I executed that 4 times without the other zombies running around and got good performance with 6 people and that is a step up compared to what originally runs through with 5 people.

But yeah what I meant to say was the way Celery spawns hordes.

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I speak of hordeSpawner.sqf

I executed that 4 times without the other zombies running around and got good performance with 6 people and that is a step up compared to what originally runs through with 5 people.

But yeah what I meant to say was the way Celery spawns hordes.

Okay, I'll put it as a parameter for zombie spawning. You probably won't see zombies as much.

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Guys I hope you could make version for vanilla ArmA 2 that works properly. Often crashes and lockups at "Loading Mission Components" make this mission unplayable with vanilla arma 2 and arma 2 free.

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It's more than tweaking the Celery stuff, or editing them.

Celery's stuff is loop intensive, and works fantastic for a scripted, linear mission that spawns/despawns at triggers with groups more or less in the same localization.

It fails when it has to deal with dispersed targets (players) with zeds randomly spawned over wide areas (4+ sq km, or a 2x2 map)

You can fix it by:

1) Dumping the Celery scripts and going to a location or player based trigger spawn that makes it a localized spawn/despawn. This gets rid of all the non-triggered zombies but might provoke spawn lag if too many people are up.

2) Dumping the Celery scripts and rethinking new applications of the BIS FNC group spawn command, with zeds as a parameter. This pushes the cpu thinking back into the purer game logic-thinking rather than leveraging script work arounds.

3) Dumping the Celery scripts and going simplistic 'move to nearest' and 'inflict damage after animation within 2m' script with a sound attachment. This streamlines all the other stuff.

4) Dumping the Celery scripts server-side and go to a client-side performance demand like Undead mod. Worst choice. What drew me to DZS was that it is all server side, and you lose a percentage of interest (particularly from new players) by having them go through the complicated BIS process of implementing mods. (My plug: they should change this to downloading the mod if not on local at time of connection, like other FPS do for maps and mods - then the server searches for availability, crc's it for cheats, and says yes/no for joining the server).

What sticks out? Dumping the Celery scripts. Now do not misunderstand my opinions: Celery did a bang-up innovative and talented scripting for what it was - a controlled deployment of zeds with either a very local aggression area or less than six players that generally stick together on a smaller map. Thats not what the unwashed masses want. They want continuous, aggressive zeds with a large online participation - the more zeds and more online players the better.

What his scripts cannot do is spawn 200 zeds that loop through 30 players locations in the cpu time allotted, on a 12kmx12km playing ield (144km Chenarus, Takistan, or even a 9x9 Zargabad 81km) with everything else that happens on the map (recalc of player positions, bullets flying, smoke and fire, effects and repositions of moveable objects). You really cannot force this big square peg into a small round hole.

Plus, nows the time to make the big change to some kind of simple scripting that will migrate well to Arma3, which will more or less have the same issues with probably a greater graphics demand. Get the fix in now, and make it work without glitch so you can put it up as fast as possible for A3. Great work, Craig - keep the faith on this. whiskey

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I haven't had any issues with the horde except today on Chernarus might be goof on my script on Takistan i had 20 peeps no issues. I do see the task get done quickly before the zombie horde is eliminated.

Edited by striker10
add another issue to my post

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