Tent movement is driving me insane

[Dayzo 182]

Just need to vent...

I've always got about five tents that I keep stocked, pitched about 1km apart. I spread my weapons out between them for redundancy; when one is found and looted it doesn't affect me a great deal because the others are left untouched. One of the few places you can pitch tents is inside groups of pines in quiet areas of the map. I've found this very effective, and some tents have lasted three or four weeks without being discovered.

However, there's a bug that is driving me crazy. The first week or two, all the tents stay put in the middle the pines; they're seemingly stable, so of course you fill them with gear. But after one week, on every server-restart they'll start to inch closer to one of the trees until eventually you can't access them.

I'm finding myself in a continual cycle of rescuing my tents from becoming inaccessible, and I don't like it at all. I've done the work getting the tent and finding a good place to pitch it. I shouldn't have to put up with this bullshit of finding replacement tents and transferring gear between them every few days. Also, I've lost a load of gear, representing many dozens of hours of my time, to this bug before I noticed what was happening.

I posted in the bug forum but it didn't get past moderation. Does anyone know if this problem will be worked on?

Anyone else getting fed up with their tents moving?

[Stafoo 61]

Tents are too buggy I generally just roll around and if I lose it its gone.

[Maca (DayZ) 769]

Gave up on tents along time ago, infact I've ever only pitched two tents.

[Dankine 377]

Gave up on tents along time ago, infact I've ever only pitched two tents.

dysfunction?

[puppetworx 474]

This was bugging me too, I'm not sure how it happens but my tents always seem to move downhill. To be honest I shouldn't be able to place my tent in the middle of a pine tree on a 45-degree incline though...

[Dayzo 182]

This was bugging me too, I'm not sure how it happens but my tents always seem to move downhill

Yes, they tend to follow the slope. What gets me is that the movement is exponential - they start off moving incredibly small amounts so you can't even notice if, but after twenty restarts, they are suddenly jumping a half a foot at each restart. A tent that seemed to be okay for a week or two can suddenly become inaccessible over the course of one day if the server reboots every six hours.

I lost another one about an hour ago. >:(

I don't PvP very much, so setting up camps is what I do most of all. But this bug is just killing the scavenge/survival aspect of the game.

If you can't hide tents in pines, then you may as well just pitch your camp in the middle of Cherno!

[Erizid 56]

My tents were moving away from trees more and more.

Personally I like the private hive I play on that only allows tents to last one week before they vanish.

Now I just store extra guns in useless GAZs and UAZs and leave the offroading to my white pickup.

[void.false@gmail.com 300]

Great anti-hoarders mechanic. Hope it stays so.

[venthos 605]

Hey void_false. Been a while. Glad to see you're still the same old... well.. void_false, that you always were (no other way I could say that without resorting to unkind words).

The tent creep issue is a interesting situation to fix, simply because ARMA's engine isn't designed around precisely placed persistent "vehicles" (tents are considered vehicles, as are players).

It's important to understand "why" this happens in the first place.

[1] you throw a tent down at an x/y point 100,100.

[2] It gets registered in the hive as existing at 100,100, and all is well.

[3] Each time you "save" your tent, it saves to 100,100. All is still well.

[4] *The server restarts at some point*

[5] During restart, the server must poll the hive and place down all those tents again that people had put down. When it does this, it certainly does call the proper ARMA2 function to say "place a tent at 100,100" However, ARMA2's engine doesn't enforce a strict position on "vehicles", only "objects". This means the vehicle may shift ever so slightly on placement (you'll notice this happens with cars/helis/bikes/etc, too). As you've noticed, it's basically the "gravity" in the game that causes it to slightly pull down a bit in whatever direction the land it's being placed on is sloped.

[6] It's at this point, the tent is now no longer at precisely 100,100. It may be at 100,99.

[7] If nobody saves the tent, it would continually end up at 100,99 each restart. This is because the server would read 100,100 from the DB, and the engine would slide it slightly to 100,99 each time consistently. But, no doubt, people USE their tents. So, they end up saving the tent at its new location of 100,99.

[8] *Restart*

[9] Rinse repeat, the same problem happens here and now the tent moves to 100,98. This keeps happening until the tent nestles itself on flat ground.

The easiest fix here (as far as I can discern) is simply to prevent tents from saving their location each time that they're saved, and only save their inventories on each save. If this is done, your tent will still experience that first "shift" from 100,100 to 100,99, but since you'd never "re-save" the 100,99 location, it'd never shift again beyond that initial "shift" location.

I'll be experimenting with this, but that seems like the best compromise at the moment.

To ensure tents were enforced at 100,100 guaranteed, you would need to write some complex algorithm that took into account the slope of the ground the tent was on and attempt to compensate for whatever "shift" the ARMA2 engine would effect on the tent and therefore spawn a tent saved at 100,100 at 100,101 or something (although the calculation wouldn't be that brain dead simple). That's way too much effort/calculation for what it's worth and I think the "just never update the tent's new location" compromise would be reasonable.

Since void_false seems to really love tent shift, I'll be sure to personally look into this to eliminate it. I *think* this is fixed in 1.7.3 if you don't use the "Save Tent" action menu item ever, but I'll need to go perusing through every server_updateObject call to verify this.

Basically, the "Save Vehicle/Tent" action menu item is superfluous as of 1.7.3 and no longer required. Tents/vehicles are autosaved in situations where a save is appropriate (which prevents duping through them). In fact, the "Save" menu item is already being removed for the next DayZ official patch simply because it is superfluous at this point. But, the call to server_updateObject from the "Save" menu WOULD update the position of the tent and therefore contribute to tent shift as described.

TLDR: Never use the manual save option to save your tent in 1.7.3, just let the auto-save that naturally happens occur, and you should no longer experience tent shift. But since you can't stop OTHERS from saving your tent in 1.7.3 that way, you may just have to wait until the next patch for tent shift to be gone forever ;)

<3 you void_false

[void.false@gmail.com 300]

Y U mad?

[BAHADIR 124]

And the best part is, I lost all my tents for f***n 3 times. They just disappared, consider yourself lucky... and the updates keeps focusing on car repair menus. Well, considering this is an alpha, thers no problem for me about these bugs, they did a great job, and the standalone will be great too I hope...

[shadowjack 254]

What i don't understand about tents is how does my newly created character know where the previous dead characters tent(s) were? :P

They should either die with the character or be relocated to a random spot on a random server. Same with vehicles.

[venthos 605]

Sounds like you'd have to extend this into real life as well and get one of those men in black devices to wipe every player's memories of where loot spawns/the map layout/etc. Or just allow 1 life per CD key.

Some stuff just doesn't work when you try and apply too much realism.

[Steak and Potatoes 13480]

I stock pile tents with empty cans and bottles and place them in the middle of a city and watch peoples reaction always a good laugh and you never get frustrated.

[Sturgeon 40]

Hey void_false. Been a while. Glad to see you're still the same old... well.. void_false, that you always were (no other way I could say that without resorting to unkind words).

The tent creep issue is a interesting situation to fix, simply because ARMA's engine isn't designed around precisely placed persistent "vehicles" (tents are considered vehicles, as are players).

It's important to understand "why" this happens in the first place.

[1] you throw a tent down at an x/y point 100,100.

[2] It gets registered in the hive as existing at 100,100, and all is well.

[3] Each time you "save" your tent, it saves to 100,100. All is still well.

[4] *The server restarts at some point*

[5] During restart, the server must poll the hive and place down all those tents again that people had put down. When it does this, it certainly does call the proper ARMA2 function to say "place a tent at 100,100" However, ARMA2's engine doesn't enforce a strict position on "vehicles", only "objects". This means the vehicle may shift ever so slightly on placement (you'll notice this happens with cars/helis/bikes/etc, too). As you've noticed, it's basically the "gravity" in the game that causes it to slightly pull down a bit in whatever direction the land it's being placed on is sloped.

[6] It's at this point, the tent is now no longer at precisely 100,100. It may be at 100,99.

[7] If nobody saves the tent, it would continually end up at 100,99 each restart. This is because the server would read 100,100 from the DB, and the engine would slide it slightly to 100,99 each time consistently. But, no doubt, people USE their tents. So, they end up saving the tent at its new location of 100,99.

[8] *Restart*

[9] Rinse repeat, the same problem happens here and now the tent moves to 100,98. This keeps happening until the tent nestles itself on flat ground.

The easiest fix here (as far as I can discern) is simply to prevent tents from saving their location each time that they're saved, and only save their inventories on each save. If this is done, your tent will still experience that first "shift" from 100,100 to 100,99, but since you'd never "re-save" the 100,99 location, it'd never shift again beyond that initial "shift" location.

I'll be experimenting with this, but that seems like the best compromise at the moment.

To ensure tents were enforced at 100,100 guaranteed, you would need to write some complex algorithm that took into account the slope of the ground the tent was on and attempt to compensate for whatever "shift" the ARMA2 engine would effect on the tent and therefore spawn a tent saved at 100,100 at 100,101 or something (although the calculation wouldn't be that brain dead simple). That's way too much effort/calculation for what it's worth and I think the "just never update the tent's new location" compromise would be reasonable.

Since void_false seems to really love tent shift, I'll be sure to personally look into this to eliminate it. I *think* this is fixed in 1.7.3 if you don't use the "Save Tent" action menu item ever, but I'll need to go perusing through every server_updateObject call to verify this.

Basically, the "Save Vehicle/Tent" action menu item is superfluous as of 1.7.3 and no longer required. Tents/vehicles are autosaved in situations where a save is appropriate (which prevents duping through them). In fact, the "Save" menu item is already being removed for the next DayZ official patch simply because it is superfluous at this point. But, the call to server_updateObject from the "Save" menu WOULD update the position of the tent and therefore contribute to tent shift as described.

TLDR: Never use the manual save option to save your tent in 1.7.3, just let the auto-save that naturally happens occur, and you should no longer experience tent shift. But since you can't stop OTHERS from saving your tent in 1.7.3 that way, you may just have to wait until the next patch for tent shift to be gone forever ;)

<3 you void_false

Thanks for the explanation :) Not a tent man myself and i generally look for flat ground anyway if i do want to set one up.

[Dayzo 182]

Yep, thanks for the verbose explanation, and for the hope that one day my tents will not be eaten by pines.

I think the admin of the server is updating to 1.7.3 today or tomorrow, so I'll take your advice and not manually save them any more.

[joeoblong@yahoo.com 614]

Been saving every tent I find for about a month now. I am gonna spell "Pendragon Rulez!" with them in a open field some day.

[Erizid 56]

Thanks for the explanation :) Not a tent man myself and i generally look for flat ground anyway if i do want to set one up.

Thank you Sturgeon for quoting a wall of text when a "Thank you Venthos" was all that was needed.

Also, thank you Venthos for your explanation and confirming a suspicion I had that the save menu option was totally unnecessary.

Edited November 2, 2012 by Erizid

[BAHADIR 124]

I stock pile tents with empty cans and bottles and place them in the middle of a city and watch peoples reaction always a good laugh and you never get frustrated.

you got one of my beans, four more to go...