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Mr Jizz

Car Dynamics (spawning, glitching, etc.)

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I'm hoping the community has a little experience that can shed light on things I've otherwise only assigned theories.

My first question to the community is if anyone understands the Car spawn mechanic. Do the cars spawn on weekly server maintenance, or on the twice-daily server refreshes?

Regarding glitches - will a car despawn automatically if any part of it is ruined? We had a car that otherwise seemed very safe with one ruined tire, and hours later (after a nightly server refresh) it was gone.

Also, has anyone successfully parked a vehicle inside a structure where it DIDN'T disappear on the server reset? My current understanding is that cars (being a server-side entity) will 'drop' into place on a server reset, which in many cases causes them to land on the roof and thusly crash/ruin and vanish. 

 

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1 hour ago, Mr Jizz said:

My first question to the community is if anyone understands the Car spawn mechanic. Do the cars spawn on weekly server maintenance, or on the twice-daily server refreshes?

Honestly, I'm not sure how this works but it's most certainly not on maintenance day. It's either going to be at a restart or it checks randomly if a new car needs to be spawned.

1 hour ago, Mr Jizz said:

Regarding glitches - will a car despawn automatically if any part of it is ruined? We had a car that otherwise seemed very safe with one ruined tire, and hours later (after a nightly server refresh) it was gone.

No, at least they shouldn't. They only should despawn when the vehicle itself is ruined (black smoke coming from the engine block). At that point, the car will definitely despawn.

1 hour ago, Mr Jizz said:

Also, has anyone successfully parked a vehicle inside a structure where it DIDN'T disappear on the server reset? My current understanding is that cars (being a server-side entity) will 'drop' into place on a server reset, which in many cases causes them to land on the roof and thusly crash/ruin and vanish. 

It's not possible currently. At least, I wouldn't bother with it if you don't want to lose your car. I found this out the hard way recently and lost a car with some stuff in it as well.

But it's not only structures, server restarts might fuck up cars. With an emphasis on might because of I have seen the weirdest shit. I have seen a car standing where it spawned and a couple of restarts later, it was flipped on top of a pile of logs a couple of meters further. Or a car which moved a couple of meters by itself. And no, this is 100 % not the doing of another player.

When this happens (cars moving by itself on a restart) and they hit an object, they will most likely get ruined and despawn. Also, make sure that the wheels aren't sunk in the ground.

Talking about structures, not only cars have problems with structures. It seems tents do as well, since I placed a tent in a barn. When I came back later, it was gone, without a restart. And no, it wasn't a player since no one had been on the server. And that would be odd as well since the SVD was still in a wooden crate, a couple of meters from where the tent was.

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See, this is interesting because some of what IMT said contradicts what I thought regarding cars.

My understand is that on a server start/restart, cars that have not been touched (i.e. they are still sitting where they were when they first spawned) will automatically despawn after its lifetime value is reached -- a value that can be changed by the server administrator.  Since there are normally more car spawn points then there are spawned cars, one that spawned at X spawn position prior to the restart may not still be there after the restart as the server has now placed that car at some other car spawn point.

Once you drive a car even as little as a meter, it then becomes part of the persistence system, so parking one inside of a structure and then having it disappear is most likely related to having some or all parts of the persistence files corrupted due to a server crash.  So, saying that cars will "drop into place" is not quite correct -- they should definitely remain parked, but if there was an issue with persistence, they might not reappear after a server crash.  Any ungraceful termination of the server exe could cause the cars (among other persistence-related items) to despawn once the server comes back up.

As for the gone if ruined issue, I think IMT is correct -- they're only supposed to despawn if the car itself is ruined, but I have also seen evidence to the contrary -- it seems ruined attachments also causes the car to vanish, at least in some circumstances.

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Best thing to do is remove any ruined parts, ASAP. Cars are far too delicate, though. One tiny bump and the radiator gets ruined. I’d much rather they make the engine parts stronger, and make the body and wheels be the only areas at risk of being severely damaged.

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6 hours ago, ThePugman said:

Best thing to do is remove any ruined parts, ASAP. Cars are far too delicate, though. One tiny bump and the radiator gets ruined. I’d much rather they make the engine parts stronger, and make the body and wheels be the only areas at risk of being severely damaged.

^^ THIS!

I'd like to see them implement a "cleaning" system similar to how it works with guns.  The cars definitely are too delicate, but even toughened up, they will eventually get ruined and should do if you lose control at high speed for example and smack into the side of a house or something.

In the case of a few bumps along the way, it'd be nice having the "PRISTINE/WORN/DAMAGED/BADLY DAMAGED" statuses and be able to loot some type of repair kit that maybe works only once per use, but puts the car back up to WORN.

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In general, cars are both awesome and brain damage.

I've been thinking about a new mechanic to help reduce theft - the Hood (bonnet) can only be "popped" from the driver's seat (like real life), and the car doors themselves are lockable with the lock pick.

I wish the devs would start to consider the futility of base building and putting a car together when it's so simple for assholes to steal and grief.

 

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6 minutes ago, Mr Jizz said:

I've been thinking about a new mechanic to help reduce theft - the Hood (bonnet) can only be "popped" from the driver's seat (like real life), and the car doors themselves are lockable with the lock pick.

I like it, but I think you'd still end up removing something (like the spark plug and/or radiator) from the car as a deterrent from theft because with this system in place, anyone with a lock pick can drive away with the car.

The same idea, but being able to lock the door with a combination lock perhaps would be better.  The cars could spawn with the combo lock built into the driver door with no code set (i.e. door unlocked).  You set a code to lock the door and from then on, entering that code toggles the lock/unlock.

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"Immersion aficionados" would hate these ideas, but I say immersion is a bullshit reason to kill any idea in a survival game when a compelling non-immersive element exists. If I can't be in the game 24/7 to protect my shit, then there should exist handicaps to thwart thieves and griefers.

Speaking of which - are Landmines persistent yet? I had a few vanish (pretty sure no one hit them, and they can't be 'defused')

Edited by Mr Jizz

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In fact, here's some visual proof regarding the "does it despawn if something in it is ruined but the car itself is not ruined".  I was watching TheRunningManZ today and he crashed a Gunter going too fast under a bridge (tsk tsk Paul).  😋

https://player.twitch.tv/?volume=0.75&video=v450769599

If you start at the 03:57:00 mark of that video, you'll see the crash.  You'll notice when he looks at the dash after crashing, the Gunter itself is still green and not red, but when he pops the hood, he sees the radiator is the thing that is ruined.  He takes the spark plug out so that nobody will steal it, but leaves the ruined radiator in place and then he and his passengers head off in search of a new radiator.  He does find a new one and if you jump to the 04:15:00 mark, you'll see them returning to the crash site to find it now lacking in quantity of one Gunter.

So yeah, if you crash and only something on the car is ruined, take it out/off the car and discard it somewhere if you want the car to still be there when you get back.

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Just to clarify @drgullen,

Are the experiences you listed above primarily on Vanilla Public Servers?

 

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2 hours ago, philbur said:

Just to clarify @drgullen,

Are the experiences you listed above primarily on Vanilla Public Servers?

 

I've made several posts in this thread, so not sure which one you are referring to.  If it's the one with the video link in it, that was not me experiencing it, I was watching a Twitch streamer play the game and he doesn't usually mention what server he's playing on due to the fact that he'll be stream sniped if he does, so not sure which server he was on in that video, to be honest.

Why do you ask?  Are your experiences with cars despawing different?

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Keys would be nice, so we could lock cars.

Then again, I stumbled upon a fully kitted car just outside the airfield once. It was so exhilarating, driving it away, thinking that the owner was about to pop me any second. That feeling shouldn’t necessarily be taken away from players.

I don’t think the devs want us to over-hoard our stuff anyway. I’m sure Nespesney said that things like bases should always be at risk of being broken into. Look at some of the servers that have tweaked base raiding, making it harder. You have to hold left mouse button for up to 20 minutes on some of them! How is that fun gameplay? All for the sake of people, essentially, having ‘gear fear’. It’s only loot, at the end of the day (more relevant if cars were easier to get going, I guess).

Edited by ThePugman

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On 7/11/2019 at 12:54 AM, drgullen said:

Why do you ask?  Are your experiences with cars despawing different?

I personally have only had ONE type of vehicle despawn on me and that is the Blue LADA. The Gunter has yet to act up and the Olga has been extremely reliable and faithful for remaining where I leave it.

On a Community Modded Server there seems to be only ONE regular that the vehicles have despawned on, and the rest of us have only encountered the very rare occasion of it.

I know the vehicles are still a LONG way off from being what they should be....but again....it has been my consistent experience that the Olga and Gunter seem to stay in place at least.

I can get through many hours of driving and only rarely do I experience the stuttering de-sync and it is usually when a high-ping player is on (not positive this is related though).

I hit a Vanilla server every once in a while and vehicles definitely seem to be a hell of a lot more flaky and unpredictable.

Coincidence? Dunno. But again.... It would be interesting to know if there is a greater likelihood of vanishing cars on Vanilla versus Community Modded. Maybe making even slight changes to their spawn conditions, or their spawn timers might be having an effect?

 

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14 minutes ago, philbur said:

Coincidence? Dunno. But again.... It would be interesting to know if there is a greater likelihood of vanishing cars on Vanilla versus Community Modded. Maybe making even slight changes to their spawn conditions, or their spawn timers might be having an effect?

Yeah, it's an interesting point.  I don't know if there is such a mod out there that says "despawn the car if anything attached to it is ruined" but perhaps there is.  I think what happened here though was a bug and should not have happened -- you shouldn't have to remember to remove a ruined attachment to a car to prevent it from despawning.  In fact, as few cars as there are on any given server, it'd be nice if by default, ruined cars just didn't despawn at all and remained in the world until a server restart occurred.  You might be driving along with a similar car that's missing some of its parts and you could then loot the ruined car if you found it and if it had some of the things you were missing.

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On 7/11/2019 at 4:42 PM, ThePugman said:

Keys would be nice, so we could lock cars.

Then again, I stumbled upon a fully kitted car just outside the airfield once. It was so exhilarating, driving it away, thinking that the owner was about to pop me any second. That feeling shouldn’t necessarily be taken away from players.

I don’t think the devs want us to over-hoard our stuff anyway. I’m sure Nespesney said that things like bases should always be at risk of being broken into. Look at some of the servers that have tweaked base raiding, making it harder. You have to hold left mouse button for up to 20 minutes on some of them! How is that fun gameplay? All for the sake of people, essentially, having ‘gear fear’. It’s only loot, at the end of the day (more relevant if cars were easier to get going, I guess).

Pugman, I agree with you, at least in part. I'm suggesting things that add layers of 'nonsense' for people who want to commit wasteland crimes (LOL). The idea of making the hood release an option from the driver's seat plus lockable doors would be easy to defeat if a player happens to have a lockpick, but the same is true if they just happen to have a battery and spark plug. Assuming they don't, you've added an obstacle for an assailant to overcome. That's where this game really shines... How many times have you gone running a simple errand to find something specific, only to find it suddenly/seemingly unattainable? You go looking for a lockpick and find yourself treed in a house surrounded by zombies.

Another way they could do this is to add more components to the car which can be removed prior to logging out. At one point they had serpentine belts as a required component to get the vehicle running. Let's bring that back, and maybe throw-in fuses. I guarantee if the scenario of this game was happening in real life, I could do things to a car that would make it virtually un-stealable.  For the sake of preserving an interesting player experience, I'm sure we could limit it to items that could be found in the environment... just more of them.

 

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- I lost the car after restart / parked in the barn (gunter) * today

- I lost my car after restart / parked in the open (olga) * week ago

- I lost the car after restart / parked in the forest (lada) * 1.04

- destroyed cars (black smoke) / despawn in 10min or less

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44 minutes ago, Eugene Neils said:

- I lost the car after restart / parked in the barn (gunter) * today

- I lost my car after restart / parked in the open (olga) * week ago

- I lost the car after restart / parked in the forest (lada) * 1.04

- destroyed cars (black smoke) / despawn in 10min or less

When you say "after restart", do you mean you were playing and suddenly received the red error "No message received for x seconds" in the middle of your screen?  If so, that was not a server restart, that was a server crash and crashes can sometimes cause persistence issues which can cause some or all of the persistence items, cars included, to vanish when the server comes back up.  A server restart is where you don't get that red message, but instead are suddenly sent back to the menu screen with a message saying "You were kicked from the game".  In those cases, cars shouldn't vanish because that was a graceful exit of the server exe where persistence should not have been corrupted.

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17 hours ago, drgullen said:

When you say "after restart", do you mean you were playing and suddenly received the red error "No message received for x seconds" in the middle of your screen?  If so, that was not a server restart, that was a server crash and crashes can sometimes cause persistence issues which can cause some or all of the persistence items, cars included, to vanish when the server comes back up.  A server restart is where you don't get that red message, but instead are suddenly sent back to the menu screen with a message saying "You were kicked from the game".  In those cases, cars shouldn't vanish because that was a graceful exit of the server exe where persistence should not have been corrupted.

regular (after cca 15 hours of my absence car was gone, the barn was open - both gates, and inside was a hacksaw, that wasn't there before - empty server - 10 players max)

In addition, another car on the map disappeared after I parked it...

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2 hours ago, Eugene Neils said:

regular (after cca 15 hours of my absence car was gone, the barn was open - both gates, and inside was a hacksaw, that wasn't there before - empty server - 10 players max)

In addition, another car on the map disappeared after I parked it...

I don't know what your experiences are with DayZ servers, but do you have any idea how many crashes could occur on a server in 15 hours?  All it takes is one crash to corrupt persistence and cars could disappear.  It doesn't matter how empty or full the server is, a server could crash even if it's empty if, for example, the CLE tried to spawn something it couldn't find.

Until server crashes are fully resolved, persistence disappearances will continue, unfortunately.  DayZ Standalone servers have been crashing for about 6 years at this point, so I wouldn't bet on this problem ending anytime soon.

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On 7/16/2019 at 6:41 PM, drgullen said:

I don't know what your experiences are with DayZ servers, but do you have any idea how many crashes could occur on a server in 15 hours?  All it takes is one crash to corrupt persistence and cars could disappear.  It doesn't matter how empty or full the server is, a server could crash even if it's empty if, for example, the CLE tried to spawn something it couldn't find.

Until server crashes are fully resolved, persistence disappearances will continue, unfortunately.  DayZ Standalone servers have been crashing for about 6 years at this point, so I wouldn't bet on this problem ending anytime soon.

during Christmas the car in the forest lasted for 5 days on the official server.

now disappearing after the reboot as the boys write above, but yeah, we won't be paranoid

sry for my eng, bye

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This problem is not defeat until special slots to store loot. Technically I see the solution only in one - the server of storage of a loot and an entrance to the game server with the loot, but there has to be a restriction of a loot at an entrance. Otherwise, the game servers will fall. And Yes, loot should be from the server where you played!

This can only be implemented if the player will do the save loot function. Which will send the loot to the storage server. And when entering the server, the player must have clean slots that he can use.

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6 hours ago, maxon-69 said:

This problem is not defeat until special slots to store loot. Technically I see the solution only in one - the server of storage of a loot and an entrance to the game server with the loot, but there has to be a restriction of a loot at an entrance. Otherwise, the game servers will fall. And Yes, loot should be from the server where you played!

This can only be implemented if the player will do the save loot function. Which will send the loot to the storage server. And when entering the server, the player must have clean slots that he can use.

This won't solve anything, your system would still be storing loot in the persistence files, so a server crash could still wipe away the stored loot.

There's always going to be server crashes, so based on the design of the persistence system, there's always going be the chance of vehicles and loot disappearing.

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You understood me wrong.

I offer a "cloud" server for storing loot and transport. On the game server you found the loot and through the function "save" you move it to this "cloud" server. Then you go to the game server and move your loot from the cloud server to the game server. But be sure to do this by limiting the slots so that the game server does not overload. The same can be done with one car. Saved through the function to the cloud server and moved your car to the game server.

If the server has lost all data, then limited and saved loot you can take with you to the game!

I think that this function of "saving loot" can be made paid and given an opportunity for developers to earn money. 1 slot - 1 $.

Edited by maxon-69
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